So over the weekend I took a little break from my computer (I know - hard to believe), and attended a 10 year class reunion for my wife. Class reunions are a whole different topic that I don’t think I will ever get into! The one thing I will say about class reunions if you have never been to one is that they are a big “size you up party” more then anything. Of course people wanted to know what my wife had been up to during the last ten years, and with 3 kids and me … that was pretty much it! Then the conversation would always come my way because my wife would tell people that I worked from home, and ran my own businesses. Then the question would come; “What do you do?”

I decided to turn it into a little un-scientific marketing research, and turned it into a question; “Do you know what SEO is”? I would ask, and not one of the 15 people that I asked had a clue. I am talking serious deer in the headlights here. It would not get much better when I followed it up with “search engine optimization?”. Even when I told them when they go to Google and type in a keyword phrase, those results that come back … they would interrupt and say, “oh you get those sponsored results” …. by this time I was DONE with the conversation, and just told them I ran Internet businesses, and helped others by consulting.

The point here is we have a great opportunity as SEOs. We are in a field that is ready to harvest. I am amazed how many people call me back after talking to them about what I do, even when they still have no clue exactly what it is. They just know that they need help online, and I seem like the person to do it. It seems almost everyone has a need, or knows someone who has a need for SEO services. It does scare me though with so many worthless companies out there claiming to know SEO, and I usually go in and clean up a mess, and try to polish our reputation as SEOs.

Anyway, I just thought it was very interesting that not one person out of 15 I talked to had a clue of what SEO was, or even understood the industry enough to have a conversation. My next post? I think I will talk to you about the lady who asked me how old my son was, and when I told her 13 months, she said … oh so almost a year? Um… yea….

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I do my best to teach (those who ask) about finding targeted niches and keywords when starting their business online (and sticking with them), and I want to spotlight a company that I think has been brilliant at this. The guys at DB Clay are friends of mine, (especially Mr. Diggles) and this is not a paid post, and I just wanted to thank them online for sending me one of the sickest unique wallets I have ever owned in my life!

DB Clay has been making unique and designer wallets for several years now and has had a humble beginning, but has managed to turn their niche into an empire, and stay true to their product line. The reason for their success is they figured out what people were looking for online when it came to wallets, and they hit that group of people hard, and did not venture out into other areas. They knew the keywords they wanted to be found for, and built a website around it.

They also understand about the power of social communities and getting people to talk about your product, so they started Evil Backwards (LIVE). DB Clay considers this their online business paper trail, but I think of it as an amazing idea to get people involved and actively talking about product. Every business owner can learn a lesson from the accomplishments of DB Clay, and their small little niche!

Again guys, thanks for the wallet!

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I did a post about Google News (and link building) a while back on YouMoz (SEOMoz) that quickly became one of their most popular blog posts with loads of comments back when they first launched. I was surprised to not see more SEO’s talking about Google News, or loving it as much as I do for finding powerful links that are very targeted and relevant. I have been doing case study after case study and have perfected what I wrote about back then. I wanted to share with all the updated information that I think is beneficial for all those trying to do a better job building relevant links.

I am not a big fan of press sites like PR Web, PR Newswire or PR Leap for the “SEO- Factor”, but rather for the exposure. However; I am a fan of getting my press release (or article) to the most targeted “Press” sites possible so they do the most good link wise.

Finding a powerful, relevant link inside a press site that was created for my niche is going to give me additional link juice and rankings that will help my bottom line. In turn I will get more traffic due to additional rankings, make more sales, and experience a higher conversion rate because of the targeted press.

Here is how it all works:

Go to Google News and type in a keyword that is the most targeted keyword for your site; Make sure you are using the “Search News” (see picture below)

Once you get a list of results that have made it on Google News you will start to see what I am talking about. Start paying attention to the targeted press sites that are related to what you are doing on your website.

I tested this on a site selling memory foam mattresses. I went to Google News, typed in memory foam mattress and got an amazing list of targeted press sites likes product review sites, home textiles sites, furniture today news sites and so on that would be perfect for link building. I ended up submitting the press to a “product review” site that was ranking fairly high on Google News. All I did was find the place on their website to submit, or just contact them directly and asked them to accept my release. They did the very same day I submitted it, and just like that I had a very targeted relevant link on a site that was already showing up, and ranking on Google News.

