Peter Vatistas

It’s funny how private I’ve been about my SEO techniques and where I spend my money to help optimize my clients sites. It’s not so much that I tried to hide some secret SEO technique that makes my client’s sites rank #1 on Google, its more resources than anything (which is my secret weapon).

The most valuable thing I spend my money on by far is events, website memberships and books. Of course I buy links, I pay for analytical services, content and etc but those come secondary to my budget and many times I never spend a single dime on them.

So what resources I spend my money on and recommend?

SEOmoz - Get the premium membership, well worth the money.

SEO Book Training Program & the SEO Book - Either is fine, I find the training program is a lot like the book with updated content & a community presence.

For resources that is basically it; I’ve read probably close to 100 books on internet marketing and I’m a member of probably every SEO forum on the internet but with everything I know now the only two resources that actually teach me new things are the two listed above.

As for events (physical conferences, forums, etc) I recommend the following:

SMX: The Search Marketing Expo - $1395 for an all access pass.

SES: Search Engine Strategies - $1795 for a platinum passport.

PubCon: Search Marketing Conferences - $799 for a full pass.

Forums I recommend:

Search Engine Land

Sphinn

The V7 Network

Search Engine Watch

SEO Guy

Another thing I like to do is track the experts in search engine optimization. Here is a list of people I highly respect and follow religiously:

Aaron Wall

Chris Hooley

Andy Beal

Matt Cutts

Andy Hagans

Danny Sullivan

C.K. Chung

Lee Oden

Neil Patel

Patrick Sexton

Todd Malicoat

Here is a quick and easy way to track page names in WebCEO’s HitLens analytics application by changing a couple variables in the tracking script. This works perfectly in Community Server 2008!

First let’s take the original code generated by HitLense:

<!–WEBSITECEO:BEGIN:{764EEF2E-BC11-45CF-8627-300CE1BA2219}–>

<!–
Do NOT modify this script to avoid traffic misrepresentation!
Web CEO 4 0300/1
Code initially inserted into: “index.aspx”.
–>
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
// hitlens v1.2.7
function hitlens_embedded() {
var id = 123456;
var pc = 0;
var PAGENAME = escape(”);
var CONTENTGROUP = escape(”);
var TRANSACTION = escape(”);
var TRANSACTION_ID = 0;
var ORDER = escape(”);
return “id=”+id+”&pc=”+pc+”&p=”+PAGENAME+”&gr=”+CONTENTGROUP+”&tr=”
+TRANSACTION+”&trid=”+TRANSACTION_ID+”&ord=”+ORDER;
}
//–></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”/webceo.js”></script>
<!–WEBSITECEO:END:{764EEF2E-BC11-45CF-8627-300CE1BA2219}–>

Now lets add a quick line of code to the var PAGENAME = variable:

var PAGENAME = document.title;

What this will do is pull the page’s title and post it in HitLense.

The default tracking code HitLense generates also throws in the following comment that needs to be removed completely:

<!–
Do NOT modify this script to avoid traffic misrepresentation!
Web CEO 4 0300/1
Code initially inserted into: “index.aspx”.
–>

Also make sure to leave the var pc = 0; at 0. The var pc is a unique page identifier, if you use specialized tracking (like above) instead of the wizard-driven setup then you’ll definitely need to keep it at 0 or your going to run into some problems.

Your final tracking code should look like this:

<!–WEBSITECEO:BEGIN:{764EEF2E-BC11-45CF-8627-300CE1BA2219}–>
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
// hitlens v1.2.7
function hitlens_embedded() {
var id = 123456;
var pc = 0;
var PAGENAME = document.title;
var CONTENTGROUP = escape(”);
var TRANSACTION = escape(”);
var TRANSACTION_ID = 0;
var ORDER = escape(”);
return “id=”+id+”&pc=”+pc+”&p=”+PAGENAME+”&gr=”+CONTENTGROUP+”&tr=”
+TRANSACTION+”&trid=”+TRANSACTION_ID+”&ord=”+ORDER;
}
//–></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”/webceo.js”></script>
<!–WEBSITECEO:END:{764EEF2E-BC11-45CF-8627-300CE1BA2219}–>

Good luck!

