What I want to do today is take some time to look at the most important points to include when putting together your authority website, so you can avoid the most common pitfalls.

Structure

You need to plan your site well in advance and you can either use a mind mapping tool to do this or just sketch it out on paper. One of the best ways to structure an authority site is to use a system called “siloing”. This is where you plan and then create groups of pages which are very tightly focused on a specific subject. So let’s take the example of a site about acne treatments with a silo about “natural acne treatments.” Within this silo you’d have a set of pages about the best natural acne treatments, acne treatments you can make at home etc etc. Using this structure provides you with lots of SEO “juice” and gives you tons of internal linking opportunities too.

You can’t start an authority site and then try to figure out what structure to use – you need to plan it all out first. You can create a site with the silo model in just about any CMS or web development program.

How Many Pages?

There is this massive myth that creating an authority site means writing or outsourcing thousands of pages of content but nothing could be further from the truth folks. A true authority site can contain as few as 50 pages of content and as many as 500,000 or more. The reality is that once you’ve created enough content to answer any potential questions your visitors might have about a given topic then you have created a true authority site.

Never, ever start the creation of an authority site with the focus of creating a single page of content for every single keyword you could find on the subject – you’ll just wind up with a lot of repetitive and boring content as a result. Your only goal with an authority site should be to create the kind of content that people will link to naturally and that your visitors are going to bookmark and share your site with their friends as a result.

Snow White SEO

When you’re building an authority site it’s going to mean investing a significant amount of time and even money in the entire process – especially if you’re hiring high-quality writers who create great content for you. This investment on your part isn’t something you want to waste so you need to keep your nose clean when it comes to SEO. All those spammy links you can point at your Tier-2 web 2.0 sites…forget about them! When it comes to building an authority site you’re effectively creating a small online business and you need to treat it with the same level of care. Keep your SEO tactics clean when it comes to building backlinks and any other promotional methods you might intend using – otherwise you run the risk of wasting hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars of your money as a result of trying to take a shortcut.

Time

Getting results from an authority site takes time, so you’ll need to be willing to invest at least a few months to watch it get traction in the search engines and actually start to develop and generate either leads or revenue from that point onwards. You can’t expect to see results in less than 90-days or so.

If you’re planning on generating income from the Internet over the long-term then an authority site should definitely be part of your overall plan, just be patient and be consistent and you will see results.

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Let’s take a look at the factors you need to focus on in terms of improving the ranking of your website.

External Links

Incoming links to your site are what the original Google algorithm was based on and it’s still extremely relevant today – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Without getting into a huge amount of detail about building links to your site what you need to know is that your backlink profile (the number and type of links your site has) needs to be very diverse. So in an ideal world your backlinks would be made up of links from article sites, social bookmarking, free and paid directories, some high PageRank sites, YouTube videos, web 2.0 sites, guest blogging links, press release links, links from forums you participate in, RSS feed links etc, etc. Focus on diversity and focus on quality and you should have absolutely no problem at all.

Internal Links

If there’s any one single aspect of SEO which is under utilized by people trying to rank in the search engines it’s in the area of using your own linking power. What this means is that you can and should be creating links from your own pages to other pages on your site. Let’s say for example Page A (a sub-page) on your site is all about natural acne treatments and the homepage of your site needs some extra link juice. All you need to do is create a link from Page A to your homepage with anchor text that you want your homepage to rank for e.g. best acne treatments. A link from within your own site can be just as powerful as any external link.

Content

The days of being able to use badly spun PLR content or some rubbish article you paid $2 for are over. Finished. Done. Google hire real human beings to perform a quality check on websites these days and although they can’t check every single site in their index you still need to be aware of this. If your site (or sites) get flagged as having spun content or poorly written content you can kiss any website rankings you have goodbye – you’ll be bumped so far back down in the SERPS you’re likely to appear in an alternate universe.

Don’t get me wrong here – I know SEO is FAR more difficult that it ever has been before in the history of the SEO business but the reality is that unless Google scraps its entire algorithm then high-quality incoming links, solid internal linking practices and providing great content should be enough to improve your rankings for the foreseeable future.

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Google Panda Update

Google has announced on Twitter of a new Panda Update, making this a 24th refresh.

The first update took place in February 2011 that has affected many sites. This refresh has a noticeable impact 1.2% of English based sites.

The previous update #23 has affected 1.3% of English queries on December 21, 2012. Prior to that was a refresh on November 21st that impacted 0.8% of queries. It seems like Google is now rolling out these updates just about every 4 weeks.