The links alone you gain would be worth it because of how targetd they are, but I want you to see an additional “bonus”. In the picture below pay attention to the very first result when memory foam mattress is typed in. It is the product review site that I submitted the press release to and has been in this spot (at time of posting this article) for almost a month in the #1 spot.

What does this teach us? Finding relevant links that are targeted to your business are not as hard as you might think. Google is giving up the tools to use (as well as other major search engines), we just need to take advantage of them.

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A few months back I was up late working, as usual, and was up so late, that the late, later, even latest show was over and the infomercials started. I happened to be watching one talking about making money online, and how easy it was etc. I like watching these anyway, because they are funny to me. I was paying close attention to the “keywords” (buzz words) they were using to grab peoples attention. The main reason I was taking notes was because one of our biggest clients at 97th is in the “make millions” industry!

So, in my process of doing a little late night keyword research I wrote down all of the “buzz” words they were using including the branding words they were using for their “new revolutionary money making system”. I came up with some pretty cool ideas, and keywords to test out.

I did a little competitive research online with the words and found out some of them were pretty amazing words, and the only thing I had to do is put them to the test and see if they converted worth a crap.

Long story short, After approval from my client, I pursued the keywords and found some pretty amazing words that are converting about 10% - 15% of the time (based on web analytics) for my client by watching infomercials.

The lesson here is to pay attention to non-traditional ways of keyword research. If you are still just using the old keyword tool from overture to find keywords, then you really need to think about better ways of doing keyword research (or get out of the industry all together).

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So we finally completed our redesign, as always there are some small changes that have yet to be done. But the overall design and the moving of our old blog from a different url to 97thfloor.com/blog are completed and those were my biggest issues.

A couple of things we are particularly excited about beside the incredible job my Bro. did on the web design, is our new client showcase, and our “Words We Rank” Tag Cloud.

Our new client showcase is the rotating logos on the nav, and while that isn’t anything new or spectacular, some of our clients are. Our old client page never got updated and we have been working with some really cool companies since.

The “Words We Rank Tag Cloud” is something that we wanted to do to show our stuff and back up our skills. Mat and I love SEO, and don’t consider working at 97th Floor work at all, but instead a place to fuel our passion. We have gained rankings for some pretty insane keywords and we wanted to list some of those on our site in a unique way that didn’t disclose the client but shared the success. Obviously every site has thousands of long tail keywords and some secret sauce keywords that convert like crazy that their competition doesn’t know about. We didn’t want to over extend the list and water it down so we took a handful of some words we feel share our advanced strategies along with our capability to market sites in many different markets.

One other thing that will be interesting to watch is how Google treats our 301’s from our old blog, ninetyseventhfloor.com/blog and from Mat’s blog eplanit.biz/blog. There were hundreds and hundreds of pages to redirect and categories to consolidate. So far Google is doing well with it, we already had one of our good rankings SEO Blog get replaced from the old URL to our current one, and that is good to see. It will be interesting to see how our articles that made Digg Popular on the old URL do with 301’s to the new one.

Still a laundry list of some tweaks to finish but overall we are stoked to finally get the design done and thanks to my Brother and his team at Modern Blue Design. If anyone needs serious design and php he is the one to talk to.

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I love the seach industry with a passion that is second to none (ok - maybe Chris Bennett and I are tied). I am so lucky to be in an industry that has allowed me to meet some of the most amazing people on this earth! My roots in search engine optimization goes all the way back to 1999 when i first starting “dinking” around with title tags for a radio stations website I use to be a co-host on! (ok, so it was only small market radio, but I was still on the radio danget!) Besides my passion for SEO, I love Social Media Marketing & Optimization, Viral Marketing, Blog Promotion, Link Building Strategies & Baiting as well as Reputation & Brand Management.

Besides being a part of the most amazing SEO Firm this world has ever known, I am an avid SEO blogger. I own several successful eCommerce sites selling products, as well as an internet directory. It may start out as as simple home based business, but I can grow into something of a monster! I have also had the pleasure presenting my SEO know-how during seminars at places like BYU-Hawaii during business plan competitions, and more recently the eTourism Summit in San Fransisco.

