Okay, half of my friends and family already checked out because the title involves search engine optimization. That's okay. Those of you willing and brave enough to continue, let's get on with it. 

As a search marketer, one of the key strategies I employ in on-site optimization includes internal linking strategy. Here's a quick summary of how it works, from the beginning: 

Step 1: Keyword Research

Step 2: META Tag Optimization

Step 3: Content and Header Tag Revisions

Step 4: Internal Linking 

Step 5: External Linking 

If you want an explanation of these basic concepts, visit any one of a hundred SEO blogs and search for these terms. Or, you can wait for a few weeks and I will begin recovering all the SEO basics on another blog which I will announce soon. For now, I'm only covering Step #4 as it applies to a blog. 

The thought occurred to me months ago after I had written a blog post about how my wife loves the affordable women's clothing at Papaya Clothing Store in the Grapevine Mills Mall. Actually, it was also after my most popular post was written on the Papaya Clothing website. That second post, written in April 2007 (only three months ago), received more than 1,000 visitors the first month simply by ranking at the bottom of the first page on Google for "Papaya Clothing". After I saw that jump in my analytics, I decided to test something out. I wrote two more blog posts referencing Papaya and linked back to that second post from each of them. My ranking jumped from #8 or #9 to #2 within a couple weeks.

Granted, many phrases are more competitive and getting solid results take much more work. But the results I saw were phenomenal. I now receive more than 13k visitors per month just reading my few posts about Papaya Clothing. It's ridiculous. Of course, it really helps that the company has taken more than a year to build a website and has only an unlaunched tester site to show for the time and money lost. 

My point is that I'd never paid much attention to internal linking within my own blogs. I'm all over the map with my blogging, and it just never occurred to me until then that it could be very useful to use some of the same principles for a blog that I use on static websites. It's the visual blog style that probably kept me from thinking about it. I mean, even when I look at my own home page, I only see the most recent 10 posts or so. Everything prior to that is filed in Archives and fades from view.

Blog categories are an excellent way to keep tabs on what you've written before. Of course, you can always do a site search if you've incorporated search functionality. So here's the easiest way to go about building internal links on your site:

Rule #1 – When writing a new post, search your own blog for references to the same subject or keywords. Copy those specific post URLs and use them in hyperlinks on the new post.

Rule #2 – As an alternative, determine which category your new post falls under and search that category's archives for pages to link to in your new post.  

There you have it. Basic. Simple. Link to your own posts. I'll give more specific advice on internal blog linking in the new blog which will be announced soon.  

Rand posted an SEOMoz comment this morning, with some illustrations of really underhanded advertising for search marketing. He then asked a question I have asked myself for months:

“So what are we to do, fellow SEOs? After 10 years of attempting to educate the outside world, is it time to give up the game and just accept the fact that SEO will always have negative, inaccurate associations and a shroud of mystery? Or… are there new approaches that could be taken to better inform a clearly curious and often desperate public?”

As influential as Google and Amazon have been in Internet history, they both made an effort to market themselves via television, radio, film, and print. And the core principal at work then is the same now: if you want to educate or influence the masses, reach them where they live.

You can’t educate the masses with an SEO blog. Trust me, I have dozens of friends and acquaintances who use MySpace and visit my blog, but they hate it when I write anything SEO related.

In order to educate the public, you have to entertain them at the same time. Someone needs to spearhead this. Let’s look at the two easiest ways to educate the public:

1. Find a budding movie scriptwriter and write a main character to be an SEO. Without overtly preaching about the industry, teach the public about SEO through the comments and experiences of the character. This is an extremely powerful (and expensive) method.

2. Get the financial backing to create some infomercials. Make them cool (think Mac & PC), funny (Sonic DriveThru commercials), or edgy (TRUTH campaign). Create 5-10 commercials, each that covers one topic or exposes one unethical practice. Let each one air for a month or two before moving on to the next.

Both of these ideas are ridiculously expensive. But how did Amazon brand itself? Traditional media. We should give Amazon a lot of credit for building the Internet user base. Millions of people discovered for the first time that they could purchase items online, and the rest was history. But it took reaching them through the mediums they use most.

Internet use is definitely on the rise. In the future, I expect most Americans with Internet access will have a website of some sort. eBusiness will continue to rise. Search marketing is a vital aspect of eCommerce. It’s unavoidable.

Are commercial spots and movie appearances pipe dreams? Maybe. But someone will do it someday, and they will become instant experts in the minds of millions. If ever there was an open opportunity to make a name for one’s self in search marketing, this is it. Throw a few million at it and watch what happens. Of course, once the rabbit is out of the hat, expect to see the unethical marketers create 30 minute infomercials on late night television promising millions if you create an instant SEO shop or use their services.

There will be abuse of every inspiration. The only way to combat that abuse may be to get enough SEO professionals to band together to support this ad campaign that the space is flooded with support and verification.

Thoughts?

