Learn Search Engine Optimization Tips

Tips to Get First Page in Google Ranking

2011-01-17T06:35:00.000-08:00

Go to first page of search results on Google is the goal of many webmasters. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us, many are still doing bad things to improve their ranking.
It is not possible to obtain in the first 10 rankings on Google using a single strategy. To get a good ranking on Google you must work on all elements of your site.
Here are the five strongest factors known to affect the position of your site in Google search results:

Factor 1: Web Accessibility

It is useless to optimize your web pages so search engines can not access them. Your robots.txt file should allow search engines to visit your web pages. If your robots.txt file contains errors, so search engines will not index your website.
The HTML code of your web pages must be free of errors and your web server should return the correct response code. The content of your web pages should be readable by search engines.
Before you start optimizing your web pages, make sure search engines can read the contents of your web page.

Factor 2: site architecture

Google wants to show relevant Web sites in search results. Your site should not be a collection of copies of web pages that already exists. If you want to obtain first page rankings on Google, the pages of your website should be linked.
Your web pages must show Google that your site is relevant for a certain topic. All pages of your website must be linked. If possible, users must reach a page from your website with a maximum of three clicks.
The links and directory structure of your website should enable search engines to categorize the content of your website.

Factor 3: Keyword

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps. If you choose the wrong keywords, you will not succeed in your online marketing campaign.
Optimize the pages of your website different key phrases. The more you optimize your site pages, the better.
Start with highly targeted keyword phrases that consist of many words, eg “Google first page positioning. When you have the best rankings of these key phrases targeted proceed with more general words such as “Google positioning.
When you have the best rankings for these key phrases, you can proceed with very general keywords such as “positioning”.
In general, targeted keywords have a conversion rate much higher than generic keywords, meaning you get more sales per visitor with “Google first page position” with “positioning”.
Also consider the type of visitors you attract with a keyword. These people are interested in information or want to buy?
Our company can advise you on the words that sell. We can provide the best keywords you should target in priority for your business.

Factor 4: content

Your site will be very difficult to get a better ranking on Google if it only offers articles and affiliate links can be found on dozens of other sites.
Differentiate your website from others by creating unique content and trustworthy. Write your own articles on the topic related to your website. Your site must be useful to users.

Factor 5: links from other sites

It is not possible to obtain high rankings on Google without having links from other sites. The more links pointing to your website, the more likely it is that your site has good positions in search results on Google. The links to your website should be on web sites trust and your business.
If a page Web site for your business is a link to your website then the effect of link ranking in search engines is higher than the effect of a link is unrelated to your sector.
He must also know that if you have links on social networks and that if many users add your website to social bookmark sites, then your site could merit a higher ranking.
A small error in one of these elements can destroy all your online marketing strategy. For this reason, it is important to know what you’re doing and not doing anything with your SEO.

SEO Interview Questions

2010-11-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve written a few questions that might help structure a SEO interview or even help someone get an SEO job. I think though, there are a great deal of ways to answer many of these questions. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing example answers but I think as long as you have a clear idea of the kind of answer you expect to hear back then this should do the trick.
A SEO interview needn’t be a long list of technical questions (as I expect many people might have differing perspectives anyway) but rather a chance for you, as the interviewer, to understand their technical SEO skills, depth of knowledge and interest the candidate has in SEO.
Some people might also disagree with the ethics of asking some of these questions, but feel free not ask them if, of course, you don’t want to.
SEO Interview Questions
Death by interview has been known so I wouldn’t recommend asking all of these questions. Pick and choose at will…
Open-ended SEO questions
1. What is your favourite aspect of SEO?
2. What is the most difficult aspect of SEO for you?
3. What has been your biggest mistake in optimising a website for search engines?
4. What has been you biggest success in SEO?
5. Do you have your own website(s)? What are they? What is their purpose? How effective have they been?
6. What business sectors have you previously worked in as a SEO?
7. What is the most competitive sector you have worked in as a SEO specialist?
8. Do you like Matt Cutt’s?!
Knowledge of the SEO Industry / engagement in learning about SEO and engagement with the SEO Community
9. What is your favourite SEO website/blog, and why?
10. Who do you most respect in the SEO industry, and why?
11. Who do you least respect in the SEO industry, and why?
12. Which website do you go to learn something new every time?
Analytics
13. What Analytics packages have you used?
14. Talk me through the process of setting conversion goals?
15. Explain the process of advanced segmentation and an example of why you might use this?
16. If you could develop a new feature for an analytics package that is not currently/easily available what would it be?
Algorithms
17. Please explain the PageRank algorithm…
18. What is the most important aspect to you of the PageRank algorithm for link-building?
19. What is page segmentation?
20. What is LSI / LSA and its relevance to SEO?
21. Explain to me how phrase-base algorithms work? Clustering?
22. Describe any perceived differences in the main search engines?
23. Have you noticed any algorithm changes lately that you believe to have affected your rankings? How do you work to protect your online visibility?
Keywords
24. What process do you typically go through when researching keywords?
25. How could this process be improved?
26. How do you carry out competitive analysis of keywords/SERPs as part of the keyword research process?
27. When targeting keywords on-page, discuss some considerations you might make?
Accessibility
28. What factors hinder search engines access to a website’s content?
29. What is the most responsible way of using Flash?
30. Tell me how you might use the Robots.txt file?
31. What is the difference between an xml sitemap and an html sitemap?
On-page Ranking Factors
32. If you were reviewing a landing page, what on-page ranking factors would you consider?
33. How would you analyse the strength of that page as part of the site?
34. Are you competent with HTML and CSS?
Onsite Ranking Factors
35. Talk me through factors you would consider in building an optimised website. (Possible answers might include the discussion around information architecture, site structure, title tags, link structures, keyword relevance, etc).
36. What are onsite ranking factors for building a successful landing page strategy?
37. Please provide examples of blackhat SEO techniques?
38. What are your thoughts on blackhat SEO techniques? What, if any, have you used, or tested?
Offsite Ranking Factors
39. What would the perfect inbound link look like?
40. What do you like and not like about link-building?
41. Explain to me your involvement in link-building in the past?
42. What approach to link-building have you had most success?
Linkbait Development and Marketing
43. Would you consider yourself as creative?
44. Have you ever successfully carried out a linkbait campaign for a client / in-house? What was the success?
45. Talk me through the process you might go through in developing a linkbait strategy?
Copywriting
46. Are you confident writing and publishing content online?
47. Please provide examples of the content that you have written. What was the purpose of this content and what keywords were you targeting?
SEO Tools
48. What keyword research tools do you use and why?
49. What is your favourite ‘SEO tool’? Why?
50. Do you think SEO tools are effective in competitive markets? Why?
Testing
51. Have you carried-out split-testing / multivariate testing of content?
52. What did you learn from this process?
Image Optimisation
53. What factors can you do to encourage the chance of ranking for images?
54. What is hotlinking? How can this be successfully optimised?
Video optimisation
55. Have you ever carried out video optimisation?
56. What are a few considerations of optimising video content?
Social Media Interview Questions
Open-ended Social Media Questions
57. Which social media sites do you most like? Why?
58. Which social media sites do you most dislike? Why?
59. What has been your biggest achievement in SMM?
60. Do you feel that you are well connected in Social media spheres? Does your social media account carry influence?
61. Do you prefer to use the same pseudonym across your social media profiles? What are the pros and cons of doing this?
62. When did you get into social media (and marketing)?
63. What is your oldest social media profile?
64. Would you ever sell or buy social media profiles?
65. What has been the most effective social media marketing campaign you have been involved in? How was it effective? Metrics / exposure / links?
66. How do you effectively use social media to support SEO campaigns, or vice versa?
PPC Interview questions
67. Although not strictly SEO, the understanding of the cross-over of visibility in paid-listings can be very important for effective SEO campaigns.
68. Have you worked on/with PPC accounts? How did it go?
69. How do you integrate PPC and SEO?
70. What considerations might you make when carrying out paid search competitive analysis?
Business Acumen and ROI
71. What are the key performance metrics you have previously reported to clients?
72. What are effective metrics for highlighting return on investment from SEO?
73. What would you like to change about the SEO reporting process?
74. What other areas of business present opportunities for organic search visibility?
75. If your SEO efforts aren’t getting the visibility you would hope, what would you do?
Pitching for Business
76. Have you prepared proposals for SEO clients?
77. Have you presented proposals to SEO clients? How did it go?
78. What was the biggest mistake you have made in a meeting with a client?
79. What is your greatest strength when presenting to prospective SEO clients?
Retaining Business
80. What do you think is the most important factor in retaining a client?
81. From the previous company that you worked for, what was one process that they could have improved in retaining and gaining clients?
Closing questions
82. Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
83. What are you salary expectations? Availability? Etc, etc…
84. How did you feel the interview went?!

5 Ways to Improve Your Local Business Website

2010-11-15T06:24:00.000-08:00

When customers don't stay on your website for long, it's hardly surprising you fail to connect with them and build the trust needed for them to get out their credít cards and purchase from you.

The great news for you is there are tons of quick and easy - usually free ways - to make your website more appealing to your customers.

Here's 5 you can apply today.

1. Site Search

When you have more than 20 pages, it's a good idea to add a search facility. If you have a site search, make sure it's prominent. Usability guidelines tend to prefer the upper-right corner of the page. Keep the button label simple and clear - "Search" still works best for most sites. Don't unleash your powers of lateral thinking and swap in a word like "Retrieve". Keep it simple.

To Do: Just using your search, try to find 3 pages of content. Is that process "quick, easy and straight-forward?" Or is it "hit and miss?"

2. Ensure Your Web pages Can Be Skim-read Easily

Few people read word for word online; the vast majority skim-read to get a sense of the page before they read any of it in detail. Make it easy for visitors to skim-read your content. Always use headings and bullets to break up text.

Think about it. If a heading is not relevant for your visitor, they can easily skim down to the next heading, making it straightforward for them to get directly to the information they need.

Always keep your text in manageable chunks, not an unbroken wall of words like insurance small print, so it's easier for customers to look up what they want right away and with confidence - which is critical if they are making a buying decision.

To Do: Give your website a quick review and make sure all your text is broken up into clear, manageable sections.

3. Keep Your Styles & Colors Consistent

Make sure people know they're still on your site by being consistent - confuse them and you'll lose them. Keep the look and feel of your website sections consistent and avoid any radical changes. Visitors can get confused and think they have left your site accidentally.

Layout, headings, and styles should be consistent site-wide, and colors should usually have the same meaning.

For example, don't use red for headers on one page, red for hyperlinks on another, and red as standard text somewhere else.

To Do: Ensure all your web pages appear to be part of the main site and that they are consistent with each other. Are there any "nasty surprises" depending on the part of the site you're in?

4. Use Emphasis (bold, etc.) Sparingly

It's a fact of human psychology: try to draw attention to everything and you'll effectively draw attention to nothing. We've all seen that site, the one with a red, blinking, underlined "NEW!" next to everything. Don't be that guy or gal.

Remember, if your site's graphic design is counter-intuitive and doesn't help visitors get something done quickly, it's going to make your site much slower and difficult to work with.

Slow, awkward sites don't ever, ever, delight your customer or create a good rapport online.

Visitors will be back at the search engine in seconds if they find your website "complicated" or "busy".

To Do: Ensure your website is only highlighting critical factors you absolutely need your visitors to gaze at or clíck on in order to meet your online business goals. Menus, buy buttons, opt–in boxes and so on.

5. Keep Your Ads & Pop-ups Unobtrusive

Ads are a fact of life, but integrate them nicely into your site. Don't try to force ads and pop-ups down peoples' throats; you'll end up creating frustration for your visitors. Also, do people a favor and make your ads clear. If you blur the line between ads and content too much, your content may suffer, since many people have developed "banner blindness" when it comes to surfing, and might overlook some important content by mistake.

To Do: Double check if your popup window is significantly increasing your opt–in rate. If it isn't, you could be annoying present and future customers unnecessarily.

Final Word

Always make sure you view your website through the eyes of the customer and not through your eyes, the website owner.

Make sure there are no red-flags on your site that are going to frustrate, confuse or bore customers. Keep everything nice and simple to make sure your visitors enjoy spending time (and money) on your site

How site index by Google Sitemap

2010-09-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

Google has implemented a cutting edge method of crawling web sites for its search engine index. This unprecedented method of indexing web pages is known as Google Sitemaps, and it is quickly growing in popularity among webmasters and SEO agents and managers due to its ability to get an entire web site indexed quickly and to pick up errors in the links coming into and out of a web site.

Google Sitemaps consists of placing the URLs of your pages along with important information regarding how Google should index them into an XML document. This information is then read by the Google Spider and the pages are normally indexed quite quickly, assuming that they are coherent to Google's standards for indexing pages (and also assuming that the sitemaps conform to Googles Sitemap Criteria which will be explained a little later).

There are two primary types of Google Sitemaps. The first is a list of pages in a website and the second is a list of sitemaps in the website. Google has limited the number of URLs in its sitemaps to fifty thousand URLs. This may sound like a lot, but for some of the more intricate web sites, fifty thousand URLs may not even make a dent in what they want indexed.

This led to the advent of the Google Sitemap index file which can index up to one thousand sitemaps. If you do the math, this means that you could have one thousand sitemaps with up to fifty thousand URLs in each sitemap which allows for fifty million URLs to be placed in your Google Sitemap scheme. But wait, there's more. Who ever said that you can't have an index of indexes? You could actually make an index of a thousand index files which are all indexes of a thousand index files. Basically, there is no limit to the number of URLs that you can hold in your Google sitemaps.

Now that you understand the power of the Google Sitemap you're probably asking yourself how to create and implement a Google Sitemap. The first step is to simply create your sitemaps. Here are the templates which are also available at www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ . For a sitemap file use the following format:

http://www.example.com/
2005-01-01
monthly
0.8

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=12&desc=vacation_hawaii
weekly

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=73&desc=vacation_new_zealand
2004-12-23
weekly

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=74&desc=vacation_newfoundland
2004-12-23T18:00:15+00:00
0.3

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=83&desc=vacation_usa
2004-11-23

Everything here is pretty self-explanatory with the exception of the changefreq and the priority aspects. The change freq asks how often you think the page will change on average. The possible values for the change freq option are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. The priority aspect basically just asks how important the particular page is in your website. The value can be anywhere between 0.0 and 1.0. If you decide not to specify a priority it will default to 0.5.

To create a sitemap index file follow the following format:

http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz
2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00

http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz
2005-01-01

This is all pretty straight forward but it leads me to my next point. You notice that the file names all end in .gz. Google allows you to compress your sitemaps so that they take up less of your disk space when you place them on your site and less of your bandwidth when Google downloads them (which it seems to do approximately once every 9 hours or so). You may only use .gz compression. If you try .zip, it won't work.

Now all that you really have to do is submit your sitemap to google. In order to do this you must go to Google Sitemaps and log into your Google account. If you don't have a Google account, you can create one. Once you log in you will be allowed to submit your sitemap into the google index. At some point within about 24 hours of your submission, Google will give you the option to place a small HTML file onto your website so that it can confirm that you do, indeed, have access to editing the site. Once you have done this it will begin to provide you with statistics regarding your google sitemap. (Note that even without this feature you can see when google downloaded the sitemap last and what the status of the sitemap was at that time.)

How Google Sitemaps Fits Into Search Engine Optimization

According to Google, the Sitemaps utility is free and will continue to be - yet it's almost as good as the paid inclusion service offered by rival search engines. So how can you take advantage of this great service?

First of all, you should create a Google Account. Although you can still use Google Sitemaps without an account, you need one before you can use Google's tools to check your site submissions. Once you do that and go to sitemaps.google.com, you'll be guided through the process.

Google Sitemaps has a very helpful question and answer page that will give you the help you need - the answers to most questions people have can be found right there. Good luck!

Backlinks for Search Engine Optimization- How Important are They?

2010-08-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

Backlinks are a key component in search engine optimization. Search engine consultants talk about the importance of backlinks for achieving higher search engine ranking. That’s because the more one-way backlinks you have leading to your website, the more important the search engines believe your page to be.

There are two types of backlinks: one-way links and reciprocal links.

One-Way Links are basically backlinks that only go one direction. Maybe it’s a link that goes from your website to another website. Or maybe it’s a link that goes from another site to yours. Either way, it’s only going one way.

Reciprocal Links are backlinks that go from one website to another, and then back to the original website.

It’s important to differentiate between one-way back links versus reciprocal links. Many search engine optimization experts believe that one-way back links are more valuable than reciprocal links because they’re much harder to earn. The thinking is that since they’re harder to earn, they must be more valuable, which means other people think very highly of your site. If people think highly of your site, it must be an important site, which means the search engines will give it a higher ranking than those sites that do not have a lot of one-way backlinks.

As search engines like Google grow and improve, they’re putting more emphasis on how popular a website is, not whether they use all the right keywords. This popularity is measured through one-way backlinks. They’re like votes to Google, and search engine ranking is more like a popularity contest: have a lot of links to your site and your site achieves a high ranking. The easiest way to find the number of backlinks that lead to your site is to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the following command:

link:www.abce.com

You will be shown a list of all the websites that have backlinks to your own domain. If you want to see who has links back to a particular page on your site, then type in the whole URL to that individual page.

