Protecting your Online Reputation

We are living in an era now wherein people need to control their online reputation or risk letting other people control it for you.

You might like having your privacy and anonymity, but if you are the type of person who makes enemies then you are going to be badmouthed by those enemies online.

Which means if you have avoided having an online presence then your online reputation can be ruined by a few bad eggs who see you as an easy target by messing with your online reputation.

By not protecting / promoting your online reputation then other people can gain control of your reputation and it will be very hard to fix it.

But not impossible.

Which is why SEO experts can also be hired to do online reputation management and repair. We maintain and improve your online reputation.  Enemies who badmouth you all over the internet will have their complaints and lies down at the bottom of the Google results instead of at the top.

And frankly, when you go for a job interview or are interested in a romantic relationship, chances are likely people are going to Google your name. Do you want them finding all the bad stuff people have been saying about you at the top?

Or all the good stuff?

You could try and sue people / websites for posting bad things about you, but that gets very expensive and difficult if the companies are based in foreign countries. It is less expensive to simply keep control of your online presence.

Lose control of your reputation and it can turn into a nightmare for your work and relationships.

If you've lost control of your online reputation please contact designSEO.ca for Online Reputation Management Services in Toronto. 

Why it is useless to link to Facebook or Twitter or similar websites

Okay here is the funny thing about Social Media websites like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc...

Every time you link to them via your website(s) those websites get the SEO benefit of those links and will rank higher on the search rankings - and your company website will end up ranking lower.

It is even possible that your company will website could end up ranking lower than your company's Facebook, Twitter or YouTube pages.

Why?

A combination of factors including the fact Youtube, Facebook, Twitter all have good Google PageRanks. As such they get ranked higher easier.

Another factor is that Youtube, Facebook, Twitter all use rel="nofollow" on their outgoing links, which means that if you link back to your company website from those pages then those links don't count because they are "nofollow" links that are ignored by Google's search bots.

Thus social media websites get all the benefits of incoming SEO, and none of the negatives because every outgoing link doesn't count as a link.

So let us take an example.

Let us say your website is ArcheryToronto.ca and you are linking to several pages about archery in Toronto on Facebook like The Canadian Toxophilite Society, The Toronto Public Archery Range, etc.

Every link that goes to those Facebook pages benefits Facebook itself and boosts the rankings of those Facebook pages - but your website gets nothing in return.

Even if you were to post links on Facebook to your website (and get a little traffic from curious people who click those links), those links won't count as SEO as far as Google is concerned because it is all rel="nofollow".

And the same goes with YouTube, you could post a link like Toronto Archery Videos, which will ultimately benefit YouTube, but is it going to benefit your company website? Not really.

So the trick then is to make sure all your outgoing links are also rel="nofollow", so your company website maintains its position in the search rankings and the social media aspects of your company are further down in the rankings - but still be there.

Of course if your goal is to wildly promote your YouTube page, Facebook page, etc, then by all means link to them willy nilly. Just don't expect to make a profit off of them unless those pages are somehow rigged up to sell a product or service.

Local SEO + Peak Internet Hours

Awhile back I embarked on a change of career - becoming a personal trainer in Toronto.

Now in doing so I got my personal training certification, I created a website, and of course I started doing SEO for that website : www.cardiotrek.ca.

Now since I am an experienced SEO expert - who for my own reasons have decided I don't want to be stuck behind a computer any more - the quality of my Search Engine Optimization for that website is actually pretty good. I will still continue to do SEO and website design as a source of work, but my personal goal is change the focus of my career over the long term so I can do other things with my life.

So much so that despite my website's comparably small size and newness, I am now beating out many of my competition's personal training websites on PageRank, Alexa ranking and so forth.

Now part of that is unique content. I write fresh content for my website every day. Or almost every day. My goal for 2013 is to have 40 new posts per month, every month. By the end of 2013 I should have 480 new posts + the 180 from 2012 and the 10 posts I did at the very end of December in 2011. So by the end of 2013 I should have 670 blog posts and be getting a tonne of traffic.

But here is the beauty of it. My focus has been on LOCAL SEO for the city of Toronto. Yes, I still get hits from the USA and other places, but by January 1st my site was in the Top 5000 sites for Toronto and is currently ranked at #3,449. My goal in the next 2 months is to get it in the top 2500.

