We are proud to announce that we are rolling out our Atlanta SEO Training in Atlanta, GA. For SEO in Atlanta related to corporate training, small business training, marketing team training and more please visit us at www.smt-atlantaseo.com.

Whether you are searching for SMM, SEO, SEM or PPC training or services for your business, we can help. We can train your team from the ground up, or work with what you already have in place.

In this business, the Search Marketing Company you hire can and will get you the best rankings they can, but – for ongoing SEO – the Best Search Engine Optimization to Improve Search Engine Ranking and keep it is to train someone on your staff Learn Search Engine Optimization basics.

For our readers across the U.S., you’ll need to do some research online for local SEO Training. Thankfully, locals in Atlanta, Georgia have at their disposal what we consider to be the Best Corporate Search Engine Optimization Training and Search Engine Training company in the form of the Search Marketing Team of Atlanta (http://smt-atlantaseo.com/). The SMT’s trainers have trained thousands of people all over the world since 2001. Additionally, the company is kept up-to-date monthly on the latest tools and techniques and they share that knowledge with you.

As a final note: The Search Marketing Company you hire will do their job and get you noticed, but our advice for the Best Search Engine Optimization to Improve Search Engine Ranking is to put someone on your staff through The SMT’s Training to Learn Search Engine Optimization so that they can keep your site competitive after your SEO/SEM company get’s you the ranking you deserve.

Hello and welcome to Organic Link Building Revealed. Today we’re gonna talk about one of the most important things to consider when developing links — namely, theme relevancy. Got a lot to discuss so let’s get straight to business.

—Josh

In Today’s Issue:

***What Is Theme Relevancy And Why Should I Care?***
***Hey, A Link Is Still A Link, No Matter Where It Comes From, Right? Wrong!***
***OK, So How Do I Find All These Beautiful Sites Related To Mine?***

What Is Theme Relevancy And Why Should I Care?

What theme relevancy means is the site that places a link to yours (an vice versa) should be relevant or related to your sites “theme”. Ideally, your link partner’s Website should complement, but not compete with whatever you are offering.

For instance, if you are selling blue widgets, it makes sense to get a link from a site selling widget accessories. Or, if you are selling Search Engine Optimization services, it’s a good idea to get links pointing to SEO-related articles, search engines news and forums. And, in both examples, it’s definitely NOT a good idea to exchange links with casino, gambling, or real estate sites.

This is not to say that blue widget buyers never gamble or never purchase real estate. But if they came to your site looking for your products or services such as blue widgets or SEO services, there’s probably one chance out of a million they are interested in casinos or real estate right now.

This is how your site’s visitors would have thought, and this is how search engines think it should be. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other major search engines have been designed with one purpose — to provide value to their users, which means relevant, accurate search results. Their algorithms may — and will — change, but this underlying principle will remain the same.
“Hey, A Link Is Still A Link, No Matter Where It Comes From, Right?”

Wrong! This is a misconception that can easily get you in trouble. This approach could bring you short-term benefits 2 or 3 years ago, but major search engines (especially Google) have gotten a lot smarter since then.

If you still think theme relevancy is nice-to-have rather than a must-have, well, think again. Get a hundred unrelated links pointing to your site, and several things will happen, none of which involves high rankings for you:

• Google will simply not count these links when computing your ranking. This is the best thing that could happen since it doesn’t involve penalizing your site;
• Google will think (justifiably) that your site belongs to a different theme (say, gambling) and treat it accordingly. This could mean your site will go up in gambling-related search results, and down in the results you seek (such as blue widget results). Now, you don’t want this, do you?
• With the last Google algo update (dubbed “Big Daddy”), Google will decide (again, justifiably) you are trying to trick search engines and will simply drop your site from its index. Ouch. That was definitely NOT intended.

So here’s a rule of thumb: Always keep your site’s visitors in mind when running your link building campaigns. Try to get into your visitors’ shoes and think what resources they would be numberswiki.com

interested in. Would they be interested in casino sites? No? Then don’t do it.
“OK, So How Do I Find All These Beautiful Sites Related To Mine?”

