• What the heck are permalinks
• Why would I care about optimizing them?
• Will I have to undergo expensive surgeries in order to optimize?

What’s SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the science, or art (in many cases) of tweaking things in your favor with the search engines.  No one can “guarantee” top rankings on search engines, because the method by which Search Engines work is not completely known and changes constantly.  In fact, Google even employs real people to validate search engine results – they dig through popular search terms to make sure that people aren’t accidentally getting “bad things” to the tops of the ranks and ruin their good name.

Which brings us to the …

Two Types of SEO

Off-Page SEO

Off Page SEO is when you do things to build in-bound links through any of a variety of methods.  Things like link-directories, link-swapping, and article marketing are all effective ways of building inbound links, thus off-page SEO .

On-Page (or On-Site) SEO

On-page SEO is the type of optimization you can perform on your page of which you are in complete control.  This type of SEO pertains to things like using good keywords in the body and title your pages, having sufficient keyword density and linking to other pages within your site using frequently sought keywords, and the like.

Google takes a look at many on-page factors when determining what makes a page relevant for a certain search term.  One of those factors is the URL of the page itself.  If the URL of the page contains the words that people are searching for, Google lends just a smidge (since there are so many factors) more weight to the likelihood that your page will be found as relevant for the sought keyword.

Here’s an example:

http://Using-Twitter.com/blog/How-To-Retweet

Now, when people are searching for things like “Twitter How To Retweet ” or “Using Twitter Retweet ” or similar phrases, that page will be considered more relevant for those terms because those words (and sometimes complete phrases) are matched perfectly in the URL.

Knowing what you know now… how does a URL like THIS compare?

http://Using-Twitter.com/blog/?p=7

Exactly. ICK!   Which brings us to…

What’s a Permalink?

“Permalink” is an abbreviated form of the phrase “Permanent Link.”  In WordPress, it’s simply the URL someone would use in order to directly link to a specific page in your site.  It’s also the URL that Google will (or won’t) send people to when they search for your targeted keywords.

How do I optimize Permalinks?

WordPress is very configurable, and as such, there’s an easy way to set your URLs to be far more meaningful to the search engines.

1. Open the URL “<YourBlogUrl>/wp-admin/options-permalink.php”So, for the site mentioned above, the link would be

   http://Using-Twitter.com/blog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

2. In the “Common Settings” section, select the radio button marked “Custom Structure”.
3. In the big text box over to the right of “Custom Structure”, enter this value: “/%postname%/” (without the quotes)
4. Click the “Save Changes” button at the very bottom to put those new setting in to effect.
5. MOST IMPORTANT: Visit your home page and click a few URLs to make sure the new ones look like you expect.  If not, repeat the steps above more closely.

PLEASE NOTE: If you’re using a crappy hosting provider (such as GoDaddy), you will have to wait about 10-15 minutes for your changes to take effect.  Make sure to make these changes during slow traffic periods or after hours.  Better yet, switch your hosting company to one that doesn’t suck .

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The question is “Why are your domain names so long, with all those dashes in them? Should I be doing that as well?” (A domain name is the .com, .net, or .org part of a web site address – aka URL)

The “right” answer to this question depends significantly on how you intend to drive traffic to your site.

Best Domain Names for Offline Media

If you plan on using radio or television advertising, it is important to be able to make sure your domain name gets heard properly, and then subsequently typed into their browser when they get back to the computer. Combine that with being billed by air time, and you don’t want to waste time having to say the words “dash” between every word. You also want something catchy, rather than your company name. Like WinAFreeTrip.com or FreeCreditReport.com and so forth.

Best Domain Names for SEO

If you plan on using Search Engine Optimization to drive traffic to your site, you have a different battle. You see, people don’t actually type your URL in when using search engines, they just click on a link in the search results. If your domain name looks like spam, searchers will ignore it in the search results. If your domain name has nothing to do with what they’re looking for, they’ll ignore it as well.

But, here’s something interesting that few people realize, but it is VERY important to understand when creating a domain name. Google (and others) believe that the text used to link to your site/page is very descriptive of what will be found there. So when someone links to a page with the phrase “As Stupid as George Bush ”, it increases the chances that someone will find your page when searching for exactly that.

That’s the first piece of the puzzle – the next piece is that frequently, whether in forum postings, news releases, or what-have-you, people just type the full link to where they want you to go. The posting software automatically converts that into a link to your site. So when someone posts a link to your site using your domain name, the search engine sees that the words in the domain name are what someone will find there.

Let’s put that all together – if you have figured out that the people who you will sell your products best to are looking for information on Fog Horn Parts and you want to get search engines traffic to your site. You will do quite well to name your domain Fog-Horn-Parts.com . If .com isn’t available, .net, .org, .info, and .us are all possibilities.

What Google Sees

As a result, when someone links to your site with the text http://www.Fog-Horn-Parts.com , it will link to your site, and the search engines will see that “http www fog horn parts com” is what can be found at your site (turning the weird punctuation into spaces). You would do well, also, when possible, to leave out the “www” part – this wastes a word and distracts the search engine. You NEED the “http://” part to make the link work, so there’s no getting around that, I’m afraid.

