Search Engine Marketing Spot

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So you are launching a new website, or wiping the dust off an old one to re-launch it to the world. Before you get in to deep, you need to think about the link structure you want to put in place for this website. You looking at using sub domains to separate the different sections of your website and keep it organized? How about making sub directories and keeping your pages organized that way? Well lets take a look at the benefits of each first before you make your decision.

Sub-Domains: Using sub domains for your website would look something like this site.yourdomain.com, site2.yourdomain.com. They look short, clean and to the point. Well to the search engines they two different websites all together. It does not matter that the same domain name is being used, what makes the difference is what you are putting before your domain name, that being the sub domain. Using sub domains will not pass the link love around your main domain name as freely as using sub directories. Using sub domains however is a great SEO tactic if you have a large website.

You have your mainsite.com, and you want to add a blog and maybe a chatroom. So you would make blog.mainsite.com and chat.mainsite.com. Now keep in mind that the engines are treating them as different websites here, however when you start linking to other sections of your website, it will look like it is coming from 2 other authority websites. This is a great way to keep your brand recognition and at the same time have the ability to market several websites with each other because they are all under the same domain name. Marketing sub domains can take more time because you are essentially marketing several websites and not just one.

Sub Directories: Sub directories are nothing more then folders you have created to put your pages into, an example would be www.sitename.com/widgets. This is a great for smaller websites and also for people with a limited budget and time frame. I say time frame because no matter how many folders you create, they are all seen as one website by the search engines. So when you start your search engine marketing campaign you are only marketing one website and not multiple websites, like if you were using sub domains.

With sub directories all of your pages will be linked to the same domain and the link love will be passed around through your main domain name. When receiving backlinks, it will not matter what sub directory they link to, your main domain name will still get the “link credit”. Most common way of using sub directories is to have setup like the following.

www.sitename.com/keyword1/keyword2-keyword3.html

Or if you choose to use separate directories for each page then you could do the following

www.sitename.com/keyword1-keyword2

In the end use sub directories if you are running a smaller website and looking for quick link strength throughout your domain. If your site is thousands of pages deep, you have the time to invest in a good search engine marketing campaign and looking for brand awareness then use sub domains. Keep in mind that you will want to use keywords for either your sub domain or sub directory as to help with your optimization. What site structure are you currently running and why did you choose that route?

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

A thread over at digital point got me thinking on how possible this was.  Let’s say SEMSpot blog was to hold a contest in the coming weeks to see who could rank the highest on Google for the term “Google”.  Do any of you out there think you could actually rank number one without using photoshop or other editing softeware?  I bet nobody could even get on the first page of Google for that keyword, I mean wikipedia is currently ranked 8th for he term.  So lets see some results for that term and you will see 9 out of the top 10 are Google owned domains. 

I have seen other SEO contest which the contestants are not told the keyword until the day the contest starts and normally it is for some off the wall phrase.  Well here would be one heck of a contest to showcase people’s search engine marketing skills, weather white, black, gray, blue, purple, green hat it doesn’t matter.  Just show us the highest ranked site and tell us exactly what was done to get it the ranking for the term “Google”.  This contest would take a long time to complete, probably would have to give it a good 12+ months or so for the contestants to try and rank there site or sites.

If you look at the google wikipedia, you will see at the time of this post they have 3.2 million back links in googles index and they are only ranked #8.  That is one crazy number to try and compete with, we know as of right now your back links and anchor text play a big role in your SERP’s so imagine trying to break into the top 10 for the term google.  Is is definitely the extreme SEO challenge and I think impossible to break into the top 10 for.  But one could only wonder what it truly would take to do so…what do you think?