I have attended most of the big search engine conferences including Search Engine Strategies, PubCon and more recently SMX. I have a degree in computer information systems, and have had a computer attached to me by the hip pretty much since 1997.

Please feel free to post questions, and ask me anything that may be on your mind.

Contact me directly - mat [at] 97thFloor [dot] com

-or-

Connect with me online at:

http://matt-siltala.stumbleupon.com/
http://del.icio.us/eplanit
http://digg.com/users/eplanit/news/dugg
http://www.linkedin.com/in/eplanit
http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/eplanit
http://twitter.com/Matt_Siltala
http://www.facebook.com/p/Mat_Siltala/513843843
http://www.myspace.com/matsiltala
http://www.squidoo.com/matt-siltala/

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I am the President and Founder of 97th Floor and I have been involved with the Internet since the days of Alta Vistas reign (the good ol days when you could change your meta tags, submit your site through Inktomi and see your rankings improve by dinner). I got into SEO from a Graphic Design background, that is what I was majoring in in school when I started my first online business with some buddies. I came on to help with offline marketing and design and started to notice that when we did certain things to the pages of our site we would see more traffic. I quickly became addicted to SEO and after that business, I started to work as an SEO and overall Web Strategy Consulting for clients. Since then I have seen the rewards of high search engine rankings and really don’t know how to do anything business oriented without thinking about how to leverage it online.I have been privileged enough to work closely with large companies such as Omniture, Henry Schein and The Polynesian Cultural Center. I have spoken at many SEO conferences and seminars including a yearly seminar we put on in Hawaii that has been a lot of fun for us to do. I have personally worked on or advised nearly a thousand sites, which has helped me think outside the box and find a way to leverage anything from drop shipping, to catering, to one of the fastest growing software companies on the planet.

My best advice for someone starting out is to just get the site up and live, and then start small by picking a less competitive keyword to start and test, test, test. That way once you rank for the smaller word you will enjoy small victories and it will carry you until you are dominating your industry. I believe that if a company is not online in 5 years they will not exist, everyone should be thinking about adapting to the Internet. I believe the future of SEO is in branding and doing things differently, which may include adopting a social media campaign or ranking for every spot in Google for your branded terms and employee names or buying smaller sites and ranking them for the same keywords to give you multiple positions for the same term. Also if you are not doing something to build a community online you will be past up by a competitor that is. Whether it is through blogging, user generated content or a profiles and member based site you need to be building a community. Community is the new commodity.

I am originally from Vista California, that is where I grew up and lived until I got married. I have also lived in Newport Beach and Bellevue WA. I currently live in Utah with my beautiful wife and twin boys. If I am not glued to my laptop I am probably riding my atv’s, watching reruns of Arrested Development, wake surfing or trying to get back to California to paddle out with some buddies.

Please feel free to contact me at:
chris [at] 97thfloor [dot] com

-or-
http://www.linkedin.com/in/97thfloor/

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This is a hook a brother up post.

Do any of you know any lawyers or law firms that specialize in Mesothelioma or Asbestos? I have a site that is an informational site that ranks like crazy for pretty much every mesothelioma word, including info words, law words, and pretty much everything, also Asbestos words.

The site is an info site totally white hat, will keep all the rankings has been ranking since I took it over in April.

If anyone knows any firms that may be interested in sponsoring the pages that rank please contact me at

chris AT 97thfloor.com

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Sometimes I wonder if all the hardwork to become an “authority” in a certain fields is worth the effort. Especially when you become a target of a negative campaign. I really don’t get it, and why people would do this to someone that has only brought great information to the table.

Anyone that reads this blog knows that I hold Jim Boykin in the highest of regards and think is flat out the “jedi master ninja” when it comes to link building and link authority information. Earlier this week Jim posted about a smear campaign against him, and it really got me thinking about the downsides to really becoming an “authority”. So why would someone want to trash his name? (more…)

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I don’t care who you are and what your level of expertise is there are some industries and words on the net (non adult and gambling) that are so competitive you will not stand a chance if you are not a darker shade. The competition can be so fierce in these niches you better have the dirty alter ego ready to play if you want to make any headway. I think by competing in these industries there is a lot to learn that will help you sharpen your skills for your legit sites. (more…)

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