As you all know I am an avid user of Web CEO for my SEO/SEM solutions company. Although there are a few other tools and applications I use, Web CEO is by far the most powerful and stable application I have ever used in this field. I easily spend the majority of my day using Web CEO for just about all steps of my search engine optimization for all my clients.

Become an expert in SEO quickly and easily:

* Web CEO software package consisting of 12 potent tools to organize your efforts
* Professional Training Course in Search Engine Marketing to learn all the best practices

Web CEO is a full-range search engine optimization software with advanced site troubleshooting and web analytics functionality. Here are a few facts about Web CEO:

The choice of 440,000+ businesses.
Web CEO stands on guard of the rankings of IBM and Motorola. These companies have no right to make mistakes. What about you?

Simple and user-friendly.
Packed with powerful features, Web CEO still can boast an ultra user-friendly interface that turns a novice into an SEO expert right away after installation.

Completely Safe.
Employing Google API and cutting-edge human emulation techniques, Web CEO makes the optimization process absolutely safe for you and your site. Some of the important tools you will find in the package will help you:

* Get suggestions for new keywords relevant to your business and research your own keywords
* Get optimization advice and tweak your Web pages in friendly editing environment
* Create link partnerships
* Keep track of your site’s rankings and links
* Get comprehensive real-time visitor reports

I’m sure your looking at this like I just wrote a sales pitch but if you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I don’t sell a damn thing. In addition to that fact - WebCEO is free! Just download, install and get your rank on.

Download the free edition of Web CEO and get access to the Training Course now!

In addition to Web CEO’s awesome application and training program I totally recommend that you grab the latest copy of SEO Book by Aaron Wall. It doesn’t matter how much you know about search engine optimization/marketing, SEO Book is by far one of the best (if not THE BEST) reference and training materials available today.

That. Just. Happened.

I use a great application called WebCEO to track and manage various parts of my SEO/SEM efforts. As much as I would like to get into how awesome their software and support is I would rather talk about the people behind WebCEO.

A couple days before Christmas I received an envelope from Kherson, Ukraine. I wasn’t sure why I had received a letter from the Ukraine considering I don’t know anyone from there, I thought it was some sort of mistake or just a marketing piece. I opened the envelope and pulled out a very rich and shiny holiday card with a little WebCEO logo at the bottom. I figured it was just a holiday promotion printed in the masses - I was wrong.

I opened the card and found a long, had written letter addressed to me - wishing me a safe and happy holiday season. The letter was well written and by the looks of it not rushed at all. In addition the letter never once mentioned anything about business, their products, money, or a holiday deal - just a letter hoping and wishing I have a wonderful holiday.  WOW.

Now this is what I call great marketing, you see they didn’t have to mention what they are about or what they are selling - not even a holiday coupon or discount - just a hand written personal letter directed to me. It made me feel great! I was very impressed with what I saw and very happy to be a customer of theirs. More importantly (for them) it made me think about WebCEO and their products.

In my opinion this is the kind of thing that separates companies apart; even though there aren’t many comparable applications to WebCEO available today I would stick with WebCEO regardless. Something like this shows me (the customer) that I am important to them and they care about me and my business (which they do).
Take note of this guys, a great marketing campaign with little cost and a bigger impact than you could imagine. Thank you WebCEO - Happy Holidays!

Being that I am an SEO I need to see live stats and information all the time; fortunately for me Firefox has a lot of great tools for free and extremely easy to use.

SEO tools for Firefox:

1. Search Status: This toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar. I use everything this tool has to offer but my favorite feature is the display of site’s Google PR, Alexa, and Compete at the base of my browser.

2. SEO for Firefox: Aaron Wall from SEOBook had this neat little tool developed and I love it. Tons of stats show for every listing in Google’s SERP whenever you search anything. This tool has to be one of the best SEO tools out there and without it a lot of my time would be wasted.