Although no one can be sure of the exact algorithm Google and Yahoo use to rank sites, it’s commonly believed that if a website has more backlinks, it will achieve a higher search engine ranking. There are other factors that go into the whole search engine ranking, but backlinks are one of the more important ones.

But it’s important you have good quality backlinks, not just links that appear on any page you can find, like a link farm or sticking a comment on a page that has nothing to do with your website at all. That is, if you sell hammers, don’t put any backlinks on a page that sells children’s shoes.

That’s because search engines like Google have started cracking down on link farms and backlinks spammers. The search engine spiders know how to tell the difference between backlinks on a link farm and links on a quality website. If you are caught spamming, you will be dropped in the rankings, or possibly even dropped completely from Google’s index.

So you need to pay attention to the quality of your backlinks, now more than ever. One way to do this is to make sure you use the proper anchor text in your backlinks. For example, do not ever hot-link the words “click here.” What you’re basically telling the search engine spiders is that the website is about Click Here. Instead, use the keywords about the site that the backlinks are leading to. If you’re creating backlinks to a site about hammers, put the word hammers in your links. “Click here” isn’t about hammers.

In short, if you want some great search engine results, be sure to include backlinks as part of your search engine optimization strategy. You’ll see it pay off with improved search engine rankings.

Link Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds

2010-08-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.

More Is Not Better In Link Building

Just going out and getting a bunch of links won’t necessarily help your site. You need quality links to get higher search rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may just be wasting your time.

Targeted Anchor Text Is A Must

When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor text. However, you don’t want to use the same text everywhere. Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If you can’t get anything but an image link, make sure the site owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT tag of the image.

Pay Attention To Links In And Out

Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably won’t help you much.

PageRank Isn’t Everything

Don’t be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank. A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites that use phrases like “sponsored by” or “paid for by.” Google may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They’re not worth your time.

Concentrate On Site Relevance

Let’s say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a site about purple doohickeys. That link isn’t worth as much as one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you’re pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a link on a page titled “About Us” or one with the title “About Red Widgets,” which one do you choose? The link on the optimized page, “About Red Widgets,” has more value.

An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What’s Not Obvious

Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren’t obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a site url and find out if the site has been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those dates mean?

Chances are good that if the site hasn’t been crawled in 30-45 days, it’s not a good place for a link. But some domains have more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these factors should be weighed in judging a site’s worth in your link building efforts.

Does Social Networking Matter?

We’ve all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the “active Web” in determining site authority.

It’s time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember, relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.

Are You Getting Clean Links?

When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page’s source code? Is there anything extra in the “href” tag on the link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a “nofollow” in the site’s meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you. It won’t pass any authority to your site because that code tells the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you’re getting clean links.

When you’re on a tight budget and trying to develop your site and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to change in 2004 when people began talking about “Web 2.0.”

It’s harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it, but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort; you don’t want to waste those any more than you want to waste money during hard times.

Quick Link Building Tips

2010-08-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Link building is the most dreaded task of all serious SEO’s. Here are five quick and easy backlink building tips that you can apply today!

Link Building Tip #1 – Get Active in Your Community

I’m not talking about joining the local country club here (although that would be fun…), but rather about joining forums that are relevant to your niche. You want to find a forum (or forums) that is active and well ranked, and place your link in your “signature” section. This way, whenever you contribute to the forum (i.e. say something), you’ll be building backlinks. It is vital that your posts are of informational and educational use, and that you don’t just abuse the system in order to gain links. You’ll get banned quicker than you can say “backlink” if you do this. Contributing to the community is of the essence here.

Link Building Tip #2 – Suss Out Your Competition

Write down the website addresses of the top five results for your desired keyword. Then, using Google, type in “link:website” (replace website with the actual website address). This will show you where each site is getting their links from (well, most of them in any case) and hopefully spark some ideas for your site.

Link Building Tip #3 – Get Writing…

Writing and submitting articles is definately one of the most popular link building tactics around. You simply write a short article (400 – 600 words) and publish it on as many article directories as possible. Each directory will allow you to place your link in the “resource box”, thus growing your number of backlinks. You might be wondering “But what do I write about?”. The answer is simple – write about your area of expertise. So if you’re a handyman, write about some basic DIY tasks that people can carry out. Write how-to’s, 101’s and the like – Just give it some thought, it’s well worth it…

Link Building Tip #4 – Submit To Directories

Wherever there is an industry, you’ll find directories, especially on the internet. Do a search for your keyword and the word “directory”. Sign up to as many of them as possible – it’s a free link every time, and you might even find organic traffic (people) finding you on these directories (that’s what they’re there for, after all).

Link Building Tip #5 – Get Blogging

My final tip is to get blogging, or at least commenting on other people’s blogs. Have a look for relevant blogs and post some useful comments where suitable. Each comment will earn you a free link, plus potential direct traffic if the blog is popular and well followed. A word of warning though – make sure that the blogs don’t use “nofollow” tags, as this will render your link null and void in the eyes of the search engines.

And there you have it! Five easy link building tips that you can apply today. Best off all – they’re all absolutely free… Remember, link building is an ongoing exercise, and the more you make it a habit, the easier it will become. The only cost is your time and effort.

Five Tips To Increase Your Backlinks

2010-08-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

Getting a top position in the search engines is no easy task. The key to achieving this is constantly building links to your site – here are five simple strategies…

Put Pen to Paper

Whatever industry or niche you’re in, you should have an above average knowledge of that topic, so put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!) and write some informative short articles (300 – 500 words) that would appeal to your target market. You can either syndicate these articles through article directories, or head to the publishers and try to get them published on high ranking sites. Doing both is always a good idea. Every time your article gets published, you score free links – so get going now!

Social-ize…

Explore the realm of social bookmarking and get your links featured on as many social networks are possible. The potential for a viral linking explosion is huge in any social network, so work on a good value offer to promote to these networks (something free and useful).

Break Into the Forum Community

By registering on, and actively participating in forums that are relevant to your niche, you can quickly build up the number of back links to your website using your signature file (provided that they allow this and that the links are “dofollow”). Whilst the “SEO weight” of these links is debatable, you still get the benefit of publicity and who knows, you could learn a thing or two whilst online! A word of warning though – don’t spam the forums with rubbish comments purely to score back links to your site – you’ll get kicked out pretty quickly.

Follow Some Blogs

Blog commenting is quite a popular link building technique in the SEO community. You simply follow some popular blogs in your niche or industry, and provide constructive comment where suitable, leaving your link in the comment. Make sure that the blogs are “dofollow” type, as the “nofollow” ones are useless.

Differentiate or Die

This classic business phrase has a slightly different meaning in terms of link building. When building links (whatever method you may use), always try to differentiate your anchor text used across the web – at least to a certain degree. Having identical links and anchor text all over the web is likely to raise a brow with the search engines.

Most importantly, commit to the journey of link building.

The best link building strategy is a long term, consistent one. Set a target for how many links you want to build monthly, and aim to achieve this amount every month. Be patient and have a little faith – your hard work will be rewarded.

10 Steps To Getting The Click

2010-08-20T19:52:00.001-07:00

There are a number of steps a webmaster can take to encourage visitors to “click” on a link or graphic located on their website. The following steps will help “get the click

1. Colors

Use contrasting colors for links. This makes the links easier to discern from other text on a web page. Also, avoid placing links against a patterned background, as it will make it much more difficult to read the link text. Bottom line, the link color should stand out from the rest of the web page, and be easy to locate.

2. Link Traits

Underlining is still the universal indication of a link. Using the “underline” for links will send a clear message to website visitors about which text on the webpage is just text, and which text is actually a hyper-link. And along this line of thought, you should avoid using underlining for text that is not a link, just to avoid confusion.

3. Visible

Make all the links visible. Do not hide the links or navigation on a web page. Avoid using scripting to display links, as these links will not be visible to website visitors who have turned scripting off in their browser for security reasons.

4. Textual

Text links have a higher rate of clicks than linked images. The one exception is typically a “Buy Now” button, which tends to be more effective than text-only “Buy Now” links. Keep this in mind when creating a linking scheme for your website.

5. Consistent

The location of links should be consistent as the visitor moves from page to page through your website. Do not move links around as the content of the web page changes.

6. Position

Place important links in a location that is easy for the website visitor to see without having to scroll. Position important links “above the fold” on the website.

7. Font Style & Size

In order to make links easy for the visitor to see, be sure to use a font style and size that can be easily read.

8. Graphic Links

If you use image links, the clickable graphics should be vibrant and should stand out from the other content on the page. Use bright or bold contrasting colors for the graphic. Be sure to include appropriate ALT text for each linked image, so the visitor will have an indication of the material being linked to as they move their mouse over the graphic.

9. Split-Test

Conduct split-testing by changing colors and moving links around, and then monitor and track which options and locations result in the highest number of clicks. What may seem intuitive is not always as obvious as you might think.

10. Fresh Eyes

Ask a friend or family member to navigate your website. It may surprise you to learn what they see and where they click. A fresh set of eyes will give a good indication of how others will perceive your website and the clickable content.

Top 5 Semantic Search Engines

2010-07-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

“Semantic” is a word with a magic ring to it in search engine circles. The way it’s hyped makes you suspect it is the second coming of search. Hypes make me skeptical and I have been biding my time, waiting for the technology to mature. Now the time has come and I’m glad to present the top 5 semantic search engines.

What is semantic search?
A semantics search engine attempts to make sense of search results based on context. It automatically identifies the concepts structuring the texts. For instance, if you search for “election” a semantic search engine might retrieve documents containing the words “vote”, “campaigning” and “ballot”, even if the word “election” is not found in the source document.

An important part of this process is disambiguation, both of the queries and of the content on the web. What this means is that the search engine — through natural language processing — will know whether you are looking for a car or a big cat when you search for “jaguar”.

The five search engines below all use semantic analysis to sift through and present data. But, as you will see, they do not do this in the same way and present five different products.

When to use semantic search engines

Semantic search has the power to enhance traditional web search, but it will not replace it. A large portion of queries are navigational and semantic search is not a replacement for these. Research queries, on the other hand, will benefit from semantic search.

Read on to see our list of the top 5 semantic search engines and learn how they can improve your search experience.

Hakia

Hakia is a general purpose semantic search engine, as opposed to e.g. Powerset and Cognition (below), that search structured corpora (text) like Wikipedia.
Hakia search results are organized in tabs: Web results, credible sites, images and news. Credible sites refer to results from sites that have been vetted by librarians and other information professionals invites by Hakia to identify credible web sites.
For some queries (typically popular queries and queries where there is little ambiguity), Hakia produces resumes. These are portals to all kinds of information on the subject. Every resume has an index of links to the information presented on the page for quick reference.
The elements of these resumes will vary according to the nature of the query (e.g. biography, bibliography, timeline etc. for persons, government, economy, culture etc. for countries). Resumes are excellent for researching a topic and are my favorite Hakia feature.
Often, Hakia will propose related queries, which is also great for research.
For instance, if I search for Barack Obama, Hakia suggest I might be interested in information about Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, Sarah Palin, John McCain, John Sununu and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as well.
For some queries Hakia presents really poor results, but it is still in beta and is improving rapidly.

SenseBot
SenseBot is a web search engine that summarizes search results into one concise digest on the topic of your query. The search engine attempts to understand what the result pages are about. For this purpose it uses text mining to analyze Web pages and identify their key semantic concepts.
This way SenseBot helps you get a better grasp of what the relevant term is about. In this way you do not have to go through a large number of web pages and comb through results with incomprehensible expert definitions (or any definitions at all).
The summary serves as a digest on the topic of your query, blending together the most significant and relevant aspects of the search results. It contains a tag cloud, relating your query to other relevant concepts and a list of sentences believed to define or describe your query. Each sentence is followed by a link to the source.
Not all of the summaries are informative or even intelligible, but that is likely to improve; Like Hakia, SenseBot is in beta. This is bleeding edge technology — it’s evolving as we speak.
Read our review of SenseBot.

Powerset
Powerseet is at present not a regular web search engine. It works best on smaller, relatively structured corpora.
The technology offers a comprehensive view of such information. You can test it on Wikipedia and Powerset definitely excels at this, structuring the information and presenting it in a way that, for research purposes, is a great improvement on Wikipedia’s own search engine.
You can enter keywords, phrases, or simple questions in the search box. On the search results page, Powerset often answers questions directly. My favorite feature is the way it aggregates information from across multiple articles.
“Factz” is a box that often appears in the search results and is a set of suggestions for reference queries based on the information available. For instance, when I search for Obama, Powerset offers links to information on what Obama has said about Robert Gates, Middle East, Pakistan, trade and more. Clicking one of these links brings up a box in the search results page with the actual words said by Obama and links to the articles in which the quotes appeared.

DeepDyve
DeepDyve DeepDyve is a powerful, professional research tool available for free for the general public.
It is a research engine that lets you access expert content from the “Deep Web”, the part of the Internet that is not indexed by traditional search engines (e.g. databases, journals etc.).
Researchers, students, technical professionals, business users, and other information consumers can search Wikipedia or deep web resources within these categories: Life Sciences and Medical, Physical Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, Business and Finance, Patents, Legal, Clean Technology and Energy, IT and Engineering.
Research sites’ search engines often rely on Boolean languages or hard-coded taxonomies, which constitutes a threshold and makes them hard to use (or even inaccessible) to anyone but insiders. DeepDyve is an advanced yet easy interface to these valuable sources of information.
Your query can consist of anything from a single word to 25 000 characters. The search results are presented in a complex manner with many advanced options for refining, sorting or saving your search. Despite the complexity, the search results are relatively easy to navigate.

Cognition
Cognition has a search business based on a semantic map, built over the past 24 years, which the company claims is the most comprehensive and complete map of the English language available today. It is used in support of business analytics, machine translation, document search, context search, and much more.
You can use Cognition’s technology to search one of four bodies of information:
• Public.Resource.org (currently 1,858 volumes consisting of 675,704 files of federal case law in XHTML format). The release comprises US Supreme Court Decisions and Court of Appeals decisions from 1950 on.
• MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) Abstracts: abstracts for life sciences and biomedical information from an international literature database. It covers the fields of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care, as well as fields with no direct medical connection, such as molecular evolution (currently 18,005,903 files).
• The English version of Wikipedia
• The complete New English Translation including text and translator notes of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, John and Mark.
We tested Cognition on Wikipedia. On this huge volume of text, Cognition is especially useful for sorting out meaning in complex queries:
• Phrases like “historical houses of worship & historical temples”
• Meaning: “worker on strike” vs. “strike oil in California”
• Classes like “Indian tribes of Latin America” or “diseases of North American trees”
The technology that goes into solving queries like this is impressive and Cognition gives you valuable control over the assigning of meaning and classes in a user friendly way.
The presentation of the search results is less than perfect, though, and I wish the cognition team would learn from Hakia or Powerset in this regard.

Make best use of Manual Directory Submission

2010-06-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

The main goal of any website owner is to increase the traffic to his website. One way of achieving the goal is to submit the website manually in web directories. Submitting the website manually includes visiting every directory one by one and submitting the link of the website manually over and over again. Several companies take the difficulty of submission on their own for a fee, thus solving your problem. The benefits of manual submission get along a far road as the directory entries are of best quality and pose a greater result of being accepted and indexed.
Website directories usually accept all kinds of websites and then categorize them into different categories. Visitors who are in search of new and interesting information on the internet often bump into web directories. The more the visitors to your site, the better will be conversion link. Though there is one automatic submission process which makes the process of submitting links easy and in short time, but it will be regarded as spam by search engines. Automatic submission will make hard for the website to have a good rank on search engines. These days, most directories have installed Google Analytics to track the submission made by automated software, so one needs to be careful.
Manual submission makes the website owner to have higher control over submission process. Moreover, you can become specific by choosing the categories wherein the link can be submitted which is not provided by automated submission. With the implementation of Captcha code, usage of automated submission will limit the number of directories where you can submit to. Thus, purchasing automated directory submission software is a sheer waste of money. It is better to submit the link manually. The time that the web directory takes for listing the site depends on particular search engine or directory used. Although the process is tiresome, labor intensive and cost effective to build, but it offers better control over submissions.
While submitting the link to web directories, all that is needed is to fill out a submission form and your conformation as well as following guidelines and terms. The most crucial benefit derived from manual submission is that the quality of content and link will always be reviewed by human editor, thus increasing the credibility of the site.
Before submitting the link of your website, it is necessary to make sure that one’s website is designed in right way to take most of the advantage of traffic that is directed by submission in varied categories. While submitting, you must write title as well as link text while utilizing niche keywords. There must be a brief description of the website written in effective and attractive manner. You do not have to repeat the words and remain factual all the time. The content in your website must be keyword based.
Manual submission of website link to the web directories brings in traffic to your site and helps in topping the charts in search engine rankings.

