• Remember The ‘90% Rule’ •
• The Competition Ignores SEO, and That’s Where You’ve Got ‘Em! •

I wanted to take a quick moment to post something that I think needs repeating in a quickie post of its own.

And that is this … always remember that 90% of your online competition DOES NOT give a hoot about optimizing their websites. Honestly!

Search engine optimization is still a concept that almost all websites pay no attention to. The positive benefits derived from basic SEO techniques are not even attempted.

To me it’s hard to believe that web owners DON’T “get it”. It’s even harder for me to understand people that offer website design, or webmaster services who haven’t a clue about proper optimization techniques. Innocent people who are willing to pay someone else to maintain their sites do so because they don’t know how!  But so many people who design or maintain sites are short-changing and even hurting their clients.

Without good solid on-page optimization, you won’t get targeted traffic nor will your site provide you the opportunity to produce revenue for you because it is LOST, yes invisible, to the search engines. 

This is 2008. The words “search engine optimization” are all over the internet. The web is abuzz with how to get top rankings; how to “beat” Google; etc. etc. etc.  Yet, 90% of all the sites (and this includes blogs, too) are NOT optimized.

So, Take Advantage Of This Huge Window Of Opportunity!

Since 90% of other website owners aren’t savvy enough to even do the bare bones basics of optimizing the tags on their web pages, go and jump on the chance to out-rank everyone.

Do your keyword research! I suggest Wordtracker to find out what people are really typing into the search engines to find the products and services in your niche.

Write compelling, call-to-action Titles and Descriptions for the search listings. Make sure to check out what the top 10 or 20 competitors have written. This will help you do a better job at what you write.

Make sure your content uses the keyword phrase chosen for each page in “all the right places”.

Even these seemingly simple steps can many times offer high ranking results!

Not quite sure where to start with your SEO efforts? No problem! Did you know I offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation? I’d be happy to look at your website, listen to your concerns and give you a few pointers. Please visit my Complimentary SEO Consultation page to find out more!

• SEO Rankings Can Go Up … And They Can Go Down •
• There Is Usually One Of Three Basic Issues Affecting A Rankings Change •

I have been writing about how I am able to maintain top SEO rankings for the keyword phrase garden art project: read about it here.

At the time of that article (March 25, 2008), I held the #1 and #2 Google SERP positions. Today, I see I have the #2 and #3 positions, and also that the total number of SERPs (search engine result pages) that Google is showing has dropped significantly from 2.4 million to about 1.2 million.

Here is a screenshot I took a moment ago:

See what can happen in just a few weeks with rankings and other search engine results? The number of competing pages dropped significantly and I would have thought I’d have stayed up at the top with my ranking positions, but I haven’t.

But you know what? I’m not alarmed, nor really concerned, as little fluctuations can happen from time to time.  I will just sit back for now and see what happens within another week or two. If this competing website is still at #1, then I will make a decision as to what I need to do to try and attain the top spots again.

Trust me, I am not boo-hooing, as #2 and #3 are still WONDERFUL Google rankings to have.

Why Do Keyword Phrase Rankings Fluctuate?

You can pretty well bet there is more than one reason why my rankings, or yours, or anybody else’s may take a small nose dive, a huge drop, or on the positive side, a rise in the rankings from week to week, or month to month. Some of us refer to it as “The Rankings Roller Coaster”.

There is one thing you can be sure of, and that is this: NOTHING  is for sure in the search engine rankings wars! LOL  Just as in life, the ONLY thing for sure is that things are in a constant state of change. And this applies to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and all the other search engines as well.

The Three Main Reasons For SEO Ranking Fluctuations

The three basic reasons for drops or rises are either you’ve changed your site in some manner; competitors’ sites have changed; or the search engines’ algorithms changed. Be aware fluctuations can be one or a combination of these three.

To give you a little more insight, here’s a few more things to think about:

On-site issues :  Page content, products, file names, even the actual coding of your website might change every now and then, on down to daily or even hourly changes. (It all depends upon how you maintain your site.)  Anything can cause a slight or even drastic fluctuation in the rankings.

However, all being kept about the same as far as what you normally maintain and “do” on your site, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about if you dip down a notch or two.

