I’m excited to announce that The SEO Girl now has Advertising opportunities available! A few of you have emailed me and asked about them, but I wanted to wait until I had a good amount of posts up and regular traffic visiting the blog each month. I’ve kept the rates pretty affordable, so I’m hoping you’ll check them out and take advantage. It’s a great way to get some added exposure and target the exact audience you’re courting!

I was recently asked to review KeywordCompetitor.com, a real-time Keyword Research Tool. You never know when you might just find the tool that fixes that ol’ leaky faucet, so I said “Sure, why not?!” I’ve been married to the Google Keyword Suggestion tool for quite awhile now, and I’ve noticed myself often spending time slipping between researching related keywords and their search volume on the Google keyword tool, then separately checking out the number of results for each keyword (competition volume), and also taking a look at where the site’s competitors were ranking for these keywords. That means I’m clicking through three different browser tabs, and with already being pressed for time in every moment of my day, that’s just a time suck!

Then Keyword Competitor came along and swept me off my feet. Not only can I see related keyword phrases to the keyword I typed in and their search volume, but I can also view the number of search results for that keyword…and I can also see what keywords the site’s competitors are ranking for! Patience isn’t a virtue I was exceptionally graced with, so it’s great to see I can simply allow the report to run in the background, and I get an email with the report attached once I’m finished. I can email and export that report as a pdf, csv, or in html, making it client-friendly and perfect to send to the client at the beginning and conclusion of the project.

I’m on the SEO side of things, but it never hurts to propel a client to sign on for our Pay-Per-Click services as well, and the keyword reports also include a tab that displays your competitors’ paid ads and paid keywords, helping to educate an on-the-fence prospective PPC client on why they should do both SEO and PPC, cuz well, their competitors are!

Sure, keyword rankings can fluctuate, so providing your SEO client with organic search traffic data is always best, however you do want to benchmark the client’s keyword rankings at the start of the project, as well as their competitors’ rankings, and monitor progress as you go along, whether you show it off to the client or not. Keyword Competitor allows you to do just that. After all, if the client’s organic traffic increases, their keyword rankings also likely did as well.

Believe me, I wouldn’t review anything I wouldn’t use myself, and Keyword Competitor will certainly be seeing more of me! There’s other keyword tools out there, but for its Price and Features, Keyword Competitor has this SEO Girl’s vote!

Hi there! Just a quick post, as I’m about to make my amazing mashed potatoes for my family’s Easter dinner – what are your recommendations on the best press release syndication sites out there? I’ve previously used PRWeb.com and loved them, but I’m now looking to branch out a bit and see what else is out there. My must’s are:

• No yearly fee or contracts, purely a pay-by-release structure. The ability to pre-pay via check/electronic payment for multiple releases is preferred.
• SEO features, such as the ability to include links and the anchor text of my choosing.
• Ability to include a photo in the body of the release. Not a deal-breaker, but would be nice.
• Release should syndicate to similar major media outlets as PRWeb’s, such as the Associated Press, Google News, Yahoo News, etc.
• Ability to select categories for the release.
• Able to view statistics, such as the number of times the release is shown and the number of times the release is clicked on and opened.
• Ideally, each release should be $200 or under.

Here’s to hoping you’ll help this SEO Girl out!

Last week pretty much zapped the energy right out of me! The weather was gloomy, I had a few problem/resolution situations to take care of, and a great deal of monthly work left with the end of the month just a few days away. Yet, it was one of the most inspiring weeks I’ve had recently. We developed a plan of action to get our name out more, with our investment being mostly our time, expertise, and our motivation to illustrate that we are industry experts and have the proven experience to back it up.

A lot of great ideas get a lot of spark in the brainstorming phase, but seem to fizzle out after that. I was so proud to see my team fully embrace our plan of action and set out on it, needing only just a few words of encouragement and direction. It’s a trait I’ve seen again and again in our industry – such a desire to constantly move forward, learn more, and better ourselves. We’re not 9-5 pencil pushers, we’re creatives that happen to know quite a bit about search. This passion to continue thriving, regardless of the stressful days, gives us the motivation to want to continue growing a small business in this economic landscape. In turn, we have a desire to learn more, pass this knowledge on to client’s via their SEO and social media services, and always keep moving ahead.

If you’re lucky enough to be part of a thriving SEO company, you’re likely going to be working long hours. If you don’t love the industry and the work you’re doing, you’re going to resent it, just like you would with any industry, even if you worked at it just 4 hours a day. I work an easy 50 hours a week at my not-so-easy SEO job, and usually log another 4 hours throughout the weekend. Yet, I’m happy as a clam (okay, not every second, but overall I’m a pretty happy SEO girl).

