Its not always easy to find what your looking for on Google, whether the results are skewed or your just looking for something that isn’t there, it can be frustrating especially if you don’t know which keywords to search for. Well today you are in luck, for I have comprised a list of search techniques that shall take you above and beyond search splendor.

Some of these I use daily, while others I don’t think I’ve ever used, but I hope that they still serve some purpose and are of use to you. If you are a savvy web user these may already be in your arsenal of tools, but for most people these with definitely improve upon your productivity, and if I can make that small difference in the online world my life is complete.

While Google makes it easy for you to search things like images, maps, news, photos and groups…they don’t really help you find specific’s unless you know how to do so correctly.

Search Modifiers

Search modifiers help you narrow down your search from the bazillion websites that come up for your search query. Here’s some of the modifiers I use the most, and how they can help you refine your searches.

• inanchor: <keyword> — Returns pages where your keyword was used in the anchor text of other sites linking to that page.
• allinanchor: <keyword> — Returns exact results for your search query if it was used in the anchor text of other sites linking in.
• intitle: <keyword> — Returns pages where your keyword was used in the title.
• allintitle: <keyword> — Returns pages where your exact keyword(s) were used in the title.
• inurl: <keyword> — Shows pages where your <keyword> is contained within the url itself.
• allinurl: <keyword> — Shows pages where all your <keyword(s)> are used within the url itself.
• site: <website> — Returns pages from a specific website. Conversely -site will remove pages from a certain site.
• link: <website> — Shows sites linking to your search query.
• cache: <website> — Will give you the web cache of your search query.
• movie: <movie name> — Will give you information/movie times.
• stocks: <stock symbol> — On the fly stock market information. ex. stocks:GOOG
• related: <keyword>– Will return related queries for your keyword.
• time <place> — Similar to a world clock at your fingertips, just enter the place and you will be given their time of day.
• weather <place> — Same as time only for weather.
• define: <word> — Works like a dictionary to give you the definition of your search term.
• filetype: <file extension> — Will return files of a certain extension.

There are plenty more that I may have missed but these are the most used queries that I feel serve the most purpose.  For an extremely comprehensive listing check out Michael Gray‘s list.

Finding Filetypes

This is probably the most underused, but most useful searches you can do on Google. Just doing a quick search for pdf documents brings me up a massive selection of books whether relevant or not.  If I were to type in “ebook filetype:pdf” for example, I would get a comprehensive listing of ebooks in .pdf format, ready to download and read on a whim.  Obviously you may not find what your looking for by using the term “ebook” so you can type niching it down to actual titles of books.

The great thing about the “filetype:” search modifier is that you can search for practically ANY filetype you are looking for.  Whether its a pdf, mp3, avi, ppt, doc, 3gp, and the list goes on and on.  This is a very powerful tool at your disposal and most people dont even know about it.

Search Tricks for SEO

While all those are fine and dandy, what if you are looking for a certain website for SEO purposes or to do some background checks on your competition, you will find that most of those search tricks don’t really help at all.  What you need is a little ingenuity.
If you are for example looking for wordpress blogs you may search:

<niche> blog “Powered by wordpress”
or
<niche> “Remember my personal information” “Notify me of follow-up comments”

With a little thinking outside the box it is possible to find pretty much anything you want. Combine this with inline search results using something like SEO for firefox and you will be blowing away your competition in no time.

If you wanted to find educational sites and didnt feel like using the scholarly search you could always use this search query in Google: site:.edu blog or take it a step further and add site:.edu <niche> + blog to find a specific genre.  Obviously these are all fully customizable and will deliver different results for everyone but the method is still the same. If you have any other search queries I missed or just want to add your own feel free to leave a comment below.

While most SEO’s already know the ins and outs of off-site search engine optimization, but what often gets overlooked is the actual on-site SEO which may be a key reason as to why you are not at the top of the SERP’s. I’ve compiled a list of things the beginner SEO can do to make sure his or her site is fully optimized for the search engines.

