I bet you wouldn’t disagree with me if I said that meta tags (keywords and descriptions) are one SEO factor that got popular for spamming. Haven’t you seen that page with half part of the code filled with meta keywords? Damn! That was bad.

Now, even though Google does not give much importance (as it used to earlier) to meta info, it’s a good idea to keep it as relevant to your content as possible.

But how do you know if your meta tags are “white hat” and it’s all looking good in Google’s eyes?

Hmm, well ask a friend of yours (may be your folks) to read the content and then your meta keywords. If they say “hey…are you sure you had that content on the page related to those keywords”, you know you are not doing the right thing.

Even better, there is a ncice little program that will help you do this check pretty much automated. It’s called Meta tag SEO 1.0

Give in all your URL’s it checks the content, and the meta tags and try to find some sort of correlation between it. If it finds that the meta tags ratio is alarming, it would let you know.

Of course, checking it manually is the best thing to do, but if you have a handy program that helps you with it, why not try it?

Head over here, check out the screenshots and download this guy. See if he works for you.

Just got hired by Webbizideas.com, and I’ll be contributing more articles over there on Search Engine Optimization. More of “how to” articles and tutorials which DSB readers would enjoy reading. Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Webbizideas is based out of Minneapolis, and has a wide range of professional services to deliver ranging from web design to internet marketing including SEO.

Web biz ideas have a video channel on YouTube where they explain many interesting facts on web marketing with simple, easy to understand narration. Feel free to subscribe to the channel.

Here’s a great video from Jeff Foster of Webbizideas, explaining on how to use Google Alerts to your advantage. Web masters don’t wana miss this !

You can see similar articles from me at Webbizideas, so grab the feed.

Link building has always been associated with link exchanges, link request emails, link buying etc. Not any more. They’re all old-school stuff people try and waste their time on. Now since the social media revolution, there’s a whole new array of sites available that allows SEOs and webmasters to get some link juice from them for free. Now, these features will be taken for a ride, if given out freely, and they know. For the same reason, many of the sites have converted from “dofollow” to “nofollow“.

Social Media sites are basically communities where like minded guys gather up and share stuff. Be it SU, or Digg, there’s a community within. And universally, SEOs and Webmasters are looked upon with a raised eyebrow because these guys (you and me) tend to manipulate the system, and benefit from it. So let me warn you, what I’m going to tell you is of course a part of SEO, but this does not mean we have flock to all of them and start building links from day one.

Social media sites are seen generally as traffic generation machines. Be it Digg or SU, people see it as a medium to get the extra ordinary visibility for their websites, and take advantage of the large communities there. This is something that’s open to discussion. Whether to use social media sites for link building or to leave them off as communities and let them exist for what they are.

Now, here are the social media sites that are known (as of today) to pass link juice apart from teh community benefits. Some of them give huge traffic, some does not, but give you good healthy, relevant google juice.

Digg - Digg gives link juice from all the stories submitted. If you are on a top page, you have higher PR link juice, if you are on the upcoming page, lesser.

Mixx - Mixx does pass link juice and it’s easy to use it to rank high on SERPs as of now. But it’s a growing community, so it may not be easier later. Bit right now, it’s a good tool.

Hugg - Hugg is almost like digg with focus on environmental issues. Links are crawlable and passes juice.

Linkinn - Linkinn has some offbeat categories that you won’t find in the mainstream, popular social media site. A PR 6 site it features videos and pictures. Links are indexed and pass juice.

Reddit - One of the most popular guys around, reddit still have it’s links dofollowed so if you make it to the top pages, you’re lucky.

Indian Pad - Audience that’s Indian targeted, this guy is the only most popular social media site in India. Links are crawlable and indexed, and does pass on Google juice. The most popular categories are Tech and News

Backflip - Social bookmarking site with PR 6. Links are crawlable and passes on link juice.

Mister Wong - One of my favorites, Wong is a PR 6 social bookmarking site that allows dofollow links.

Mylink Vault - This guy gives you PR 5 backlinks, clean interface, good tool.