Based on the posts in forums and blogs, seems that there is a very big diversity in change that people have been noticing. Some have noticed small changes, and others have ether dropped several pages in ranking as well as completely dropped their keywords ranking.

It has also been noticed that the websites that have not been in top 10 positions for a competitive keywords are now there, which does not make a lot of sense, since some of their websites are very new, spammy or just do not have the content to back up the reason for them to be at the top.

This is still very early to tell weather they will stay there as things tend to change daily after every Google update.

Last week there were significant reports of a Google update, which Google originally denied.

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Do Offer Value

If you want to be truly successful in Internet marketing then do something different because if you’re doing the same thing as everyone else then you’re just lost in the all the marketing “noise” online and you’ll never be noticed. If you want to separate yourself from the rest of the IM herd then creating something original is a good start – being unique means that you instantly get noticed. If you’re struggling with creating something 100% new then look at an existing product or service and find a way to add value to that in the form of a user guide, add-on product that works with it or something along those lines. Just don’t expect people to be lining up to buy your 25-pack of eBooks for $10 – those days are over.

Don’t Spam The Search Engines

If you’re going to be a serious contender in the IM world then you’re going to need to leverage all the lovely, free traffic that Google and Bing can offer you – especially Google. You want the secret to search engine marketing success? Don’t spam the search engines! Avoid using “loopholes”, “push button software” or any other tricks, gimmicks or SEO miracles you see offered online. Building stable search engine rankings takes time (allow at least 8 – 12 weeks from the moment you start) and building a site with great content, a strong social media presence and a few high-quality backlinks is all it takes. Using gimmicks will either get your website ignored or banned completely; you have been warned!

Do Sell High Ticket Items

Most people take years to realize the one big secret in Internet marketing – it takes as much effort to sell a product with a $100 commission as it does to sell a product with a $10 commission. Why not sell 10 items @ $100 commission each instead of 100 items @ $10 commission each? Plus the people spending $100+ on a single online purchase have purchasing power so you should be forming a relationship with them before, during and after the sale itself. If you’re selling your own products then don’t try to compete for the lower end of the market because it’s already crowded. Instead look for people with money to spend and then sell them something.

Do Outsource

There is no way you can be a graphics, content, marketing, SEO and backlinks expert all at the same time. Well you could but you’ll drive yourself completely insane in the process. If you want to grow then you need to outsource. Start small with Fiverr gigs for graphics or content and as your business grows work your way up to hiring your own VA (virtual assistant). Outsourcing is the only way to grow your business in any meaningful way, just take a look at all the big names in Internet marketing to see what we mean.

Don’t Hammer Your List

There’s been a relatively recent return by some marketers and marketing “gurus” to the idea of churning and burning your email subscriber list. The basic idea is that you offer your subscribers a free gift to get them to sign up and then literally hammer them with offers every single day until they get tired of your and unsubscribe.

Hammering your list is a bad move ethically and financially. Firstly you’re tarnishing your own name and secondly you’re spending money to build a list and then destroy your subscriber’s confidence – they’ll be very reluctant to trust you with their email address again.

The biggest “Do” in Internet marketing is that you find a market that you’ll be happy working in and if you happen to know something about that particular market your IM business will feel more like a hobby than a job…which is the ideal outcome right?

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The buzz surrounding social media, and Facebook in particular, at the moment is pretty huge, so if you’re not using Facebook then it’s important that you get started straight away.

Why?

Well because you can be sure that your competitors are making the most of their Facebook presence, so the sooner you get established the better it is for your business for a number of reasons:

• Social Triggers

If you have an existing website and you want to give it a boost in the search engines then creating a Facebook business page with a link to your online business URL will help you quite a bit. When Google is trying to decide if you’re a serious business or not they start looking for your social media presence, such as Facebook pages, and if they don’t find it they’ll assume you’re not a legitimate business – this is referred to as a “social trigger”. If you have a business you need a Facebook page – it’s really that simple.

• Professional Design

If your Facebook page looks exactly like a million others then it’s going to be very hard for you to attract attention from potential customers or clients. If you want to take things up a notch then hire a Facebook-savvy designer to give your page a makeover – you’ll be amazed at how much more vibrant your Facebook page can look. Plus this won’t cost you the earth and realistically only takes a few hours for a designer to complete.