1. The Title Tag – Single handedly the most crucial element of on-site optimization. Make sure you have your main keywords in here. A useful plug-in for this if your using WordPress is optimal title.
2. The H1/H2 Text – Are also extremely important because they show the search engine the main subjects and “table of contents” for your sites content. These should be targeted towards the keywords you want to rank for, and should be indicative of your title tag.
3. First sentence of body text – In terms of advanced SEO tactics, the first sentence for the body for every page on your site will be picked up by the SE’s and more importantly are picked up by Google’s LSI algorithm.
4. Meta Keywords, Description and Robots Tag — The site’s meta tags are always used to place your site in the rankings. As well your sitemap.xml will be looked at by Google on a regular basis so keep it updated.
5. The Body Text – Try to keep your focused body text in bold as this will be more emphatic to the search engines.
6. The URL — The subdirectory folder and page of content should be optimized. A useful way to do this with wordpress is through permalinks. (Settings -> Permalinks -> Custom Structure, and then use “/%category%/%postname%/”) So for http://site.com/SEO-optimization-in-toronto.html would rank higher for a page devoted to “SEO optimization in Toronto” simply due to this structure.
7. Same Site Link Texts — Make sure all your pages of your site are inter-linked or have some type of navigation whereas your main pages you are trying to rank for are linked. Make sense? Having your targeted keywords linked to other relevant pages can go a long way for a little higher rankings.
8. Same-Site Link URLs — Don’t just use keywords to describe pages inside your site, those URLs you link to should include SEO URLs as well. (eg: http://site.com/your-keyword.html)
9. Keyword Density — While this topic is generally up for debate, the general consensus is to have anywhere between 5-8% of your total text. So for a 500 word article you should have anywhere between 25-40 of those words as some sort of derivative of the keyword you are trying to rank for. While this isn’t THAT important for rankings, it should still be considered.
10. Image ALT Tags — Lastly you should always make sure to have your images optimized for keywords you wish to rank for. It wouldn’t hurt to go as far as to change the names of the images to be keyword-rich as well.

By using these simple methods, you can get a jump start on your off-site SEO so that you can focus more on getting inbound, authority backlinks from relevant sites. Then all you can do from there is write viral content and link build like a madman. I will be doing a follow up post on off-site SEO methods so stay tuned.

When it comes to getting your website ranked in the SE’s, it comes down to variety of factors that all pertain to your pages overall visibility. Lower visibility on the search engines means less traffic, and less reach, we don’t want that. So how does page ranking actually work you may ask. Behind all the complex algorithms put in place by Google, the actual system for ranking is quite simple. I will go over some of the best ways you can optimize your site to make sure you have the best ranking possible across all SE’s, not just big G.

External Links: Page Rank is frequently amplified by the # and quality of inbound links. The better the sites that link back to yours, the better. You can attain these through massive email campaigns, networking with similar sites, or buying reciprocal links. Stay away from link trades as they are now deemed a negative impact on ranking as well as your SERP.

google pagerank explained

Keywords: SEO, SEM, Meta Tags, various social media advertising platforms (Adwords/YSM/Facebook Ads) all rely on these crucial elements. There are two types of keywords that can be implemented. Firstly there is the primary keyword which is the base for what you are targeting. Then you have a secondary keyword which is less pertinent but still helps to pinpoint what you’re targeting. Try to avoid keyword spam, as you need to place your primary keywords throughout your site strategically (H1, Title Tags, etc.) so that the SE’s can place your site quickly and easily.

Optimizing website content: The driving force that contributes to page ranking is textual content. You need to ensure that your web site has sufficient text on each page to facilitate proper indexing by the SE’s. Also keep in mind that the text on your page will not include images or Flash elements. The body copy of a web page should have the correct and most important keyword phrases.

Page titles: You need to create appropriate page titles for each of the web pages on your website. A page title is the first line of copy that is displayed during search listing. To attract visitors, you need to apply the right keywords and compelling copy in page titles.

Dynamic URLs: If you are using a dynamic URL then search engines will face difficulty in indexing your web pages. Try to avoid using dynamic URL’s.

Edit: Flash/JavaScript content: I was unaware, but apparently the SE’s can now read data from flash files, so feel free to create your menu’s and navigation in flash, however I would shy away from this as im sure not ALL the SE’s can read your swf’s. As for JavaScript, the SE’s also have trouble indexing websites using Java based navigation, so stay away from it.

Aaron Wall over at SEOBook has recently released a great tool that I am just diving into called the SEO Toolbar. So far this thing looks great, its got a bunch of nifty features as well as an SEO X-ray tool and a competitive analysis tool which look like they will be really useful. The competition tool can track data from Compete, Google Trends, Quantcast, Alexa & SEMRush as well as show PPC destination urls.