Importance of SEO Companies

2010-06-18T09:13:00.001-07:00

All the websites that are present on the Internet needs SEO services or better say effective SEO services to get noticed as they strive to reach their targeted customers by attaining higher search engine rankings. Some people might argue that their website ranks topmost in the search engine rankings and they do not require SEO services. But this is not true for the website. Even a website with the top ranking requires optimization services to maintain their position on search engines. This is because SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a ferocious circle that requires constant ongoing efforts from experts who work on the behalf of the webmaster to fight an uphill battle in the search engine results.

What do they do?

A professional search Engine Optization Companies helps you support the identity of your website at an international level on the Internet. They bring into the notice of the Internet services, users and products that are being offered at your company's website. Strategic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques are utilized for website promotions. As your website ranks on the top positions in the search engine result pages, the traffic on your website is increased tremendously.

How do they do it?

Scrutinizing the behavior of the Internet users allow SEO companies to develop new ways of promoting a website. Reliable SEO company experts also keep a constant eye on the frequent amendments that are made in the search engine algorithms and device their SEO strategies accordingly.
Long term benefits promised by professional SEO Company
If you wish to benefit in the long term from the advantages of professional provider, make sure they employ only white hat SEO techniques. Some of the best white hat SEO techniques that professional companies use for the long term success of a website are:

1. Link building - Inbound links, diverting the Internet users to the main website are created by the SEO experts all over the Internet on blogs, discussion forums and social networking sites. Reciprocal links are also made with websites that share a similar theme.

2. Selection of the right keywords - Accurate selection of keywords is also necessary for the success of a website promotion. The chosen keywords should attract relevant traffic to the website. The competence of these keywords must be checked.

3. "Content is the king" - This phrase is indeed true and holds a lot of importance in the Search Engine Optimization world. Search Engine Optimization consultants ensure that the content of the website is original, up-to-date, easy to read and have the appropriate keyword density. Over stuffing of keywords unnaturally may draw the suspicion of spamming towards the website. So, professional firms are quite alert in this regard.

4. Blogs, article and press release submission - As updated information is necessary to achieve higher rankings, press releases, blogs and articles are written by expert writers associated with professional SEO firms and the link of the website is included in the author's bio.

5. Web designing - Last but not least, the website designing of the company is also checked by the affordable SEO Amendments are Company are made in the website so as to make it search engine friendly.

Hence, the need for a professional SEO company and its affordable SEO services is irrefutable for online success of a website and business.

Planning a marketing strategy for the online businesses

2010-06-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Marketing is often considered as the backbone of any sort of business, whether it is an online business or offline business. Marketing is the only proper way to notify the target customers about the business, so that they can go into business deals with the company. If the target customers cannot get to know about a business, then cannot make any sort of deal with that company which is a sure loss for the company. Now, if the business is an online business; then the main tool for marketing is the website. Promoting the website to the worldwide target customers should be the main aim of the website owners. The more people they can reach, the better is the chance of success for that business. However, this is a very difficult task and only proper Search Engine Optimization tool can help the websites to reach the worldwide target customers. To get noticed by the worldwide internet users, the website must attain superior rank in the search engine; this is only known way to reach the target customers from all over the world.

Search Engine Optimization has helped the website owners to a large extent in promoting their business. It is often considered as the backbone of the websites. Without proper marketing online strategy it is almost impossible for any website to get proper business deals. When any website is published in the internet, it remains invisible to others. At that moment, the websites need proper Search Engine Optimization which helps the websites to rise up in the page rank of the search engines. After few months of proper website optimization, the websites succeed in attaining superior rank in the search engine’s pages. And at this time it gets highly noticeable to worldwide target customers. SEM tools have proved to be extremely essential for the progress of the websites in the cyber world; without proper optimization no website can survive in the tough competition of the internet market.

Website optimization consists of two main steps; the on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Both of these optimization processes are extremely important for the websites. In the on-page optimization, the SEO companies perform several tasks on the pages of the websites and for that they may even have to hire a programmer. On-page optimization is pretty difficult, but can help the advancement of the websites to a large extent if properly conducted. Besides this, the off-page optimization is also very important for the websites; it is not as difficult as the on-page optimization but helps the websites to a large extent. The Search Engine Optimization companies which can perform both these optimization techniques successfully and completely, succeed in helping the websites get a superior rank in the pages of the search engines. When any website owner goes for a Search Engine Optimization company, he should always go for the experienced and efficient ones. SEO management techniques are pretty complicated and only the experienced SEO companies which have adequate knowledge on the internet market condition can succeed in helping the website owners reach their goal.

Why Choose Local Search Engine Marketing

2010-06-18T09:07:00.001-07:00

The potential of the Internet is no longer unknown to the global citizens in this technology-enabled century. Today, the Internet is an integral part of our lives and it is the focus around which all our social and commercial lives revolve. Nowadays, before we go out to purchase anything, we make a thorough research of the product on the net. As an industrialist, it should be our attempt to utilize the websites to promote and represent our products appropriately. Search Engine Optimization is a set of techniques that helps to improve the projection of the visibility of your website in the search results which are produced by the primary search engines. There are several such techniques that are legally permissible that can get your web site's visibility much better in the search results; local search engine marketing is one such techniques.

History of local search engine marketing

If you are a technology-enabled industrialist, you must be knowing that through the medium of your website, you can reach out to nearly all probable customer across the world. You also have the opportunity to deliver your and services to almost every possible country by the means of shipping companies. But there is a truth which you cannot afford to disregard. Every business carries out a good amount of its dealings in a restricted geographical area near the place where it is located. This is very normal when you are looking at it from its operational and logistical standpoints. Therefore one out of the many in the set of SEO techniques is what is called local SE marketing.

What is this local search engine marketing?

This particular concept mainly depends on local search engines and directories. These offer you to join them and set up your own profile. They also allow you to post your link. There are several search engines which work in specific regions and countries. These are approached by people who look for regional products and services. You can get a good chance for a better search-rank in this local SEs. Local Search Engine marketing targets a restricted environmental area.

Benefits of local search engine marketing

* the cost of listing in a local SE is far less than anywhere else

* you can update all matters regarding your business anytime and from anywhere

* you are provided with a free map that points out to your location

* your chances of a better visibility in other search engines are improved and you can work in accordance with other SEO methods.

Four reasons why Google might not use the anchor text in the links to your website

2010-06-02T08:11:00.001-07:00

The text that is used in the links that point to your website has a major effect on the position of your website in Google's search results.

For example, if many people use the text "buy blue widgets" to link to your website, then it is very likely that the linked web page will get high rankings for the keyphrase "buy blue widgets" in Google's search results.

The link text (also called anchor text) is the text that is used in text links. Example:

Learn Search Engine Optimization Tips

Unfortunately, not all anchor texts will be used by Google. Check the following things to make sure that the links to your website pass the correct anchor tag:

1. The nofollow attribute

This is a no-brainer. Links to your website that use the rel="nofollow" attribute don't pass the link text to Google. Example:

SEO

2. Invalid characters in the URL

If an URL contains invalid extra characters then chances are that search engines won't be able to index the link correctly. Example:

Learn Search Engine Optimization Tips

In this example, there's a space at the end of the URL. Some webmasters found out that anchor text is not passed to Google if the link contains an extra space character.

Note that most browsers are able to correct this link and they will display the web page correctly. Unfortunately, search engine spiders seem to have more difficulty with malformed links (or they take them as a signal of low quality).

3. The links use 301 redirects

Google's Matt Cutts recently confirmed that Google won't consider all anchor texts that are used in 301 redirected links. Example:

SEO

The web server redirects "http://portaltechnologiespark-learnseo.blogspot.com/page.htm" to "http://portaltechnologiespark-learnseo.blogspot.com" with a 301 redirect. In that case, it's likely that Google won't use the link text.

4. The first link passes the link text

If a page links twice to the same page then Google will use the first link text and discard the other link texts. Example:

A leading SEO resource focused on helping successful webmasters make money and increase their profits through driving targeted traffic to their sites by improving their rankings in Google and other major search engines will be ignored by Google.

The first and the second link go to the same URL. In this example, Google will use the link text of the first link, which is "A leading SEO resource focused". The link text of the second link will be ignored by Google.

If the second link points to another page of the linked website, then both link texts will be used by Google:

A leading SEO resource focused on helping successful webmasters make money and increase their profits through driving targeted traffic to their sites by improving their rankings in Google and other major search engines will be ignored by Google.

Six things you can do to remove bad press from the search results

2010-06-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them.

Reputation first aidSome customers might write negative comments about your company in their blogs or some of your competitors might like to damage your reputation by creating fake comments about your site.

What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on Google's first result page for your company name?

1. Fix the problem

If people write negative reviews about your company, the first thing that you should do is to fix the problem that caused the negative review.

2. It doesn't hurt to ask

Send the webmaster of the web page with the negative review a polite email and ask for removal of the negative comments. Many webmasters will cooperate if you explain the issue.

3. Give web pages with positive comments a boost

If the webmaster does not want to remove the negative review, find websites that contain positive comments about your site.

Link to these pages from your own website to increase the link popularity of these pages. The more links the pages with the positive reviews have, the higher they will be ranking in the search results.

If appropriate, bookmark web pages with positive remarks about your website on social bookmark sites such as Digg and Delicious.

4. Ask for testimonials from happy customers

If you receive positive feedback from customers, ask them to write a review on ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com or similar sites.

5. Add your website to company wiki pages

Websites like AboutUs.org allow you to create an article about your company. If your company is important enough, you might even create an entry in Wikipedia.

These Wiki pages will also appear in the search results when someone searches for your company name.

6. Make sure that your own website tops the search results

If your own website comes first for your company name then most people will click on your link and don't look further. Use IBP to make sure that your own web site has position 1 in the search engine results.

Removing negative comments from the search engine results can take some time. It's best to avoid negative experiences at the outset by providing high quality products and good customer support.

Do It Yourself SEO with a Foolproof Twist

2010-05-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

As the founder of an independent SEO firm I am asked almost daily "What is the easiest way to optimize a web site?" It is harder to answer than you might think. It depends on who is asking and what their knowledge or experience level is. But last week I read an article written by the person who taught me search engine optimization ten years ago, and I now have an answer... Learn the secret recipe, then use it.

There is no magic bullet that works on every web page like so many SEO 'miracle' books and programs would have us believe. Each page has its own unique 'secret recipe' that has to be discovered and then applied because every single page it is trying to outrank, is unique. If this seems confusing, just remember my new favorite quote that I borrowed from that author's website: "Think about it. Anyone could bake Mrs. Fields famous cookies - possibly better than Mrs. Fields herself - with the secret recipe. And that's all SEO is; knowing the secret recipe for any given web page."

And it really is that simple. We will look at how to discover the secret recipe in a moment, but first there is one crucial thing to understand about search engine optimization before you go any further:

SEO means making a web page as highly visible as possible to search engines... for a given keyword.

Just about everybody knows the first part; but too many people forget the second.

Remember that your soon to be visitor types in very specific keywords (search terms) on search engines like Google, because they are looking for something very specific.

If you know your most important keyword that is great! If not, do not waste your money on expensive keyword software that SEO professionals use. Use a free keyword tool like Google's, found at:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just enter in the keywords that you think people are searching for to find your product or service and then check the search numbers for those and related keyword suggestions.

So what about the secret recipe? Once you know your main keyword or keywords you need to see how well your site is optimized for that term already. This is called getting your SEO Quality Score.

What you do is make a list of the most important optimization aspects of a webpage, for the search engine of your choice (because Google looks for different things than Yahoo or Bing.)

Here are ten critical factors for Google, but there are nearly 140 to be aware of...

• Keyword use in document title
• Keyword use in body text
• Link texts of inbound links
• Global link popularity of web site
• Keyword density
• Keyword position and proximity
• Number of words
• Readability level of web page
• Keyword use in H1 headline texts
• HTML validation of web page to W3C standards

Once you have all of this information for your webpage, you need to get it for the pages currently occupying the top ten positions for that keyword and then see how your page compares.
You can buy software that does a lot of this for you but it generally costs $500 to $2,500 for the ones that really work and even then you might need to buy an hour of an SEO consultant's time to help you really understand it.

Doing it yourself is very educational. You will be an SEO pro after a couple of these. So if you have the time, I would not hesitate.

In my case I did not have the time - or let's be honest, the patience - to invest what would be 20 plus hours doing this manually and not really understanding what I was looking for. At the time I was a lawn sprinkler installer looking to optimize my company webpage and knew nothing about SEO, except that it was too expensive for me to hire someone else to do it they called their SEO To Go package that reviewed my site for all 140 SEO factors and provided plain English instructions to fix every aspect of it. I did most of them and hit number two on Google.

Here's my dirty little secret... Realizing this was much easier than breaking my back in irrigation, I picked up a couple local shops as SEO customers, ordered reports for those sites, followed the directions and my SEO business was born. I no longer need their help, but it made for some easy success when I needed it most.

Knowing the secret recipe is the foolproof answer to DIY SEO. Once you have the secret recipe it's easier than you ever thought possible and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank with the money you saved.

On Page SEO Mistakes

2010-05-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

This section refers to SEO mistakes made on your actual website.

1. Not Targeting 1 Keyword Per Page
This is the most important facet of on page SEO yet so many people are either unaware of its importance or forget to do it. It's heaps easier to target a single keyword per page than to target 10 keywords per page. At the very maximum, you can target 2 keywords, but you should try to keep it to just one. Focusing your efforts on 1 keyword per page will get greater results quicker.

2. No Keyword In URL
The URL of each page should have the keyword you are targeting for that page. If it doesn't, then it's just going to be harder for you to get that page ranking for that target keyword. Fix up your URL if you have to because this is crucial to SEO success.

3. No Keyword in Title Tag
I cannot count the number of pages I've seen that don't have their target keyword in the title tag. Just in case you're not aware, the title tag is what appears at the top of your browser when you're on a webpage. This is the one mistake I see the most because it is so obvious when I visit a webpage. It's surprising how many home pages of websites have the word "Home" in their title tags. You MUST have the target keyword in your title tag because it will make a huge difference to your SEO efforts. This is certainly one of the top 10 SEO mistakes out there today.

4. Bad Use of Meta Description and Meta Keywords
The most common mistake regarding meta description is people not using it at all. Just in case you weren't aware, the meta description is a short description which is used to describe your website in search engine result listings. You should use it to encourage people to visit your website when they find you on the search engines. It also doesn't hurt to have your target keyword there.

Regarding meta keywords, the most common mistake people commit is putting too many keywords there. You should limit yourself to a maximum of 5 to 8 keywords because putting more will only get you punished by the search engines for keyword spamming.

5. Bad Keyword Density
Unfortunately, many people are still committing this grave SEO mistake. Some are mentioning their target keyword as much as possible on their webpage to try and get it to rank highly. It used to work in the early days on the Web when engines were not intelligent, but these days it can only result in your websites getting penalized or even banned.

On the other hand, there are also people who do not use their keyword enough on their webpages. This is equally bad because it means that the search engines have no idea as to what keyword your webpage is trying to rank highly for.

The goal should be a keyword density of 3% which is not too much and just enough for good SEO.

Off Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made outside your website, but which hamper your website's ability to rank highly on the search engines.

6. Bad Keyword Research
Keyword research is the basis for SEO success. If you target keywords with a high level of competition, then your ability to rank highly and get traffic will be diminished in the short term. On the other hand, you should not simply target keywords because of low competition because there may not be enough people searching for that keyword. It's all about finding a balance between the number of searches and the number of websites competing for that keyword. Using tools such as the Google Keyword Tool can help you achieve that objective.

7. No Keyword in Anchor Text
Off page SEO is all about building backlinks aka links back to your website. Nevertheless, while doing that, most people forget to put their keywords in the anchor text of the backlink. For example, if "computer repairs" was the primary keyword of your website, then you want to be sure that computer repairs is in the anchor text, just like in the following:

"Visit the best computer repairs service in town."

Please note that the above is just an example.

This must be one of the most simple top 10 SEO mistakes committed today.

8. No Anchor Text Variety
While it's great to use your target keyword in the anchor text of your backlinks, you must also mix and match with other keywords. In other words, if you use the same keywords in the anchor text of 100 links, then the search engines will regard this as suspicious and will penalize your website. For this reason, you should find about 5 other related keywords and use them in your anchor text too. The greater the variety, the better your SEO results will be.

9. No Link Source Variety
There are plenty of ways to get backlinks. One of the top 10 SEO mistakes committed, however, is using only a minimal number of link sources. For example, some people simply use article marketing to get their backlinks. Others just use social media. You need to be using a variety of sources to get your backlinks. The reason why this is the case is that the more sources you utilize, the more natural the backlinks will appear to the search engines, and the higher your site will rank.

10. No Natural Build Up of Links
Building on the previous mistake, you have to make sure that the number of backlinks your website gets takes place in a natural, human-like manner. For instance, getting 300 links in just a single week will certainly grab the attention of the search engines and as a result, they will punish your website accordingly. However, if you get 300 links over the course of a month, then that will appear to be more natural and they will more likely than not reward you.

Fix Them and Then Avoid Them

I suggest that you go through all of your websites and see whether they are committing the SEO mistakes covered in this post. After correcting them, it's all about avoiding these common SEO mistakes so that your websites get the rankings and traffic they deserve.