• Interaction

Smart business owners don’t just use Facebook to advertise to their customers, instead they interact with their customers in a very real way. Having this kind of real-time interaction with customers is great for getting both positive and negative feedback from people using your products and services and also for monitoring new customer trends as they start to appear. Having a Facebook page is one of the quickest ways for any business to limit any potential reputational damage too so make the most of these opportunities.

• Vary Your Content

If you want to attract thousands of Facebook “Likes” then adding a human touch to your Facebook page is a good move. People expect to see pictures and videos on Facebook pages so make sure you’re making the most of your social media presence by adding some. Having content that’s 100% on topic is fine but sharing a harmless joke, touching picture or funny video with your customers gives you even more ways to interact with them – this is what social networking is all about after all! Showing your human side is fine – it appeals to people in a way that no advertising campaign ever could.

• Facebook Groups

To help you kick-start your business and your Facebook presence it’s a good idea to get involved with a variety of related Facebook groups. This will help you create the first few Facebook relationships with either customers or other businesses that will serve you long into the future. Remember that being successful as a business on Facebook is about getting your message out there and that means having friends – in essence the more friends you have spreading your message the better.

Even if Facebook seems daunting right now you’ll find that it’s remarkably easy to set up an account and get started using it. So why not cut your lunch break short by 10-minutes today and take your first steps into the world of Facebook?

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Business Name

Your business name needs to be practical, make sense, be easy to remember and also look very well on business cards. So for example Jerry’s Auto Junkyard might sound quirky and fun but Auto Parts Experts is going to make a better impression on customers, and it’s also going to look better as your website URL and Facebook page name. On the subject of website URLs/domain names it’s critical to remember that your domain name is equally as important as your business name so make sure they’re either the same or complement each other completely.

What Is Your USP?

USP stands for “Unique Selling Proposition” and simply means that you need to decide what makes your product or service unique. If you’re struggling with creating your own USP then just look at Domino’s Pizza as a perfect example – “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less – or it’s free”. Did you know that before Domino’s started using that USP they were relatively unknown in the world of pizza delivery? That’s the power of a USP folks, so spend as much time as you need on creating your own.

Professional Logo

Unless you have training in graphic design only ever hire a professional to create your logo for you. Remember your logo is going to be on your property signage, your business cards and also on your website so it needs to be clear, simple and visually appealing. The very last thing you want is a logo that tells people nothing about what you do and leaves them with more questions than answers. Again if you’re struggling for ideas for your logo don’t try to reinvent the wheel and just look at what other companies have created. Great examples of simple but hugely effective logo designs are McDonalds, FedEx and of course Google and Yahoo! None of their logos are complex, they convey the business name and as established brands you know exactly what these guys do.

Social Media Spots

Once you’ve decided on your business name it’s important to reserve all your social media “slots” to prevent any problems with brand jacking. If you’re not familiar with brand jacking this is when somebody creates a social media account using your business or brand name and then either offers to sell it to you or causes you a lot of reputational damage online. You can avoid these types of problems by simply reserving your Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts under your business name at the first opportunity – you’ll thank yourself in the long run.

Patience

Building your brand will take time so persistence is the key. Remember that McDonalds started with a single restaurant and KFC only came to be because Colonel Sanders started selling chicken dinners from the small service station he ran in Corbin, Kentucky. From these humble beginnings multi-billion dollar industries have grown and there are opportunities like that just around the corner from you too.

Once your brand reaches its tipping point you’ll be busier then you ever thought possible so enjoy any spare time you have right now.

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Keyword Basics

When you first start out with your new website target search terms with medium or low levels of traffic, say terms with maybe a few hundred searches per month; what are often called the “low hanging fruit” by old school SEO guys. These terms won’t mean a lot of traffic initially but as your site gains more TrustRank/authority in the eyes of Google then you’ll be able to target far more competitive terms with almost no effort at all.

Constant Content

Keep adding new pages or posts of content (one per day if possible and if not then weekly at least) which target a variety of keywords that are directly or indirectly related to your niche or market. Each page of content you add might only attract an extra 50 visitors per month but if you do that 365 times in one year then 365 x 50 = 18,250 extra visitors for your online business. Buying that many clicks in Adwords would cost you a small fortune.

Stickiness

One of the easiest ways to create lots of free search engine website traffic is to give your visitors a reason to come back all the time. Your website needs to have a certain level of “stickiness” where people are bookmaking your site, telling their friends and then sharing it on Facebook, Twitter etc, etc. If you look at movie reviews sites as an example of this you’ll find that they have the same people visiting them every single day looking for movie news and new trailers. If you can’t provide your visitors with something new every single day then look at creating a viral video or something similar that will be shared and bookmarked on thousands of other websites – again resulting in a flood of traffic.