Easy. There are several ways you can do it:

1. Do a search in major search engines such as Google using your niche keywords. Scan the results, copy the URLs you are interested in into a spreadsheet, wash rinse and repeat.
2. Visit a good link directory. Link directories are human-compiled directories of sites broken down into categories. DMOZ is an excellent example. Simply find your niche category in a directory, and search for relevant link partners there.
3. A trick you could use is examine your competition. Your competitors, who are selling, say, red widgets, most likely have other sites that link to them. You can use the LINK:WWW.COMPETITOR.COM command in Google, for example, to find out who.

So really, you can do it all by hand. The only problem is that finding quality link partners for your site — as important for your site’s success as it is — is very time-consuming. So if the above does not seem easy for you, here’s the good part.

Search Marketing Team makes it a lot easier to find relevant link partners. Just point to Tools -> Find new link partners… and explore your options. In short, you can do it all:

1. Find new partners using keyword search. Point to Tools -> Find new link partners… -> Search for new partners on the Web -> Find sites by keyword search. Then simply enter your niche keyword phrase and let Search Marketing Team do the rest — find hundreds of potential link partners related to your site’s theme. Pretty fast, too.
2. With Search Marketing Team you can also scan a complete Website (such as a links directory) and harvest all links from it, or just a specific category or page.
3. Search Marketing Team doesn’t stop here. You can also use it to quickly figure out who links to your competition and acquire hundreds of relevant link partners this way.
4. And it’s getting even better. Some sites are using link submission forms to exchange links. They provide you with a form that you must fill in specifying your domain, the page with a backlink, your email, etc. With Search Marketing Team you can quickly find relevant “Auto-Complete” link partners, and fill in their submission forms automatically — again, saving you time.

Now, let’s assume you need to find and evaluate 50 link partners a day. If you do it by hand, and spend 5 minutes on every link partner, you’ll end up stealing more then 4 hours of your precious time. If you don’t use Search Marketing Team, that is.

And, after you’ve tried the manual versus the Search Marketing Team way of finding potential link partners, I won’t have to ask you which one you like best — I know the answer 😉

I hope you enjoyed this issue as much as I did when I wrote it. So go make yourself a cup of your favorite beverage, sit back, power up Search Marketing Team and let it do the job for you.

That’s it for now. Contact me at josh@thesmt.com if you have any questions, and stay tuned for the next issue!!!

Is your company getting the search engine exposure needed to reach the increasing demand for companies that export? If you are not ranking near the top of the first page or if you are paying too much for SEO in Portland or Pay-Per-Click in Portland we will put your website in front of more searchers for export goods and services. It is all about REAL ESTATE. If you own a good position, or good placement on the first page of search result real estate, you will receive the lion’s share of searchers.

Why does this matter to an import/export company in Portland? Well, let’s consider this quote today from the Business Journal:

Portland business leaders said Tuesday that a new plan to double the region’s exports over the next five years could create 113,000 area jobs.

Economic development officials, who want to raise the region’s value of exported goods to $42 million by 2017, unveiled strategies that could build on Portland’s exporting base. The Greater Portland Metro Portland Export Strategy was developed in concert with a Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution    program. The Brookings-Rockefeller Project seeks to better link American companies with global customers.

The strategies, which will be presented Wednesday morning at a Portland Business Alliance  event, include:

• Supporting and cultivating primary exporters, including such area tech giants as Intel Corp.  and TriQuint Semiconductor Inc., so that they provide “greater economic impact and longer-term local industry sustainability.” Tech companies provide some 56 percent of the area’s total exports.
• Encourage companies that don’t export a lot of materials to export more.
• Build a pipeline that makes it easier to export. Some 18 percent of Portland’s economy depends on exports, much higher than the national average of 11 percent. However, 89 percent of the area’s companies either aren’t exporting at all or aren’t even considering it.
• Market the city’s various business proclivities, such as clean technology and other clusters.

SEO and Internet Marketing in Portland is one of the most efficient and effective marketing tools that bring measurable results. Call or email and we can walk you through ways that we can position your company for great search exposure, more traffic and an increase in revenue.

Is your company poised to take part in the educational market in China through internet marketing in Portland Seattle and the world?

China needs leadership management growth for its technical resources and its explosive growth. It is looking to outside sources for experienced educational resources.