What sets us apart is that we love our SEO jobs. We’re part of an industry that’s always changing and questioning preconceived ideas, along with being lucky to have some great people in our industry. The days are long and results are never immediate, but loving the work you’re doing goes a long way towards maintaining your happiness level. There’s always going to be those difficult days and even more difficult clients, but have faith that you’re in an industry that’s going places and evolving.

I’ve been told I work too much and that I’m a workaholic more times than I can count, but I still have that smile on my face and excitement to keep going, even after almost 4 years of being in this industry. It hasn’t been easy and clients try my patience all the time, but there’s a big difference from working just for a paycheck and working because you love what you do. I’m lucky to have the latter.

If you’ve met me in real life, you’ve probably seen me whip out a tube of berry Yes To Carrots lip balm (several hundred times) or heard me talk about their sister brand, Yes To Tomatoes, and how much I love it. I’ve been to the Yes To Carrots website, Twitter, and Facebook, many many times, and like any SEO worth her salt, there’s some things we notice a bit differently about a website. Yes To Carrots has an exceptional social marketing campaign and overall brand personality, and they’re definitely a brand to keep an eye on! (Fellow SEO girls – you must check out their body butter, so wonderful.)

Homepage Image: The first thing you’ll notice about the site is the very attractive homepage. The second thing: it’s all an image, oh no! A search engine is basically glossing over this page as they can’t read images. Ideally, the page should be balanced with an adequate amount of SEO-friendly text and images. Plus, visitors utilizing screen-readers to access the page will be able to identify what’s actually on the Yes To Carrots page.

The homepage does include image alt tags, which is great, but be sure they’re in a consistent format. Some read “Body Butter”, while others read “hand_and_elbow_cream”. A very small point, but great for consistency and having a clean website.

Page Title: Check out my previous post, “Ask The SEO Girl: Should My Page Title Include My Website’s Name?”, about adding your brand name to each page title on your website, along with a keyword phrase you’d like to rank for. Their homepage page title includes the Yes To Carrots brand name, but their interior pages lack it. Go for consistency and branding and add that brand name in!

Twitter.com/YesToCarrots: This is an example of a company Twitter page done so right. They’ve identified a brand personality of embracing a refreshing, healthy lifestyle, with an optimistic outlook. From their own tweets to the posts they decide to retweet, their Twitter posts reflect this personality. They don’t just tweet to tweet – they do it with a purpose, and they do it well.

Facebook.com/YesToCarrots: They convey that same vibrant personality on Facebook. We’d like to see them have different posts on Twitter and Facebook, but we applaud them for keeping their page updated, posting new status messages, adding photos, and posting new discussion topics. Their loyal fan base has responded back by embracing how active they are on social platforms and interacting with them.

Yes To Carrots is an exciting brand with products that meet and way exceed what’s said in their marketing messages. They can benefit from some SEO improvements, but their social media campaign sets the bar, and sets it high, for what a successful social campaign should be. Now time to re-apply my berry lip balm and get started on more SEO copy!

Yes, yes, and a thousand more yes’s to this question! The page title, or meta title, are the words in the blue bar at the top of your Internet browser, or the words engulfed by <title> in the source code for a website. Including one or two keyword phrases that are relevant for your site in your page title is a common SEO best practice, and as long as it’s not abused, actually does contribute quite well to a website being ranked for those keyword phrases, particularly the keywords in the homepage page title.

I recently heard an SEO say that they prefer not to put the site’s name in the page title. I strongly disagree – creating a page title similar in structure to: Keyword Phrase 1 and Keyword Phrase 2: Site.com, is a must for the following reasons:

• Reinforce Branding – In an age where searchers want to find the lowest price product, and want to find it fast, you need to do everything possible to instill your brand name in their minds. Adding it to your page title keeps it right in front of their eyes as they flip through your website.

• Search Result Listings – A search engine will typically pull your site’s page title as the title of a search engine results page listing. Imagine seeing a slew of search results, all with relatively generic, keyword-rich titles. Then, you spot one that includes keyword phrases, but also has the site’s brand name. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to click on the one with the brand name?

• Bookmarking – Whether it’s social bookmarking or simply bookmarking a site to your Internet browser, the bookmarked listing for a site usually is pulled from the site’s page title. Once again, branding is everything, and when the person who just bookmarked 10 relatively similar sites goes back to look at their list, their eye, and mouse, is going to be attracted to the one that has a brand name listed.