What would happen if you smooshed together many of the best parts of Rank Checker, SEO for Firefox, the best keyword research tools across the web, a feed reader (pre-populated with many SEO feeds), a ton of competitive research tools, the ability to compare up to 5 competing sites against each other, easy data export, and boatloads of other features into 1 handy Firefox extension? Well, you would have the SEO Toolbar.

Some of the main features listed are:

• Google PR
• Yahoo linkdomain/pagelinks
• DMOZ/Yahoo/BOTW Directories
• Archive.org Site Age
• Compete.com Uniques
• SEMRush.com Traffic Value
• Competition Analysis
• SE Rank Checker
• SEO X-Ray
• Keyword Suggestion

And that’s not even half of it.  There are tips and techniques available for the more advanced SEO’s out there, as well as a generalized section for the total newbs.  All in all I think this will be a great plugin, and might even replace my Google toolbar and SEO for Firefox altogether.

For a full list of features head over to the download and overview page.

Today I am going to talk about the steps put forward when taking on a new SEO client or when optimizing my own sites.  I use a 10 step formula which basically covers all aspects of optimization and ranking.

From competitive analysis, keyword research, directories and articles all the way through to social bookmarking. Everything you need to get started optimizing your site today, in a quick and easy to follow manner. So lets get started..

1. Initial Analysis

During the initial analysis of a campaign I will look at what your target niche is and plan around where you would like to take it. Whether that may be a service or product route or if your simply ranking for an aggregate affiliate program, the ground work needs to be laid out so you can decide on which keywords to focus on, which leads into the next stage.

2. Keyword Research and Analysis

Perhaps the most important of all the stages, keyword analysis sets the tone for your entire optimization process and will prove whether or not you are successful marketing with the search engines.  I like to use Keyword Elite for my research as it has a friendly interface and makes your keyword research a breeze.  What you are looking for when researching keywords are niche relevant words that have a decent amount of search traffic, but not so much as to make it too competitive.  Its about finding the right balance, which can sometimes be hard to do.   Thankfully there are other tools available like the Google Keyword Tool which can make this daunting task simple.

3. Competitor Analysis

Once you have your keywords selected you will need to take a look at what the top sites in your niche are doing to have those top rankings.  You can use free online tools like SEO Digger to lookup their info, or you can use a more complete solution like SEO Elite which will automate it all for you (in a very similar way to Keyword Elite).  Once you know what your competition is doing, or not doing, you will have an advantage on where to go next in terms of your optimization campaign.

4. Sitemap/RSS Feed Inclusion

The next step I like to do is generate an xml sitemap for google, so that the spiders can start tracking your pages as fast as possible.  If you are running a wordpress blog, this task is done quickly and easily with the Google Sitemaps plugin. After creating an xml sitemap I make sure I have an RSS feed setup for subscribers, and make sure its easily accessible.

5. Search Engine + Directory Submission

While it is debated that you should allow the spiders to crawl your pages instead of submitting to the SE’s, I myself have never had any issues with this and always find that I can get my pages indexed that much faster simply be submitting to the major engines. (Yahoo, Google, Msn)  Directory submission is a whole other ballgame.  There are services on Wickedfire and DP for directory submission and you can usually get your site submitted to 500+ directories for pretty cheap.  While this doesn’t really boost you THAT much in the rankings, it does help and should not be overlooked.

6. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is submitting your site and your sites content across social networks like digg, reddit, furl, delicious, technorati and the list goes on.  Even now I would consider using twitter as a social bookmarking tool.  I prefer using Bookmarking Demon for my submission as it makes it quick and painless for a task that would otherwise be mundane and time-consuming.  There are other free services out there like Social Marker that do the same thing in essence, so be sure to check them out too.

7. Blogs & Press Release Creation

Its a no brainer that the search engines love wordpress, so creating a blog for rankings should fall hand in hand with any SEO campaign.  At the same time creating a press release for the launch of a new product or service is a great way to build steam aka traffic for your site.  Once you have a press release written up I would recommend using PR Wizard to get it blasted out to over 28,000 media outlets, which in turn create backlinks and much needed publicity, a big plus.

8. Article Submission

Once you have some content on your blog/site, you will undoubtedly have some articles in which to press around the various article sites on the net.  Now while there are a few major ones which gain more precedence than others, I prefer to just submit them to the whole lot using Article Post Robot. This neat little application allows you to select as little or as many article sites from their database of over 500.  You can select sites with the highest PR or you can just choose the ones that don’t require a login (save time), the choice is entirely up to you.