Link Diversity

Never, ever, ever rely on one single source for all of your backlinks – especially after the carnage that Google Penguin caused. You should have a lot of different types of links coming from lots of different sources like paid directories, article directories, social bookmarking sites and other social media sites – to name just a few. This ensures that your link “profile” is natural and geographically diverse, which is exactly what Google expects to see and will also help keep you safe from future Google updates.

User Enhanced Optimization

Have you ever been to one of those websites where navigating the menu system was a nightmare because it kept disappearing when you moved your mouse .002 inches in the wrong direction? You got tired of trying to use the site in the end and just went back to Google right? Never underestimate the importance of having a very clear and very user-friendly website navigation system – it should never take a user more than 3-clicks to get where they want to be.

Traffic Growth Is Gradual

If you ask anyone who owns a high traffic website how they got where they are today they’ll probably say “slowly at first and then it just snowballed”, which is exactly what happens once you give your site time to develop. Your website traffic will start off as a slow drip, then a stream and, once it reaches its tipping point, you’ll be dealing with an absolute flood of traffic.

Just don’t expect the flood of traffic to come overnight because, let’s face facts, how many brand new websites wind up with 1,000 unique visitors per day right out of the box? Exactly – only scammers get those kinds of results!

Hopefully we’ve got you thinking because just sticking to the advice we’re shared here is enough to separate you from 95% of your competitors.

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Google has an informal corporate slogan which says “Do No Evil” but in the last 18 months a lot of people involved in SEO and online marketing are looking in the direction of Larry Page and Sergey Brin and wondering if the founding fathers of modern search marketing have lost their way?

For anyone who’s been involved in the search engine marketing or affiliate marketing world for more than 5-minutes you’ll no doubt be familiar with the infamous Google algorithm updates.

An algorithm update simply being when Google decides to change how it ranks websites and adjusts its search index accordingly, which for webmasters means either losing or gaining in the search engine rankings “game”. What most people don’t realize is that algorithm updates are anything but new and in fact the first update was rolled out by Google in 2002. But it wasn’t until November 2003 with the “Google Florida” update that people involved in SEO actually started to pay attention; simply because so many websites lost their rankings and it became obvious that SEO was changing.

How Do The Algo Updates Affect SEO?

After 2003 things were relatively quiet in the SEO world until February 2011 when Google unleashed their “Panda” update on the world, this update effectively killing off millions of “thin” affiliate websites. Suddenly there was a push for everyone to start building real authority sites again and not just churning out 5-page micro-niche Adsense sites with outsourced content that was embarrassingly bad.

Google weren’t quite finished yet though. Oh no – they had another surprise in store which arrived in the form of the devastating Google Penguin update in April 2012. Instead of trying to track down spammy sites the Google spam team went after blog and article networks instead and just deindexed all of them. Overnight the business of selling backlinks changed and blog network owners (even the truly private ones) watched their investment get flushed down the toilet. In fact the Google Penguin update was so effective that the majority of people working in SEO quit working online and went back to their day jobs instead. This is pretty much what Google wanted…they shook the SEO tree and a whole lot of people came falling out of it; the herd was thinned considerably so they have less SEO spam to deal with.

So where does that leave the world of search engine optimization right now? Well the reality is that Google still bases the majority of their search algorithm on acquiring quality backlinks, although they want you to do this “naturally” but that doesn’t work in the real world – you’ll still need to “create” some of these links yourself.

What works in SEO right now is what’s worked in SEO for the last 12 years or so – quality. Creating sites with high-quality content, which offer real value is step #1. Step #2 is using the tried-and-tested SEO backlinking methods of free and paid directory submissions, web 2.0 backlinks, guest posting, videos and social bookmarking among many others.

There is one tiny difference though when it comes to improving your search engine rankings and this is time. You can ask blackhat, whitehat and grayhat SEOs and they’ll all tell you to expect to wait weeks to see a change in rankings. This is obviously a deliberate move on Google’s part to see what people are doing to manipulate the search results, so they can include that in their next, and inevitable, update.

Giving Google what it wants (high-quality content and backlinks) is what has always worked in SEO and will continue to work for many years to come.

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Branding is creating an identity for your products or services, that online customer will grow to trust and be loyal to.  Here are 10 tips for Online Company Branding to help you set up and grow your business in the virtual market.