Swik - A clean social bookmarking site that gives you PR 6 backlinks. The community id for developers and open source enthusiasts.

That’s it for now. There are quite a number of other niche social media sites that help you with link juice and targeting niche communities. A healthy participation in these communities respecting the members and the laws can ensure you long lasting help with link building and traffic.

It makes sense for someone to look for the ROI when he’s investing money on an SEO project right?
When dealing with clients who have a limited budget, one question that they are keen on is -

“What ROI would I get investing all this money in SEO?”

And I think that’s an interesting question because, in any other project, there is a ROI calculator, especially SEM. When you are opting for PPC ads, there is a clearly a mathematics involved. In PPC, you have a daily budget and you know how much traffic you get, it’s all out there in numbers at the end of the day.

But does the same happen with SEO?
Some questions SEO’s are expected to answer are -

• Can you guarantee me a number one/two position?
• How much traffic will I get if I spent X amount of money with you?
• What will happen if I don’t reach a good position?

Now, it’s not difficult to answer these questions you know. More than answering these questions, what helps is “educating the client”. The client would be only familiar of PPC campaigns and online advertisements, the ROI of which he calculates by using the simple formula of “No. of visits/No. of purchases.”

Unfortunately, this simple formula when applied in the SEO perspective becomes a little vague. If you had all the numbers in place for SEO, probably a formula similar to the following would have  made sense. (For product selling/ecom websites)

ROI on SEO = (No. of goals achieved x Price of product) - Cost to SEO

Where no. of goals achieved is no. of sales or subscription/ visit to a check out page.

Conversion ratio OR Efficiency of an SEO = (No. of organic visits(traffic) / No. of goals achieved)

Things are more tough in the case of non product selling websites.

Here the core metrics would be (i) Page Views (ii) Traffic and (iii) Subscriptions

The above formula can be tweaked to suit them.

For sites dealing with subscriptions as their final objective.

ROI on SEO =  (No. of subscriptions x Effective revenue from Ads) - Cost to SEO

Conversion ratio OR Efficiency of an SEO = (No. of organic visits(traffic) / No. of subscriptions)

Basically, any website that employs an SEO can take the organic traffic to be their primary goal. The rest depends on what the goals are and what the revenue model is.

Most of the times, if SEOs can ensure a boost in “value traffic” then things become easier to handle. And interestingly, this is where many clients gets into disagreement. Increasing traffic is not important, but “value traffic” is.

What is the difference between “traffic” and “value traffic”?
Traffic is only numbers. You can employ 10 guys from around the world to Digg your articles to get traffic, it’s no big deal. But the question is whether it that traffic is converting into results. The SEO Efficiency ratio calculated will show how effective the campaign is. There might be 10,000 new visitors but only 100 new subscriptions. Which means the traffic is not relevant.

Meanwhile, “Value Traffic” is the one which has come from relevant sources, through a pull strategy, in the right amount. This traffic is likely to have more conversions as compared to the “bought” Digg traffic. There might only be 500 new visitors but 400 new subscriptions. But this makes more sense to the client.

So essentially, even though it is tricky to find ROI ratios on an SEO project, if you dig into the details and have clear cut ideas on what the metrics are, it is quite possible. I have an inclination to believe that SEO Efficiency is far more better than SEO ROI though.

This is no exaggeration. A true story I’d like to share with you, probably you’ll have something to take back home.

I had launched a new website this April 12, related to the IPL chennai super kings. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a cricket team in the Indian Premier League and I support them. I had started this website just because I had to support them and the official website was scrap. I had no intentions of monetizing it, as a matter of fact I wanted to have a better site for the fans, that’s about it. But things have gone totally out of hand now (for the good that is.). Let me tell you in detail.

This is how the whole thing began.