Reverse SEO Restoring Online Reputations

2010-04-30T05:51:00.001-07:00

Reverse SEO fits seamlessly within the context of your online reputation management (ORM) program. It is the quickest, most effective solution for dealing with bad press that has surfaced on the search engines about you or your company. By pushing negative listings from the front page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, reverse SEO shields you from the damaging commentary of others.

Negative publicity online has become one of the most frustrating challenges for companies. It is typically anonymous. Names are often unattached to forum threads, blog posts, and even entire websites. Therefore, it is difficult to track and address the source of the complaint. Moreover, the growing popularity of social networking platforms has made it easier than ever for anyone with a mild grievance to give weight to their grudge. If you or your company have been the target of bad press online, it may be time to launch a reverse SEO campaign.

In this article, we'll clarify how negative publicity gains traction within the search engines, and how it can lead to a public relations nightmare. We'll also provide a working blueprint for executing a reverse SEO campaign and controlling the damage.

Controlling Bad Publicity With Reverse Search Engine Optimization

To appreciate why reverse SEO is effective, you should understand how negative press takes root within the top search listings in the first place. Google, Yahoo, and Bing rank pages based on a large number of criteria. If a website and its individual pages satisfy the most important of those criteria, those pages will rank well.

A lot of the bad press that targets companies (possibly even yours) is placed on websites that meet key ranking parameters in the search algorithms. That means the negative publicity can climb into the top positions and gain exposure. When people search for you or your company, they'll see the bad press. That damages your reputation.

Reverse search engine optimization is an ORM strategy that pushes negative publicity from the top search positions. By moving the bad press off the first page of listings, reverse SEO limits its exposure and stifles its impact.

Ingredients For An Effective Reverse SEO Campaign

Like search engine marketing, reverse SEO uses a methodical, multi-pronged approach to protect your online reputation. The first step is to identify the sites and pages that contain negative publicity about your company and that are ranking for important keywords. Those keywords might include your name, that of your company, or key employees.

The second step of reverse SEO is to analyze those sites and pages for their respective ranking authority. That will help you determine the effort and tools you'll need to use in order to move them from the first page of listings within Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A negative PR blitz that is spreading across social networking sites is more difficult to overcome than a single blog post that is on a non-authoritative domain.

The third step is to gather the necessary tools and execute your reverse SEO campaign. Such tools might include optimized press releases, a new network of competing sites and blogs, social media profiles, and a social bookmarking program. Reverse SEO may also include heavy content syndication to build high-quality links. A search engine marketing specialist will have these tools at their disposal.

Reverse SEO Begins Before Negative Press Emerges

The best time to launch a reverse SEO campaign is before bad publicity appears in the search engines. This is due to the way that the pages link. A page will rank well within the search engines if there are enough thematic links pointing toward it. However, once it ranks, it will gain exposure. That exacerbates the problem.

Negative press can spread rapidly as people attach the press to their own blogs, sites, forums, and social media accounts. That creates a growing portfolio of links pointing toward the damaging press, cementing its position in the top listings. It becomes more difficult to address. By launching a reverse SEO campaign upfront, you can prevent the negative publicity from gaining exposure in the first place.

Protect Your Online Reputation With Reverse SEO

Reverse SEO should play a key role in your online reputation management program. It is far too easy for unsatisfied customers, resentful employees, lazy journalists, and malicious competitors to tarnish your name. And when it happens, it is usually done under the cover of anonymity. Anonymity makes the complaint or grievance impossible to address in private.

Launch your reverse SEO campaign now - before trouble strikes and the damage begins to gain momentum in the search engines. In a year's time, you'll be glad you did.

The Google Duplicate Content Penalty

2010-04-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea what it means, and then profess to be experts.

The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google's own words "There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty". This comes directly from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.

That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google's main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google 'duplicate content penalty'.

So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.

As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.

The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty

There is no duplicate content penalty. Google's major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.

Google's customers are not:

1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.

2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.

3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.

4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.

Google's customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.

If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).

So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google's customer.

This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google's criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.

All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as 'duplicate content', and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.

What counts in the long run is which version Google's algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn't it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn't want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?

No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.

You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term 'duplicate content' you are using a term that does not exist in Google's vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!

Your Corporate Identity Stand Where

2010-04-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

Whether you direct a corporation or own an independent operation, your corporate name will set the pace and tone. However, a great business name alone will not guarantee success. Additional key factors to consider include:

--Logo design and corporate identity package--
Since a majority of people are extremely visual, a strongly designed logo can work wonders in establishing your identity. Visual design is a language in and of itself. If you don't have a logo, you are selling yourself short... if you have a poorly designed or unprofessional logo, you could be turning business away.

--Corporate Name "by-line"--
Many corporate names do not describe or even indicate the kind of products or services offered. Examples are corporate brands like J & R Industries or Red Moon. In such instances, a solid by-line can offer added valuable and concise information, lending clout to the name itself.

--Product Names--
Product names are certainly just as important as the names of the businesses that market them. But how can a product name best do its job in grabbing the attention of a customer or client? Some folks figure it's all about choosing a brand that is totally unique and unconventional like Uggs or Spanx. Others believe a descriptive name will do the trick. In the end, a name that engages emotion while providing a hint of description is likely to be the most successful. Go into any store, and you'll come across tons of product names you've never heard of, which means the product itself may be great but the brand is not. Yes, while the names Snickers, Corvette and Popsicle have proven to be tried and true winners, the same cannot be said for Edsel and Titantic.

Here are some points to consider when establishing a name for a product:

--A great name should last.
Years ago, product names were created to appeal to the public long-term. Consistent advertising campaigns turned many brands into household names. Just think of those Brill Cream ad along the highways or those for Timex that proved they "just keep ticking." But then many companies made a decision to put less emphasis on marketing a product name and more emphasis on marketing sales by focusing on price. Soon, one product name was blending with the next, and something was lost. Today, there's a move toward restoring the "personality" in a brand. And that means if you choose a ho-hum name for your product, you're likely to get lost in the shuffle. Develop a brand for your product that can work in multiple cultures for decades to come by telling a "story."

--Know what you want your product to do.
Choosing a great brand does not take place by means of committee. You could gather a roomfull of so-called experts, and have them debate winning names for hours. And in the end, you could well end up with a loser. As you begin the naming process, go out and talk with potential customers to see what they look for in a name product like yours. Do a bit of surveying, and then use that information in conjuction with your own inner sense. What feels right to you? After all, the person who gave birth to an idea is the one who really "knows" the personality.

--Stand out from the competition.
As you develop a name for your product, raise the bar for the whole industry. In other words, don't attempt to fit in with all of your competitor's names. Rather, dare to set a new standard. That's certainly what Apple Computer and Nike did with their products. When you set a new standard, the public will gravitate toward your product because of the motivational experience they believe it can produce.

--Consider your brand to be an evolving metaphor.
People love stories and metaphors because the imagination is engaged when considering imagery, and because stories and metaphors reach deeply into human experience beyond words. The "Cabbage Patch" dolls stirred imagination through the name, since this brand allowed for all kinds of evolution around the birth of these little creatures in a whimsical cabbage patch. The first name for these dolls was "Little People," a name that had nowhere near the metaphorical potential as the eventual name.

--Be sure your brand engages the emotions.
Air Jordans didn't sell because folks were interested in advanced construction of the soles. Rather, every time they thought of Air Jordans, they could picture Michael leaping to make a winning shot. Products help us connect to our dreams, and good product name will

--A great product name is supported by strong reputation and integrity.
Before introducing your product, set an internal standard that will be not only the foundation for this product but all those to come. Levi Jeans have established a high standard that has lasted through decades, giving the name an added boost.

--Don't go for "hip."
A great brand isn't contrived or forced and that means names that seem "cool" or "hip" will seldom be enduring. The public wants value in a product, and they also want value in a name.

How would you promote an enterprise that lacks a defined title or brand

2010-04-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

In considering these questions, it doesn't take long to realize that a business name plays a huge role in letting the world know you exist. A business name is a constant touchstone, connecting your purpose with the public you serve.
Comparing Then to Now...

Naming a business in the year 2007 requires more know-how and awareness than ever before. No longer is it as simple as putting a family name on your office door or store front. Nor can you count on a blend of your first name and service description to do the trick on a business card. Sure, the likes of Henry Ford, Marshall Field and Montgomery Ward, didn't have to invest much thought or money into a unique brand. In their time, few people had the resources or know-how to start their own businesses and if they did, professional identity was considered synonomous with the family or individual that stood behind the company. In other words, naming was a no-brainer. When driving down Main Street in any town across America in past decades, you'd see a bevy of business names like Joe's Plumbing, Gloria's Boutique, McAllister Legal Services or Smith & Sons Jewelers. Back then, little thought or consideration was given to the process of business naming, since it was enough to be descriptive while identifying ownership.

We entered a new millenium, and corporate America was undergoing some big changes. Large companies reorganized, leaving many employees, who thought they had security, suddenly without a future. As giant conglomerates rescued sinking ships from imminent bankruptcy, many companies and corporations spent thousands (and sometimes millions) developing catchy, unique titles and logos to give themselves and their offshoot divisions an edge. And some of those folks facing premature retirement, decided to grab for financial freedom by giving the business world a try. Every day over the past several years, hundreds of small companies are popping up everywhere with hopeful entrepreneurs seeking to outdo growing competition with unique ideas or the best deals. The internet is now a permanent presence as an important means of marketing. With the rapid evolution of the world of business, the process of naming a professional enterprise has become more complex than ever.
So What's Important?
So what's important to consider when naming or renaming a business today? Of course, sight and sound are at the top of the list when it comes to the key ingredients in a successful brand. If a name doesn't look good on signage... or if it's tough to say, spell or remember, there won't be a lot of staying power. Secondly, a name should provide positive or intriguing associations for the greatest percentage of the probable customer base. Just about everyone loves the imagery of a star, so Starbucks couldn't go wrong choosing that word as a primary syllable in their identity. On the other hand, a term like "slimy" or "mad" might be more challenging to integrate into a name. Suggesting a pleasant mood or actively engaging the imagination could be the means to a happy ending. For instance, the moniker of Arizona spa resort, Miraval Life in Balance soothes toward relaxation while Monster.com scares those who are unemployed into action!
Sight, sound and positive association are somewhat obvious components in the process of naming, but there's an often overlooked key ingredient that can break or make a brand silently... the subliminal frequency. Yes, every word in language carries a silent vibration that is generated by the vowels and consonants present in a word pattern or equation. Just like the frequency of a color will unconsciously affect human response, so too, the frequency of a word will influence the human energy field. You may hate the color pink and never wear it, but walk into a pink room and you'll find yourself calmed into a relaxed state... like it or not. In a similar way, you'll recognize a mood of solid responsibility when you see the name IBM... and you'll somehow sense that the Ritz-Carlton is all about luxury and appealing image just by hearing the name. Although subliminal frequencies of language are hidden from the five senses, a professional nameologist can readily determine the most advantageous name vibration for a particular enterprise.
Even the best business name is at the mercy of the person in charge. That means every potential business owner should evaluate his or her name for strength and balance before finalizing the name of the business... and before signing those corporate papers. Determing if you should use your middle name or initial in your business title will give you an edge as you embark on your new venture. And larger corporations would do well to evaluate the name dynamics present for CEO candidates. While the name Enron in itself was poorly structured with regard to its silent sound frequency, the name Ken Lay put a few extra nails in the impending coffin, since this is a moniker that encourages its name bearer toward impetuous action irresponsible thinking.
Finally, in the age of the internet, securing a solid internet presence is imperative. The name you choose, should have .com availability, so that your web address will be easy to find for your many customers and clients. Settling for a .net or .biz address could well have you lurking in the shadows, rather than being center-stage.
Key Ingredients for a Successful Business Name
1. Sight and sound
2. Positive association... and imaginative potential
3. A complementary subliminal influence... by way of the silent language frequency
4. Strength and balance in the name/names of the business owner and/or CEO
5. Availability of a .com internet address

Online reputation management with SEO

2010-04-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

is the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media.he goal is to have people speak about your brand in a positive sense by achieving, maintaining and improving a positive online sentiment about it.

Being mentioned in social media can be a threat if not dealt with correctly, but can also generate great benefits if used the right way. It’s all about buzz and sentiment, and how you manage it."

Online Reputation Management or ORM, (* Brand Reputation Management or BRM in UK) requires more targeted optimization since the goal is to remove negative URLs from the top 1-2 pages of Google result pages.

Here are my tips for ORM:

1. Check if the website pointed to by the URL of the negative article or post has a free article submission link. Create and publish an positive and informative article regarding the ORMed website on this article website. This gives positive feedback to the ORMed website. Add links to the article that point to the ORMed website. Perform off-page optimization / link submissions that point to this article.

2. Push the lower ranked URLs higher by performing link submissions that point to these lower ranked URLs. You are in fact performing SEO for the positive URLs. This will take much of your time since you have several links (about two pages but depends on how far back from Google search results you want the offending links listed) to push higher in Google search results.

3. Use microblogging and social bookmarking sites to push the positive links higher. These sites are indexed faster by major search engines and you will see immediate results in less than an hour.

There are several websites that have more detailed info about Online Reputation Management. You just have to Google it.

What is Online Reputation Management?

It is rare that a successful long standing company does not at some stage have some kind of negative feedback from a competitor who is jealous, a dissatisfied client, a prima-donna who wants to look special or just someone who simply wants to rock the boat. Of course the vast majority of website owners do not have a problem with their reputation.

However, with more and more user- generated content media and social media opportunities, there is the danger that negative comments/posts can find themselves in the top 10 of Google, or even worse, above-the-fold on a search for your company name, individual name, brand/product name or main keywords.

I am a great believer in free speech. However, free speech has its drawbacks. Sometimes negative feedback can get written with little justification or evidence provided. This can be disastrous PR wise, especially for strong brands.

Sometimes, however, negative comments are justified. In this case, a marketing manager will still want the “negative” page on the second page of Google results. It is a bit of a problem for SEO companies to offer this service, as they could be seen as manipulating Google to the detriment of users if there is a real basis for negative comments, and could themselves face a problem with their reputation. “ABAKUS helping the XYZ cowboys to gain reputation!”. This article, however, assumes that the reputation management is justified.

Who Needs Reputation Management?

Anyone in any kind of business needs a reputation management plan, including those who are just beginning their careers.

•Career Development and Reputation Management. Anyone beginning a career or changing jobs can benefit from reputation management. One of the first things a hiring manager does when he or she receives a promising resume is to enter the name of the applicant into a search engine. As a job seeker, you want to make sure that what your potential employer sees on the internet makes the best impression possible. One incriminating photograph or inappropriate blog comment could take you out of the running immediately.

•Brand Reputation. If you’re marketing a product or service, you want to make sure that the information about your product or service floating around on the internet is positive. Consumers regularly use the internet to research purchases and will immediately write off any brand or company that has made a poor name for itself. Even one bad review can turn a consumer off completely.

•Online Crisis Aversion. If you’re running a business, you will likely undergo a crisis at some point or another. The Taco Bell incident mentioned above is a good example. Another example is Jet Blue, the airline that made its passengers sit on a tarmac for the better part of day while waiting out a storm that was tearing through the east coast. There is no doubt that a crisis of some ilk will happen to your company, and you’ll need a stellar reputation management to help you deal with it.

•Anonymous Online Defamation. Online character defamation can be a serious issue for businesses and individuals. The laws surrounding character defamation and free speech are tricky, so if you find that some anonymous person on the internet has created content about you that doesn’t present you in the best light, the quickest and easiest way to deal with it is through reputation management.

•Government Public Relations SEO. Surprisingly, government organizations haven’t been known to use SEO to its fullest potential. Electoral campaigns and international conflicts are but two of the many situations in which officials can benefit from government online PR and reputation management by making sure that internet users find positive information when they conduct online searches about public policy, tourism, and conflicts.
It’s clear that the number of people and businesses who could benefit from reputation management is immense. And both proactive and reactive reputation management are key.

What Can SEO 1 Services Do To Help?

Reputation management is an involved process, and one that you simply can’t afford to tackle on your own or leave to someone who doesn’t know how to do it well. Bad press can ruin your business, so it’s worth the time and effort to enlist the aid of someone who can do reputation management right the first time.

If the information that needs to be buried is minimal, customers can expect to see the positive effects of reputation management within a few months. For businesses that have experienced a large amount of damaging press, the process can take as long as a year. This means that you simply can’t afford to wait to start your reputation management campaign.

Why we need HTTP Compression

2010-03-21T05:41:00.000-07:00

HTTP compression isn't something you put in your code. Instead, check with your sys admin to see if it's installed (or can be) on the server that's dishing out your site's pages.
What does it do? HTTP compression accelerates the transmission of pages from server to surfer. It allows for server-side HTML compression so server apps (like Apache or Microsoft Web Server) can compress the source code of your page before sending it out over the wires.