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

 

You take the time and put in the effort to write great content for your site, once you have published it you then realize another site has just published the exact same content on there website. This happens in a matter of seconds after publishing your content, and think to yourself how is that possible. Well it is quite easy since your RSS feed is publishing a full article for each post you make, that website just scrapes your content from your feed and republishes it on there site. This has happened recently to both myself and Maki over at DoshDosh. The site gives us credit on the side for being so called contributors, however straight up theft of content is a far cry from any contribution on my part. What can really be done about this though? There are not running any ads on the site, I do not see any form to where they are trying to capture any information, except maybe the email box for feedburner which could be fake. Anyhow what can be done about this? You can try and complain to there hosting company by doing a whois on the domain name and seeing who the NS servers belong to. I do not see that working really in the long run, but its a shot. You could send a cease and desist order to them, but there whois information is hidden and there is no contact information so you can try and send one to the hosting company.

Well i am not going to do any of that, instead I am putting in each of my post where it originated from and links back to this site. Yes I understand about the duplicate content issue at hand, but I want to see what the engines do in the coming weeks/month with this other website and my content. A few things I am trying out is using the term search engine marketing blog as my anchor text for my site. I am using absolute URL’s in all of my post’s and I am considering adding other links to posts on this blog. I am not sure how well this is going to work since it is duplicate content, we shall see. What would you do about a website that is scraping content straight from your RSS feed?

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

Most people have heard of these two names in one way or another and what they do online to make money.  It is all about marketing, you market the right product to the right people you will make money online.  Well the two of them are having a friendly battle of RSS subscription wars.  Whoever has the most subscribers by the end of the month will be declared the winner.  Only thing at stake would be there pride and ego’s, oh and the loser will have to link on there site stating why the winner is better then me.  Shoemoney has posted his John Chow VS ShoeMoney - Rss Subscription Challenge article and John has post his John Chow VS ShoeMoney - Rss Subscription Challenge article, John added a twist though by throwing in competition for his readers.   

Now some people are probably thinking either this is a waste of time for them both, or that these to are stroking there online ego’s.  I don’t think it is either of the two, I think it is marketing genius at work.  Let’s go ahead and look at a few things first shall we.  Neither of them will probably spend that much money on this challenge, shoemoney has even said he does not spend any money advertising his blog.  Any publicity they get out of this weather it is good or bad will result in more subscribers which is what they are both after anyhow.  Since they have both posted this on there blog, they will end up getting new subscribers from each other.  In the end it will be a win win situation for them both because there RSS subscription count will go up. 

There are a few things I have already seen with comments on both sides in regards to creating multiple email accounts and signing them all up for one feed.  Who is to say those Google account makers can’t whip out a few thousand accounts to slowly subscribe to a feed.  I do not think that either of these two guys would do that, they probably do not have the time and don’t care.  Remember in the end they both just want more subscribers to market there ads to and make more money. 

John has already started a contest to basically see who can do the work for him, which is smart marketing.  Work smarter and not harder is a phrase we have all heard, John is just putting it to more use.  He is giving away prizes if you sign up to his RSS feed, you have a chance at winning a book.  If you blog about him and tell your readers to signup to his feed your site has a chance at winning free RSS text ads for a month.  The final prize being an iPod nano and a free John Chow review goes to whoever gives him the most creative way to get more subscribers.  In the end John is trying to have his readers do all the marketing for him by giving away a few free things. Jermy on the other hand has remained someone quit so far, but I will not put anything past him by any means.  We will just have to wait and see if what tactics he uses, if he makes them public.

All in all neither of these two will be loser’s, yea so one will end up with more subscribers in the next 30 days then the other but who cares.  They both will see a big jump in traffic to there site, which in return gives them more people to throw there ads at and  make them more money.  I am not sure how big this will get, it might get huge and make a wave or it might just stay a swell and disappear.  Who knows, all I know is to me it is a great marketing tactic.  Take a friend or even contact a competitor and stir up a contest to generate some more juice to your website.  After all we want traffic to our site and creative thinking, crazy marketing tactics, buzz around the blogosphere are ways to get it.

 

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog.  If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.