Not to mention that the visits came more often than visits from internal links, resulting in less than an hour on average while visits through internal links often took up to 14 hours to send the bots.  The study went on to double check that the Twitter Googlebot visits were indexing pages, and they were. 
 
While some results were off, possibly due to variables used in the study, the end conclusion was that it was possible to index websites using Twitter accounts, and it may be a good way to speed up the indexing of newer pages as well as index links that cannot be found internally. 

Whether Google or Twitter catches wind of these sitemapping tricks in the future and makes moves to get rid of them or make them obsolete, for now it seems to be working.  Not to mention this is another interesting addition to recent speculations about nofollow links and their role in search engine optimization. Read about the study for yourself and check out data graphs at SEOmoz Article.

In another recent article on SEOmoz.org, Glenn Allsopp of Viral Marketing wrote how he put out a free eBook that was downloaded by literally thousands of people, but he had made the mistake of not linking to a website that was an essential part of the process described.  The end result was that in the first month, about 500 readers had Googled his brand over and over and then scoured through a few pages of Google results in order to find his website.

Before long, Allsopp found his site making it to 2nd place on Google, even though he had performed no other linking efforts.  It was a brand new site with hardly any links up against many older sites with legitimate linking programs.

So why would Google favor a site on this basis?  Well, if you give it a little thought, it is not much of a stretch to understand. 

Google is focused on giving users the best possible results for their queries, and it seems that would include delivering the website of a brand name that is Googled often.  So, when people continually search for a term and click on the same site over and over in Google, they are going give that site some extra love and bring it up to the first page for more relevance.

I would also speculate that it makes sense for Google to do this in the case of any keyword term, not just a brand.  For instance, if people frequently Googled a certain keyword string but everyone seemed to pick the number 10 site on Google, for whatever reason, why would Google not want to bring that up to number one where it belonged?  Remember, the sole purpose is giving you the best results, and every time someone clicks on that result, it is almost like giving it a vote. 

Wouldn’t Google want to acknowledge those votes?  In fact, Google has even admitted that their algorithms take this into account, but for many people the lasting speculation is about how much of a difference it makes. Allsopp’s experience along with the experiences of many other webmaster’s is indicating that it plays a substantial role. 

Another interesting aspect to note when it comes to this observation is the growing trend of Google personalization, which may even compound the effect on an individual level. Google now has personalized results set on its search engines until the user switches them off, something that the typical user would never think about. 

So what happens is that once someone searches for a certain term and then clicks on a certain link, it becomes a part of their personalized Google experience.  They are far more likely to get that site as a result next time they search for their term.

How can these two interesting variables be capitalized on?  One is by asking your audience to Google a search term rather than linking to it, but in the case of personalized web searches, it may be powerful enough to offer a prize or coupon for Googling.  Of course, this would work to varying degrees based on the purpose of your site and your offer, but I see some interesting changes coming to this trend in the future. I have no doubt some smart marketers will find ways to capitalize.   

It is crucial that you spend some time doing research on the Internet marketing company that you choose. There are many different SEO strategies and techniques that can be offered to you and there are many companies out there just waiting to take you for all you can afford. While there are many different SEO techniques, there are some that are more beneficial than others.

Do not fall in the trap of paying for more than you really need or by signing a contract with a company that does not know the first thing about true SEO marketing. Consider the following questions and tips before hiring an SEO Internet marketing company.

• Ask for references and check those references.
• Make sure the company will fit your style and mission statement.
• Make sure to talk to the person who will be handling your account. Many times, you will be assigned to someone else. It is imperative that you both have a good understanding and will be able to connect with each other.
• Find out how often reports will be sent to you.
• Ask how long before you will see tangible results. If a company tells you that you will see results within a month, this is not possible. It generally takes at least a good six months before you will see positive results. SEO is a slow process, yet very reliable.
• The SEO firm you choose should be able to not only provide SEO services to your company, but should be able to follow their own advice. Search to see where that company shows up on the organic rankings.