HTML compression works on almost every browser these days, but the code is savvy enough to dish out un-compressed files to unsupported browsers. Compression alone improves the download size of pages by up to 300%. (Exclamation mark.)
Other nuggets in the HTTP compression nougat include persistent connections (between server and client) and pipelining (which allows the server to rattle off files without waiting for a client's "uh-huh, got that one, next please" response). Crackin' good stuff, all of it. The only negative thing we can say about HTTP compression is that it's probably already installed on your server, seeing how it's well-adopted now (for obvious reasons). Still, if you suspect your hosting company is slow-with-the-program, it couldn't hurt to ask.

Link Prefetching

Link prefetching is a feature in some browsers which makes good thrift of a browser's idle time by downloading files that aren't on the current page but might be needed a page or two down the road. Don't worry - link prefetching doesn't slow pages down. The extra downloads don't kick in until after the current page has finished loading and the browser doesn't have any pressing matters to attend to.
If you had a photo gallery, for example, with Previous and Next navigation links by each picture, you could add a prefetch link tags pointing to both of those destinations. That way, while the user is staring at one amazing travel picture, two other pages are downloading in the background. If the user does click either the Previous or Next links, those pages will already have been downloaded, and the content will display instantaneously. More technically speaking, "Guy clicks the link, see, Bada-bing, Bada-boom, it's the next page, already. Aow!"
Link prefetching isn't automatic - it relies on you, the developer, to encode hints as to what files are likely to be needed next. (Browsers aren't prescient, but good webmasters understand a site's traffic flow.) You can encode prefetch hints in either the HTTP header or the page's HTML. There are a number of allowed variations on how to code a prefetch, but a simple HTML link¢ tag with a relation type of "next" is small, easy, and our favorite. Like these:

Cache In

Network (or Proxy) Caching
We previously discussed how browser-side caches store commonly-used images on the users' hard drives, but it's important to note that similar caches exist all alongside the highways and byways of the internet network. These "Network Caches" make websites appear more responsive because information doesn't have to travel nearly as far to reach the user's computer.
Some webmasters are leery of network caches. They worry that remote caches might serve out-of-date versions of their site - an understandable concern, especially for sites like blogs that update frequently. But even with a constantly-updating site, there are images and other pieces of content which don't change all that often. Said content would download a lot faster from a nearby network cache than it would from your server.
Thankfully, you can get a site "dialed in" pretty nicely with just a basic knowledge of cache-controls. You can force certain elements to get cached days on end while keeping other elements from being stored at all. META tags in your document won't cut it. You'll need to configure some HTTP settings to make caching really work for you.
Every Bit Counts
Alrighty. So you've done the big stuff - dropped bit depths on your every PNG, cranked up the HTTP compression, and taken a (metaphorical) weedwhacker to your old, convoluted table layouts. Yet you're still obsessed with how small, how fast, and how modem-user-friendly you can make your site. Ready to jump into some seriously obsessive-complusive optimization?
You know those TV commercials where they zoom in on a supposedly "clean" kitchen counter, only to reveal wee anthropomorphic germ-creatures at play?
Well, you can similarly clean every extraneous detail from a site's layout, and still have some nasty, nasty cruft living in the source code. What's the point of novel-length meta keyword lists and content tags? C'mon, do you still believe that search engines care about that stuff? Not in this millenium. You'll get better search referrals by thinking carefully about the real content on your pages and building an authoritative site that's linked to widely.
Streamlining the head¢er section of unneeded meta keyword/author/description content, and likewise junking giant scripts makes a bigger impact, kilobyte-per-kilobyte, than sacrifices made elsewhere on the page. Having a short head to ¢ to your document ensures the initial chunks of data the user receives contain some "real" content, which gets displayed immediately. That's another notch for "perceived speed" improvements.
Of course, there are plenty of regular body¢ bytes still worth tossing. Start with HTML comments, redundant white space, and returns. Stripping all these invisible items from your source code yields extra kilobytes of space savings on the average.

URL Abbreviation

Ever spot how links on the Yahoo frontdoor are generally just a few characters long? Go to the site and move your mouse over some of the news links near the top. You'll see they all start with http://yahoo.com/s/ and then list a string of six numbers. Links, generally, run on much longer than that, especially if they include redirect codes or CGI variables. Put enough normal links on a page, (viz. the Yahoo frontdoor, again) and a sprinkling of kilobytes (and seconds of download time) is also added to the code.
So what's Yahoo doing with those funny links, anyway? They're abbreviating their URLs, using the mod_rewrite Apache module, so that a link like "/s/882142" redirects to "mysite.com/content/unregistered/News". Implementing this requires getting your hands dirty with some server configuration. Specifically, you need to get mod_rewrite installed and poke around with the srm.conf file. Dirty work for many of us, but the payoff is worth several solid kilobytes on a link-heavy page.

Keyword Effectiveness Index

2010-03-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) compares the Count result (number of times a keyword has appeared in data) with the number of competing web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are most effective for your campaign.
In a nutshell: Look for the keywords near the top. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. Which means you have a better chance of getting to the top.
The article below is a much more detailed look at the KEI and why we have decided to use it.

DETAILED EXPLANATION
The KEI is a measure of how effective a keyword is for your web site. The derivation of the formula for KEI is based on three axioms:

1) The KEI for a keyword should increase if its popularity increases. Popularity is defined as the number of hits coming. This axiom is self-explanatory.

2) The KEI for a keyword should decrease if it becomes more competitive. Competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which a search engine e.g. AltaVista displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search.

Exact match search means that a search engine searches for only those sites, which use the keyword exactly as typed in by the user. It is the equivalent of entering: It Basically used by " "
“beach wedding dresses”

Partial match search means that a search engine also searches for sites which contain the individual words of the keyword but not necessarily occurring together or in the order typed in by the user. It is the equivalent of entering:
beach wedding dresses

Partial match search presents a distorted picture of the competitiveness of a keyword because when you optimize your site for a particular keyword, you are actually competing with sites which have used the keyword exactly as typed in by the user.

So to clarify, competitiveness is defined as the number of sites which a search engine displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search, that is with quotes surrounding the term. Rather than those web sites returned when entering the phrase only partially, that is without quotes.

Note: When you select KEI Analysis, quotes will be added temporarily to each of your search terms for the purposes of the search.

3) If a keyword becomes more popular and more competitive at the same time such that the ratio between its popularity and competitiveness remains the same, its KEI should increase. The rationale behind this axiom requires a more detailed explanation. The best way to do this is to take an example:
Suppose the popularity of a keyword is 4 and AltaVista displays 100 sites for that keyword. Then the ratio between popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 4/100 = 0.04.
Suppose that both the popularity and the competitiveness of the keyword increases. Assume that the popularity increases to 40 and AltaVista now displays 1000 sites for that keyword. Then the ratio between popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 40/1000 = 0.04.

Hence, the keyword has the same ratio between popularity and competitiveness as before. However, as is obvious, the keyword would be far more attractive in the second case. If the popularity is only 4, there's hardly any point in spending time trying to optimize your site for it even though you have a bigger chance of ending up in the top 30 since there are only 100 sites which are competing for a top 30 position. Each hit is no doubt important, but from a cost-benefit angle, the keyword is hardly a good choice. However, when the popularity increases to 40, the keyword becomes more attractive even though its competitiveness increases. Although it is now that much more difficult to get a top 30 ranking, spending time in trying to do so is worthwhile from the cost benefit viewpoint.
A good KEI must satisfy all the 3 axioms. Let P denote the popularity of the keyword and C the competitiveness.
The formula that we have chosen is KEI = (P^2/C), i.e. KEI is the square of the popularity of the keyword and divided by its competitiveness. This formula satisfies all the 3 axioms:

i) If P increases, P^2 increases and hence KEI increases. Hence, Axiom 1 is satisfied.
ii) If C increases, KEI decreases and hence, Axiom 2 is satisfied.
iii) If P and C both increase such that P/C is the same as before, KEI increases since KEI can be written as
KEI = (P^2/C) = (P/C * P). Since P/C remains the same, and P increases, KEI must increase. Hence, Axiom 3 is satisfied.
Note that the formula for KEI is not unique. In fact, this is one of the nice things about the KEI. If, instead of using 2, you use any power of P greater than 1, the resultant formula will also satisfy the 3 axioms. For example, (P^1.5/C) and (P^3/C) both satisfy the 3 axioms. The exact power of P that you choose depends on how much emphasis you want to give to the popularity of a keyword viz-a-viz its competitiveness. Higher the power of P in the formula, higher will be the emphasis on popularity. If you are very confident about your search engine positioning skills, choose a higher value for the power of P. If you are not that confident about your search engine positioning skills, choose a lower value for the power of P (but the power should still be more than 1). Thus, the KEI can be adapted to your skill level! Feeling confused as to which power you should choose? Stick to 2. It maintains a nice balance between both popularity and competitiveness.

Why Ping is necessary

2010-02-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

The last six months has seen a massive rise in content theft blogs and spam blogs, and there’s one thing these blogs usually have in common, and that’s the whole “Blog and Ping” thing, but if you don’t know what Blog and Ping is, don’t feel bad, because most people don’t.
But before I start a word of advice: don’t do it. Knowing and understanding your enemy is important in formulating ways of overcoming and defeating them. People who create these blogs are leeches who deserve nothing less than being banned from the search engines they so desperately seek to be included in.

So what is Blog and Ping?
I’ll give a short answer and a long answer because Blog and Ping comes in a few different flavours.
The Short Answer: Blog and Ping is a online marketing term applied to a system that utilizes blogs and pings to deliver content and/ or sites for indexing in search engines with the ultimate aim of profit.
But that doesn’t really explain a lot, because basically that’s what blogs already do.
Background
For those of you too young or who never got into writing more traditional web pages, basically getting your webpage into Google, Yahoo or other search engines has always been somewhat difficult. The time it takes for your static web site to be indexed by Yahoo for example after you submit it to them without taking up the paying option is around 6 weeks, and sometimes longer. Blogs changed the rules of indexing because where as you use to have to wait for the search engines to index you, all of a sudden bloggers could wave a big red flag with the words “I’m over here” written on it and the search engines would come. Pinging a central server such as Weblogs.com meant that a central list was available of blogs that were posting at a given point in time, and the search engine spiders then followed the links on these lists and bingo: your blog gets indexed.
The vultures circle
When your on a good thing, people notice, and the vultures started to notice blogs getting a really good run in search engines, and they pretty quickly worked out why….introducing Blog and Ping.
Flavours of Blog and Ping
Blog and Ping comes in different flavours and variations to the theme. Each Blog and Ping promoter has a different sales pitch that also states that their flavour is the best. The commonality to all of them is that they involve pinging sites such as Weblogs.com as a means to deliver the search engine spiders to a blog. But this is where things get different.
Real blogs, stolen content
One strain of blog and ping promotes blogs as being a great way to make money from Adsense and affiliate programs with scripts that steal content from other blogs and repost it in an attempt to create a legitimate looking site that gets traffic from search engines.
Michelle Timothy’s RSStoBlog.com is a leading pusher of this flavour of Blog and Ping. To quote Ms Timothy:

” Imagine for a minute that you had a tireless assistant that worked hard night and day finding fresh, relevant content for you to post to your blog. Now also imagine that this tireless assistant not only finds this relevant, keyword specific content for you but also posts it to your blog at exactly the times you want it posted … and they do this day in and day out, until you beg them to stop!”

I’ve not provided a link to the site, but by all means cut and paste the URL into your browser, because the people using it are stupid enough to give testimonials as well. Their example WordPress blog also includes a stolen story to the Blog Herald as well.
Spam blogs
I’ve split spam blogs into a separate category because the stolen content blogs can in reality function and look like real blogs if they are done properly, and many people would be unable to tell the difference. Spam blogs on the other hand stand out like a sore thumb, and these are another flavour of Blog and Ping. The theory with these sites is essentially a new form of link farms, in that they are never really created for viewing by the general public, but as a way for the search engines to discover other sites, and to reward those sites for multiple links. A three step process: the search engines spider finds your spam blog ping at Weblogs.com, follows it back to the blog, then discovered links to static web pages and then goes through to index them. The difficult thing of course is without content the search engine spiders won’t visit, so these sites create all sorts of rubbish as content, often with keywords scattered throughout posts, to assist the spider going onto index the money making static web site.
There are a number of sites promoting this, and each one usually has a slight variation on this theme. BloggingEqualizer.com states the following on their method:

The technique consists of 4 steps:
1. Build a search engine “spider trap” by creating a free blog on Blogger.com (they can’t resist freshly updated content).
2. Grab a free account at MyYahoo.com.
3. Post links to the Web pages you want spidered inside your blog.
4. Then, just call the search engine spiders to dinner by sending (or “pinging”), with the click of a button, the blog to your MyYahoo account.

Sites like Instantblogandping.com promotes a version which involves automatically reposting your own static webpages to Blogger with links back to their source.
Is there money to be made in Blog and Ping?
Yes. The same way as there is money to be made in Amway, because Blog and Ping is really just another variation on the old multi level marketing theme without as many circles on a whiteboard; the only people who make money are the promoters and the people at the very top of the pyramid.
First and foremost the promoters are most likely raking it in. Most of these programs/ scripts are on the market for between $100 and $500 USD, and guess what: they wouldn’t be offering them if there weren’t thousands of suckers out there who’d fall for the slick marketing spiel and promises of automated riches and happily put their hands into their pockets to buy them. They say there is a market for everything, and with the internet being so large and with so many people using it this also holds true for Blog and Ping programs.
Some of the earlier users would have made some money out of Blog and Ping as well, in around the middle of last year when spam blogs were still relatively unknown and those using Blog and Ping techniques would have been few and far between. Today, with literally millions of spam and content theft blogs out there it would be nearly impossible for anyone to even earn enough money back to cover the cost of Blog and Ping package they’ve bought if they are looking to make money off their blog.
In terms of SEO strategies the honest to god truth today is that if you’re looking only to get your static site indexed into one of the big search engines Blog and Ping actually does work, but only in the same way that a few text links from a few decent blogs would deliver the same thing, and you’ll pay a lot less for a proper text link from say here at the Blog Herald then you’ll pay for most of these programs.
The end is nigh
Already some in the SEO industry are saying that Blog and Ping is dead due to the massive increase in users, content theft sites and spam blogs. If you’re getting any benefit out of Blog and Ping now, you won’t be for much longer because already some search engines are talking about excluding your sites.
Is there any good in Blog and Ping
Yes, but in the same way that there is good in porn, because the pursuit of money often drives technological change. Services such as reblog have potential to be used for real meta-blogging in the same way you can set up a link blog at Bloglines today. The challenges presented by people using Blog and Ping strategies will force search engines and others to find new ways of filtering the rubbish out and that will be a good thing for the blogosphere.
Note to Google and the Blogger team: sooner rather than later please.

How to recover virus infected site which is banned by Google

2010-02-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

The number of sites affected by malware/badware grew from a handful a week to thousands per week.You can do from Webmaster Tools which provides malware reviews.

If you find that your site is affected by malware, either through malware-labeled search results or in the summary for your site in Webmaster Tools just do following step.

View a sample of the dangerous URLs on your site in Webmaster Tools.
Make any necessary changes to your site according to StopBadware.org's Security tips.
New: Request a malware review from Google For evaluate your site.
New: Check the status of your review.

If Google feel the site is still harmful, then Google will provide an updated list of remaining dangerous URLs
If Google determined the site to be clean, you can expect removal of malware messages in the near future (usually within 24 hours).

We encourage all webmasters to become familiar with Stopbadware's malware prevention tips. If you have additional questions, please review this documentation or post to the discussion group. We hope you find this new feature in Webmaster Tools useful in discovering and fixing any malware-related problems, and thanks for your diligence for awareness and prevention of malware.

What is the Google Dance?

2010-02-12T23:27:00.000-08:00

Approximately once a month, Google update their index by recalculating the Pageranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google dance.
Because of the nature of Page Rank, the calculations need to be performed about 40 times and, because the index is so large, the calculations take several days to complete. During this period, the search results fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute. It is because of these fluctuations that the term, Google Dance, was coined. The dance usually takes place sometime during the last third of each month.
Google has two other servers that can be used for searching. The search results on them also change during the monthly update and they are part of the Google dance.
For the rest of the month, fluctuations sometimes occur in the search results, but they should not be confused with the actual dance. They are due to Google's fresh crawl and to what is known "Everflux".

Google has two other searchable servers apart from www.google.com. They are www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Most of the time, the results on all 3 servers are the same, but during the dance, they are different.
For most of the dance, the rankings that can be seen on www2 and www3 are the new rankings that will transfer to www when the dance is over. Even though the calculations are done about 40 times, the final rankings can be seen from very early on. This is because, during the first few iterations, the calculated figures merge to being close to their final figures. You can see this with the Pagerank Calculator by checking the Data box (top left) and performing some calculations. After the first few iterations the search results on www2 and www3 may still change, but only slightly.
During the dance, the results from www2 and www3 will sometimes show on the www server, but only briefly. Also, new results on www2 and www3 can disappear for short periods. At the end of the dance, the results on www will match those on www2 and www3.
This Google Dance Tool allows you to check your rankings on www, www2 and www3 and on all of data centers simultaneously.