If there was ever a need for business schools in China, including SEO and internet marketing courses, it’s now.

From the WSJ:

Breakneck economic growth has far outstripped the supply of management talent. Meanwhile, Chinese companies in both the private and state sectors are responding to government incentives to “Go Out” and compete against the best companies in the world—while juggling fierce competition, rapidly changing technology and shifting macro-economic forces at home.

No wonder some of the world’s most prominent business schools are eyeing China as the next educational frontier.

China Europe International Business School got to China early. That gives it a head start in terms of faculty and facilities. Its new pitch: “China Depth Global Breadth,” marrying insight into how China works with an international perspective that attracts students from China and around the world.

Dean John A. Quelch, a veteran of the Harvard Business School and London Business School, insists that despite economic turmoil in Europe, the CEIBS brand in China remains untarnished. “Germany is held in very high regard,” he insists. Besides, he adds: “People in China take the long view.”

Mr. Quelch talked with Andrew Browne in Shanghai. The following interview has been edited.

WSJ: Like everybody else in China, CEIBS seems to be investing massively in infrastructure. Tell us something about your expansion plans.

Mr. Quelch: The Shanghai campus will double in size by the end of 2013. We also have a campus that we opened in Beijing in 2010 and we currently have operations in Shenzhen that may convert into a fully fledged campus within the next two to three years.

We also have an appetite for going west, and looking at that hundred million people in the Chengdu-Xian-Chongqing triangle, who will eventually want their own business school and will not necessarily want—or be able—to fly to Beijing or Shanghai.

The reason why Stanford exists is because Harvard always thought that Californians would be happy to come east to Boston, and never imagined they’d want their own Harvard, a.k.a. Stanford.

WSJ: The No. 1 complaint of foreign companies in China is lack of management talent. Isn’t that a huge opportunity for you?

Mr. Quelch: First of all, China’s pace of expansion has outrun the speed with which managers can experientially develop themselves, and so our role is to be an accelerant. We take experienced or high-potential young managers, and we accelerate the speed with which they can assume more management and leadership responsibilities.

Are you and your company ready to fill this educational void in China? Internet marketing in Portland, Seattle and the world is one effective way to participate in that market. Is your website ranking on page one? Call us.

There’s nothing like winning – ranking first as world champions no matter what the field is a great feeling! Do you have the SEO and SEM tools to make your website the super bowl champs of eCommerce?

Thousands of fans roared as New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning hoisted the team’s Super Bowl trophy from a glittering blue-and-white float Tuesday as the victory parade made its way down the Canyon of Heroes, where the city has honored stars for almost a century.

The parade set off from the southern tip of Manhattan and moved slowly north to City Hall as fans dressed head-to-toe in Giants gear cheered and confetti wafted slowly down from the high-rises that line the street.

Manning, joined by coach Tom Coughlin, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other teammates, waved and grinned from the float as a deep roar rose from the crowds. The team will be honored with symbolic keys to the city at a City Hall Plaza ceremony.

Some fans waited since 6 a.m. to catch a glimpse of their favorite players. About half of a Long Island high school class skipped school to see “a whole nation coming together in one place – this parade,” said Mike King, 16, of Wantagh, N.Y.

King and seven school friends got up at dawn, arriving by subway in lower Manhattan to join the crowds packed behind police barricades lining Broadway. He attributed the win to the stellar performance of Manning and the hold-your-breath catch by Mario Manningham that led to the game-winning drive.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/football/nfl/02/07/new.york.giants.parade.ap/index.html#ixzz1lijqRPyF

As cited above : ““I like the whole atmosphere here – of winning in New York – there’s nothing like it. Winning in the greatest city in the world,” Lobosco said.”

Winning and ranking first for online searches with help from The Search Marketing team is a great feeling. Take your web site for a ride down the Canyon of Heroes with SEO from the search marketing team where ranking first is fun and rewarding. Be a champ and call The SMT today.

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Does it feel like Google has been loco over local search results and relevancy lately? If so, here’s the reason: Google has been aggressively updating Google Places and rolling out new products such as Hotpot (a hyper-local, user reviewed, social recommendation engine) with an aim toward improving local results and displaying these results above organic listings.