- April 12
Started the blog, put up a good theme from WP Designer, and put a few content as well.
- The next few days, I kept adding more content and used the social media to promote it. Well, that’s submitting content to all those guys out there.
- Placed a banner ad on DailySEOblog.(Check out the right hand panel)
Traffic - Nil

- April 13-15
- Site indexed on Google, picked up a few positions on the SERPs for terms such as “chennai super kings pics” and “chennai super kings wallpaper”.
Traffic - Around 50-100 uniques a day

- April 15-18
Added more unique content, wallpapers, pics, siggies (You know the boys stuff! )
Traffic - Around 50-200 uniques a day

- April 18 - 22
Nothing at all as I was attending the Bangalore Barcamp, and took a days leave further
When I left on 18th to bangalore the traffic was around 300-400 uniques a day. And when I came back, the traffic was around 500 uniques a day.
That got me exciting, as I saw the traffic trickling down, decided to do some “home work” on it.
Though on a tight schedule, decided to spend some time on it, since I saw that on Google Trends, the search frequency for IPL related terms were increasing.

Okay, so I went about doing a quick SEO campaign for the site, the next few days.

1. Went about using all the powers on my social media network and promoted some unique content that was there on the site.
2. Targeted some regional networks, like the star brand amassadors fan sites and networks, and gave them some exclusive viral content to feed on.
3. Link building, link building. No, not the typical directory submission for page rank, but the “new kind” that helps the content travel places and keeps the bots busy on the site. This worked and articles were now getting indexed within 30 minutes.
4. Used Google Trends to fish out the IPL related keywords
5. Wrote excellent SE optimized content targeting the keywords and their combinations.
6. Traffic just multiplied by 100 times (see the stats) in just two days.

Looks very simple eh? It is indeed. Simple strategies but doing the right thing at the right time really matters.
If you look at what I achieved in numbers, check the stats.

Current Stats

VISITS

Total 17,236
Average Per Day 2,097 (It was in 200-300 range 5 days earlier)
Average Visit Length 1:29
Last Hour 175
Today 1,159
This Week 14,677

PAGE VIEWS

Total 34,471
Average Per Day 3,863
Average Per Visit 1.8
Last Hour 345
Today 2,192
This Week 27,044

Traffic Stats over the last 7 days

I think for the little effort from my side, the results are very interesting.

Some crucial things that made me achieve the results are -

i) Putting up a banner ad on DailySEOblog. (If you want one, do let me know)
ii) Promoting the site genuinely on the social media (Mind you, this isn’t just about digging and thumbs ups)
iii) Some careful and timely Keyword research
iv) Some clever onsite SE optimization
v) Getting control over the bots as to when and how should they crawl

Now, that the traffic is there, I’ve put up AdSense ( bad choice huh?) and some banner ads, if at all they make some money, why not try them?

Here are the twenty four kickass plugins that are used on DailySEOblog. Some are active and some are not. Marked against each is the reason why it’s cool and what it won’t do.