Google currently has 12 data centers, any one of which can provide the Toolbar PageRank of any page. As the dance progresses, these data centers are updated one by one. Before the dance begins, they all return the same, current PageRank value for a given page, but during the dance they are updated, one by one, to the new PageRank value. Checking each of the centers during the dance reveals the new PageRank values as they gradually spread through the centers. If the PageRank isn't going to change, the centers show the same values throughout, of course.
Querying the data centers
For this, it is necessary to have the Google Toolbar installed and the PageRank indicator on. Every time a page is received by the browser, the Toolbar requests its PageRank from one of Google's data centers. The information is returned as a one-line text file and stored in the Temporary Internet Files folder.
The Toolbar's request URL includes the URL of the page that it wants the PageRank for (the target page), and a checksum that matches that URL. Of course, the checksum must match the target page's URL.
A fat URL for a typical Toolbar request (all in one line):-
http://216.239.33.102/search
?client=navclient-auto
&ch=5150615727
&features=Rank:FVN
&q=info:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eexampledomain%2Ecom%2F
If you copy and paste that fat URL into your browser, you will get Google's "forbidden" page back. That's because the target page and checksum don't match - it's just an example of the request URL.
Notice that the target page is in escaped format - some of the characters are represented by hexadecimal codes (e.g. %2F).
To get the new PageRank for a particular page, you need to make the same request that the Toolbar makes for it. I.e. you need the fat URL that the Toolbar uses. And you need to request the PageRank from all of Google's data centers. The method is a bit long-winded but it works. Here's how to do it:-

Use your browser to browse to the page. This makes sure that the page and the Toolbar's PageRank request are in your Temporary Internet Files folder. You only need to do this once - not every time.

Open the index.dat file from the Temporary Internet Files folder into a text editor, and perform a search in it for the target page. You'll find the entire fat URL, similar to the one above, for the Toolbar's PageRank request. NOTE: Because the target page is escaped in the fat URL, search only for an unescaped part; e.g. "exampledomain".

When you've found the fat URL, copy and paste it into your browser's address box and press Return or click Go. If the page is in Google's directory, the returned line includes the directory path. The last element in the first part of the line is the Toolbar PageRank value for the target page. To see the page's new PageRank spread across the centers during the dance, use the same fat URL, but replace the IP address with each of the data centers. This is also a good way to see the progress of the dance in general.
Data centers

216.239.33.100	:: www-ex.google.com
216.239.35.100	:: www-sj.google.com :: currently offline
216.239.37.100	:: www-va.google.com
216.239.39.100	:: www-dc.google.com
216.239.41.100	:: www-fi.google.com
216.239.51.100	:: www-ab.google.com
216.239.53.100	:: www-in.google.com
216.239.55.100	:: www-zu.google.com
216.239.57.100	:: www-cw.google.com
216.239.59.100	:: www-gv.google.com
66.102.11.100	:: www-kr.google.com
66.102.7.100	:: www-mc.google.com

TIP: If you want to check the same pages during future dances, save the fat URLs into a text document so that you don't need to go through the process of finding them in the Temporary Internet Files folder each time.

Google Dance - The Index Update of the Google Search Engine

2010-02-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

The name "Google Dance" has often been used to describe the index update of the Google search engine. Google's index update occurred on average once per month. During an index update there was significant movement in search results and Google showed new backward links for pages. However, in mid-2003 Google started to update it's index continuously. It appears that, still, there has to be an update of the complete index once in a while and during this time new backward links are shown. But, because of the continuous update, the effects on search results seem to be rather insignificant.
We will keep this site up running because it provides some information beyond the Google Dance. But there will no longer be a monitoring of updated data centers during a "Dance".
The Technical Background of the Google Dance
The Google search engine pulls its results from more than 10,000 servers which are simple Linux PCs that are used by Google for reasons of cost. Naturally, an index update cannot be proceeded on all those servers at the same time. One server after the other has to be updated with the new index.
Many webmasters think that, during the Google Dance, Google is in some way able to control if a server with the new index or a server with an old index responds to a search query. But, since Google's index is inverse, this would be very complicated. As we will show below, there is no such control within the system. In fact, the reason for the Google Dance is Google's way of using the Domain Name System (DNS).
Google Dance and DNS
Not only Google's index is spread over more than 10,000 servers, but also these servers are, as of now, placed in 13 different data centers. These data centers are mainly located in the US (i.e. Santa Clara, California and Herndon, Virginia) and in Dublin, Ireland.
In order to direct traffic to all these data centers, Google could thoeretically record all queries centrally and then send them to the data centers. But this would obviously be inefficient. In fact, each data center has its own IP address (numerical address on the internet) and the way these IP addresses are accessed is managed by the Domain Name System.
Basically, the DNS works like this: On the Internet, data transfers always take place in-between IP addresses. The information about which domain resolves to which IP address is provided by the name servers of the DNS. When a user enters a domain into his browser, a locally configured name server gets him the IP address for that domain by contacting the name server which is responsible for that domain. (The DNS is structured hierarchically. Illustrating the whole process would go beyond the scope of this paper.) The IP address is then cached by the name server, so that it is not necessary to contact the responsible name server each time a connection is built up to a domain.
The records for a domain at the responsible name server constitute for how long the record may be cached by a caching name server. This is the Time To Live (TTL) of a domain. As soon as the TTL expires, the caching name server has to fetch the record for a domain again from the responsible name server. Quite often, the TTL is set to one or more days. In contrast, the Time To Live of the domain www.google.com is only five minutes. So, a name server may only cache Google's IP address for five minutes and has then to look up the IP address again.
Each time, Google's name server is contacted, it sends back the IP address of only one data center. In this way, Google queries are always directed to different data centers by changing DNS records. On the one hand, the DNS records may be based on the load of the single data centers. In this way, Google would conduct a simple form of load balancing by its use of the DNS. On the other hand, the geographical location of a caching name server may influence how often it receives the single data centers' IP addresses. So, the distance for data transmissions can be reduced.
How data centers, DNS and Google Dance are related, is easily answered. During the Google Dance, the data centers do not receive the new index at the same time. In fact, the new index is transferred to one data center after the other. When a user queries Google during the Google Dance, he may get the results from a data center which still has the old index at one point im time and from a data center which has the new index a few minutes later. From the users perspective, the index update took place within some minutes. But of course, this procedure may reverse, so that Google switches seemingly between the old and the new index.
Finally, it shall be noted that Google did the DNS load balancing by themselves until September 2003. Since then, they use the services and, hence, the name servers of Akamai Technologies, Inc.
IP Addresses and Domains of Google's Data Centers
The progression of a Google Dance could basically be watched by querying the IP addresses of Google's data centers. But queries on the IP addresses are normally redirected to www.google.com. However, Google has domains which resolve to the single data centers' IP addresses. These domains as well as their IP addresses are shown in the following list.
Domain IP-Adresse
www-ex.google.com 216.239.33.100
www-sj.google.com 216.239.35.100
www-va.google.com 216.239.37.100
www-dc.google.com 216.239.39.100
www-ab.google.com 216.239.51.100
www-in.google.com 216.239.53.100
www-zu.google.com 216.239.55.100
www-cw.google.com 216.239.57.100
www-fi.google.com 216.239.41.100
www-gv.google.com 216.239.59.100
www-kr.google.com 66.102.11.100
www-mc.google.com 66.102.7.100
www-lm.google.com 66.102.9.100
Those that keep an eye on Google's index updates often think that the Google Dance is over, when they see the new index at www.google.com or when they don't see the old index at www.google.com for some time. In fact, the update is not finished until all the domains listed above provide results from the new index.
The index updates at the single data centers seem to happen at one point in time. As soon as one data center shows results from the new index, it won't switch back to the old index. This happens most likely because the index is redundant at each data center and at first, only one part of the servers (eventually half of them) is updated. During this period, only the other half of the servers is active and provides search results. As soon as the update of the first half of servers is finished, they become active and provide search results while the other half receives the new index. Thus, from the user's perspective, the update of one data centers happens at one point in time.
Finally, it shall be noted that the access to the single data centers is generally controlled by the DNS only, but sometimes queries are redirected. However, this is easy to detect: When for a query at one of the domains listed above, the links to Google's cache do not comply with the IP address that belongs to the domain, then the query is redirected. If this happens, Google inhibits - for whatever reason - the access to one data center.
The Google Dance Test Domains www2 and www3
The beginning of a Google Dance can always be watched at the test domains www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Those domains normally have stable DNS records which make the domains resolve to only one (often the same) IP address. Before the Google Dance begins, at least one of the test domains is assigned the IP address of the data center that receives the new index first.
Building up a completely new index once per month can cause quite some trouble. After all, Google has to spider some billion documents an then to process many TeraBytes of data. Therefore, testing the new index is inevitable. Of course, the folks at Google don't need the test domains themselves. Most certainly, they have many options to check a new index internally, but they do not have a lot of time to conduct the tests.
So, the reason for having www2 and www3 is rather to show the new index to webmasters which are interested in their upcoming rankings. Many of these webmasters discuss the new index at the Google forums out on the web. These discussions can be observed by Google employees. At that time, the general public cannot see the new index yet, because the DNS records for www.google.com normally do not point to the IP address of the data center that is updated first when the update begins.
As soon as Google's test community of forums members does not find any severe malfunctions caused by the new index, Google's DNS records are ready to make www.google.com resolve the the data center that is updated first. This is the time when the Google Dance begins. But if severe malfunctions become obvious during this test phase, there is still the possibility to cancel the update at the other data centers. The domain www.google.com would not resolve to the data center which has the flawed index and the general public could not take any notice about it. In this case, the index could be rebuilt or the web could be spidered again.
So, the search results which are to be seen on www2.google.com and www3.google.com will always appear on www.google.com later on, as long as there is a regular index update. However, there may be minor fluctuations. On the one hand, the index at one data center never absolutely equals the index at another data center. We can easily check this by watching the number of results for the same query at the data center domains listed above, which often differ from each other. On the other hand, it is often assumed that the iterative PageRank calculation is not finished yet, when the Google Dance begins so that preliminary values exert influence on rankings at that point in time.
The New PageRank Values during the Google Dance
Most webmasters are interested in ranking changes for their website during the Google Dance. But, besides that, many also want to know about their new PageRank values. Normally, the Google Toolbar fetches the PageRank values from the data center that is specified by its IP address in the actual DNS record for www.google.com. Hence, when the Google Dance begins, the Toolbar usually displays the old PageRank values.
Google submits PageRank values in simple text files to the Toolbar. In former times, this happened via XML. The switch to text files occured in August 2002. The PageRank files can be requested directly from the domain www.google.com. Basically, the URLs for those files look like follows (without line breaks):
http://www.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&
ch=0123456789&features=Rank&q=info:http://www.domain.com/
There is only one line of text in the PageRank files. The last cipher in this line is PageRank.
The parameters incorporated in the above shown URL are inevitable for the display of the PageRank files in a browser. The value "navclient-auto" for the parameter "client" identifies the Toolbar. Via the parameter "q" the URL is submitted. The value "Rank" for the parameter "features" determines that the PageRank files are requested. If it is omitted, Google's servers still transmit XML files. The parameter "ch" transfers a checksum for the URL to Google, whereby this checksum can only change when the Toolbar version is updated by Google.
The PageRank files that are requested by the Google Toolbar are cached by the Internet Explorer. So, their URLs and the checksums can simply been found out by having a look at the folder Temporary Internet Files. Knowing the checksums of your URLs, you can view the PageRank files in your browser. Since the PageRank files are kept in the browser cache and, thus, are clearly visible, and as long as requests are not automated, watching the PageRank files in a browser should not be a violation of Google's Terms of Service. However, you should be cautious. The Toolbar submits its own User-Agent to Google. It is:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; GoogleToolbar 1.1.60-deleon; OS SE 4.10)
1.1.60-deleon is a Toolbar version which may of course change. OS is the operating system that you have installed. So, Google is able to identify requests by browsers, if they do not go out via a proxy and if the User-Agent is not modified accordingly.
Now, let's see how we can get the new PageRank values. Taking a look at IE's cache, you will notice that the PageRank files are not requested from the domain www.google.com but from IP addresses like 216.239.33.102. Additionally, the PageRank files' URLs often contain a parameter "failedip" that is set to values like "216.239.35.102;1111" (Its function is not absolutely clear). However, it is pretty easy to get the new PageRank values. Simply modify the IP addresses in the URL so that the request goes to one of the data centers that already has the new index. The necessary information is given above.

Measuring Results

2010-02-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

Is your site generating more leads, higher quality leads, or more sales? What keywords are working? You can look at your server logs and an analytics program to track traffic trends and what keywords lead to conversion.

Outside of traffic another good sign that you are on the right track is if you see more websites asking questions or talking about you. If you start picking up high quality unrequested links you might be near a Tipping Point to where your marketing starts to build on itself.

Search engines follow people, but lag actual market conditions. It may take search engines a while to find all the links poiting at your site and analyze how well your site should rank. Depending on how competitive your marketplace is it may take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple years to establish a strong market position. Rankings can be a moving target as at any point in time

* you are marketing your business
* competitors are marketing their businesses and reinvesting profits into building out their SEO strategy
* search engines may change their relevancy algorithms

Google Analytics Tutorial

2010-02-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

why web analytics is important?
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can start using it in just minutes to gain LASER like focus on what is making you money, and who your REAL customers are!While many people use some type of web analytics package to track site traffic...Most are watching page visits and not much more.

The truth is page visits is a nearly useless piece of data.Think of it this way... RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS - I can visit every page of my site from three different computers and generate a boat load of visits that would show up on the server logs.What you really WANT to be tracking is "UNIQUE VISITORS" not "PAGE VISITS".One person could generate multiple "visits" - but that doesn't help you actually gauge your efforts to create traffic.Additionally you want to be able to see where people are coming from, what they are looking at, where they go after they leave... and if they didn't convert (purchase, or download, or sign up, etc) you'd like to be able to gain some insight as to why!A good web analytics package can also tell you which of your marketing efforts are performing the best.

Do ads with a certain headline result in more sales than another?
Do banner ads placed on site A perform better than site B?

Google gives you all of this... with ease... for free... and that's just the beginning.

What you'll see in Google Analytics' Basic Reports
Some of the standard Google Analytics metrics you'll use everyday...
Absolute Unique Visitors:
The number of unique individuals who've come to your site in a given time period. So, if your cousin comeas to your site 20 times in a month, they still only count as a single unique visitor.

Visits:
The number of times people open your site in their browser.
If your cousin comes to your site 20 times in a month, they count as 20 visits.

Page Views:
This tells you how many pages of your site are viewed in a given period.
If your cousin come to your site 20 times in a month, viewing 3 pages each time, they count as 60 page views.

Referring Source:
This tells you where your visitors are coming from.
Setting up goals in Google Analytics.
What do you want your site to accomplish?
One of the important features available in Google Analytics is the ability to determine the ROI (return on investment) that your marketing efforts are generating.

To do that you set up GOALS in Google Analytics.
The concept of "goals" often scares people. It's really very simple.

Goals are just things you want your site visitors to do.
Maybe you want them to purchase something.
Or download a white paper.
Or sign up for a site membership.

These things that you want people to do are often times called "conversions".
When a visitor does one they "convert" from a visitor to a customer (or member).

To start tracking goals in Google Analytics all you have to do is tell Google which of your site pages indicate that a goal (or conversion) has been met.

If your goal is for a visitor to buy something this may be the "order confirmation page"

If your goal is a download or sign up form it may be the "Thank you page."

Once you clue Google Analytics into these important events it will automatically start tracking them for you!

Nice huh?
Monetizing your goals Google Analytics.
Determine your ROI
To figure out how much money your site is making, and thus how effective your marketing efforts are... you can assign monetary values to your goals.

If you are selling something ... it's easy.
Each conversion is worth the price of that item.

But what if you're not selling something directly.
what if your goal is just generating leads...people who may one day buy.
How can you assign a value to that goal?

Well lets assume that an average successful sale is worth $800 to you, and you know that about 1 in 10 leads eventually become a paying customer. All you have to do is divide the average sale by the total number of leads, and you get the goal value: $80.$800 / 10 = $80,So each time that goal is met it's worth about $80 to you.

Simple!
Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics.
Now that you have goals in place you can ALSO set up what is called "conversion funnels".

These are really neat. Here's how they work.
You tell Google Analytics of a couple of pages that a visitor must hit in order to reach the goal page.

For instance before anyone can get to the "order confirmation" page they must go through the "billing information" page, and "shipping information" page.

Now that Google Analytics is aware of that it will track this too.
And you can see all sorts of great things like where in that process people drop out.

If 500 people start the check out process but only 3 get past the shipping page... you may want to revisit your shipping page and/or policies to make it easier for your visitors.

Manage PPC from Google adward

2010-02-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for a low-cost, yet highly effective means of advertising your products and services, then Google AdWords may be your answer.

Google AdWords provides a simple way to purchase highly targeted advertising, regardless of your budget. Unlike other sites selling banner ad space and pay-per-ranking, AdWords provides advertisers with highly effective text ads that are displayed with the search results. Studies have shown that highly targeted keyword advertising produces an average of four times the industry standard clickthrough rate.