If you are smart and do your homework, you will be knowledgeable enough to hire an SEO Internet marketing company with the satisfaction that you are not being conned into spending money that is not necessary. Campaigns can run from $1,000 to $100,000. Many companies will offer SEO services ala carte. When you choose to go ala carte, you will not be guaranteed traffic.

In fact, beware of any company that guarantees results quickly and that guarantees you will rank on the first page of any search engine. It is likely that if you choose to go full steam ahead with an Internet marketing plan that you could end up on the first page. However, no Internet marketing company can guarantee this.

While social media marketing is definitely a highly effective tool for Internet marketing, it is critical that you do not abandon your SEO marketing campaign. SEO and social media marketing are a powerful combination that must go hand in hand in order to truly benefit your Internet marketing needs. Why is this?

The answer is simple. What happens when you create a social media marketing profile and you start connecting with people? In order to maintain their attention, you must be able to offer some form of valuable information that people can use. Social media marketing is just the beginning, a way to jumpstart your potential prospects. However, you must be able to provide pertinent information, such as blogs, articles, newsletters, etc. through your SEO techniques that will attract and keep the attention of those you meet in the social networking world.

How can they work together to grow your business? SEO can improve your social media campaigns, and vice versa. Keywords are an essential tool for SEO and can be integrated into your social media campaign. Use keywords in your LinkedIn profile, on your tweets, and in the titles of your descriptions on YouTube videos and Flickr photos. Tools like Google Insights can help you track trending topics associated with your website.

Social media can improve your search engine visibility. Have you noticed YouTube videos showing up on the front pages of Google? If you have a blog that shows up in the search results, your LinkedIn profiles, Facebook Fan Page, and tweets can show up on the front page of Google, too! Target keyword phrases on social media publishing platforms, such as: Hubpages, Squidoo, or Wiki. This will not jeopardize your current rankings.

SEO and social media are essential techniques that must be utilized together to ensure success. One does not work well without the other. Combining social media and SEO insights can be done by developing a plan that outlines your goals, your target market, and your SEO and social media marketing plans.

Take advantage of what social media marketing can do for your business, but do not let your guard down on your SEO strategy. These two are a powerful combination that can be the secret to your company’s success.

Myth #1: Meta tags are all equally important.

Fact: Some Meta tags are useful, but others may not be relevant. These days, search engines are more concerned with the content that is on the website, rather than what Meta tags have been chosen for the site.

Myth #2: All SEO is expensive.

Fact: SEO is like just about anything. There is expensive SEO and SEO for the bootstrapping budget. You just have to know what to look for and what SEO techniques will best benefit you. Organic SEO is less expensive to set up and many aspects of it can be free. A PPC campaign or banner advertising can be more expensive because you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, the clicks do not cost a thing.

Myth #3: Sites should be submitted to search engines weekly or monthly.

Fact: You should only have to submit your site to a search engine once. The search engines will come back. To speed up the process of getting your site indexed, link it to a high traffic or high PR site. Your URL will be found by the search engines and will be indexed automatically.

Myth #4: Providing content on the site is all that is needed to rank well.

Fact: This is one myth to avoid at all costs. You must provide quality SEO content off site with the proper keyword density. Providing backlinks to your site is critical to ranking well with Google and many other search engines.

Myth #5: Competitive keywords and phrases are not recommended.

Fact: It is imperative that you utilize the keywords that everyone is using, as the people searching for your topic or product are likely typing in that keyword. It is recommended that you use a variety of high, medium, and low competitive key phrases.

Myth #6: Natural SEO is not as effective as PPC.

Fact: While this could actually be a true statement for the short term, in the long term it is not true. This is because people tend to trust the information found in organic searches rather than for information that is paid for on a per click basis.

Now that you are aware of the top six SEO myths, you are better prepared to create a SEO marketing campaign that will truly benefit you.

