Allen Harkleroad’s Confidential SEO Secrets – The Best SEO Report You Haven’t Heard Of
February 27, 2008 at 9:03 am | In free information, internet marketing, online marketing | 14 CommentsThe Marketer Review has moved to
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From time to time, I may stumble upon a report that was written by a well-established, low-laying internet businessman. Allen Harkleroad is one of them and his report, Confidential SEO Secrets, is definitely note-worthy.
Who the hell is Allen Harkleroad?!
Allen Harkleroad has been online since 1991. He is an online magazine publisher and an active SEO experimenter. Lately he’s also been experimenting with social media, as is evident in his blog.
Why Would You Want to Read Confidential SEO Secrets?
Allen is not one of the celebrity Gurus, so you probably haven’t heard of him. Naturally, you’d be asking: “Why should I trust this guy?” or even ”Why should I waste my time on his report?” Those are valid questions and that’s exactly The Marketer Reviews venue. 
There are two good reasons why you want to even bother with Confidential SEO Secrets:
- Harkleroad owns a few sites that bring in around 300,000-500,000 page views.
- This report isn’t written in “classic” free-report speak. It’s written like an informative how-to book and doesn’t leave you guessing.
Not so Confidential SEO Secrets
Most of the tactics in Confidential SEO Secrets aren’t really all that confidential. I’m sure you can gather them from here and there, around the web, but reading them in this concentrated form will save you loads of time. You see, Harkleroad built this report almost like a checklist. You can read a little, stop, implement his advise, and continue reading. By the time your done, you’re search engine ranking will sure to have improved. Simply because the information in Confidential SEO Secrets, while not earth shattering, is accurate.
The SEO Tip that Rocked My World
I know I’ve said it didn’t shatter my earth, but there’s this one piece of advise that rocked my world:
“Left Vertical page navigation…hindered spiders from indexing or diluted the pages content to such a point that the search engines would not rank the content very well at all”
Simply put: If you’ve got a sidebar on the left of your site- you’re screwed!
Well, let’s not get overly dramatic. Harkleroad explains this quite extensively. What he’s saying is that search engine spiders read the page top-to-bottom-left-to-right. So If you’ve got content, other than your main content, on the left side of your site, your content could be getting buried by it. This is great advise for bloggers, as we’ve got a lot of crap in our sidebars (keep’em clean people! 
), and if that crap-infested sidebar is on the left, the search engines will be reading Blogcatalog nicknames and Entrecard widgets, instead of your fresh, original content.
Putting it Together
Don’t you just love it when someone tries to make things easy on you?
Harkleroad does exactly that in Confidential SEO Secrets, in chapter 7, “Putting it All Together.” In this chapter he actually gives an illustrated example and a step-by-step guide to meta-tagging! Sure, meta tagging is simple once you’ve done it once, but if this is your first time, go ahead and follow Harkleroad’s steps. Frankly, I’ve meta tagged so much, I thought it’d be a good idea to double check, using the steps as a checklist. I also enjoyed the tip on meta maintenance.
A comprehensive guide to SEO and then some. A step-by-step guide for the beginner and a checklist for the veteran.
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[...] msdanielle wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAllen Harkleroad is one of them and his report, Confidential SEO Secrets, is definitely note-worthy. Who the hell is Allen Harkleroad?! Allen Harkleroad has been online since 1991. He is an online magazine publisher and an active […] [...]
Pingback by Page Rank » Blog Archive » Allen Harkleroad’s Confidential SEO Secrets - The Best SEO Report … — February 27, 2008 #
Sounds like it’s worth a read. Just the one tip you revealed from the book is worthwhile.
I’ve been accidentally following the “no sidebar on the left” rule. To me, it is a visually cleaner look. The fact that it improves the spider’s readability is an added bonus.
Comment by Don Wilson — February 27, 2008 #
the sidebar can be either side, as long as the most important content is crawled first. now what is most important, the navigation, or the main content? i wonder about that…
Comment by Jansie Blom — February 28, 2008 #
Hey Jans,
If you know how to program it to read the content first- that should do the trick.
As for the content Vs. navigation question- that’s why I review
Comment by talishapiro — February 28, 2008 #
Wow, This is quite unexpected. Thank you for the kind words Tali!
Comment by Allen Harkleroad — February 28, 2008 #
Thank you for the great report! It was refreshing to see something so concentrated and none-salsy to come out of this industry.
I figured my readers would be interested
Comment by talishapiro — February 28, 2008 #
One of the first SEO tips I got – and it still works – was from Delorie Software about using tables to feed your content first. (Try coloring each cell differently until you get the effect you want.) Playing with divs and css positioning can give you the same boost.
As for which is more important, you really have to decide if you want the search engine to get the links and anchor text or the content… left-side navigation on a well linked page could be used as a sort of site map.
Comment by NetMidWest — February 28, 2008 #
Wow! Thanks for that mysterious NetMidWest
I know it’s very easy for a lot of bloggers and e-merchants NOT to know coding, with all the free-ready-made services, but it’s truly imperative for a successful business. Thanks for the link!
Comment by talishapiro — February 29, 2008 #
[...] presents Allen Harkleroad’s Confidential SEO Secrets – The Best SEO Report You Haven’t Heard Of posted at The Marketer Review, saying, “From time to time, I may stumble upon a report that [...]
Pingback by Working at Home on the Internet — February 29, 2008 #
[...] presents Allen Harkleroad’s Confidential SEO Secrets – The Best SEO Report You Haven’t Heard Of posted at The Marketer Review. Tali says, “From time to time, I may stumble upon a report [...]
Pingback by Bootstrapper » Carnival of Business and Entrepreneurship #10 — March 2, 2008 #
Can I add something about SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.
The initialism “SEO” can also refer to “search engine optimizers”, a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.
Comment by Mark Rae is building his website... — March 5, 2008 #
Thanks Mark
That’s a great clarification of the terms!
Comment by talishapiro — March 5, 2008 #
So you mean to say sidebar is bad for seo?
Anyways if its bad, good that i took it out from my skin.. Its was just a bunch of ads that was placed in the sidebar.
SticKer
Comment by SticKer — March 12, 2008 #
Not bad, SticKer, just has it’s place in the SEO hierarchy.
Comment by talishapiro — March 12, 2008 #