Google, one of the premier Search Engines, receives over 29 million searches each day. Their popularity most likely stems from the speed and accuracy of their search results. Needless to say, placing your text ad with Google Adwords will be a highly effective way to advertise your products and services.

It is a well-known fact that text ads perform much better than banner ads. What better way to target your audience than through a popular Search Engine? Your potential customer is there for a reason -- they're looking for something. When a Google visitor types in their keywords, they are almost instantly presented with their search results. On the right side of the results are colored text boxes containing targeted advertisements that match their search terms.

When you place your ad with AdWords, you will have the ability to select a list of tightly targeted keywords including all of the following:

Keyword Matching - Shows your ad when a search includes your selected words.

Phrase Matching - Shows your ad when a search includes your selected phrases.

Exact Query Matching - Shows your ad when a search contains your exact keywords and no others.

Negative Keyword Matching - Will not show your ad if a search contains certain words you select.

This unique targeting technique will enable you to create a highly targeted ad campaign and test your ads with a high rate of accuracy. What's more, you can even target your ads to a specific country or language.

The great thing about advertising with Google AdWords is that you will have complete control over your ad and how much you'd like to spend. You can open an account with a credit card with no minimum deposit required. Once you place your ad, it can begin running almost immediately.

Their advertising rates are very reasonable. The amount you spend on your advertising campaign will depend on two factors: (1) the number of times your ad is displayed and (2) the position, one through eight, in which your ad appears.

The advertising rates are as follows:

Position 1 - $15 per thousand ads shown
Position 2 - $12 per thousand ads shown
Position 3 - $10 per thousand ads shown
Position 4 - 8 $8 per thousand ads shown

The position of an ad is determined by how well it is performing. Ads with a higher clickthrough rate will receive a higher position and in turn will cost more.

In order to increase your clickthrough rate and spend less money, try to select keywords and phrases that specifically target the product or service you're offering. Avoid using common words, as these will use up your ad displays very rapidly. Instead, select words that specifically target your product or service. For example, instead of using a general keyword like 'software,' use a keyword that focuses on a specific software such as 'FrontPage 2002.' Or, a little less focused, 'web design software.' In addition, make sure you use your keyword phrase (search term) as the title of your ad. This will increase your clickthrough rate considerably.

When you set up your account with Google, make sure you use a different ad for each search term. Not only will this increase your ad's relevance in the search results, but it will also increase your clickthrough rate.

Once you place your ad, you can easily track your ad's response rate and make adjustments instantly. This is a great, low-cost way to find out which ads are performing the best.

How to reduce PPC campaign costs for your Google PPC Campaign

If a landing page (home page for example) for an Adwords Campaign is not relevant to your ads, then Google will raise the minimum bid amount for those keywords. Thus to keep your costs low, you need to take into account 3 things:
1. Keywords/research that you require for your ad campaign
2. The landing page (home page for example)
3. The Google Adwords Ad
1. The keywords that want to bid on should be relevant to the product/service you are promoting. However it would be advisable to find out what keywords people are using to search for your product/service.

To find out the best performing keywords for your PPC campaign there are many free online
keyword tools, this will help you to build up your keyword list. You want to use the keywords that have good (CTR) Click Through Rates

2. Landing page, ensure that the keywords you use for your PPC campaign are placed between the title tags, heading tags and page content. Include hyperlinks to the landing page from other pages on your website
, ensure you use your PPC campaign keywords as the anchor text for your inbound links. For example: SEO Services

Additionally optimize your hyperlinks with title attributes again use your PPC keywords. Our SEO Company offer this SEO service starting from £200.

3. PPC ad. Always use the keyword/s that your using in your AD.

If you follow these 3 steps, you will surely keep your Cost per click (CPC) low

Hope this helps:

Optimizing a website involves editing content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. To get your site to be seen via the 1st page of Google, then we can help.

Google AdWords provides Internet marketers with a cost effective alternative to banner advertising. If you want to increase your traffic and sales, give AdWord a try -- you'll be glad you did.

For further information, visit Google AdWords

Key factors to combine within the SEO Project Plan

2010-01-11T20:28:00.000-08:00

Domain Name - Short names are easier to remember ! Include short Primary Keywords ! without hyphens were possible.

Domain Extension - .com or .net For the Global Market. Use .co.in for INDIA Country specific traffic

Host Location - If your attracting UK business host in the UK.

URL Names - include relevant keywords - unique to each page.

Robots.txt - A file which permits or denies access to robots or crawlers to areas of your site.

Navigation Structure - Keep it simple.

How Does Article Submission Help?

2010-01-07T06:59:00.000-08:00

Article Submission is an ethical SEO strategy that is generally used to promote a website and also gain a steady flow of quality one way links. It is a powerful technique which involves submitting articles in various article directories to gain quick results. When such articles containing unique content are distributed across the web, they can be viewed by a larger audience. This helps the website gain greater publicity, popularity, and traffic.
How Article Submission Works?
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The first step in this process is to write unique and content rich articles. This can either be done by you or by
writers hired to write articles for you. Once your article is ready, it should be posted in the article directories. This can be done in two ways:

1)Using article submission software – here you will have to buy the article submission software in which you can load all your articles and submit them. The software will automatically submit your articles in the article directories.

2)Hiring professionals for article submission – you can hire professionals who can submit articles for you and save your time that would be spent in doing it yourself

How Does Article Submission Help?

First, it helps you to get quality one way backlinks which helps in increasing your page rank.It brings more targeted traffic to your website, since people clicking on the links in any of your articles are prospective customers already.

Article submission helps you gain more credibility in terms of the information provided through your articles. This is because your articles indicate to readers the knowledge that you possess about the topic being discussed.

Article submission is also a very successful marketing strategy for a website as it provides immediate and effective results.
Links that are generated from such content rich pages are always preferred by search engines.On continuously submitting articles to article directories, it will get a continuous flow of links to your site and this is something that search engines love.

How Should Your Articles Be?
You must ensure that your articles are unique, SEO friendly, and credible. You must try using the best of your keywords more often in your articles as it will make it more keyword rich. Additionally, make sure that your articles do not contain duplicate content and are exclusive, since search engines usually filter out articles or sites that contain duplicate content. Also, it would be a good idea to create several articles over a period of time and keep submitting them to article directories instead on writing only one article and submitting it to a lot of directories. It is also important to know that regardless of the articles you submit online, if their content is not trustworthy, they will not be of any help. Therefore, you must write articles which contain valuable information so that users will be enticed to click on your link which in turn will drive traffic to your website.

How social bookmarking works?

2010-01-07T06:55:00.000-08:00

Though several people have been using social bookmarking to publicize and increase traffic to their website, not many exactly know what this process is, how it works, or what its intended purpose is. Infact, you may be doing social bookmarking on the Internet without knowing that you are actually using it. Therefore, this process is explained below to help you gain a better understanding on it.

Fundamentally, bookmarking is an easy way to remember webpages on the Internet. It helps you in finding stuff that you are looking for much faster and in a shorter period of time as you already know the place where it is located. Similarly, social bookmarking also works the same way, wherein, you can tag any websites so that you can find them easily the next time you browse the Internet.

Additionally, social bookmarking enables you to collaborate with Internet users across the web by sharing your bookmarks of websites with them. It also allows users to save any number of bookmarks to a public website by way of tagging them with keywords that are descriptive.

How social bookmarking works?
In the social bookmarking process, people first find a website or a webpage of their choice which they want to bookmark. This website or webpage is then tagged using descriptive keywords which talk something about it. Tagging a website or a webpage helps the person tagging it and also other Internet users who are on the look out for the same topic or subject that has been tagged. People will also be able to easily find the tagged website or webpage with the help of descriptive keywords. Usually, people have to register with social bookmarking websites for creating social bookmarks for their use.

What social bookmarking does?
Social bookmarking enables the visitors of a website to get linked to other social bookmarking websites or other webpages with the help of a single link. In addition to this, it also helps users to search for websites by using keywords that will show websites ranking at the top based on the given keyword. Social bookmarking also keeps people updated on the latest trends and news. Some social bookmarking websites generate links to sites and articles and also allow their users or visitors to post their comments on these articles.

How does social bookmarking help?
First, social bookmarking helps you drive immediate traffic to your webpages, especially in cases where your site is tagged under popular tags. When you submit your site to social bookmarking sites, people can vote on your page quality, and more the number of people voting on it the more will be the visitor traffic to your website.

Second, social bookmarking also helps people making use of it to store webpages or websites that contain topics of their interest. It also helps them to enrich their knowledge on the subject or topic they have interest in.

Finally, social bookmarking also helps to arrange, search, and present any information easily and efficiently without much trouble.

Video Submission is a new Trend

2010-01-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

One of the most recent trends today in building backlinks and driving traffic to a website is video submission. This process has of late become very popular among the savvy internet marketers as its easy to get started with it. Video submission is a process where you create a video which can be purely text based or containing a power point presentation and sound and then uploading and submitting this video to video submission sites. The video you create can contain a description of your products or service offerings, new launches, or any other matter that is appealing and can drive more traffic to your site.
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The main idea behind video submission is that search engines assign more weightage to pages containing videos. For instance, if you submit a video of your product on Youtube, then when anyone searches for that product on the Internet, the possibility of your video showing in the top results is much higher when compared to not having any video. Additionally, if you put a link pointing to your site in this video or under it, it can benefit you as well as your site. This is because when people watch your video, they see your products or services in it and if they are interested in what they see then they will visit your website to buy what they have seen and liked.

Advantages of Video Submission
Some of the key benefits of the video submission process are:
It helps in getting more traffic to your website.

It helps in building more backlinks for your site.

One video can be submitted to several video submission sites.

You can drive traffic from several video submission sites to which you have submitted your video.

Search engines give more weightage to videos.

How to create a video?
Since video submission is the most happening process to boost traffic to a site, it would be a good idea to start creating a video if you don’t already have one. If you have any text based content with you, it can be converted into a video by you speaking about it or creating a presentation out of it. However, it is important to keep in mind that a video must be interesting enough to be able to capture the attention of your audience and keep them engaged. It can also contain a demonstration of how users can use the product or particular software for their business.

How to gather content for your video?
Once you have chosen the topic you want to create a video on, you can then start talking about it before the video camera. When you put yourself on the video, it adds a more personal touch and builds more credibility. Also, it instills more trust in people and increases the chances of them connecting with you.

You can also create a video that contains the actions people need to take in order place an order for your product or use it. This can be done using a screen capturing software that will record a video of your actions on the computer. By demonstrating your ordering procedure, it will help people know how easy and secure it is to place an order with you. This can benefit you by driving more sales.

Finding your audience
Once you have created your video, you need to upload and submit it to the video submission sites who will allow you to host your video free of cost. You can check out sites like YouTube, AOL Video, Google Video, and many others and sign up to create an account with them. Each of these sites will guide you on hosting your video, assigning keywords to them, putting them under the correct category, etc. The main advantage of hosting your video on these video hosting sites is that you will free up your own disk space and not take up the bandwidth of your web server.

How Advantageous is RSS Feed, from an SEO Perspective

2010-01-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

Backlinks today are an important part of the SEO process because when you build quality backlinks, your website stands a higher chance of getting indexed faster by the search engines. Also, from the long term perspective, it will help in boosting quality traffic to your site.

If you have gained an insight into the SEO world, you would have come across the word “backlinks” several times. For those new to the SEO industry, you might wonder what backlinks are and how essential they are for the success of websites.

In short, a Backlink indicates a link from another site to your website. These are also known as inbound links and their number indicates the popularity of the website. Backlinks are considered as votes by search engines: more the number of votes (backlinks) your website has, and based on the importance of websites linking back to yours, your site is assigned a trust rank.

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Backlinks today are an important part of the SEO process because when you build quality backlinks, your website stands a higher chance of getting indexed faster by the search engines. Also, from the long term perspective, it will help in boosting quality traffic to your site. Apart from this, building backlinks serves your bottom-line of website visibility by improving your page ranking and ultimately your ranking in the search engines.

Additionally, it is not just enough to have lots of backlinks, but, it’s also the quality of backlinks that helps in achieving a better ranking in search engines. When calculating the relevance of a website to a particular keyword, search engines usually take into consideration the number of quality backlinks to that website.
Search engines like Google give a lot of importance to websites that contain more number of quality backlinks and also consider those websites as more relevant when compared to others in search results.

A backlink is considered as a quality link if:

a) It links back to your site with the keyword which you are optimizing for.

b) The website linking back to yours has the same theme as your website – this means that when your website contains an inbound link from another site, and that site has content related to your website, this inbound link will be considered as more relevant to your website. However, if this inbound link comes from a site that is totally unrelated to your site content, then it is considered as a less relevant backlink. Therefore, higher the relevancy of backlinks, the greater will be their quality.

For instance, if you have a website about furniture and you receive an inbound link from another website also containing furniture, then this backlink will be considered more relevant and of higher quality when compared to a backlink from a florist website.

Today, search engines watch out for websites that build quality backlinks slowly over time. Though it is quite easy to maneuver links on webpage's in order to attain a high ranking, it is much tougher to manipulate search engines with inbound links from other sites. This is also one of the reasons for backlinks gaining increased importance in search engine algorithms. Recently, search engines assessment for quality backlinks has become even tougher as there are many webmasters out there who make use of unethical techniques and deceive search engines to attain a higher ranking. These techniques are not only illegitimate but can also lead to your site getting banned.

Lastly, building quality backlinks could be a very time consuming and tedious process requiring a lot of patience, efforts, and also funds. However, it is a crucial step in creating blogs or any website since the quality and relevancy of backlinks can determine the success or failure of the site. Therefore, it is very important that you prioritize this in your SEO activity and hire professional SEO experts to whom you can outsource this task and achieve a better search engine ranking.

How Do Search Engines Work?

2010-01-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already in the database

Search engine indexes the content (text, code) in these documents by adding it to their huge databases and periodically updates this content

Search engine searches its own database when user enters in a search to find related documents (not searching web pages in real-time)

Search engine ranks resulting documents using an algorithm (mathematical formula) that assigns various weights to various ranking factors

Can SEO Exist Beyond Google Personalization?

2009-12-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, Google has been monitoring what you search for when logged into your Google account and in particular, what sites you click on in the SERPs. If you favor particular sites, Google takes note and customizes future searches to show you more results featuring your favorite sites, more often and in higher positions.

For example, if you like t-shirt shopping online and are a regular visitor to Thread less as a result of logged in Google searches, Google would feature pages from Threadless more in the SERPs you see for t-shirt related search queries than would normally be featured in SERPs shown to others for the same search queries. Likewise, pages from Threadless would be pushed higher up the search results than they would normally be.

Why Personalization DOES Impact SEO:

• If everybody sees different SERPs based on their searching patterns, how can you measure a consistent ranking? How can you reach an audience if their search queries are already *rigged* to show your competitor's brand?

• On page optimization and link building will no longer have as much influence on your site's rank for competitive search queries.

• Clients who opt-ín to personalization and visit their own sites may have a false impression that their sites are ranking well in the SERPs and cease or refuse SEO services.

• Clients who opt-ín to personalization and visit their competitor's sites may have a false impression that their sites AREN'T ranking well in the SERPs and blame their SEO.

• Companies / brands with greater traffic have a better chance to gain new business because searchers will see more impressions of snippets to their sites. This creates branding opportunities via snippets.
• Webmasters will start optimizing more for other search engines like Bing where they can have more of an impact on organic results.

• It will become even more difficult to rank for generic keywords and search phrases (as larger brands will tend to dominate based on market search share), meaning long tail search queries will become much more important in an SEO campaign.

• Search spam should start to be filtered out as very few people will be revisiting spammy pages. That should eventually push more relevant, naturally optimized pages higher up the SERPs, particularly those in competitive industries.

• Fresh content will give sites an advantage because new pages are more likely to stand out to searchers in personalized SERPs. Same goes for real-time content generated by Twitter, Facebook etc. Static sites are going to fall to oblivion.

• Audience targeting and snippet relevancy will become more important when optimizing web pages.

• PPC ads will have to try harder to compete with increasingly brand-biased SERPs.

• PPC will become more popular as people find organic SEO too complex and abandon it.

• Personalization should help normally lower ranked sites to get to the top a little faster via loyal customers and visitors.

• Titles, META descriptions and text snippet optimization will become SEO priorities.
• Top SERP performers will fall down the ranks if their snippets and offerings are not competitive enough, allowing lower ranked sites to take over.
• Manually checking your site rankings, or those of your clients with personalization switched on will result in skewed, inaccurate SERPs.

• Rank checking tools like WebPosition will no longer be accurate. Clients will stop asking for ranking reports (hooray!).

• Some think that Google could be using personalization to monitor user-driven search in order to tweak the PageRank algorithm based on what users actually search for.

• Brand new sites targeting competitive search queries have very little chance of appearing in SERPs customized by personalization, even with SEO.
• If you don't rank well now for your target search queries, you might slip further and further off the radar as searchers refine their SERPs by clicking on the higher ranked sites.

• If clicking on SERPs begins to impact what users see, hackers may develop malware etc. that automates SERP clicking.
Convinced that SEO is dead yet? Hold your horses. Let's aim for some perspective here.

Why Personalization DOESN'T Impact SEO:
• Personalization has been in place for some time already - since 2005 in fact.

