New Orleans Internet Marketing

Link building has long been a source of success and frustration when doing SEO. When it first became known that links form other sites affected search engine rankings, immediately FFA (Free For All) sites appeared that allowed users to add their links for free. There was no editorial discretion in the placement of these links and commonly, they were all thrown together on one page with no relevance between them.

This is when the search engines became charged with the task of determining link quality. I’ve long said that “a link to your site is like a vote for your site, but all links are not created equal.” Obviously, Google and other search engines found a way to devalue FFA links over time. So much so, that FFA sites are virtually non-existent today. Then came link exchanges, which are also not nearly as effective these days.

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Conceptualization
I started Independent Layout & Website Design while in graduate school. I had a passion for designing websites, and I wanted to have my own business so that my hours could be flexible. My goal was not to create a large design firm and have to hire employees, but to market myself as a freelance designer and find jobs that were within my realm of knowledge and ability.

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My first check I got from Google Adsense in 2003! $260.40, not bad for a first time Adsense user!



That was when the light bulb went off. I had done something I enjoyed doing (building a website), and I had earned money from it that would contine to grow. Keep reading this blog, and you’ll eventually find out exactly how I did it every time. Here are some tips to make money from Adsense: Read the rest of this entry »

What is PageRank?

If you’re completely new to search engine optimization, then you may not even know what PageRank is. Start by downloading the Google Toolbar. You may have to enable the PageRank display in the settings. Below are some examples of what PageRank indicators look like on a page form the Google Directory, viewed through a web browser with the Google Toolbar.



PageRank is displayed on the toolbar as a scale from 0 - 10, with “10″ being the “most important” pages on the web, and “0″ being the “least important” pages on the web. On the toolbar, PageRank is only displayed as an integer; however, in reality, PageRank is an infinite scale from 0 - 10. It is important to differentiate between “Toolbar” pagerank, and “actual” pagerank.

Actual PageRank is the factor that is computed by Google’s algorithm to determine the “importance” of a web page. While the toolbar PageRank is only updated about once every 4 - 5 months, actual PageRank is dynamically updated as changes occurr in Google’s index.

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Not all Web Directories are Created Equal.
These are a few I know about, as well as some links to other lists. Getting your site listed in web directories is a small way to help your site’s relevance and link popularity in the search engines.

Most Important:

Yahoo! Directory

ODP - Open Directory Project

Best of the Web Directory

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— This Contest Has Ended! Congratulations Jess, a visitor from MyBlogLog who won! —



This image came form a recent news story on a popular news site. To win this contest, you must name the headline of the news item, or send a link to the page.

The winner will receive a $20 itunes gift certificate. You must leave a correct email address to get your prize. Answers must be given as comments on this page. The prize goes to the first comment with the correct answer.

There’s a new service available to mental health professionals called @ Counseling.

http://atcounseling.com

@ Counseling is a place where counseling professionals can sign up and create their own web site, choosing from a variety of different templates. It all takes place through your browser window, and is a very simple and straightforward process. Best of all, it is completely free for any licensed member of the helping professions.

The service is provided by The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory, but therapists do not need to advertise in the directory to be eligible. I hope people will take advantage of it.

— This Contest Has Ended! Congratulations Jess, a visitor from MyBlogLog who won! —

This contest will be easier for people from SE Louisiana, although contests in the future will be easier to answer for a wider range of audience.

Many people have asked what the picture at the top of this website is from, where it was taken, etc… I was actually fishing (hint) at the time. It’s the same picture I used on my older hartwell.tv blog.

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People ask me how to get their web site to show up in search engines once a week. Then there’s the question about the spam email they got that guarantees to submit their site to over 1000 search engines! Or, “I keep submitting the site to Google, once every day, and I’m still not listed.”

Let the truth be known….submitting your site to Google is a waste of time. If that’s all you’re going to do in order to get your site listed, then I guess it’s better than nothing. And if your site is about some really obscure topic that no one else talks about on the internet, you might show up eventually. And that’s if your on-page factors are well optimized for the search engines.

With that being said, there are some very basic ways to get our websites to rank well in the search results. They’re not as easy as typing in the URL and clicking “Submit,” but if you’re going through the trouble of designing a site, you can certainly pay attention to these details along the way.

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The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory was started in 2003 as a project that would take advantage of Google’s brand new program (at the time) called “Adsense.” While at the same time, filling a gap in mental health resources on the web.

Need
The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory was designed specifically to fill a need that existed on the internet at the time. “Marriage Counseling” was, and still is, the top keyword phrase that search engine users type in when they are looking for help with their relationships, and the site was started with the intent to make natural search results the goal. At the time there were no other directories of therapists showing up on the first page of results for “Marriage Counseling.”

Target Audience
The target audience for this project was internet searchers looking for help in their relationships. Due to budget limitations, all money was invested into search engine optimization - to improve the “natural” search results.

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I’ve been designing web sites since 1998, but that’s really not important. Anyone can design a web site. But how many people really understand how traffic flows on the internet? I spend  e v e r y   w a k i n g  moment trying to figure it out.

I’ve helped bring traffic to websites in many different ways. It started with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When I started doing SEO in 2002, the results were amazing. I read a few good resources, like The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, the doctoral thesis by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. I spent countless hours on WebmasterWorld and SearchEngineWatch and reading newsletters by people like Jill Whalen. In no time at all I was hitting the top of the search engine results with every keyword phrase I targeted. I was also learning Social Work at the time, and I wrote my master’s thesis on Search Engine Accessibility and Community Resources; it was a project designed to help community resource agencies design web sites with search engine optimization in mind. The research I did at this time gave me an in-depth understanding of how search engines work.

I was still designing web sites at the time, and with incredible results. My client’s sites did great in the search engines. That’s when I realized that I needed to start designing web sites of my own. I realized that no matter how much I charged for the web sites I designed for small businesses, my time and effort was just as valuable, when put towards developing sites of my own.

Needless to say, the success I had was great. The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory was my first real project I did on my own, and it’s still one of the top sites in its niche today, well enough respected that therapists fequently submit articles for publication on the site.

I’ve since moved on to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), running ad campaigns in Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and their collective search partners. I’ve done a lot of experimentation with those campaigns on my own sites, which has helped me learn what works and what doesn’t.

Then came social networks. Forums had always been around, but social networks? To be honest, I had my head in the sand, hoping that they would go away at first. I was “too busy” to go on myspace.com, and wayyyy too much of a rebel to be a part of the “mainstream” by doing something like “having a myspace page.” Boy was that dumb. People are navigating the web in a completely different way now, and it’s going to continue to change. Hopefully I never put my head in the sand again. Now I actually like myspace, and I “get it.” Even though I’m 31 years old and definitely not “with it.”

Did I mention that World Spearfishing Guide (case study coming soon) is #1 on myspace.com right now when you search for “Spearfishing?” I’ve found a whole new area of internet marketing - social media search engine optimization - let’s call it “smseo” for short. :)

So this is what I do now. It started off as Independent Layout & Website Design, and it’s now New Orleans Internet Marketing (dba inlayout, LLC). The focus of my work is designing proprietary, niche, web sites that provide information and services to the public.

 Thanks for stopping by,

 Chris Hartwell