But, if you’ve caused a coding error, or caused a glitch somewhere on your site, you might experience bigger search engine ranking problems.

Back-links (in-pointing) links :  There can be a change or drop in some good quality links that point to your website from other well-ranking websites. This is something we usually haven’t too much control over. This is also something that will happen to even the best of sites.

Hopefully you’ve not fallen prey to buying “link building” software or hiring companies that promise to get you high rankings by purchasing in-pointing links. Normally these are junk links and though you may see a spike in your rankings, it’s a short lived situation. You can also hurt your rankings by going after links from websites that are in non-related niches, or in “spam niches”, and the like.

Just keep pursuing good quality, links from relevant sites to help counteract the times when you do lose a back-link.

Server down time :  Sometimes SEO ranking drops may be due to nothing more than your website being inaccessible when the search engines try to spider your content. Usually a single instance of inaccessibility won’t affect your rankings. But, if your site is down repeatedly during crawl times … you have a serious issue that needs fixing quick!

Remember: If the search engine bots cannot spider your site when they show up at your front door, then they’ve got nothing to analyze for your ranking positions. The solution to this possibility is to have a good reliable web host provider.

A change in search algorithms :  This is one area that you and I have absolutely NO control over. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the other SE’s have these very smart analytical-type employees sitting in their offices figuring out complicated mathematical formulas that instruct the search engines on how to process the terms you and I are searching for in relation to the gazillions of web pages filled with another gazillion subjects.  Whew … that was a mouth full!

In other words, it’s a well guarded secret as to exactly what factors are taken into consideration to deliver you or me good ranking positions. Don’t get me wrong … yes we can get a pretty good idea of what causes “good” rankings versus crummy or non-existent rankings, but the absolute answers are locked up somewhere in the search engine vaults! :) 

Suffice it to say it is true that the better the content and more theme oriented your website is, the better you will do in the rankings. And the better you’ve succeeded with your SEO optimization efforts, the better you will probably do in the rankings, too.

And then there is your competition :  If we could get rid of the competition, we’d all be in great shape! But seriously folks, new sites come onto the scene; other sites add new pages of quality content; maybe other sites gain a few more quality in-pointing links than you have; maybe a competitor starts paying better attention to their search engine optimization efforts than you are; maybe someone just wrote a couple of new articles using a keyword you didn’t have much competition for previously … the list goes on and on.

Do you get the idea of all the variables that can come into play when it comes to a drop (or rise) in search engine rankings?

I will be touching upon more of these issues in greater depth in future posts. But for now, I do hope you’ve gained some insight into the reasons for “the SEO rankings roller coaster” effect.

• Don’t Get All Excited Over Your Alexa Ranking •
• A Recent Email From A Newbie IM’er Caused Me To Post This •

SEO professionals KNOW that putting any credence into Alexa rankings is wortheless. Whoa … did I say worthless? Yup!

I thought I’d make a post on Alexa, as just the other day a rather new internet marketer/website owner sent me an email bragging about how great their Alexa ranking was.  Oh dear, I had to burst their bubble, and tell them that ranking wasn’t going to do squat for them.

Alexa rankings are basically meaningless. How come?  Well, Alexa gathers their data ONLY from people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their web browser. Making matters even more skewed, most of the people with the toolbar installed are marketers and techie types.  People like you, me and “regular” web surfing folks don’t use it and quite honestly, most people have never even heard of the “Alexa toolbar”.

So … Alexa’s results are skewed towards the types of websites these marketers and computer-tech people frequent.

You CANNOT get an accurate picture of what’s popular online by looking at Alexa results. Think of it this way: if you wanted to know what the most listened to genre of music was in the entire USA, and you only asked 65-year old people what their favorite music is … well let’s say we’d not have a very accurate result for the entire USA, would we?

So, if you are a person who keeps checking your Alexa ranking … unless you are immersed into marketing in the niches that the Alexa toolbar users can be found in, I’d say STOP wasting your time even going there to look.

Start spending you time on something more useful, like writing quality content using a new keyword phrase, and of course … properly optimizing that page in order to try and achieve a top ranking position in the search engines!