Your Site may not be being Indexed

Although your Google Webmaster Tools Reports shows you are being indexed, it is not always a reliable source. You need to dig a little further to make sure your URL is being ranked. To do this, simply use your traffic analytics tool to see if there have been any Google search referrals to this page. If your page is being ranked, then this is not the problem.

Insufficient and Low Quality Content

It is important to provide high quality content. High quality content is basically enough pertinent information about the topic that will be of use to a visitor. While your content may be valuable information, it is also important that you provide enough content. A few sentences will not do the trick, even if you update it every day. Try to provide at least 250 to 500 words of high quality content.

Your Site may be too New

Google automatically considers new sites to be “under suspicion”. It does not want to store the information of sites that are not accurate and are not providing quality information. All you can do is continue to add quality content, so you can earn its trust.

You may not have enough Links pointing to your Domain

Googlebot visits websites and continues to spider the links on the page. Therefore, Googlebot will not index your site until there is at least one link that points to your domain name. Here are some ways to get some backlinks:

• Write a press release about the launch of your website and submit it to press release websites.
• Write articles and submits to the top article directories. Be sure to include your link in the author resource box.
• Create a blog linking back to your website.
• Join niche forums. Set up the link to your domain in the signature and make some posts.

These are just a few ways that your site can be indexed badly. If your site is being indexed badly and you provide high quality and updated content, be sure to do some investigating.

For the first step, you need to come up with keyword ideas. For example, if you sell fruit juice, you will use fruit juice as your main keyword and come up with ideas related to that term.

Take the term you have selected and then type it into Google using this format: allintitle: ~fruit juice

The tilde tells Google you are looking for synonyms related to the main word.

Once it is typed in, you will see a list of results displayed. The synonyms will be in bold. You will be able to scroll down the page and find countless synonyms. Some you will not be interested in, but others will be exactly what you are looking for in a keyword.
Write down the synonyms you are interested in and then plug them into a keyword program so you can get statistics and find out more about the word. You will find some great keywords in the process.

The keyword tool will give you further recommendations. You will end up with a large list of keywords you can choose from. You will be able to find the ones that are the most effective for your campaign.

This is a great way to find keywords you would not have thought about. Many of the most popular keywords are missed because people simply do not think of them. A keyword tool is not perfect and can only lead someone in the direction they take it in. thus, a search engine such as Google can be incredibly helpful.

Keyword research relies on creativity and you can tap into your creativity by using Google. You will find more words than you normally would have and enjoy the success of a creative campaign.

Keyword research is always improving, and you can be a leader by using this trick. You will save time and come up with better keywords than you would if you were using a keyword research tool on its own. If you really want the best keywords possible, go over to Google today.

There are certain things I’ve noticed over the years when it comes to people and how they behave on websites. This information I’ve put to use in different SEO projects and I thought I’d share it with you all to help you gain some insight into how SEO firms can use human behavior to help them design better sites.

When we humans find something familiar, we tend to stick with it.

We tend to like to find patterns in things; it’s just part of how our brains operate. Knowing this we can design anchor text and link bait more effectively by trying to incorporate a surprise or some element of mystery. Surprise is one method of passing along content – the phrase “did you know?” has a unique ability to raise linkability.

Experience Drives Current Behavior

People tend to put more weight on personal experiences and recent events. In the SEO world this can be used to get people to link or buy something from your site. Perhaps make the site look like another famous site that people tend to visit, or if you are trying to build links why not mention a link on the target site that they already have that is oddly familiar to the one you are promoting. You’d be surprised how well this works!

Optimism and Confidence

People tend to be overly optimistic about their personal futures. The big takeaway here is when dealing with a client engaging your SEO services keep in mind they tend to think that their project somehow is going to always defy all the rules and outperform everyone else. It’s up to you to make sure you keep their expectations in check.

We Like Things The Same, Day In, Day Out

People don’t like to lose, and conversely people like things to stay the way they are if given the choice. The “status quo” is good enough for many of us.