What this means for Oregon businesses: Local businesses have a competitive edge over non-local businesses.

In a video uploaded to Google’s Webmaster YouTube channel (watch it on our video page), Matt Cutts, Google, addressed this comment: “… how can an out of town company compete with the local based (and locally housed) competition without lying to show up in these results?”

Cutts explains in the video that the the entire first page of organic rankings is there for out-of-towner to compete on. But this didn’t really answer the commentor’s question. So, what he didn’t say is that if your company is not local, you just aren’t going to be able to compete with businesses that appear in the local results.

Our advice is this: If you want to compete in a local market where you do not have a physical location, you may just need to get a local phone number and a local mailing address (street only, Google Places will not work with a PO Box) and set up a virtual shop in that geographic market. This trend, focus on local results and relevancy, is going to continue, especially now that Google has entered the mobile geolocator race with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

The AP in Seattle today reported that Microsoft and Yahoo may have finalized a Internet search advertising partnership aimed at narrowing Google’s chunk of the lucrative piece of the online advertising market pie.

Microsoft just recently launched Bing, it’s new search engine, which leads us to nickname the new Yahoo, Bing ad alliance as “Ying”.

As of now, it looks as though Yahoo will handle ad sales and customer service and Microsoft will power search results and display the appropriate ads to display.

It is unsubstantiated, but expected that part of the deal includes Yahoo promoting Bing on its engine.

The title is of course, a joke, but one that illustrates a very good point for the audience- the readers of the web content you are attempting to produce are not only friendly robots- the spiders, the crawlers, etc. but ultimately fellow human beings who are overwhelmingly fluent English speakers.

Articles like this are examples of poor subject/verb agreement obvious to any high school graduate in the United States, and are frequently the result of a lack of proofreading by a native speaker.

Many articles are auto-generated based on past publications, resulting in inconsistent tense usage, and strangely poetic lines such as “…just to make it clear, I am in full senses and not in a mood to shoot myself in the foot.”  To the savvy web user or digital native, bizarre phrases and incorrect usage of English are dead giveaways, and the current equivalent of latin filler, an immediate turnoff to the viewer.

The inherent message behind poorly written copy is that those who comprehend the language are not the intended audience, and should avoid the page, thus lowering any hope of increased traffic.  Though bad copy may have all the correct keywords when scanned by a menial machine, when read by a highly complicated, literate human, the truth will out, as they say.

For quality traffic from actual humans, it makes more sense to hire a local, literate firm to represent you in a manner which speaks to your customers and the crawlers.  Insert hyperlinked keywords here.

Is there a reason why food resources are so difficult to distribute equitably during this economic downturn? How can the same the same tools used for internet marketing in Portland and Seattle be used to help alleviate some of the problems facing our part of the world? Non-profits are not the only ones who should address the shameful condition of hunger that exists in the Pacific Northwest. Non-profits use internet marketing tools in Portland and Seattle to get the message across. Here’s a sample from the Neighborhood Notes site:

With Portland’s ubiquitous farmers markets, a committed locavore “foodie” movement, and the great luck of being located in the Willamette Valley—home to some of the most fertile soil on the planet—how could the Rose City possibly face any food security issues? But the facts don’t lie. According to the Multnomah Food Action Plan, adopted by the County Board of Commissioners in January 2011, there are 36,000 people in the county who access emergency food boxes each month. Over half of county adults are overweight or obese. Nearly one-third of county children rely on food assistance programs.

Portland faces the same food security issues as the rest of the country, even the rest of the world. However, most people aren’t aware that it doesn’t really cost all that much to end world hunger, depending on your perspective.

What we are highlighting here is – even in the non-profit sector – sites that support charities, fundraisers and etcetera still gain overwhelming exposure by implementing internet marketing in Portland.

?The SMT is ready to assist your non-profit or for profit company with internet marketing targeted for Portland and Seattle.

As this site predicted back in 2007, Knol – Google’s dofollow answer to Wikipedia, and a great resource for SEOs looking to juice backlinks – is officially being scrapped. Google announced that Knol will be discontinued April 30, 2012.