1. Akismet
   The must have spam catcher. It’s already present in your default wordpress installation, if you haven’t activated it, please do it before those spams accumulate.
2. All in one SEO pack
   (Inactive)This is an great plugin that will help you manage the meta tags for articles enabling them with unique meta and titles.I use an even better plugin now (Headspace2), which is AllinSEO x 10 times. So this one is inactive. You may want to use it if you are looking for a hassle free and easy meta tag management.
3. Feed copyrighter plugin
   This one is reposible for throwing up those copyright statement at the end of the feeds in RSS readers. It is one way of fighting the scrappers, not sure how effective it is, but it is indeed one weapon we hve right now.Bad thing - The credit link will appear on all RSS footers.
4. Better comments manager
   This is one of the best plugins I’ve always cherished using. It enables easy management of comments, lets you reply to them easily, mass edit/approve them. And yes, this is from Keith and team. His plugins have exceptional quality after all.
5. Comment Luv
   This plugin is responsible for placing the link to your latest posts on comments. Nice plugin, it crawls your site (from the info you submit while commenting), and get’s the latest URL, parse it as HTML beneath your name.Bad thing - To tweak the text that appears with it, there are no options menu, and you have to edit the code. Not too many are comfortable doing it.
6. Duplicate sidebar widgets
   This plugin helps you to duplicate the widgets modules to drag and drop on the sidebar. Ex: If you want two instances of the random posts widget, this one replicates it.
7. Enhanced Contact form
   This plugin is responsible for all those contact forms appearing in the pages.
8. Feed footer
   Adds anything in HTML to feeds appearing in RSS reader. 10 spots available, suitable for advertising and throwing up messages.
9. Google AdWrap
   You know about Googles section targeting right?This plugin adds the “sections” to be targeted to comments and content area thereby the ads that appear on Google AdSense will be heavily contextual to the information in these sections.Bad thing - You can’t manually add te google_ad_section code to any other place on the blog.
10. Google XML sitemaps
    Must have for all blogs. Generates an XML sitemap making the contents visible for search spiders.Bad thing - If you enable the robots.txt rewriting, everything you set manually on robots.txt is rewritten.
11. HeadSpace2
    The best meta tag management plugin I’ve seen in the recent times. No words to describe - killer plugin!Bad thing - Initially, difficult to understand how it functions and yo use.
12. Homepage Excerpts
    Adds a “more” link cutting posts on the main homepage within certain limit of characters. Good for curbing duplicate content on wordpress.
13. I love social bookmarking
    (Inactive)Great plugin that displays a pull down menu for social bookmarking on all the top social media websites.Bad thing - Serious alignment issues.
14. KB Linker
    Great plugin to increase the number of links within your site. It enables you to select a keyword for which you can set a link. Where ever this keyword appears, it would make it a link.Bad thing - It injects the link code even to links and in between html codes ! And you get html errors sometimes.
15. Random posts widget
    Throws up a set of random posts on the sidebar. Good options available.
16. Search Meter
    Gives me access from the dashboard to search phrases on DailySEOblog search box. And also shows if the person who searched the phrase got the info he wanted or not. Good plugin to get an idea of topics to blog.
17. SEO for Wordpress
    A little outdated plugin, it says is reduces instances of duplicate content. But it doesn’t show us how and where. Otherwise a good concept.
18. Shylock AdSense
    The killer plugin that allows you to inject adsense codes anywhere on the post, and decide which ads to go where.
19. Ultimate Google Analytics
    Great plugin that will manage Google Analytics code injection and tracking a breeze. You could very well do it manually, but this one is a laymans friend.
20. WP- Stats
    Displays the wordpress blog stats from the dashboard. A better stats if you wat uptodate results. Analytics is a day and some hours late.
21. WP-Cache
    Makes wordpress faster and quick loading.
22. WP- category posts
    Includes a widget that will display posts from a particular category in the sidebar. Neat and clean code. Serves the purpose with no glitch.
23. Yet Another threaded comments plugin
    (Inactive)This comment allows to have newly created comments relate to existing comments, so you can comment on a comment. This information allows to display the Comments in a hierarchical fashion (e.g. a Tree).This is an alternative to te Brian’s threaded comments plugin that’s got some issues while installing and working.This plugin adds a pull down menu while you comment listing you the names on the previously commented guys name. You can select the guy you wanted to reply and comment.Works on many sites but not mine, hence inactive.
24. Who Sees Ads
    Another Killer plugin from OZH. You can decide whether your AdSense ads should be displayed to a search engine visitor or not, or a regular direct hit reader or not etc. Great in incresing the CTR and revenue of Google Ads.Bad thing - Can’t really track as to how the ads are performing and how they gave you improved revenues.

You rarely see such titles on this blog. Today, I have a genuine reason to write one. A screen capture.

Link to the webpage here.

I appreciate the efforts but it does throws a bad picture. In fact, on many others as well.

A good increase in the number of subscribers and total traffic. There has been a steady increase in the number of unique visitors and page views as well. More pages at the blog is now viewed, which is really exciting. I think the large footer placed with all the SEO tutorial links has really worked, people are really finding it useful.

However, this December I had been involved with house shifting and transfer so there were less posts than usual which has reflected on the traffic. I think this will be a one off thing and the traffic will gain in the coming months.

There are some interesting and basic SEO tips and tutorials that’s coming up so that should keep you hang around the blog for a while.