• Mark your individuality

Try to be unique in your products and highlight that exclusivity. You can do that by creating an effective logo, or a tagline which tells the viewer about your work.

• Craft an identity

Create a solid brand name. By brand name I mean a title expressing what you do, and how good you are at it. Even if you are the core of your organization, project your product, not yourself. For instance, any viewer would prefer to buy from the cakesandbakes.com than a hannabakes.com. Show that you are professional and credible.

• Target your viewer

In order to target a customer, you first have to understand the kind of customers you want to target and then build a strategy to get them. Find out what they’re interested in. you can then alter your products, quality and extent of your service or even opt for customization according to their needs.

• Advertise the right way

Once you have adjusted yourself to cater to the consumer, advertisement is a great way to let them know that you have what they want.

• Position yourself

Work your way into the network, by commenting on similar web pages, discussion forums. Make effective use of social media like networking sites and blogs like WordPress and Blogger.

• Connect

Make effective use of emails, newsletters, notifications of new products or additional services, discounts or best deals available. Even in networking era, emails pose as a personal and reliable way of communicating, especially if you want to do business.

• Showcase

Don’t wrap your goods in a bundle and expect to have customers lined up at your steps. There’s no use keeping a fashion range folded however neatly in a rack. You have to parade it in your window. Except in the virtual world, you have a thousand windows to showcase it and get traffic on your website.

• Make it appealing

Emphasize on your product, and make it the first thing to look at in your web pages. You can also display them in other already established websites; for example Fab.com. make use of bullets, fonts, images, animations, etc.

• Concentrate on conversion

Broadly conversion is when a window-shopper or an enthusiast turns into a buyer. Now, for an online business, even a subscription to newsletter or membership can be termed as conversion, since these means help you be in continuous contact with the potential consumer, triggering a future deal.

A good Conversion rate can be achieved by advertisement, use of audio visual aids, discounts, daily changing offers and prioritizing your communication.

• Build a reputation

Positive reputation can be built on the basis of great services, timely payments and following ethics of online trade.

Do not ever create a negative reputation by low quality content, offensive language, or anything that might displease a consumer. Any positive reputation you might build after that, will not neutralize the negatives.

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That’s why the virtual world and a number of Search Engine Optimization specialists have presented the tools that can help you eliminate the factors pulling your ranking down, at the same time putting you in the limelight for viewers. We are listing the top Free SEO Tools we found to be effective.

Traffic Travis:

This free tool provides you with your traffic rank, number of your web pages to rank in prominent search engines. It can also generate loads of keywords for your cause. And the tool continues to lend a hand in choice of an appropriate keyword depending on suitability and difficulty.

The Fiddler:

It’s a cool little web debugging tool that allows you to monitor traffic, incoming and outgoing data.

Firefox extensions:

FIREFOX OFFERS A range of add-ons for your website SEO. Some of the most interesting are Doctor, SEOquake, niche watch, KGen, SEO toolbar. These help you get enormous amount of feed including, page ranks, backlinks, SEO analysis of your competitor, keyword occurrences, etc.

Sitening Analyzer:

It’s like your personal management tool, which thoroughly checks your website for outdated SEO and reports back to you on where and how you can improve SEO.

Wordtracker:

This ever assisting tool generates keywords that express your page better and help you get better rankings in search engines. Wordtracker Linkbuilder is a great tool for long term SEO, which helps direct the search engines to index you through various other sites linking you.

Google tools:

The general notion regarding SEO is that it’s a way to nick data from search engines and use it to improve your own standing with the SEO. After using Google free SEO tools, it’s bound to turn into a misconception. Its webmaster tool tells you the keywords which lead to your page and also comes handy for repairing broken links. While analytics is basically used for social media impact, Insights, Trends and Adwords can be used to identify keywords, searching patterns and your competitor keyword data, that’ll help improve your ranking.

Robot.txt

As mentioned above, SEO isn’t only about getting ranked and using proper keywords. As much important exposing your product is, it equally important to protect yourself from search engine spiders. This tool can work as a directory for search engines that tells them which of your pages to index and which of them to ignore.

Wikipedia traffic stat:

This online media is the queen of all in terms of traffic. So, what if you could find out which of the encyclopedia’s pages are mostly flipped through! Such info can go a long way in determining which of your web pages you should underline.

Meta tags:

Since, the caption of your webpage and description is a major factor in ranking yourself, this tool will help you generate titles, and Meta tags.

Gsite crawler:

It’s a grand tool for beginners, which generates sitemaps for you. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to use it.

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