True to its announcement, the home page for Knol now sports a closure message.

Transitioning all of your existing Knols to an existing Wordpress.com account is fairly easy, and it will keep all of your backlinks intact. We followed the instructions and the migration was seamless with no link loss (though domain age is an issue).

Part of a general “spring cleaning” of out-dated, ill-fated and poorly conceived products, Knol is joined by Gears, Wave and Friend Connect, to name just a few.

At this time there is no word on why Google, and its partners Solvitor and Crowd Favorite (a web design and WordPress theme developer) choose to utilize WordPress for Annotum, a web-based authoring, publishing platform instead of going with Google-owned Blogger…

But, if this snapshot of Solvitor-founder and CEO’s (Carl Leubsdorf) Google Knol is any indicator, we can probably expect some, ummm, briany stuff from the new endeavor.

If, just for kicks, you’d like to watch the new ensemble’s hits and misses as they develop, please check out Solvitor’s own Annotum in development. It’s great reading.

WordPress is, of course, thrilled to be part of the next stage of Google’s experiment. But again, Why WordPress and not Blogger, Google? Perhaps this does not bode well for Blogger? Or maybe this is Google’s way of acknowledging  Blogger’s limitations? This will no doubt fan the flames of the rumors last year that Blogger itself may get the axe.

More great reading here: http://ojasdeliverable.blogspot.com/2011/12/test-knol-number-four.html and here http://groups.google.com/group/annotum?pli=1 and here http://ojas-deliverable-non-annotum.annotum.net/2011/12/test-knol-number-four-gkgrwihhcv7j-4/

Fascinating Annotum, Carl

Are you prepared to take advantage of an improved housing market? Recent stats point to a slow recovery in the housing market in the Pacific Northwest and other regions of the country. Do you have the presence needed on the internet to make your company stand out?  If internet marketing in Portland and Seattle is part of your overall marketing plan the potential for increased market share may be linked to an  improved housing market.

This ran recently at Bloomberg:

Contracts to Purchase Existing U.S. Homes Hold Near 19-Month High: Economy

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) — Thomas Lee, chief U.S. equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., talks about investment strategy and the outlook for U.S. stocks. Lee speaks with Betty Liu and Dominic Chu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” Brian Battle of Performance Trust Capital Partners also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)

The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes in December held near a 19-month high, showing the stabilization in the market that began in late 2011 will extend into the new year.

The index of pending home sales decreased 3.5 percent last month after jumping a combined 18 percent in October and November, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. It was the best back-to-back reading since a buyer tax credit boosted demand in early 2010.

“We’ve had a clear turn toward positive momentum in the housing market,” Aaron Smith, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. inWest Chester, Pennsylvania, and the third most accurate forecaster of pending home sales. “Lower unemployment and higher confidence, coupled with record low mortgage rates, are coalescing to spur increased buying.”

The ability of the market to sustain gains in the absence of government incentives may mean housing has stopped weighing on growth. President Barack Obama yesterday proposed a plan aimed at reducing monthly mortgage payments, which would help combat a drop in home prices that Federal Reserve policy makers say is impeding the world’s largest economy.

Central bankers said today that they’ll keep their benchmark interest rate low until at least late 2014 to help stoke the economy.

Fed Statement

“While indicators point to some further improvement in overall labor market conditions, the unemployment rate remains elevated,” the Fed said in its statement. “Household spending has continued to advance, but growth in business fixed investment has slowed, and the housing sector remains depressed.”

Get prepared to position your internet marketing in Portland and Seattle with SEO from The SMT. You’ve held on this long so don’t miss out on the opportunity.

The most common question I get about SEO in Portland is actually part statement; “That sounds easy, why wouldn’t I just do it myself?”.  First, let’s unpack that sentence.

SEO is a highly competitive, extremely technical industry, and usually the reason that anyone thinks it’s not difficult is because it’s been explained in only the most rudimentary of terms.  To put it simply, the web as we know it is expanding at such an incredible rate that quantification is almost impossible, literally exploding with new forms of information, and more importantly, new forms of connection between sets of data.

