Welcome to this week's edition of the SEO Chat newsletter. If the current economy is making you think long and hard about job security, you're not alone. While some things are beyond your control, there are other things you CAN do to make your job more secure or at least avoid sabotaging your career. Think you're already doing your best? Check out the slide show we're highlighting this week from eWeek. If you recognize yourself in any of the behaviors it discusses, you might need to adjust your attitude.

On a more pleasant note, let me tell you about the helpful SEO tools and advice you can find on our site this week. Have you ever wondered how much your domain name influences your standing in the SERPs? Check out Monday's article for the full scoop. Did you enjoy last week's article on SEO tools? Then you'll love the second and third parts we ran this week. You'll find linking and statistical SEO tools, web analytics tools, social media tools, and much, much more.

Have you seen your site traffic or bottom line go down, and you're not sure why? Then you may want to check out this week's thread. The original poster faces such a problem, and receives some excellent advice. Be sure to stop by the thread and join the conversation.

If you're looking for even more SEO-related information, you might want to check out the SEO-related tutorials on Tutorialized. You'll find nearly 100 tutorials on SEO topics alone, plus others covering web site design, graphics, and other technical issues. You can also share your expertise with the world by submitting your own tutorial.

This week's Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, covers an issue novice SEOs sometimes face. Clients may want to hire you, but what are the services of an inexperienced SEO worth? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• News of the Weird is here to tickle your funny bone. Or break it.
• Bobby Earnhardt returns wearing a muscle shirt. Muscles apparently declined to be filmed.
• Is that a giant baby or did Tech News hire the video editor from Land of the Lost?

Watch the video!

This is the third part of our four-part article series on SEO tools. In the last two parts we reviewed keyword research tools, content management systems, image search tools, ranking checkers, analytics tools, social media tools and online copy writing tools. In this third part we list link building tools and statistics tools.

Link Building Tools and Link Analysis Tools

Here's a list of tools which will assist you in your link building efforts. The most notable are Majestic SEO, LinkScape and Backlink Analyzer. Dig around yourself and do several test searches.

Majestic SEO - Majestic SEO has an index of 52 billion web pages with data on 350 billion links. They have their own crawler, which spiders the web in the same manner as Google and Yahoo, but unlike the major search engines, Majestic SEO shares their link data. When you type "link:domain" into Google, it purposely displays the wrong data, making this command useless. Yahoo Site Explorer is more open, but still limits what you can see.

Read Linking and Statistical SEO Tools

More Useful SEO Tools
by Ivan Strouchliak
2009-07-07

This is the second part of a four-part series that lists search engine optimization tools. In this article we cover rank checkers, web analytics tools, social media tools and online copy writing tools.

Rank Checkers

With rank checkers you can automate the process of checking search engine rankings for your keywords across all search engines. These tools are helpful if you take care of tons of sites.

Rank Checker - With this free rank checker you can check search engine rankings on Google(dot)com, Yahoo(dot)com, Live(dot)com and all country specific domains like google(dot)ca, google(dot)co(dot)uk, ca(dot)yahoo(dot)com, etc. Live is only limited to dot com for now. Rank Checker also supports the export feature, so you can transfer rankings to Excel and make pretty presentations. To use this you'll need the Firefox Browser.

Read More Useful SEO Tools

Domains and SEO
by Ivan Strouchliak
2009-07-06

Domain names play a big role in the search engine optimization game. Many SEOs will not go into a market niche and dish out link investments until they catch a good domain name for the field. In this article I try to answer the question of what is considered a good domain and how domains affect SEO.

Domain Age

Domain age is one of most crucial SEO factors. Since older domains cost a lot more than new ones, search engines take this as a quality cue. If a webmaster purchases an old domain name for several thousand dollars, it's a good indicator that the website will have quality content.

Search engines cannot see for how much one buys a domain, but they can check the date of registration in WHOIS.

Read Domains and SEO

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

Tips for SEO Friendly Websites
Form follows function. Before designing a website there are quite a few important factors to consider.
Read the tutorial.

What Does Seo Stand For?
What does seo stand for? Simply put SEO stands for search engine optimization.
Read the tutorial.

Submit Your Sitemap to Google
Techniques you can use to submit your sitemap to Google. An imperative step to get good rank!
Read the tutorial.

30 SEO Tips for Web Designers & Small Business Owners
30 SEO Tips in 30 Days to turn your website SEO ready.
Read the tutorial.

Submitting your URL to Search Engines
How to get search engines to crawl your site as often as possible.
Read the tutorial.

