7 Easy SEO Strategies You May Not Be Using (Part One)


SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of getting high rankings on Google and other search engines. Some strategies are very complicated and labor intensive, but some are relatively easy to implement.

Why bother with SEO? Quite simply if you have a business or nonprofit website, it will do you no good at all if no one visits your site.

But that is not enough. These visitors need to be people who are likely to do business with you. You want people who want and need what you have to offer.

In other words, you need more than just web traffic, you need targeted web traffic.

Fortunately, these people self-identify themselves by the searches they make on Google, Bing and other search engines. If your site appears on the first page of the results they receive, you will get a high number of visitors who want and need what you sell.

This is the first of seven SEO strategies you can use to get higher rankings.

The first strategy is called "Slave Sites." It is based on the principle that the domain name your site has can be one of the most important ways to get high search engine rankings.

For example: If someone is searching for a Samsung PN50C450 50-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV television, the search engines will most likely rank a site named SamsungPN50C45050Inch720pPlasmaHDTV.com, higher than a site named, joeselectronics.com.

The reason is that the domain name itself contains the keyword or search term the person typed into the search engine as a query.


Here's another example: Let’s say your company already has a website but you want to target a keyword for a particular product. For example, your company rents equipment and the name of your company is "Acme Equipment Rental." The URL for your website, of course, is, www.acmeequipmentrental.com.

Your most popular products are forklifts and you want to get higher search engine rankings when people search for "forklifts." But your URL (domain name) is not optimized for forklifts, it is only optimized for "equipment rentials."

Here’s a solution: Buy a domain name like www.forkliftrentalscleveland.com (assuming your business is in Cleveland). Now when someone searches for “forklift rentals in Cleveland, Ohio,” they are much more likely to find your new website.

You could also create slave sites called www.electicgeneratorscleveland.com to target electric generators, or www.scaffoldingrentalcleveland.com to target scaffolding.

Using slave sites, you can target every keyword you need.

But how do you get people from this new site over to your main site?

Make your new site a one-page mini site with some content about renting forklifts, but cut the information off mid paragraph with a link that says “See More.” The link of course will take visitors to the appropriate section of your main site so people can continue reading.

You can create these one-page slave sites for every type of keyword you wish to target, just be sure to link them to the sections of your main site that deals with the topic of these keywords.

You can also create slave sites for specific products, including the model numbers, as I did in the example above about the HD TV. Believe me, when someone searches for a product by its model number, they already have their credit card out and are ready to buy.

These are people who have already done their homework and are in the final stages of their buying cycle.

Using slave sites enables you to funnel traffic from a large variety of specific keywords, product categories and even individual products to your main site, no matter what domain name your site now has.

The next strategy will also be an easy to implement way to get better search engine rankings to get more, targeted, traffic to your website.

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Homeless Man Benefits From a World Wide Rave

You've probably already hear the story of Ted Williams, the homeless man from Columbus, Ohio who has a terrific announcer's voice. If not, check out this amazing video:

As moving as this story is, it gets better. An article by Brenna Ehrlich in Mashable/Video about Mr. Williams and the video gives us a great case study of the power of social media.

The video really took off on Reddit, a social bookmarking site, which spread the news about Mr. Williams and spurred it to over 5 million views on YouTube.

Within a short time, according to Ehrlich, he had received 70 to 80 job offers and had appeared on CBS'The Early Show. Among the job offers he has received is one from the Cleveland Cavaliers and their sister organization, Quicken Loans.

This story is much more than just a heart warming story of a man getting a second chance. It is also about the power of social media.

It doesn't take a viral video getting 5 million viewers to make a social media campaign effective. But it does take noteworthy content that is fueled by an enthusiastic community.

Social media is more than just word of mouth. Word of mouth in the "real" world typically dies out quickly unless there is a compelling story behind it. For example, if the story is about a company that delivered truly horrible service, as was the case with United Breaks Guitars, it gives hearers something tangible to pass along.

On the other hand, the story can be about something exceptional as well. People love to hear and retell good stories. If there is a link or a video they can pass along, it makes this process even easier.

What do you think? What makes this story about Ted Williams so compelling? Do you have another story that was so compelling it created its own buzz?


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