• The main Google PageRank algorithm still applies, it's just the delivery of the results that has changed.

• Any SERP emphasis is user-driven rather than algorithm driven and personalization changes only relate to search queries closely aligned to your web history.

• Most non-personalized SERPs are not identical these days anyway. There is evidence of changes even based on the same search query on same PC in the same location a few minutes apart. Different datacenters and Everflux between them mean consistently shifting SERPs.

• SEO isn't just about SERP ranking. Think usability, keyword selection, conversion design, branding, social media, online reputation management etc.

Managed Email Marketing including writing and design consultation of emails

2009-12-05T00:09:00.000-08:00

Don't know where to begin with an email marketing campaign? Portal Technologies Park can advise you on best practice. We can also offer as much technical, editorial or marketing help as you require.

Email and the Internet have opened the floodgates for direct marketing. Although we're all sick and tired of deleting hundreds of 'junk' or 'spam' emails that fill up our in-boxes, a carefully targeted and designed email marketing campaign is totally different.

To start with, you should only send emails to people who've expressed an interest in receiving them from you. So you can send potential clients more information, offer existing clients a great new service or special offer, or simply keep them up to date, thereby reinforcing their trust in a tried and tested partner.

Email marketing involves sending targeted messages directly into someone's email inbox. Proper email marketing involves only sending messages to customers or potential customers who have asked to receive news, information, special offers and so on. It never involves sending out unsolicited emails or 'spam'.

Email marketing is undeniably a cost-effective strategy. According to the DMA's Power of Direct economic-impact study released in October 2006, email returned the equivalent of £32 for every pound spent on it in 2005. And don't forget that email is also environmentally friendly, so is a good 'responsible business' practice!

Here we can advise you on all aspects of email marketing, including writing and designing the emails. In addition, we provide a cost-effective browser-based email marketing system that's much more powerful, flexible and measurable than ordinary emailing.

Social media maths: is time spent online a net gain or a loss?

2009-12-05T00:05:00.000-08:00

A recent interesting article in Management Today mentioned the research we conducted on how many small businesses in the world have websites (answer: fewer than ought).
This was as part of a wider response to a recent report about how much time is wasted on social networking sites, and particularly by those who are purportedly at work.
It’s a difficult truth that, even while we evangelize about their transformative effect on businesses, such sites can easily be time-sinks even for the most diligent workers. Even the best of us cannot deny the temptation to take a quick peek at our Twitter stream, only to emerge twenty minutes later having been sucked into a debate about who would win a fight, Superman or Spiderman… or some equally unimportant subject.
The problem is that we can’t expect our employees to be using social networking sites effectively unless they are enthusiastic tweeters, Facebookers or bloggers themselves. As we’ve said a thousand times before, you really can’t understand these sites or what they do, until you have become fully immersed yourself. Undeniably, though, by their very nature, social media sites do suck people in and it’s a strong person indeed who can resist their lure.
What is the answer? Well, one solution is to do the tweeting and blogging yourself. Most people who own businesses are so wrapped up in them that their personal lives can barely be distinguished from their working ones. In no time, you’ll have gathered around you a social circle of people in the same field, and, as is the nature of these arena, you may find that such alliances are incredibly useful, in ways you never could have foreseen.
If that doesn’t appeal, you may find that the nature of your business allows you to give the job of social media marketing to someone who is mainly stuck behind a counter, with long periods of idleness: think garage attendant on a night-shift, art gallery attendant during the quiet hours, or cinema usher after the lights have dimmed.
What if your business simply doesn’t include such job descriptions? Well, you may just have to consider that 40 minutes of wasted time each week to be part of the cost of employing someone who is truly a social media specialist.

Managed link development campaigns as part of your SEO

2009-12-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

Boost your website's rankings with a systematic programme of courting inbound links - the hard currency of search engine rankings.
Link development is now commonly referred to as the currency of the Internet. To simplify this to an extreme, if you have more links coming in to your website than going out, you will be seen as 'richer' - and your ranking upgraded accordingly. However, the links must be relevant otherwise the search engines will penalize the site. Therefore good quality links will benefit your site more than a large quantity of low quantity ones.

We will find and contact sites that are relevant to your field, but not in direct competition to you, and encourage them to link to you without having to give a link back to them. This is an ongoing process and we envisage the initial campaign should be for at least 12 months.

With a successful optimization and link development campaign, more and more websites will seek to be your link partners. We will monitor and vet all link enquiries, recommending and responding to favorable link partners, as certain links could be detrimental to your popularity ranking.

Managed Internet Marketing with one way link campaigns

2009-12-04T23:59:00.000-08:00

What is it and why is it important to SEO?
One way links are one way inbound links that are pointing to your website. Good quality, relevant, one way links help to achieve a high position in search engine results.

The quantity, quality and relevance of the anchor text of inbound links to your site is extremely important to Google. Anchor text is the visible text of a link to another site. Therefore, having a large number of these links is vital to any online business.
But how many should I have?
The only way to answer this is to find out how many inbound links your competitors have pointing to their website. The higher the number of inbound links they have means you need to aim to have more.

However, we have to stress the word 'relevant'. If an inbound link is relevant to your website, then the search engines will consider it a quality link and will take notice of it. Search engines include link popularity in the way they evaluate the web pages they include in the search engine databases. These inbound links are seen as a positive vote indicating the quality of the web page the link is pointing to.

A one way link building programme is extremely time consuming and requires continuous work - which is why we offer it as one of our managed services. We do the work, while you concentrate on your business.

A small change to Google

2009-12-02T02:15:00.000-08:00

It’s a small change – but Google’s making a big thing out of it.
You may have noticed, last time you visited Google, that the size of the search box has increased. There again, you may not have noticed: it’s quite a subliminal tweak, and, as search is, by its very nature, a means to an end, you may have had something else on your mind.
There was never any limit to how many words you could fit into that little Google search box, but it’s longer now, so you can see more at once.
So what is the point? Well, Google is trying to sell it as a way of emphasising that Search is their primary and most important product, despite their diversification into so many other areas.
Champions of accessibility and usability might hail it as a welcome step too: larger fields and larger buttons are easier to see, locate, and use.
Ultimately, I suppose, it’s a design tweak, and one we’ll all get used to. Where Google leads, others often follow, so watch this space for larger search fields across the other major search engines – and other websites.

Google domestic trends

If you’re in the selling business, Google’s Domestic Trends reports should interest you.
They are based on the idea that search data can inform us about the purchasing intentions of the populace. If people are searching for terms like ‘jewellery’, ‘perfume’ or ‘Tiffanys’, then we may assume that the luxury goods market is buoyant, the economy on the up. It’s much the same train of thought that led Google to claim it might predict a flu epidemic by aggregating the number of searches for ‘flu symptoms’ and similar.
On the other hand, if searches for ‘do it yourself’, ‘jobs’ or ‘unsecured loans’ are on the up, then we may all be in trouble – except, of course, for DIY stores, employment agencies and loan firms.
At the moment, the data refers to searches on Google.com, and primarily reflects habits in the USA – but we’ve seen most other Google services unroll to other countries, so I’d think we can expect a UK version in the near future. This free tool might just become one of the strongest at your disposal.

Educate yourself with Google’s Internet Stats

2009-12-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

Have you ever needed to convince stakeholders of the value of your website?

Possibly you’re not even 100% convinced yourself. In either case, Google’s Internet Stats page is the place to visit for nifty soundbites. Next time you have to present to your investors, get colleagues “on side”, or even explain to Auntie Majore why you’re putting money into your online presence, you’ll be able to pull out facts like these:
· Online spending in the UK grew 25% to £18.4 bn in 2008, outperforming the 2.1% increase in total retail.
· Over half (51.0%) of consumers are using the Internet before making a purchase in shops, educating themselves on the best deals available.
· Social networks have a penetration of nearly 75% among European Internet users.
Each of these little nuggets of insight speaks volumes, and should provoke useful debate in your own workplace. If you prefer a surprise, just hit the ‘random statistic’ button, and see what you learn.

Brand names: fair game?

2009-12-02T01:51:00.000-08:00

Suppose you went shopping for a designer bag on the High Street one day. You head towards the Louis Vuitton shop, but before you go in, you see another bag shop next door. Something catches your eye, and you go home not with the Vuitton bag you had planned to, but with a cheaper alternative.
There’s not much Louise Vuitton can complain about there – you would have exercised your consumer choice as you saw fit. This is the analogy I keep coming back to when I consider the current legal tussle between Louis Vuitton and Google.
Briefly put, Louis Vuitton want Google to stop returning sponsored AdWords from other companies when users search for their brand name. We’ve all been there, if not when designer bag shopping, then in similar situations: you search for ‘Fox & Sons’, and a number of other estate agents’ ads appear. Search for ‘Interflora’ and the price-undercutting M&S flower service is offered (and that’s another case that has been taken to the courts, as well).
I try to look at every online situation from the user’s point of view, and here is where I think we see the kernel of the issue. If I am looking for, let’s say, Nike shoes, there is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a sponsored link that promises them at greatly reduced prices, only to find myself on a website with no Nike on offer.
For me, the real key is the wording. Offer the consumer some choice, sure – but make it clear exactly what is available, be it bags similar to Louis Vuitton’s ones, or shoes that are nothing like Nike’s, but which I might like anyway. If I click on a Google Adword and leave the site with no purchase, Google’s PPC model means that the site loses financially, and I lose my time. The only winner is Google.
That’s why, in my opinion, Google needs to refine its rules a little: not to crack down on bids for trademark keywords, but to insist on precise descriptions of what the user will find when they click through. Not easy in the small space available, but surely the way forward.

Measuring Results

2009-08-18T17:25:00.001-07:00

Viral Marketing

2009-08-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

Link building is probably the single hardest and most time consuming part of an effective SEO campaign, largely because it requires influencing other people.

Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
The beautiful thing about viral marketing is that creating one popular compelling idea can lead to thousands of free quality links. If your competitor is building one link at a time and you have thousands of people spreading your ideas for you for free then you are typically going to end up ranking better.

Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.

At the height of B2C it seemed as if every start up had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hot mail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

In SEO many people create content based around linking opportunities.

Brand Building

2009-08-18T17:13:00.001-07:00

Brand related search queries tend to be some of the most targeted, best converting, and most valuable keywords. As you gain mind share people will be more likely to search for your brand or keywords related to your brand. A high volume of brand related search traffic may also be seen as a sign of quality by major search engines.

If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand and other websites have good things to say about your brand, these interactions help reinforcing your brand image and improving your lead quality and conversion rates.

Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that

Link Building

2009-08-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Search engines view links at votes, with some votes counting more than others. To get high quality links (that help your site rank better) you need to participate in the social aspects of your community and give away valuable unique content that people talk about and share with others. The below Google TouchGraph image shows a small graphic representation of sites in the search field that are related to SeoBook.com based on linking patterns.

Link building tips

* try to link to your most relevant page when getting links (don't point all the links at your home page)
* mix your anchor text
* use Yahoo! Site Explorer and other tools to analyze top competing backlinks
* don't be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources

Link building strategies

* submit your site to general directories like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
* submit your site to relevant niche directories
* here is more background on directories and SEO
* if you have a local site submit to relevant local sites
* join trade organizations
* get links from industry hub sites
* create content people would want to link at

Search Engine Indexing Limits.

1. Page File Size==> No more than 150 kilobytes (Before Images, CSS and other Attachments).

2. Amount of links==> No more than 100 unique links per page.

3. Title Tag==> No more than 70 characters.

4. Meta Description==> No more than 155 characters.

5. Parameters in URL==> No more than 2.

6. Depth of URL==> No more than 4.

On Page Optimization

2009-08-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

It is hard to rank for keywords that do not appear in your page content, so each page should be organized around the goal of ranking for a specific keyword phrase, with some related phrases and related keywords mixed into the page copy.

Unique descriptive page titles play a crucial role in a successful search engine optimization campaigns. Page titles appear in the search results, and many people link to pages using the page title as their link anchor text.

If possible create hand crafted meta description tags which compliment the page title by reinforcing your offer. If the relevant keywords for a page have multiple formats it may make sense to help focus the meta description on versions you did not use in the page title.

As far as page content goes, make sure you write for humans, and use heading tags to help break up the content into logical sections which will improve the scanability and help structure the document. When possible, make sure your page content uses descriptive modifiers as well.

Each page also needs to be sufficiently unique from other pages on your site. Do not let search engines index printer friendly versions of your content, or other pages where content is duplicate or nearly duplicate.

Image Optimization

If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.

Alt text : ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.

File name : always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.

Image Title : always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=” http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description” title=”Title of the Image”]

The "title" of a Web page is the name of the page as it appears on the top of your Web browser. For instance, the title of this page is How to Search Within Web Site Titles Using Google's Intitle: Syntax.
Sometimes you may want to find Web pages where one or more words appear in the title of the page. For instance, many Web pages may mention feeding iguanas, even if that's not the main focus of the page. If you'd like to find a page dedicated to iguana feeding, you can use the Google syntax intitle: to force Google to only list results that have the word "feeding" in the title. Do not put a space between the colon and the next word. The search would look something like this:
intitle:feeding iguana
This will find Web pages that are relevant to the keyphrase "feeding iguana," and it will only list results that have the word "feeding" in the title. If you'd like to restrict the search further, you could search for:
intitle:feeding intitle:iguana
You can also use the syntax allintitle: which only list results where all the words in the key phrase are in the title.
allintitle:iguana feeding
Image Linking : Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.
We generate and send Google Analytics reports to you by email that tell you exactly what keywords your visitors searched for and even which search engine they used to find your site.
Increase Your Website Traffic In Less Than 1 Month!
Following are the main areas in a web page that search engines give more importance in their ranking algorithm:

1. Title =2.0
2. Link Popularity =2.0
3. The main body text =1.5
4. Domain name =1.0
5. Keyword Promience =1.0
6. Heading tags =0.5
7. Proximity of keywords =0.5
8. Bold or italic =0.4
9.Folder or filename =0.4
10. Meta description =0.3
11. Alt tag =0.2
12. Title attribute =0.1
13. Meta keywords =0.1

Total Score = 10

Site Structure

2009-08-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

How should you structure your site?

Before drafting content consider what keywords are your most important and map out how to create pages to fit each important group of keywords within your site theme and navigational structure based on

* market value
* logical breaks in market segmentation
* importance of ranking in building credibility / improving conversion rates

You may want to use an Excel spreadsheet or some other program to help you visualize your site structure.

Make sure

* your most important categories or pages are linked to sitewide
* you link to every page on your site from at least one other page on your site
* you use consistant anchor text in your navigation
* you link to other content pages (and expeically to action items) from within the content area of your website

If you are uncertain how deep to make a portion of the site start by creating a few high quality pages on the topic. Based on market feedback create more pages in the sections that are most valuable to your business.

Keyword Research

2009-08-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

What keywords are people searching for?

Use the Keyword research tool to search for popular and Long Tail keywords related to your industry. This tool cross references the Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, and other popular keyword research tools. Notice how our keyword tool provides daily search estimates and cross references other useful keyword research tools.

Keyword research tools are better at providing a qualitative measure than a quantitative measure, so don't be surprised if actual traffic volumes vary greatly from the numbers suggested by these tools. When in doubt you can also set up a Google AdWords account to test the potential size of a market.

In addition to looking up search volumes for what keywords you think are important also take the time to ask past customers how they found you, why they chose you, and what issues were important to them in chosing you.

You can also get keyword ideas by doing things like

#Checking your web analytics or server logs
#Looking at page contents of competing websites
#Looking through topical forums and community sites to see what issues people frequently discuss

Market Research

2009-08-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

The first step is to search the major search engines to see what types of websites are ranking for words which you deem to be important. For example, if mostly colleges, media, and government institutions are ranking for your most important terms it may be difficult to rank for those types of queries. If, on the other hand, the market is dominated by fairly average websites which are not strongly established brands it may be a market worth pursuing.

You can extend out the research you get from the search results by using the SEO for Firefox extension with the Firefox browser. This places many marketing data points right in the search results, and thus lets you see things like

* site age
* Google Page Rank
* inbound link count
* if any governmental or educational sites link at their site
* if they are listed in major directories
* if bloggers link at their sites

Introduction of SEO

2009-08-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of publishing and marketing information that ranks well for valuable keywords in search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, and Microsoft Live Search.

Search engines only show 10 results on the first page, and most searchers tend to click on the top few results. If you rank at the top business is good, but if you are on the second or third page you might only get 1% of the search traffic that the top ranked site gets.

The 2 most powerful aspects of search engine marketing are

1)users type what they want to find into search boxes, making search engines the most precisely targeted marketing medium in the history of the world.

2)once you gain traction in the search results the incremental costs of gaining additional exposure are negligible when compared with the potential rewards, allowing individuals and small businesses to compete with (and perhaps eventually become) large corporations

While many people consider SEO to be complicated, I believe that SEO is nothing but an extension of traditional marketing. Search engine optimization consists of 9 main steps

1. market research
2. keyword research
3. on page optimization
4. site structure
5. link building
6. brand building
7. viral marketing
8. adjusting
9. staying up to date