If you can get someone to sign up for a recurring service, a newsletter or a yearly subscription the chances are high they will stick with it. Once you’ve Human behavior can be tricky to understand, but by observing how we behave we can actually learn some pretty useful SEO tricks to take advantage of human nature.the status quo will benefit your site. Give visitors to the website as many chances as possible to convert, purchase, subscribe, etc.

Prime the Pump

If you ask someone a question about something, and then follow up with them within the next day or two about the same subject chances are if your follow-up requires a choice, people will make the positive choice – be that purchasing, donating, etc.

Start relationships with your visitors through surveys or newsletters and then always follow-up with those that participate a few days later. You will see much higher conversion rates for those you follow-up with in a timely manner versus those that you come back to weeks later.

As SEO professionals sometimes we forget that bigger is no always better. Niche blogs are excellent sources for links because the traffic coming from these links tend to be more focused (interested in your product or service) and more likely to convert to sales (people who are visiting a niche site are generally looking for specific information on that particular field – so you automatically clear out all the clutter that many links tend to bring). Sure, you might only get 10% of the traffic, but the conversion rate for that 10% may be far higher than the other 90% of the traffic you’d get from more general links!

Of course the big question is how do you find niche blogs and sites that you can form a relationship with? Generally speaking the best way to find them is to be involved in the community they are in. If you are an avid knitter, no doubt you already know where some of the best knitting sites area. When you start to develop content and sites that fit into a niche it’s a good idea to go out there and see what others are doing. Search engines are a good way to find content, of course, but be sure to narrow it down. For example, don’t just search for knitting, but rather search for the specific type of knitting you might be interested in – such as “knitting sweaters with 100% cotton”.

Niche sites also tend to stick around longer than other more general sites. The reason is that for many niche sites it is their passion – or at least their hobby. Anyone can talk about tech, but it takes someone with a real, genuine interest to talk about collecting old railroad memorabilia or discussing alternative educational models for science and math.

When you find sites that you’d like to strike up a relationship with, make sure you adhere to rule #1 on the SEO world: don’t spam. Strike up a conversation, get to know the site owner and make sure you spell out the reason for your contact in the email. If they are interested, they will follow-up with you. If not, then move on. Some niche blog owners are passionate about their topics and don’t accept advertisements or link exchanges from anyone no matter how good your content or product is.

By finding your niche you may find that you deliver less traffic, but the traffic you do get converts into meaningful dollars and cents. It’s a great way for SEO firms large and small can work to help promote their clients by focusing in on the areas and subject matters that will generate the best return on investment and not just eyes and clicks.

If you want to really find the best keywords for your site, you can use paid search in order to find results. You will actually see how certain keywords perform when they are used by real people. This will not be based on statistics that have been gathered over time. It will not be a computer generated suggestion. Instead you will see the facts based on how keywords do. You will watch the keywords and see how they perform in real life situations.

In order to do this in the most effective way possible, be sure to pick a wide variation of keywords. Use plurals and synonyms. Then, let them go to work. See how many impressions these keywords get. Then, you will know how often they are searched.

You can examine each keyword individually in order to see which ones were the most popular. The keywords that did not trigger results should be discarded, even if a keyword research program said they were the best. Sometimes programs make mistakes. They are not out in the trenches, looking at real life results in real time. Keyword research programs are incredibly helpful, but they are not always completely accurate. That is why it is important to use different research methods in order to find the best keywords for the situation.

After the research is over, you will have a nice set of keywords to use for your campaign. You will then be able to use keywords you know will work.

Remember to analyze the competition for the keywords. Keep in mind that organic search results are different than paid results. You can tell the popularity in terms of searches through paid results. However, you need to make sure you can also rank in an organic search.

There are lots of keyword tools at your disposal. Make sure you use as many as possible so you will have an effective campaign. Do not limit yourself, as that will create a problem for your campaign.