20 Ways to Build Website Authority
This is a guest post from Gino Orlandi. It is part of The 2nd annual “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.
Today, ranking high in the search engines is all about trust. Now that may sound simple, but there are many signals that search engines look for to determine how trustworthy a website is.
The more good signals you send, the more authority you will have, and the easier it will be for you to dominate your target keywords. Here is a list of 20 things you can start doing right now to make your website a trusted authority in its niche. Read more >>
Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest Update
This post is meant to simply update you on a couple of things regarding the contest. However if you are interested in participating in this contest please be sure to read the official Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging contest post for complete details on rules etc.
The first change is the due date to submit your post. This has been changed to October 12, 2011. We did this because last week was pretty much spent generating sponsors and awareness and we really didn’t get any contest entries last week.
OK now for the awesome news. Since we had such great sponsorship participation we are able to offer some really nice prizes. We have structures this in such a manner that if you really kick ass, you can really WIN BIG. But even if you do really well you can still win some nice loot and other non cash SEO related prizes.
With no further ado… here’s what you can win!
- 1st place: $1000. Cash + a Lifetime “PREMIUM membership” to MyBlogGuest.com
- 2nd place: $500. Cash + a full years membership at The SEO training Dojo.
- 3rd Place: $350. cash + Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license)
- 4th Place: $250. cash + 3 month subscription to SEMRush.com
- 5th place: $175. cash + 3 month subscription to Raven Internet marketing tools
- 6th Place: $100. cash
- 7th place: $75. cash
- 8th place: $50. cash
- 9th place: $50. cash
Keep in mind these numbers could get bigger depending on how many new sponsors we get, however they won’t get any smaller! 
Now check out all the kick ass sponsors that made all these prizes possible!
Contest Media Partner
$500 Sponsors
RankPop.com Affordable SEO
$300 Sponsors
Daniel McGonagle Link Building
SEO-Peace.com Professional link building SEO Company
$150 Sponsors
Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins
$100 Sponsors
Scott Bradley Simple Weight Loss Tips For Entrepreneurs
Milan Matchev Health Directory
Jacob Share JobMob Job Search Tips
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Ileane Smith Blogging Tips
John Britsios www.SEOWorkers.com
Magento Developer
Doc Sheldon’s Clinic Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO
$50 Sponsors
Vertical Measures Internet Marketing Services
Whitney Michael Segura Greenhouses for Sale
Butch Segura Wholesale Greenhouses by EarthCare
Whitney “WeedyP” Segura Internet Marketing Blog by Whitney Segura
Ernest Segura Greenhouse Supplies @ OurCrazyDeals.com
Raxa Design Houston Internet marketing
Ana Hoffman – Traffic Generation Cafe Web Traffic
James Brown James Brown
Anwar Barake Wholesale Herbal Incense
Understand Technology with TechFume
The Tech Blog TechnoZeast
Wilderness Aware Rafting Colorado White Water Rafting
Sales Nexus online CRM
SEO Prize Sponsors
David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo
Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.
Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools
SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com
3 month Pro subscription to Raven Internet Marketing Tools ($297 value) Raven Internet Marketing Tools
That’s all the contest updates for now. If there is anything significant worth knowing at any point in the contest I will be posting additional updates to keep everyone informed.
2 Reasons to Go Niche or Go Home
Awhile back I read the Four Hour Work Week. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s written by this guy named Tim Ferris who redefined his life in order to take a series of mini-retirements all year long rather than wait until he’s 60 and sick to enjoy life. He did so by placing himself on income autopilot.
Yes, it sounds way too good and too easy to be true. BUT, I learned a variety of lessons from the book. One of which is the power of the niche. He talks about developing a product designed specifically for a small group of people, then advertising it in various trade magazines.
Of course, he’s not the only person I’ve heard recommend this sort of thing.
But why niche? Well…
- The people who find your product are more likely to want it—Some people are concerned that if they market to an extremely specific niche, then they will cut down their sales possibilities to a small number. And while it’s true that less people out there will probably want your product overall, but we can assume that the people that DO find it will be more likely to want it. In other words, say you sell guitars. If people come to you searching for any old guitar, you may or may not get a sale. After all, what are the odds that you have the exact style and model they are looking for? But what if you marketed yourself as a seller of left handed guitars? They are much harder to come by and if someone is frustrated looking for one, by the time they find you they are more likely to buy. Now let’s take it a step up—what about left handed bass guitars? More niche, more high quality traffic. I’d venture to say your conversions would be higher.
- It’s more reasonable to assume you can hit top search rankings quicker—Say you’re a web designer and you’re looking at targeting that keyword (let’s assume you’ve already hit it locally). The term “web designer” gets about 4,090,000 global searches a month. Wow. Good luck getting on page 1 for that! On the other hand, let’s say you decided your specialty was the restaurant industry. If you build a niche website and hit it with a keyword like “restaurant web designer,” you are looking at closer to 2,900 global searches a month. Not very many, right? But I’d venture to say it would still pay to get the top spot for that keyword—and it would happen much quicker too.