Including your website’s brand name in your site’s page title is a practice that only makes sense. When you’re at the mall, do the stores have “Clothing Store”, “Clothing Store 2″, “Bath Store”, “Bath Store 2″, and “Shoe Store” on their marquees? Nope. They distinguish themselves from each other by highlighting their brand names wherever they can, and that’s what sticks in our minds and has us stepping into their stores again and again.

So say you check out a blog or website and are asked to describe that website in 20 random words. Most likely, your word choices will be a little all over the place, but they’ll probably tie together enough to form a picture on what the blog is mostly about. This is the same concept as a “tag cloud” – a tag cloud is simply a collection of main themes on a blog or website – often seem a bit disjointed, but actually do go together to form an idea of what you mainly talk about on your blog.

There’s tons of tag cloud generators out there, and I recently used Wordle to generate a tag cloud for The SEO Girl blog, only the very best blog out there, of course (just nod along). The larger the font in a tag cloud, the more often you talk about that topic or theme. For The SEO Girl, I’m big on “SEO” of course, another was “industry” which makes sense, “blog”, “search”, and “PageRank”. Nearly all the words in my tag cloud related to the search industry, so it looks like despite my rambling posts, I’m on track! I encourage you to do the same with your blog or website – it’ll allow you to get a quick snapshot on the theme of your blog posts to be sure the big topics on your blog are actually what you want them to be, and if the keyword phrases you’d like to rank for on your website show up in a larger font in your tag cloud, chances are you’re on target with your SEO keyword targeting. Happy tag clouding!

Check out The SEO Girl blog’s tag cloud, courtesy of Wordle. Note how “love” is inside the “S” in SEO – how true for me!

Before adding the Akismet spam filter to my blog, which is lovely, I was receiving tons of spammy comments with random links in them. Since the comments contained little relevant text, it appears they left the link solely for SEO value. A tactic which, of course, has little value. I stress the value of personally contacting site owners for link building and giving them a reason to add your link, rather than trying to “game” search engines in this way. Plus, you’re basically wasting your time and your money – links in blog and forum comments aren’t going to boost your rankings.

Thoughtful blog and forum comments can boost your industry cred, though. Take for example the recent post of mine, “I Think I Can, I Think I Can: SEO, The Little Engine That Could”, where I highlighted a person who commented on one of my prior posts and his insightful comments. Spend five minutes giving your opinion on a blog post in your area of expertise, and those thoughtful comments could be worth much more in the long run. You’ll be able to make contacts in your industry and network, show you know what you’re talking about, and perhaps even get the word out about your own website and encourage other blogs/sites to link to you, all without engaging in obtrusive comment spam!

Remember: Keep SEO pure. Show the value of your knowledge and your website, and real people and search engines will notice in time.

I was doing some research today on what SEO companies out there are charging for their services. I found a great article in SEOmoz called “How to Price an SEO Campaign” – excellent job highlighting what a good SEO company will do for your site, and the SEO services you actually need for your site. Of course, it’s SEOmoz, so they can charge quite a bit more than a regular old jane who’s plain fantastic at SEO.

But! I did a Google search for “SEO services”, just for a quick pricing glimpse, and was oh-so-discouraged at what I saw. I did see a few reputable companies in the first few pages, and hats off to them, but then there were the companies who promised “search engine submissions”, “blog and forum comments”, “free directory submissions”, and “meta-tag rewrites”. There was even one company who charged $1K for little more than a simple Website Grader SEO evaluation! The horror, and it’s not even Halloween yet!

Rather than choosing a company that says they’ll get you SEO results fast and cheap, look for companies that not only will advise you on on-page and off-page SEO best practices, but will actually implement those practices. You’re a busy website owner, and you need a professional who will do the work and do it right, even if it’s going to cost you a bit more. Invest the time and money into doing it right the first time. If you don’t see results until month 3 or 4 into your campaign – that’s a good thing! That shows they’re implementing ethical SEO techniques and getting search engine attention over time, rather than buying 100 paid links and washing their hands of your website.

Remember, quantity does not equal quality. Going with a company who presents you with an impressive looking report filled with all the blog and forums they spammed with your link, the free directory submissions they submitted your site to, and a few links they bought for you on spammy sites has relatively little value. Go with a reputable company who spends time crafting creative SEO content, manually contacting only a handful of sites each month for link building with a personalized email or phone call, maintains a blog and writes interesting posts, ensures your site is optimized correctly, and maybe even does a bit of social media is the way to go. Their time is likely worth more money, in the $1-2K per month range, but it’s money spent wisely.