Wondering what’s it?

Well, at DailySEOblog, I’ve tried my best to keep away from personal stuff. Simply because, I never wanted to disturb my readers and clients. So this idea of starting a new personal blog clicked! For a writer, getting an opportunity to write is like getting high on hashish. And that’s why all of us like blogging isn’t it? We can create platforms of our own.

So I have a personal blog now. It’s Manikarthik.com, and you’ll see a lighter side of me there.

I’ll be sharing jokes, travelogues, places and basically all the interesting stuff. If you’ve been bored listening to my SEO, SMM, marketing bhashans, come over to my personal space (well, not really personal right?). It’s like inviting you all to a Saturday night get-together at a favorite food joint.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the feed.

OK, So what about the money..Mani ?

I’m giving away $250 this season, and there’s a competition you can win. It goes like this.

It’s going to test your SEO link building and offsite optimization skills. So only the best-hardcore SEO’s who think they are really game for a battle need to take part.

The subject would be my personal blog, (which is brand new).

What you have to do

1 - Pick a keyword of your choice that is suitable for the website. It could be something like Mani Karthik, SEO India, Best SEO India, well, it’s your choice to select what you are comfortable with. You can use SEO tools to pick the keyword but make sure it’s relevant to the site.

2 - Let me know what keyword you’ve selected through comments here, so that everyone knows about it. (Don’t email please). You might want to pick keywords first so that there is no duplication. Each contestant will be assigned a single unique keyword. Incase there are more than one contestants for a keyword, variations of the keyword will be assigned to you by me.

3 - You have a time of maximum, 60 days. Ending March 29, 2008 you have to submit your results as to what is the position the site have achieved, because of your efforts, for the particular keyword that was assigned to you.
Of course, the progress of the competition will be monitored through out the schedule.

Points to note.

- Based on which keyword ranks me higher, the winner will be announced. For example, if the keyword, “Mani’s blog” ranks higher than any other keyword, it would be announced the winner.
- Incase there are more than one keyword that ranks number one, for instance both the keywords “Mani Karthik” and “Mani’s blog” ranks number one, the winner will be decided on the quality of the keyword.
- If it’s confusing still, it will be open to readers to select which is the best keyword.
- Keyword selection is totally up to you, but it should be related to the site and should be approved by me prior to the start of the competition (in comments).
- The results will be checked on Google.com and not any regional domains.
- Prize money will be sent through paypal ids only.
- There will be no control over the onsite optimization factors for the contestants. I’ll be making regular posts on the blog during the competition time.
- You can adopt any white hat strategy you like like reviews, link building etc. As long as it’s not black hat, it will be approved.
- Contestant should provide details of link sources on demand, though it may not be necessary.

So, there you go.

Time to prove you SEO skills and test out what you’ve learned over the years form DailySEOblog. This is going to be a litmus test for all of you SEO’s/SEO wannabes out there. I’m sure only the best would win, and if I find your work really worth it, you’d even get into a contract with me. So make sure you win the contest at any price!

The current stats of the blog are as follows.

- Not indexed on Google.
- No incoming links.

So what are you waiting for? Get set…go !

You’ve been using Lijit on your blog right? No? Then do it right now.

Since their launch, I was impressed with the tool as well as the guys behind it. They seemed to be a friendly, fun loving, jolly group of geeks. Remember this post?

I had trouble customizing the widget for this blog, but thanks to the quick responses and help over email from Tara, she actually bugged me to get it right. I like that kind of spirit, especially at work, when you’ll go extremes to get things done.

I’d seen Tara in one of her blog posts wearing the cute Lijit Tshirt and I wanted one! Unfortunately, Lijit haven’t opened a store yet like Linkedin (and that’s fine.), so Tara very kindly offered me to send one as a compliment.

So that’s the story. As a matter of fact, I really like the Lijit logo, the site and the tool as such, so I’d be proud to be wearing the T shirt. I’m planning to wear this T-shirt to the conferences and geek get togethers.

Here are the pics.

Thanks much Tara, you guys are a lovely bunch of guys there!