Let's go over the Hub Page set up that I use for just about all of my promotions. This is not an absolute formula because I am constantly experimenting. I also make tweaks here and there to see what kind of effects they cause. Things like re-ordering the capsules and trying different combinations of capsules.
The truth of the matter is that SEO is not an exact science because we can only guess what Google likes based on cause and effect studies and tracking. Throw in the fact that Google is constantly changing their algorithms and we are only making best guesses based on what is currently getting us results. Just about the only thing you can't go wrong with is good, unique content.
The Hub page I created got indexed in less than 12 hours. It showed up as the first result on the second page for the keyword "grafixplus" for two days and then disappeared for a couple days and is now at number 27 (3rd page of results) just above the Squidoo lens I made which is at 30. I searched for "web page graphics" and the Squidoo lens showed up on page 47 with the Hub page on 48. That means we have along way to go.
I did this one a little backwards because I wanted to get the Hub and Squidoo pages out there quick. Some times you can do that and they will pop right up in the first couple pages of results for the keyword you are targeting. It's not going to work this time because the topic is too competitive. Normally, you create your article and a good "link bait' page to start. You then submit the article to various directories linking back to the link bait page.
Then you create your Squidoo lens and Hub page and start linking to them by making blog posts and comments and going heavy on the social bookmarking always. But lets get back to creating your Hub page. First you are going to make sure you use your keyword phrase in the title of your Hub page. Then take the content from your article to make the first "text" capsule. Do not cut and paste! Re-word it to keep everything unique.
OK, now you can kind of do what you want. I don't add any other unique content at first. Just make sure your first capsule is at least 300 words or so. Now, go to You Tube and search for my keyword or something very similar and get a video to put into a video capsule. You can add capsules from the menu on the right and re-order them as needed. Next ad an RSS capsule. You can use a feed from anywhere you want as long as it is relative to the topic of your Hub page.
I usually add a link capsule and then either another video capsule or maybe an Ebay or Amazon capsule. When I first create a capsule I usually start with only 3 or 4 and, of course, you have the comments capsule that is already there. When you are done click on the publish button and your Hub page is live. Now. first thing you do is submit it to Onlywire. If you signed up for your Onlywire account like you were supposed to then you already have the link in your tool bar. Click on it and it will take your to the submission page.
Make sure you type in at least 3 relative tags and then type in a good description. The description is going to show up in your bookmarks page in 20 something different social bookmarking sites so make it interesting so people click on it. This creates high page rank back links and if done properly can send a lot of traffic your way. Congratulations, you have started your Web 2.0 Whammy.
Next time we'll go over how to set up your Squidoo lens. It will go a little quicker because the two are very much alike. Then we will talk about how to interact in with Hub pages and Squidoo to get lots of traffic to your pages and maximize your efforts. We will then go over some other Web 2.0 sites that can help use with our SEO and traffic.
My target keyword for the Grafixplus promotion will be "web page graphics". I did a lot of research last night and this was the one that I think I have a shot at making the first page of Google results. I contacted the owner and she has added some content to her index (home) page that will help the effort. On site optimization is not the most important aspect of SEO but you want to do everything you can to make it easier for the search engines to find you.
Good keyword targeted content is an absolute must. It also helps to have the keywords bolded and if possible, use them in a <h1> or <h2> tag. You also want your primary keyword in your <title> tag and your meta description. In most cases, your meta desription will be the excerpt that is shown in the serch engine results. It should read like a mini advertisement. There are other things you can do for onsite optimization that involve internal linking structure and the navigation of your site but we aren't going to worry about these now. It requires that you be fairly html saavy and can be a little confusing. The things that I have already mentioned are quick and easy to do.
