EzSEO Newsletter # 17
Andy Williams ez SEO
ezseonews.com
Hi again.
I am bringing this newsletter to you early today for a special reason. Tomorrow I will be announcing the winners of the prize draw to win a copy of SEO Website Builder and I figured some of you may be so disappointed you didn't win that you would not read the rest of the newsletter ;)
In addition, tomorrow is the pre-launch of SEO Website Builder. A pre-launch because it will only be available during this period to my newsletter subscribers.
If you do not win, you will be given the opportunity to get a copy at just $74 before the software package goes on sale to everyone else at an introductory price of $147 (this may well go up to $197 in a few weeks). If you have not yet read the sales letter for SEO Website Builder, now is the time to remind yourself of what this package can do.
One of my beta testers told me yesterday that the first 20 pages of his site to be included in Google are now getting found in Google (and other search engines) for over 170 different terms. The manual teaches you how to spread your net in the search engines and pull out visitors that most other webmasters just don't target.
OK, so now you know why this issue is early, let's get on.
This week I was going to write about server side includes (SSI) which, while sounding complicated, really are not. However, a number of e-mails this week have encouraged me to change my mind and instead warn you about software packages claiming to optimize your web pages for you. As you can tell, I don't rate many of them very highly (and I will tell you why) and I would certainly not recommend you buy them. Here is the summary of what you can find today.
1. Beware of Software claiming to optimize web sites
2. How you can create winning sales copy for your site
3. A Plan for 2004
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1. Beware of Software claiming to optimize web sites
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There are several tools available that supposedly help you to optimize your web pages. Many suffer the same problems in that they make a false assumption about how a web page is ranked by Google. Let's take a scenario that was presented to me this week by one newsletter subscriber using IBP (Internet Business Promoter) software by Axandra (the same company that produce the wonderful Arelis links manager). His e-mail reminded me of my own experiences with Web Position Gold (WPG) a couple of years ago (and was the reason I stopped using WPG and decided to learn the hard way what works).
He told me that after optimizing his pages using IBP, his pages were still no-where to be found in Google. He then went on to tell me that he used IBP to analyze the top pages in Google, and IBP came out with a list of suggestions as long as your arm about how to improve these pages. Doesn't that sound weird? His own pages were perfect according to IBP and were no-where in Google, yet the top pages in Google were terrible according to IBP, but were sitting at the top of Google?
To understand how this type of software can get it so wrong, you need to look at the way they are designed, and what triggers the suggestions they make when you analyze a web page.
A History Lesson: Years ago, search engine optimization was all about putting keywords in various places on your page, and in certain frequencies, and you would get a top 10 position. The search engines were in their infancy and link reputation and Page Rank algorithms were only a twinkle in the eye of their inventors.
If you analyzed a top page, and used that as a template (with regards to keyword placement, length etc), you could achieve search engine success too. This is what I believe most SEO software still does, and it is plain wrong.
My understanding of them is that they take the top x results in Google (possibly top 10), and analyze all 10 pages for keyword placement, density, page length, title length, meta keywords etc etc and then take an average of these results. They then compare your page to the average of the top ten and provide suggestions to make your page mimic the top 10 pages. They are assuming that these factors still govern (like the good old days) where a web page ends up.
The problem with this assumption is that not every (or even any) of the pages in a competitive area will exist in the top 10 because of factors on the web page itself. If you have been reading my newsletter for some time now, you will know that link reputation and PR play a much bigger role in where your web page ends up (and increasingly so as the keyword phrase becomes more competitive).
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FACT: It is possible to get a web page to #1 for a keyword phrase that does not even exist on the web page itself. What would this tell your optimization software about a well optimized page?
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These SEO software packages do not take into account link reputation or page rank to my knowledge. The only software that I know does, is Optilink by Leslie Rohde (however, that software does not take into account all of the on-page factors, just the ones Leslie thinks important).
The bottom line is that if you use tools that optimize your web page by taking a top 10 average, you are actually not helping your pages very much at all and your time would be better spent getting incoming links and organising your linking structure. You certainly should not expect to see improved rankings.
My suggestion to you if you want to optimize your pages using a tool like IBP, is to only analyze very low competition phrases. It is much more likely that the low competition phrases are less profitable to marketers and therefore have not been picked up by the SEO gurus to target for profit. What that means is that pages in the top 10 for low competition keywords are much more likely to be there because of on page factors rather than link reputation and PR, so you can actually get a better idea of what on-page factors work.
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2. How you can create winning sales copy for your site
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Writing sales copy has always been a difficult task for me, and I am not very successful at it. What about you?
I have bought a number of eBooks on writing sales copy but have not been inspired by any of them, until now. Quite by accident I came across a book that I have not seen being promoted by any of the big name Internet Marketers. I bought it.
I have to tell you that after reading it, I am very excited about the techniques it describes, and the formula it gives you (in step by step format) for writing sales copy. I contacted the author about her book, and she tells me that the book is going to be published soon and you will be able to get a copy in your local bookstore. However, until that time, you can get it as an eBook. The eBook itself is in a format I do not like (built with an eBook compiler that makes it difficult to print off), but you can request a PDF version after purchase (she labels it as a Macintosh version, but PDF is read on PCs too). I received the PDF version - all 160 pages of it.
If you want to explode your profits this year, this could be the way to do it - see my own plan for 2004 below.
The book is called "Web Copy that Sells: The secret to creating a profitable web site" by Maria Veloso .
As you know, I don't recommend many products to you, so if I do, you know it is the best of the best.
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3. A Plan for 2004
I had a few e-mails this week commenting on the plan I laid out last week in the newsletter to make 2004 a more profitable year. Some of you asked for more information like this, and when I read Maria's book, I decided that I would be doing something different myself this year.
1. Find a product I love
2. Write a sales copy page using the formula in Maria's book
3. Put my affiliate link to a merchant who sells the product
4. Upload my page and link to it from a page already in Google
Repeat step 1.
Last year I had been spending a lot of time on my sites just putting up links with very little in the way of pre-sell patter (not including the search engine site which does review products, but that is different).
I truly believe that by changing the way I build an affiliate site and concentrating on a website built around products I love (using the plan above), the web site will convert visitors into customers more readily, be hugely successful and financially rewarding. This year is going to be very exciting!
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That is it for this week. Look out for tomorrow's special edition with the prize draw results.
Have a great weekend!
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