Now when I say Top 5000 sites for a specific city, that means I am competing against every other website in existence. Including p*rn. So getting in the Top 5000, Top 2500 or Top 1000 is a big deal because you have a lot of competition and you want to be higher in the priorities for people conducting local searches for personal trainers in this city.

And I can't limit myself to those keywords either. Its best to have a mix of keywords. Personal training in Toronto, fitness expert in Toronto, etc... and also to change the order to things like Toronto personal trainer, Toronto fitness expert and so forth. Sometimes I don't even use the name of the city because it is necessary to mix things up a bit.

And then there is the matter of how to get links and from what sources. I target (or create) webpages that contain the name of the city and have something to do with exercise, dieting, losing weight, weight lifting, fitness... you get the idea. Sometimes it may only be Ontario or Canada, but it is important that the keywords are there.

The next factor is the keyword density. For that I use the site http://www.wordcounter.net which not only tells you the number of words, the number of characters, but also the keyword density of the most commonly used words in the text you are writing. What you want to do is keep the density of certain words below 5 percent, or even better, below 3 percent. So for example writing this blog post I know I need to use the word trainer a little more so that the keyword density is a bit higher and that I need to use alternative words for TO like GTA, Hogtown, Downtown York, and so forth. Nobody actually uses those words in regular speech, but if someone is looking for a trainer downtown then at least I have improved my odds by making sure the density is good.

You will notice by now that I am now avoiding using certain words and trying to use other words like exercise, fitness, weight lifting and so forth. The reason for this is sometimes you need to add extra fluff to "fatten up" a blog post or article so that you can bring the percentages of all the major keywords down a notch.

One way to do this and still maintain interest is to change the topic slightly. For example I am next going to go back to my original topic, which is the issue of hourly internet usage in North America.

Most internet users in North America are online between the hours of 6 PM and 12 PM. The peak time is around 10 PM. This becomes an issue when trying to track visitors to your website and you start to learn that most visitors show up during the afternoon and evening. If your goal is to only have people from North America then the hourly visitors to your website should look like the chart up above.

Of course to have results that look like that you need hundreds of daily visitors, which in my case they should all be looking for exercise advice. If you're only getting 10 hits per day there really is no point trying to track what your hourly views are based on the time of day. For me how accurately your results look like the chart above is a reflection of how well you are doing with your Local Search Engine Optimization project. If its pretty close you are doing a good job... if its totally off and you're somehow getting a tonne of hits from another country then you're evidently doing something wrong.

And that is really all that is good for, a measurement of success.

There are several more things I want to talk about before I finish this post.

1. Length of content matters. The more content the better. Try to write articles that are between 1000 and 2000 words long.

2. Variable length also matters. Don't write long articles or short articles all the time. Try to write different lengths so that your content is more unique.

3. Write from the heart as often as you can. If you are reading this, actually reading it then you know I am writing from the heart.

4. No amount of training or practice in SEO will make you perfect in this industry. Nobody is perfect and this is an ever changing industry. It is one of the reasons why I love the exercise industry, it just regurgitates old diets and exercise fads, slaps on a new fancy name and then sells the repackaged formula. Its not perfect, but it works. Being a trainer in that industry allows you to set your own hours and work as often as you see fit.

I am getting off topic here, but that sort of thing happens when you write from the heart.

The last thing I suppose I should talk about is SEX APPEAL. If you can make your topic sexy in some way - and that is easier to do in the fitness industry - then you will gain extra traffic (and customers) because you are effectively selling sex. It really comes down to the three things people want most of all: Food, shelter and sex. Adding that extra edge to your topic will draw in extra readers and can garner extra customers.

And more customers is really the true sign of a successful webpage. Yes, its nice to track the local statistics and see how well your site compares with the hourly chart, but at the end of the day the end goal of all marketing is to get more customers to the cash register. Or in my case, more people who are overweight, possibly obese and they want to lose weight, look more attractive and feel better about themselves. And sex appeal on a webpage helps.

Happy SEOing!

See also
Niche Topic Advertising - Toronto Personal Trainers