Last night I set up a quick Hub page using some of the content that I have put together for the article that I am going to submit to various directories. Take a second and give it a quick once over. This web site took me less than an hour to set up. Notice that all of the "capsules" have my target keyword phrase in them. Hub pages calls each section a capsule while Squidoo calls them modules. The only original content on the site is the intro which is a text capsule. I used an image from the Grafixplus protfolio to spruce it up a bit. To achieve the same effect, put a photo capsule above the text capsule and then click on the arrow that says "float right" when you mouse over it.
I checked Google today at lunch time and saw that my Hub page has already been indexed. This simply means that the site is listed in their results now. I published the site last night at about eleven pm. That means I was indexed in less than twelve hours, which is pretty good considering that if you submit your website to Google through the normal channels, it takes as long as 3 or 4 months to be put into the index. If you want to see for your self, go to Google and search for Grafixplus. That is my hubpage in the number 2 spot. Keep in mind that I haven't started with the bookmarking and blog submissions. I did manage to throw together a quick Squidoo lens on my lunch hour today. The next couple of posts I make will explain how I set up the web sites in detail and why I do it that way.
Here is the game plan in a nutshell. You are going to promote 3 different pages on your website/blog before it is said and done. Your index page, your sales page, and your "link bait" page. We are going to start with your index page and your sales page. Keep in mind that I am gearing this for beginners to intermediate marketers.
Normally, we would start promoting your "linkbait" page, but this will be the toughest page for a beginner to create. Your link bait page is going to be something that is special and unique in your niche. It needs to be a resource of sorts for your niche, like an article directory. It needs to be a very authoritative site that people will want to bookmark so they can come back again and again. It could also be a very intriguing or funny video, but we will touch on this later.
We're going to begin with a pre-sales page for one of your products or an affiliate product targeted to your niche. If you are starting with a blog you can make a nice long blog post instead of a static page. The page or post is going to be an article. You don't have to win a pulitzer prize with it unless you are working on your "link bait" page but it should be informative, unique, and full of useful content. Don't use an old PLR article that has been passed around for the last year or two.
We are going to submit this article to some directories and we are going to use the content for your intro's on your Hub page and your Squidoo lens. When I started this blog I advised you to sign up for accounts at Hubpages, Squidoo, Onlywire, and Youtube. You can hold off on YouTube for now but if you haven't signed up for the others…do it now. Onlywire will require you to sign up for 28 different bookmarking sites.
(I warned you that this is going to require some work, but you will love the results) You also want to sign up for an account at Ezine Articles and Article Dashboard. There are lots of other places we can submit articles but these 2 carry a page rank of 6 and Google loves them.
To show you that anyone can do this, I am going to take a niche that I know absolutely nothing about and use it as an example. I recently found an upstart graphics company that has done some work for me that I was very pleased with and was very very affordable in comparison to what other web graphics companies are charging for similar quality work. The company is Grafix Plus and I just created my first one way backlink (page rank 2) to their website. Since I do not have control over the website, I will not be able to start with a good "link bait" or "article"(index) page.
I don't know anything about graphics so I am going to go to Ezine articles and do a search for articles about graphics. I will pick some articles that go with my target keywords, which are yet to be determined, read them, and create an article of my own. I will then email it to the owners of the site and see if I can get them to put it on their home page. I will also ask them to put my target keywords in the <title>keywords</title> tags of the website for some onsite optimization. Then I will create a Hub page and a Squidoo lens using the content from my article.
I will let you look over my shoulder during this process through my blog. I will pick out my keywords tonight and hopefully have the article done by this weekend. The article will be the hard part. Once I get that finished, the Hub page and Squidoo lens will be a one hour project. Everything that I do will be submitted to Onlywire, including any blog posts that I make on my blogs and a few other high page rank blogs that I have access to. If you don't do anything else today, make sure you sign up for an Onlywire account or 2 or 3 (hint, hint).