How to Make Your Blog Stand Out from the Crowd
Quick tips to improve your blog from every aspects!
Read the tutorial.

How can this SEO Newsletter be better?

What do you like or dislike about this issue?
Is there a topic you want to learn more about?
What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement,
so please email us. Email us.

When business falls off, it's easy to panic, especially when the reason for the reduction isn't obvious. This week's thread features a site owner with just this issue. Read on for some good advice, and stop by the thread to add your own.

My website's business descent. Can any body tell me why?

My website was launched four months ago. It's an online store that sells electronic products. It has spent me a lot of time for optimization and promotion. But these days I found that the business has descent, although the visitors number is going well, i have no idea what's the problem. Can any body tell me? I will appreciated you if you can tell me what's the problem of my website. [link deleted] is my website's domain name.

Hi omg,

Well truthfully... 4 months isn't long enough for you to say "It has spent me a lot of time for optimization and promotion"; typically you wouldn't see much of a return for your efforts for 6-12 months.

You say "I found that the business has descent" but that the "visitors number is going well"... which would lead me to one of 2 conclusions:

1. You were getting higher quality traffic.

2. You have lost your competitive edge.

Re 1: You are in a very competitive and lucrative field and will struggle to get the "big money kwds" until you've become well established and spent a lot of time/money to compete but as your site has only been running for 4 months, you may have experienced a temporary "boost" from Google in the early days... Maybe that's now gone and you are replacing the traffic with "lower quality traffic" (off-target kwds or hits from links on other sites) so you are no longer attrating the same quality of visitor.

Re 2: Maybe your competition has begun to fight back; maybe you are no longer selling abroad (exchange rates etc) or maybe you aren't offering the latest "big thing" in your field!

Whichever of these it is, I'm sure you will be able to tell via your stats / sales records etc.

As far as your site is concerned, I don't see a whole lot wrong with it... You have canonical weaknesses (check link in my sig for fix) and I would say your home page title tag isn't optimised too brilliantly, but in general it looks fine.

Just keep link building and promoting. Choose kw's which will attract buying customers and which give you the chance for front page rankings whilst you're "building your reputation" and bear in mind that "The quality of the visitor is more important than the volume," as EGOL has said.

In addition to what Click said... IMO you need to work on your branding and trustworthiness. At first glance it looks like most of what you sell is laptop batteries. Then I see a 'good luck' figurine. I bet you are waving goodbye to some of your sales by advertising that.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

Should You Offer SEO for Free?

For almost everyone who reads about SEO long enough, there comes a time when they want to put what they've learned into practice. That step requires a web site. Many SEOs learn their craft on their own sites; some do so well with this that they never seek any other clients. Others, however, find clients almost without trying; it seems as if everyone with a web site wants it to do better, and if SEO offers a path to reach that goal, well, to quote one potential client, You've been reading about SEO for a long time; you can use my site to put what you've learned into practice.

This situation presents the would-be SEO with a quandary. They may have learned a lot from their reading, but they don't have any actual hands-on experience. Furthermore, unlike a doctor or a lawyer, they can't present any kind of certificate or diploma showing that they've completed a specific course of instruction. Yet they're offering and applying professional knowledge. What should they charge for their services? Or, even more to the point: should they consider offering their service for free, at least at first, to gain experience?

If you offer something for free, anyone and everyone will ask for it, even if they can't really use it. It's human nature to not put a high value on something offered for free and, by extension, on the person providing a free service. You deserve more respect than that. But you need to prove, both to yourself and your client, that your services are worth something. How do you do that?

Find a middle ground between free and what an experienced SEO would charge. EGOL, one of our most respected forum members at SEO Chat, has suggested offering a first client deal of the first ten hours of SEO services for free, or perhaps the first ten hours at a low fixed rate (say $10 an hour). Either way, you should make sure that you know SEO pretty well before starting the work! After you've completed the free or inexpensive SEO for your client, you can both evaluate what you've accomplished and the results you've achieved and change your price for your services accordingly.

The good news for novice SEOs is that simple optimizations for web sites can often deliver great results, because many sites have not been optimized at all. EGOL notes that in the past I have had clients and just by unframing a site or replacing unspiderable navigation made a spectacular improvement in their traffic and sales. Navigation, duplicate page titles and general web site architecture issues are easy to fix. Of course, your top concern should be links, but if you can fix those elements first and deliver a boost to the site, your clients will see the results and be more willing to pay your higher fees. After all, you've earned them. Good luck!