“SEO Book is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind. The first version of my popular SEO Book came out in December of 2003. I have probably revised it about 50 times since then.

Balancing answering emails, blogging, reading blogs and forums, buying and developing sites, working for a couple customers, and running this site is pretty hard – especially with only a couple employees.

In the past SEO Book was more about posting search news, but since the market has got so saturated on that front and I acquired the Threadwatch community I have decided to keep Threadwatch focused on the latest search news and speculation, and to use SEO Book to answer customer questions and to offer online marketing strategy tips. In 2007 I decided to shut down Threadwatch to focus more energies on improving this site. Shutting down Threadwatch has meant that more of my whinges have wound up on this blog, but then so have many of my best posts.”

This great resource covers everything from coming up with a business plan, and deciding on a brand and domain name, to marketing your website and succeeding online.

Learn about SEO with SEOBook, today!

Getting those pretty addresses for your posts and pages for WordPress is easy as 1-2-3.

Step 1: Set your permalinks structure through your Admin>Settings panel.

Under the Permalinks menu, change your default to a custom. Input %postname% for just the postname. It’s better to include a year or postid in your address if you have a lot of posts, to make it easier on the server. Shorter is ideal, but use what you prefer. Your full list of options is handy for you here.

Note: If you’re using an IIS server for your hosting, you’ll need to include index.php before your permalink (ie: index.php/%postname%). This is because IIS does not support mod_rewrite. Yahoo is one in particular that does not support mod_rewrite. Should you use index.php and your good to go, skip Step 2. More information on Permalink issues with “index.php” at the WordPress Forums.

Step 2: Add a .httaccess to the root directory of your website.

This takes maybe 2 minutes. Open notepad. Copy the following to it and change appropriately:
< IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Save this file as .httaccess (make sure you select All Files when saving to preserve the file type). Upload this file to the root directory of your WordPress installation.

Step 3: Update your linking throughout the website.

Make sure your site is reflecting the new links you’ve set up. Should you need to see the current structure, check the pageid of the page through your administration panel. When writing posts and pages, include the – between words. Search engines will recognize ‘orlando-campgrounds’ as ‘orlando campgrounds’ and _ will be just _.

Enjoy!

Marketing your website on the Internet can be difficult. Sites that are higher in search engine results generally have more links, or better links. Quality links can cost money, and a lot of links can take a lot of time to build. A good search engine marketing campaign will mix both aspects of linking.

Before reading more, see DMOZ for yourself here.

Better Links

You can submit to directories and exchange links with websites all day, but what’s really important is quality links. Quality links are links that are relevant to your site and have some authority in the eyes of search engines. Your site can easily catch up to speed in the advertising game by obtaining better links, rather than more links. Needless to say, a directory sponsored by AOL made by Google is a quality incoming link to your site.

More Links

There are countless directories on the Internet. A lot of them start up and do not have any websites to list. In effort to build their directory listings up, they pull from the DMOZ directory. This means that if you are listed in DMOZ you are likely to become listed in many other new directories.

Be Patient

Submitting to DMOZ doesn’t mean you’ll get the listing. Since DMOZ is such a quality directory, a lot of people are submitting their sites. With so many submissions, it takes time for the editors to review and approve your site. Even hearing back about your listing can take months, so be patient before resubmitting your site.

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Advice from a DMOZ Editor

In my spare time I am an editor for a category on DMOZ. Here are a few quick tips for bettering your chances of getting approved:
Be sure you have submitted to the appropriate category.
There are a lot of categories on DMOZ. Make sure you find the category that is most appropriate for your submission.

Polish your title and description before submitting.
It’s easy to overstuff the title and description of your description. Avoid overuse of keywords, and do not repeat your title in the description. You’ll also notice all sites listed are a certain perspective.

Submit once, and only once.
Editors have so many sites to go through, if we see your site more than once consider yourself done for. Also, don’t submit the same site with different domains.

There is a lot of speculation, but tests prove DMOZ listings to be one of the most effective methods of search engine marketing. Utilize the above tips and submit your site!