Next post I will reveal the keyword I am going to target first and see where it ranks now. The graphics niche is very competetive so it is going to take some work to get on the first page of results. The website is already indexed and has a page rank of 1. That in itself will help some. It is almost a year old but has almost no backlinks. I have to talk to the owner and see if she will reveal her traffic stats to me so I can start a comparison. Yes, I said traffic. Not only will these tactics get your website ranked higher, but the nature of the Web 2.0 community will drive lots of traffic to your websites.
Ok, this post is getting way to long. See you next time with keywords and hopefully a submitted article.
I added Twitter Tools to my viral traffic blog last week and liked it so I have added it here as well. I highly recommend it to all you Twitter users. You can access your Twitter account directly from your blog. The thing I like the most is that whenever I make a blog post, it automatically makes a tweet about the post. Cool Huh?
I am looking at some of the other plug ins and gadgets mentioned in the post below and will keep you updated on ones I think are worth looking at. Hope fully you all have started using Twitter, set up your blog, and picked out your 3 keyword phrases. We are getting ready to get done and dirty with what I like to call my Web 2.0 Whammy.
A quick word to the newbies. If you are going to be internet marketers, you must have a web hosting account. You are going to be building blogs and eventually websites. You can not be internet marketers with out this basic skill set. Ok, you don't have to be web designers, but any of you can put up a blog…trust me. You also need a reliable auto responder but that is for another day.
If you don't have web hosting yet, then take a look here at what I use. It gives you unlimited everything for as little as $8 a month. I have been using it for over a year and am very happy.
Filed under JT Recommends, Twitter, Web 2.0 by 
I hope you signed up for your Twitter account. Make sure you have set up your profile and put the website you want to drive traffic to in the "More info URL" box. Once you have completed your profile, you want to start folowing people.
There are 2 ways to do this. You can click on the "public timeline" link at the top of the page but I recommend using the search box where it says "People" in the right hand column. Type in a keyword to find people with similar interests. Once the results come up click on the "follow" button to start getting notices on your home page when ever that person makes a "tweet".
By the way, a "tweet" is what you do when you post a statement. We are going to be discussing a lot of different Web 2.0 sites and most of them have there own termanology that you will need to familiarize yourself with. I would make it a practice to make at least one tweet a day if not more. Don't be spammy about it. If you post a link every time you make a tweet, then you won't get as many followers.
You have to use the service in the spirit that was intended and slip in the occassional plug for your website. Make tweets like "Taking the family to the beach this afternoon" or "Watching the football game and having a few cold ones." Then later that day, "I'm just made a new post to my blog at http://yourdomain.com". Just don't over do it.
That is going to be the case with most of these social websites. You want your backlinks to look as natural as possible. I will discuss each one as we go because some sites are much more tolerant than others.
When you signed up for Twitter, you probably noticed that you can use Twiiter with IM and SMS. You can also go to http://m.twitter.com with your smart mobile phone. There are a couple of Word Press plugins that I know of. One lists your tweets in the side bar and the other one gives you full functional acces to your Twitter account from your blog and will automatically create a tweet whenever you make a blog post. If you post on a regular basis, you can accumulate quite a few PR 8 backlinks 
. Just don't forget to mix it up by making daily tweets without links. You can also use the @ symbol in a tweet to target a specific Twitter user. This will also give you "social" credibility and help you be one of the crowd.
There are other ways to monetize Twitter, aside from building backlinks and creating traffic to your websites. Websites like Twitter love it when people create applications that are designed to specifically work with their websites. Use your imagination along with a programmer and come up with something that ties Twitter into another Web 2.0 site like MySpace, YouTube, or maybe Ebay and you can see the potential.
There are already a bunch of widgets and what not that have been created. I also discovered more plug ins. The list is too extensive to put here so here are the links. Click here for the Top 10 Plugins and click her for the Twitter Wiki.
You will see that there are tons of different applications and more are being created all the time as Twitter becomes more popular. I recently read that so many people are joining , the technical team can't upgrade the servers fast enough to handle the load.
Filed under Blogs, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Twitter, Web 2.0 by
