Today’s post does not have a whole lot to do with SEO, but it is a web development reminder that should not be forgotten. In the past, web developers were aware of screen resolution when developing websites. As an unspoken standard, most web developers used 800×600 as the rule of thumb for laying out their website. Then screens got bigger and wider and developers have relaxed on the 800×600 standard.

This last weekend I spent some time on someone else’s machine and they were using the 800×600 resolution setting and we were scrolling left and right on the webpages of some high profile websites. Apparently those sites have forgotten that not everyone runs one of the higher resolutions and they have made it more work for their visitors who use 800×600. Don’t be one of those sites.

Today’s SEO tip is something that you can do on your website to help gain your visitors’ trust, which in turn helps to capture more sales and leads. What is the tip? Include a picture of yourself and/or your team on your website. This helps your visitors put a face with the name and it lets them know that there is a real living and breathing human behind your website.

If you would like an example you can take a look at my poor attempt at a picture on the main page of my Kansas City SEO site and on several pages of my child insurance site. It is probably time to update the picture, but at least you can see what I mean. It doesn’t have to be too much, but your visitors will appreciate your efforts. It may even give them a little something to laugh about and that is not all bad.

Tonight rather than talking about a “how-to”, I am going to pose a scenario to you readers and see what you think. I have not tested the use of eBay for SEO purposes, but I imagine that inexpensive auctions could definitely drive some traffic to your website. You could offer an informational product for $1.00 and include links to further information and images related to your product on your website.

I am sure this is not a new thought, but I wonder if links from eBay auctions count towards your Google PageRank. I can see where they might not because the auctions run so fast that it is hardly relevant for Google to query those pages. On the flip side though, if the pages get crawled then these links would probably be counted toward your site’s incoming link total. Does anyone have any experience with this? If so, please post comments and lets get a discussion going.

I know that you would not be reading this blog if you were not interested in SEO techniques. Well I have a tried and true technique to go over quickly today. I also want to announce the release of a new website. So buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Without further ado, the technique in question is generating back links to your website. Incoming links to your website are an important piece to the ranking equation on all of the major search engines today. This means that it is important for you to have a sufficient number of quality links to your website in order to rank well in the search engines.

So how do you generate incoming links? There are several ways of going about this. One of the more common techniques is to run a search on Google for one of the keyword phrases you are targeting for your website. Then you see who is listed in the top of the SERPs (results) for the search. Then you take that site, or sites, and run another search in Google to see who is linking to them. Then you take this latest list of sites and contact them individually to see if they will add a link to your site like they are doing for your competitor. Many of the webmasters are happy to oblige your request if you are willing to give them a reciprocal link on your own site. This brings me to my new site announcement.

I have just launched a simple link directory for MySpace Layouts and things. It is free to add your site to the directory as long as there is a reciprocal link back to my directory site. Take some time to check it out and pass it along to anyone you know who may be interested. Thanks for reading and have a good weekend.

Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope you all have a great day. Have fun and be safe.

I just wanted to mention to everyone that I have a real good shipment tracking website that you should check out. It is at http://www.trackshipment.info. You can track shipments with 10+ different carriers, including UPS, FedEx, Yellow Freight and more! Take a few minutes and check it out. Tell a friend about it if you think it will help them out. Enjoy your weekend!

Something new came across my radar today and that is the concept of buying websites as a SEO strategy. For example, you can buy an established site and use its popularity in your link building efforts. That is especially possible if the website you are purchasing has a high PageRank. Say that you buy a site with a PageRank of 7. You can use this new site to boost traffic to your existing sites and you can make some money selling some outbound links. Now that sounds like a nice investment.

What if you bought a site with a tremendous amount of traffic? You can start sending some of that traffic on to your other sites. You can also monetize the traffic with AdSense, Yahoo, affiliate sales, etc. There are some real opportunities here if the price is right. Heck, many of the sites I have seen for sale already have revenue streams in place. All you have to do is step in and take over.

I hope I have got you thinking. As you can see, there are several benefits that can make the purchase of an established and popular website an intriguing possibility. Does anyone else have any ideas along this line of thinking? Anyone got any good sites for sale?

If you are anything like me, then I am sure you have considered developing an opt-in email list for your business. I am in the process of researching email list building and everything that goes along with it. Tomorrow I will offer an early release of my notes regarding this topic to readers of this blog.

Right now the notes contain information on companies providing an email list hosting service, an exhaustive list of points to consider when selecting a provider, some potential incentives for your website visitors to join your list, and some different ideas for finding people to join your list. OK, that is all for now. I will see you back here tomorrow.

Jason

I have been contemplating some different topics for inclusion into this blog, but I thought I would open it up to you readers first to see what information you want. I am considering an experiment with audio on a website. I have also considered different aspects of website rendering on mobile devices. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been experimenting with keyword misspellings and I am developing a tool in that area that some might find useful.

What types of information will help make you more successful in your SEO efforts? I have my thoughts, but I want to see what you think too.

I have recently been reminded of the goldmine that may exist in keyword misspellings. This is a good technique in driving inexpensive traffic from highly competitve keywords in an AdWords campaign. It is also an opportunity for picking up traffic from misspelled URLs that are typed directly in to the address bar in a browser.

I have taken advantage of the opportunity that misspelled keywords present in my AdWords campaigns and they have been very successful. I have been able to have my ads presented for keywords that I would not have otherwise been able to afford. I have found misspelled keywords available for $.05 where I would have had to pay over $2 for the correctly spelled keyword.

I can also report that those misspelled keywords do generate traffic. In fact, 95% of the traffic in one of my best AdWords campaigns comes from a particular misspelled keyword.

I am currently working on a web application that will help myself and others generate these keyword misspellings. I will post a blog announcing its release when it becomes available.