You may ask yourself if people really do this – well, here are two real world examples linked to a site run Nina Hershberger who runs MegaBucks Marketing and makes a product called the wallet mailer:

• http://www.dankennedy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=234&Itemid=200 links with the text “www.wallet-mailer.com”
• http://www.marketingbestpractices.com/Articles/a-most-amazing-direct-mail-letter.htm links with the text “http://www.wallet-mailer.com”

The result of these two links combined with the intentional choice of domain names for Nina’s site results in her site ranking ever so slightly better for the search “Wallet Mailer”, for which she has been coming up number one for several years now. And that’s where I come in. I largely do that through keyword research, article marketing, and a variety of on-page optimizations. (By the way: I use a LOT of pseudonyms, so you won’t be able to track my entire customer list, just by searching for my name.)

Now when someone wants a wallet mailer, Nina doesn’t even have to give them the domain name – all she has to say is “Look up ‘wallet mailer’ on Google, I’m the first link. ” While that’s a great claim for those in the right market, do not get yourself hyped up under the false impression that you can get to this point with such terms as “home loans” or “mortgage” without a tremendous budget behind you to build and maintain such a ranking.

To further justify this advice, some of the top press release and free-reprint-article publishers out there will absolutely not post articles that contain custom linking. They will only generate links back to your site when a full URL is typed into the article. So, you get a link. But the link text will only be your URL – so, the words in your URL have to count. That’s not to say that a link is meaningless. Sure, every link helps, but it makes a lot more sense to make it count as much as possible for your specific target keywords.

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I was recently working with a member of a local marketing group here in Tampa who is a website designer, let’s call him Fred (not his real name). I got out of the “web design” and “SEO” businesses because of the same things Fred was complaining about.

I shared a number of insights with him that you can probably use in your own business.  Then I thought about some other real world examples are sure to get your creative juices flowing about increasing your profitability.

He was complaining that the sales cycle for web sites was  astronomical. He would spend 6 months courting someone, working up proposals, and so forth only to find that his price way beyond what they were considering. Of those few who accepted his bid, once he hit them up, aside from referrals, that was it — he was done — no more business from that customer for some 2-3 years, or maybe ever again.

Now this guy’s business model needed quite a bit of help. Here are a few of the marketing tips I shared:

1. Fred’s customers are poorly qualified. He’s spending way too much time talking to people who won’t pay the money. Maybe he’s afraid of scaring them off too early in the game, but that’s better than wasting billable time on proposals for clients who will never be.
2. He refused to “skimp on quality to deliver a cheaper product”, as he puts it. This may feel like adequate justification for his actions.  However, from my perspective, his young organization is failing to meet the true demands of the marketplace while he clings to “what he wants to do” rather than “what is wanted”. While I wished him the best of luck in attempting to pursue his dreams, this is a recipe for marketing suicide. Starving artists are a dime a dozen.
3. He has no follow-on products or services for his clients, nor does he have a referral program. I made a few suggestions for how he could work with his clients to provide a maintenance package at a price lower than his clients would be likely to find elsewhere or than they could do it themselves when you lump in the costs of learning the technologies, etc.

Let’s take a look at the Swiffer WetJet or the Schick Personal Touch Razor . Remember the good old days of just replacing the mop head? Or just replacing the razor blade when the blade wore dull? No more… now, you will buy replacement products far more often by imposing a shorter lifespan of these products.

How can you force more frequent consumption?

Well, the WetJet requires that you buy their specially fit container and their special pads to fit in their special mop handle that ties it all together. Once the disposable pad gets too dirty, you’re out of luck, you have to toss it in the bin. No more rinsing out the sponge head until it’s worn out – that’s the OLD way to do things. Oh, once you’ve stocked up on refills, if you break the special handle, you’ll have to buy a whole new starter kit to make sure you use up everything you’ve already bought.

And the Schick razor has a little moisturizing strip on it. The strip loses its luster in about 2-3 weeks, while the blade remains quite sharp. The strip starts pulling apart and makes a mess of things and generally makes the shaver think “Well, that’s the end of this one, innit?” As a result, perfectly usable blades are tossed out long before they’re ready, and more consumables are purchased, and the prices of these refills are ludicrous. So you wonder when you’re shopping for refills: “Should I buy that memory upgrade for my computer, or the 10-pack of refill blades?” It’s little wonder this gems are kept up by the cash-registers to reduce pilferage.

Microsoft and the Anti-Virus companies do this with their “annual licensing agreements”. No longer can you just buy software and own it and use it and be done. Oh no… you must pay them each and every year for improvements and support – otherwise that bug they left in some 5 years ago will be there to haunt you when an abusive programmer from the Axis of Evil figures out a way to turn it into an ATM machine to fund terrorism.

Now while I may lambaste this from a personal perspective, your business can certainly benefit from finding a way use this model. If you can pull it off without appearing abusive, you can leverage this tool to keep your clients longer, sell them more, and leave as little money on the table as possible.

For example, “plumbing clubs” – if you join the plumbing club for only $20 a month, you get our services for 10% off all year long. If you don’t use our services, you get a refund. This makes sure that the customer calls your plumbing company FIRST if they have a problem. Many customers will fail to request a refund, and it can become its own profit-center.

Think about it… Think about ways to use this in your business. Then, let’s discuss how to implement it.

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