I know what you’re wondering, have I put this to the test personally? No, not exactly. But I am in the process. I recently wrote an ebook directed specifically at new, first-year teachers. The plan was to have it go live this past summer, except I hit a snag. State governments everywhere started slashing the hell out of budgets and suddenly the steady inflow of new teachers shut off. So much for that product.
What I learned in this instance is that not only is finding the right niche important, but timing is almost everything too. So I’m holding onto it for whenever the hiring starts up again. Who knows, I may just go ahead and release it toward the end of this year and see what happens. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
So am I writing about something I really don’t know anything about? Nope. Because I have seen example after example of this line of reasoning working out. Car dealer website designers, MMA website designers, Civil War painting salesman, hospital wayfinding designers—you name it. It’s hard to argue with tangible results. So start to create niche sites today!
So my question for you is—what’s your niche?
The 2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest Is Here!
It’s time for the 2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest!
This year’s Donkeys Behaving Badly event is being held In partnership with Blogengage.com. If you would like a free Blogengage account (normally $29.99 but free for contestants, simply email admin@blogengage dot com with your desired username: and e-mail and your contest entry URL and Brian will hook you up with a FREE account) so you’ll be able to reply to comments you receive (see contest rules below). Blogengage will automatically syndicate your contest entries into the Blog Engage community and their portfolio of social media websites such as Blog Serp, Top Blogged, RSS Leak, Blogger Ink, Tag Serp and Blogger Tag.
Also all contest entries will be automatically submitted to blokube.com Blokube is another up and coming social voting community for bloggers and it’s free to join, so go ahead and register on blokube.com if you want to keep up with your submission there. Keep in mind social engagement at both blokube and blogengage will count towards your social engagement score. Again social engagement is a metric we use to settle any tie breakers in this contest.
What is the Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest?
It’s that time of the year when the donkey starts misbehaving. All joking aside, the contest is (now) an annual contest for SEOs and Internet marketers to showcase their awesome guest blogging skills.
The contest will start today (9/12/11) and last until October 12th, 2011. Acceptable guest post topics include anything related to SEO, Internet marketing or social media Uses of Facebook etc. Although we may extend the publishing duration of the contest to get all the entries published, we will stop accepting entries 30 days from today. Email your contest entries to gweber at sem-group.net, please include any images you would like to use as well as any image credit (if applicable)
What’s In It for Me?
- Cold Hard Cash
- Very Cool SEO Related Prizes
- Increased Exposure for Your Content
- The Potential for More RSS Subscribers
- Networking with Other Like Minded Individuals
- Did I Mention Cash?
What Exactly Can I Win?
- 1st place: $1000. Cash + a Lifetime “PREMIUM membership” to MyBlogGuest.com
- 2nd place: $500. Cash + a full years membership at The SEO training Dojo.
- 3rd Place: $350. cash + Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license)
- 4th Place: $250. cash + 3 month subscription to SEMRush.com
- 5th place: $175. cash + 3 month subscription to Raven Internet marketing tools
- 6th Place: $100. cash
- 7th place: $75. cash
- 8th place: $50. cash
- 9th place: $50. cash
Now check out all the awesome sponsors that made all these prizes possible!
Contest Media Partner
$500 Sponsors
RankPop.com Affordable SEO
$300 Sponsors
Daniel McGonagle Link Building
SEO-Peace.com Professional link building SEO Company
$150 Sponsors
Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins
$100 Sponsors
Scott Bradley Simple Weight Loss Tips For Entrepreneurs
Milan Matchev Health Directory
Jacob Share JobMob Job Search Tips
<
Ileane Smith Blogging Tips
John Britsios www.SEOWorkers.com
Magento Developer
Doc Sheldon’s Clinic Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO
$50 Sponsors
Vertical Measures Internet Marketing Services
Whitney Michael Segura Greenhouses for Sale
Butch Segura Wholesale Greenhouses by EarthCare
Whitney “WeedyP” Segura Internet Marketing Blog by Whitney Segura
Ernest Segura Greenhouse Supplies @ OurCrazyDeals.com
Raxa Design Houston Internet marketing
Ana Hoffman – Traffic Generation Cafe Web Traffic
James Brown James Brown
Anwar Barake Wholesale Herbal Incense
Understand Technology with TechFume
The Tech Blog TechnoZeast
Wilderness Aware Rafting Colorado White Water Rafting
Sales Nexus online CRM
SEO Prize Sponsors
David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo
Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.
Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools
SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com
3 month Pro subscription to Raven Internet Marketing Tools ($297 value) Raven Internet Marketing Tools
What are the Rules?