Staying current with all the new applications, rubrics, and competencies is already a field of enormous depth, compounded by the fact that usually about half of it will be completely irrelevant by the time this article is published.  Knowing what to know is always the first job, and applying that knowledge is where the real work begins.

Getting a site not only recognized but popular is the full-time work of dedicated programmers, networkers, and content generators. Which methods are best for gaining his recognition and popularity is vital to making a site well ranking not only in the short term, but the long haul as well.  An overarching vision of the future of the Web, and the future of marketing is necessary to fulfill the long term goals of your site, all while producing relevant content which draws traffic every day.  Furthermore, strategies fall flat, servers die, and sometimes, the traffic just doesn’t happen.  Unless you are in the market for an all encompassing, social-life killing, unimpressive hobby, it just makes more sense to leave it to the pros, so that you can do the thing you actually want to publicize, as opposed to publicizing the thing you want to do.

Have you seen the commercials for Microsoft’s new Search Engine, Bing? You will.Bing is Microsoft’s latest effort to take a chunk of the search engine market share away from Google.

Frankly, it is going to be tough for Bing to woo searchers to abandon Google.

Microsoft Corp. released the redesigned search site on June 3 (two days ago) in the hopes it will lure more surfers than Live Search and MSN Search were able to tempt.

For the past five or so years, Microsoft has been stuck in third place behind Google and Yahoo in search engine popularity. (Remember, this is why Microsoft tried taking over Yahoo last year.)

The first thing you’ll notice is that Bing lists “related search terms” on the left (Google displays this on the bottom), which is much more accessible.

After toying around with it a bit, Bing delivers good search results, but only if you know exactly what you’re looking for. If you misspell your query, you will get nothing near what you were searching for because there is no Google-like hint that pops up saying “did you mean” and your search query spelled correctly. In my opinion, if you want to lure users away from a very-forgiving and efficient search engine like Google, your engine needs to out-gun and out-class your adversary. So far, Microsoft’s New Search Engine, Bing doesn’t come close.

Is it too late to market your goods or services to China? If internet marketing in Portland and Seattle is part of your overall marketing plan the enormous potential to sell into China still exists.

It is also no secret that China’s economy is slowing. Property prices are falling in many major centers, raising concerns of a real estate crash.Even China’s exports, one of its traditional drivers of growth, are shrinking. In the latest U.S. trade statistics for November, imports from China were down 2.6% to $36.81 billion.

It’s enough to send U.S. businesses looking for new markets into the arms of Brazil and elsewhere. But seeing the forest through the trees, there are plenty of opportunities for American companies in China over the long term.

“There is an extreme amount of volatility in the global market. But if you take the long-term view, the potential for companies to grow their revenue is going to be in markets like China,” said Chris Lewis, executive vice president, head of trade and supply chain North America, for HSBC Bank USA, N.A.

China’s 20-year growth record — it hasn’t had a contraction since 1992 — isn’t in danger just yet.  The Economist Intelligence Unit is forecasting  that growth will slow from 9.1% in 2011 to 8.2% in 2012. “China in a bad year drops to 8.2% GDP growth,” said Leo Abruzzese, director, global forecasting, Economist Intelligence Unit. While he didn’t rule out a crash at some point down the road, China will get back on track quickly, he said.

What U.S. companies can’t afford to ignore is that China’s consumer story has only just begun. According to The World in 2050, a forecast by the global economics research team at HSBC, China’s per capita income will grow 800% over the next four decades. Even with this gigantic leap, the per capita income in China will still be only 32% of that in the United States.

“You haven’t missed the boat on China,” said Karen Ward, U.K.-based senior economist at HSBC, and author of The World in 2050report.

China is undergoing a mass urbanization movement. Currently, 40% of China’s workforce labors in the fields.  As these workers migrate to the cities — 15 cities will have 25 million-plus people over next decade or so — they also move up the value chain in terms of the products they consume.

This bodes well not only for American suppliers of infrastructure and commodities needed to build cities, but also for suppliers of consumer goods and services.  Companies have to stop looking at China as a cheap labor story and start looking at it as consumer story, Ward said.

The opportunities are there for commodity and infrastructure based companies that provide value. Internet marketing for companies in Portland and Seattle and beyond are an effective and efficient way for exposure to China markets.