Today, we’re talking about online user experience. Granted, this is the type of post that belongs on my Reputation Management blog, so I’ll be brief and expand on it there later. It’s still worth my time to cover these topics here or on MySpace because those are the places where my Internet illiterate friends hang out, and they represent the types of people who will “discover” the amazing opportunities made available by the Web, and without some kind of help they’ll throw up the ugliest or most unusable site you can imagine.

Here are the 2 biggest mistakes people make when designing and developing their first website:

1. FLASH – I don’t care how cool FLASH looks, designing your entire site in FLASH is a HORRIBLE idea. Don’t do it! I don’t care about how cool it looks, it’s a waste of your marketing dollars. Google and Yahoo! will not be able to index your site’s pages, which means you will get crap for search engine results. And in case you didn’t already know, the number one way people locate websites is by searching Google or Yahoo!. You absolutely cannot ignore this fact and must build your site to meet the standards of “crawlable” site.

2. Content Overload – No matter what you’ve seen from circa 1997 web designs, it does not help your website or company to place thousands of words on a single page. It’s a waste. Limit each page of information to 300-400 words. If you have that much more to say on a subject, think a little more strategically and organize your points so you can turn that one massive page into multiple, easy-to-digest pages. On the flip side, it’s equally unhelpful to have next to nothing on each page. If writing isn’t your strength, sub out the work to a professional copywriter (hmmm…. I wonder who?).
In EVERY situation, research what will improve online user experience for your targeted readers. There is tons of information out there to help you do it right the first time. You can always call me if you want to connect with someone offering professional design and SEO.

Once you’ve been around the SEO industry for awhile, you’ll get comfortable with the basic requirements of site design, development, and copywriting. Until then, feel free to shoot me your questions and I’ll be happy to help out.

The weather was absolutely perfect for sitting out on the patio, enjoying pleasant conversation. It was the perfect setting for the evening’s meeting at the Renaissance Hotel in Richardson, Texas. Christine Churchill, of KeyRelevance fame, introduced Brett Tabke to the crowd at the DFW Search Engine Marketing Association meeting yesterday. As most of you know, Brett Tabke is the man behind WebmasterWorld.com, one of the largest web-focused forums on the World Wide Web. He is also responsible for PubCon, the leading conference for sharing information about SEO, SEM, and Webmaster issues. I say “the leading conference for SEO” because, as many of you know, Danny Sullivan is making the keynote address at this year’s PubCon conference in Las Vegas.

Danny Sullivan had been the face behind the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES) for years, but has recently announced his separation from the SES. Questions about Danny Sullivan and PubCon were no doubt at the forefront of many people’s minds: will Danny align himself with PubCon, thus thrusting it to the forefront of search engine marketing conferences? When asked, all that Brett Tabke could say is that Danny Sullivan has likely been offered positions from multiple conference organizations and has yet to announce any final decision. “He may have something to announce at the conference,” Brett chuckled, “I certainly hope so.”

Brett’s presentation covered the history of his career, exposure to computerized technology, and the issues faced by today’s SEO/SEM forums. He acknowledged a rather significant drop off in new forum memberships over the past six months. In his opinion, the rather significant portion of the American population that had not made the switch to web-based thinking/marketing has now been inoculated. “The SEO/SEM industry has plateaued,” Brett admitted. He went on to admit a level of uncertainty as to what to expect from the next phase of SEO growth. Search Engine Optimization has “matured” to a certain point, he explained, where we no longer need to repeatedly explain META Descriptions and Title Tags to the readership. The readers have asked those questions, learned as much as they can, and are now leveling off at this level of maturity that begs the question: “What do we teach them now?” Certainly, these important questions.

While we in the SEO industry certainly do not know everything, including the actual algorithms of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, enough information is already out there on the web that anyone can learn how to optimize a website by spending the time to research and experiment. Brett Tabke’s presentation style is very relaxed, comfortable, and personable. It was refreshing to hear a man of his stature admit to uncertainties and concerns. Those questions are real. Many SEOs have been wondering the same thing. In part, the very truth of those concerns were the motivation behind my article, “Breaking SEO Myths Part One: The SEO Expert.”

There comes a point when a person is attempting to become an expert through link bait articles, countless forum posts, and blog networks. The lack of deeper waters (outside of learning HTML, Pearl, .Net, etc.) is evidence in and of itself that the industry is quickly coming to a point when talking about itself will prove to be only redundant. And before someone begins accusing me of constantly accusing and slandering SEOs, let me be the first to say that I do not wish for a lack of new information. I don’t want to be bored. I don’t want to end up regurgitating the same old thing. I enjoy learning, challenges, and growth. So just know that my comments about the industry are not bitter judgments but rather concerns about myself.

Could there be another industry more inflated by ego, misinformation, and repetition than search engine optimization? Perhaps there are a few others out there, but not many. But what else can one expect from an unregulated industry? There’s no FCC, FTC, FEC, FMC, FERC, HIPAA, ATF, SEC, FAA or any other acronym’d agency standardizing legitimate SEO practices.

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