3. Social Media for Firefox: I already posted about this but this tool is worth the time to write about again. You can see my original post here but for those of you SEO/SEM Social Network guys like myself this tool just rocks and is definitely a major time saver.

Here is a list of other extensions I use including a few other SEO/SEM plug ins:

- SEOpen: This tool packs a ton of SEO tools, most I use daily.

- SEOLinks: Neat little tool that shows link stats with mouse over.

- Link Checker: Don’t get caught with broken links again.

- ShowIP: Love this tool for when I swing DNS records.

- ServerSpy: Great extension to show what type of server & version the site is hosted on (i.e. Apache 2, IIS 7.0, etc).

Over the last few months Aaron Wall from SEOBook has been making many anti-Google comments regarding SEO. Matt Cutts, Google’s leading Spam Engineer, has been faced with such topics like “SEO equals spam” and “How to buy organic ranks in Google”. I think it is important to get people involved in this discussion and try to make some sense of this. I of coarse have my own opinions regarding many of these discussions and arguments between the two but I would love to hear what you think.

I do think that Aaron Wall and his new wife are trying to stir the pot a little and get some linkbait. Aaron has a lot of knowledge in SEO and I don’t think he will just throw things out there with no thought. I also don’t think Aaron would do anything to piss Matt Cutts off considering Matt helped Aaron when Aaron was getting sued from a business/client of his…

Matt Cutts

Aaron Wall - SEOBook

Interested to know what your online competition is spending their money on and how they rank in the SERPs? Well now you can (for the most part) with a great tool that I use religiously called SpyFu. SpyFu is a free online tool to track and manage what your competitors are doing and what they average on a daily basis for keywords and what-not.

SpyFu also offers a paid version which allows you to see and track more stats on the fly. I know this is a great tool and it is worth your time to check it out - I wonder how many of your competitors are tracking your moves online right now?

I just registered for the Blog World Expo which is on November 7th - 9th and I am extremely excited for this conference!  I am especially excited for the SEO Best Practices session on the 7th with Aaron Wall, the author of SEO Book. Blog World is in Las Vegas this year so I will be making the most of my trip by staying an extra 3 or 4 days to reflect of what I learned and the new contacts thousands of dollars I have made.  ;)

If your attending be sure to leave a comment, email, or IM me and let me know; maybe we can grab drinks and shoot the shit. Although I have been heavily involved with SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing for a couple years, I am new to blogs and blogging; I think Blog World is perfect for me and I know I will make the most of it. Make sure to click the links below and check out Blog World’s schedule, speakers, and what they have to offer!

Blog World

Blog World Schedule

Blog World Speakers

Blog World Pricing

There were a couple good posts written a while ago about URL canonicalization and it’s importance for SEO. If someone wants to link to my blog for example, there are several ways they could do so:

http://peter-v.com

http://www.peter-v.com

http://peter-v.com/index.php

http://www.peter-v.com/index.php

https://peter-v.com/index.php

https://www.peter-v.com/index.php

The problem here is Google sees different links and weighs page rank on individual links, not on the domain (Google ranks pages, not sites). The solution to this issue is canonicalization using Mod-rewrite expressions in Apache or using a tool like ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS ($99).

Web servers running Apache, just open your .htaccess (I recommend just contacting your host) and add the following expression (remember to replace peter-v with your domain):

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond % ^peter-v\.com

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.peter-v.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

The Rewrite expressions above state that the URL http://peter-v.com permantly changes to http://www.peter-v.com.

Web servers running Windows IIS with ISAPI_Rewrite, edit the .ini file and follow the same expressions:

# IIS Mod-Rewrite configuration file

#Turn IIS Mod-Rewrite engine on

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond Host: ^peter-v\.com

RewriteRule (.*) http\://www.peter-v.com$1 [I,RP]

There you have it, now you can stop worrying about how people link to you and worry more about the anchor text they are linking to you with!! Here are a few real good posts and articles about canonicalization:

Matt Cutts

Chris Hooley

Also a good link that explains more about ISAPI_Rewrite expressions:

Scott Hanselman