9. Link Popularity

Link popularity is the measure of quality incoming links from other sites.  The more backlinks you have from higher PR sites, the higher your link popularity will be.  There are service sites out there that will check it for you, or you can go the old fashion way and just go to Google and type link:www.sitename.com and get your total number of listed backlinks.

10. SERP Report

Once I have completed all these aforementioned steps I usually do a final report to see where I am ranking and also to see what I can improve upon.  I record my keywords and where they are ranking at the start of my campaign, and then do another lookup at the end of the campaign (usually a month) to see the progress I have made. I prefer to use SEO Elite for my reporting but there are a slew of programs out there that you can use.

I don’t cover link bait development in my SEO campaigns, and I don’t drive tons of backlinks using other social media methodologies not discussed.  But using these basic 10 steps you can build a basis to work from, and will more than anything be a step ahead of the competition.  And as niches and sites get more and more competitive, it definitely doesn’t hurt to get a step ahead.

Earlier today a friend recommended I check out SEO Digger which is a totally free to use competitive analysis tool, which displays keywords your website ranks for. With a massive database of 44 million unique keywords and keyphrases you can see where you rank for your most popular keyphrases in an instant.

I had been using SEO Elite for all my keyword analysis but I feel that SEO Digger deserves a chance, seeing as their interface allows you to conduct analysis from any internet browser, without the need for an external program.

In terms of tracking SEODigger uses Overture and Wordtracker to show keyword popularity, alongside with google to show your current ranking. Other similar sites that achieve this are SpyFu (AdWords & Organic), KeyCompete (AdWords), and URL Trends (Organic).

I often get sidetracked with the multitude of projects I undertake and forget about the real earners that made me most of my money so im going to take a second to reflect on blackhat SEO.

Simplified, Blackhat is valid usable content generation, usually automated.

There are generally two methods you can go about doing blackhat seo, first is spamming other sites with links or generated content… And the second is to generate content, and tons of it. Autoblog’s, comment spam, email marketing, message boards, and social networks (myspace, facebook, youtube etc.)

However if you spam sites with your chosen keywords in order to rank higher in google, you will see a short term jump in rankings, but this will be gone in less than a month due to google’s algorithm picking up on those spammish links you’ve been dropping or automating… which leaves you back at square one. Your not gonna keep buying the bitch drinks if she aint going to put out. So the best method for doing this, which has been tried and tested, is to generate comedy/humor websites based off of feeds and databases that have several entries so that the output is relevant to the keywords for titles and meta tags. I setup a site similar to this and spent less than $50 and in about 2 month’s time I had earned almost $2000, blackhat at its finest.

Personally I don’t think people should sell SEO, but practice it on their own and learn. SEO is an ever developing realm, with the algorithms constantly being updated and changed.. The top blackhats stay ahead of the algorithm either by getting the code or by guessing which methods would go undetected. There are many outdated methods (keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages etc.) that used to make a lot of money, and in order to stay ahead you have to constantly be on top of what works.

While blackhat SEO is unethical, if used properly in moderation (key word here) you can make a pretty penny, and at the same time not get penalized by the search engines as long as you stay within some very specific boundaries, and dont get greedy.

Blogs are quickly becoming one of the best marketing tools that small businesses and even large corporations can use. Whether your business is online or offline you can use a blog to keep your customers up to date on the latest events and generally use a blog as a marketing and advertising tool for extra revenue.

Blogs enable direct interaction with customers and allow them to see what goes on behind the scenes as well as keep up to date with the latest news. Blogs are inexpensive to start and run, enabling you to use thousands of themes to change the look of your site at the click of a button.

Here are a 5 key reasons as to how blogging for your company can be a good thing:

• Direct communication between you and your clientel.
• Blogs are great for SEO, fresh content added daily will bring traffic.
• The more relevant the content the more opporunity for the niche to branch off into other areas which in turn creates more revenue..
• Comments allow direct feedback customers as well as potential clientel.
• Cost effective, low startup cost, high return.

Make sure to give your customers a reason to read your blog as well.  Have them directly interacting with you by using polls, questionnaires, giveaways and contests, and you will see a surge in the growth of your company as well as some added side revenue from your blog.

For the typical forum admin, search engine marketing is a foreign concept. The what-to-do’s and what-not-to-do’s are but a blur. I have found a thread worth checking out and following. It depicts the common SEO (search engine optimization) myths, the things you have heard work but really don’t. I hope this thread is helpful. With insight in to these SEO myths, maybe the blurred vision will be a bit more clear.