- Register for a SEM Group user account so you can submit your post for review. Please fill out all of your profile information. If you don’t have a Gravatar, please get one. You may have up to 3 links in your bio. If you have already published a guest post on this blog, there is no need to reregister. If you’re in this situation but aren’t sure about your login, just send me an email and I’ll let you know your existing login information.
- You must submit your post by October 12th, 2011.
- Your post must be original content that you personally wrote.
- You must have a paypal account (as that is how we will be paying the winners cash)
- On the day your post is published, you must write a post on your blog about the contest that contains a link to the official contest post and links to all of the sponsors. Click here for a pre-formatted text document of the contest sponsors. It’s ok if you hotlink the image from my server.
Post Guidelines
- Guest posts must be at least 500 words. While they can be as reasonably long as you’d like, please don’t write a book! Please take a moment to review our guest posting guidelines
- You can have as many links as you wish in the body of your content (Please keep this within reason). However, please limit links to your projects or websites to your bio. No affiliate links!
- Your bio must have a Gravatar. Please use a picture of yourself, as opposed to a logo.
- Keep your post relevant to the overall theme of this blog. SEO, link building, Internet marketing, PPC, social media and blogging tips are all acceptable topics.
How Can I Win?
- Write a promotional post about the contest to help spread the word in the blogosphere.
- Add Sponsors’ links to your promotional post. The sponsors are the ones making the cash prizes possible, so please show them some love!
- Your contest submission will be judged first and foremost on the quality and style of your content. Usefulness etc
- A high value is placed on the number and quality of comments you receive on your guest post. Be sure to interact with and respond to your commentators, because this will help you win in the event of a tie breaker. Keep in mind that ambiguous and/or spammy comments will not help you.
- Spread the word about your post through all of your social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn etc). A high value will be placed on your entry’s number of Tweets and overall social media promotion.This will help you win in the event of a tiebreaker! (We had about 3 tie breakers last year so social engagement REALLY can help you win. Also keep in mind the social engagement (comments, tweets etc) for your post on Blogengage also count towards your overall social engagement score!
- Keep in mind that the sooner you submit your post, the more time you’ll have to promote it. The contest early bird will likely get the worm!
- Feel free to use the donkey image in your post.
Special Thanks
A few of my friends, who are also sponsors, went WAY above and beyond to help me promote this contest:
Ann Smarty, Ana Hoffman, David Harry, Brian Belfitt – These friends all helped out by mentioning the contest in their newsletters, putting contest banners on their sites/blogs and allowing me to write blog posts about the contest on their web properties. I REALLY appreciate you guys & gals!
If you have any questions about the contest feel free to contact me directly. I’m searchengineguy on skype and thegman on Blogengage and of course @the_gman on Twitter. You can also email me at gweber@sem-group.net
Release the donkey! Let the games begin!
Search Engine Optimization and Football…They Aren’t So Different
September is here and that means two things for the Gulf Coast—hurricanes and football. And since hurricanes are so depressing, let’s talk football (although football has been quite depressing the last decade for Houstonians).
So I’m sitting here watching the 4th preseason game for the Houston Texans and suddenly I have this epiphany—football…SEO…they aren’t all that different. A successful football team shares quite a bit in common with a worthwhile SEO firm. Let me show you what I mean.
They have experienced management in place
Ever heard of a first year coach taking his team to the Super Bowl? Not likely. Coaching a team to the highest level of the game takes years of experience. It also takes being surrounded with the right people. Just look at Houston—Gary Kubiak seems to be a good enough coach, but his defensive coordinator sucked. Now he has Wade Phillips on his side and the preseason has looked pretty solid (besides tonight’s game).
Now let’s apply this to the world of SEO. As you probably know, rookie SEO “coaches” are popping up all over the place. But can they deliver the results of an SEO with years of experience? The fact is, you find the right guy with the right experience then you can rest assured he’s going to boost your rankings.
The underdog may be your best option
Look at the Packers last year. Who thought they’d win it all at the onset of the season? Not me. And even in the Super Bowl, most people thought Pittsburgh was going to hand their butts to them. Wrong again! It’s good business to go with the underdog (just ask Vegas).
Now let’s look at SEOs. You have the big marketing companies that you can go to for the supposed big results. And you can wind up with an even bigger hole in your wallet. Or you can choose an underdog, a smaller SEO organization, and take your chances. Hey I did it. And I’ve seen nothing but positive results.
They have multiple players producing outstanding stats
How often do you hear of a winning team only having one player putting up good stats? Not usually. Instead, the best teams usually have multiple pieces producing winning results. Compare this to SEO. The SEO company you really want isn’t going to push everything aside in hopes for a single high ranking keyword. Instead, they are going to produce results across the board. They’ll start with your highest ranking, produce quick results, and then move on to the next. And you can see proof of these reports through their free SEO report.
Here’s to a great season
I’m excited to watch some football this season. This is also my first year to play fantasy, so I have some added interest. I’m also excited to watch my SEO guy produce results and bring me more traffic.
Here’s to a great 2011 season!