SEO Today

Marketing in the Search Tail: Is the Pain Worth the Gain?

2006-01-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

Popular search terms tend to dominate the headlines, but there are literally millions of unique searches conducted every day, and savvy search marketers are taking advantage of the opportunities in the "search tail."

In fact, Google estimates that nearly 50 percent of all searches are one-of-a-kind. That's more than 100 million unique searches per day on Google alone.

These people aren't entering words like "travel" or "books." These are searchers who know what they want. These folks are searching for things like "virgin island bare boat charter company" or "Grohe plumbing supplies Aspen Colorado" It's hard to imagine all the variations people might enter into a search engine, and it's this incredible diversity that offers a significant opportunity for marketers.

You'll often hear this phenomenon described as the "search tail." If you're not sure what people are referring to, try visualizing a graph. Plot all search queries along the horizontal axis and plot the frequency of each query along the vertical axis. Place the most popular searches at the far left, followed by the somewhat popular searches, followed by less frequent searches, and finally the one-of-a-kind searches on the far right.

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Website Submission - A SEO Specialist Shares His Secrets

2006-01-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

Source: By Robert Fuess (c) 2006 Spiderweb Logic

Many of you have heard of submitting your website, but what does this really mean? What places should you really submit your website? What about submitting to thousands of search engines and directories through some website promotion service?
What Pages To Submit:

At the minimum, you should submit your home page. Many search engines will promise to find and crawl the rest of your website automatically (in their own good time). But if they don't discourage you from doing so, I would submit several of the important pages in your site. For example, a site map is definitely something I would want to submit, since it should have direct links to the rest of your website.

Also, if I get another webmaster to link to my website, I like to submit that page as well. I want the search engines to recognize that this resource has changed - it has a link to my website and I want the credit for it.

What To Prepare:

For the search engines, I would make sure that the website is properly optimized. At a minimum, I would do double check the meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords properly describe the web pages and have some of my desired keywords in it. I would also run a website validator on the pages I intend on submitting - to keep the search engine spiders from choking on my website.

For the directories, I would normally prepare some commonly requested information. This really helps to speed up the process. I normally use a generic text editor like Microsoft Notepad and save the following data before I go and submit to the different search engines and directories. This enables me to use copy and paste.

This should have:

-Your email

-Your website url

-A good title for your website

-A description for the website

Since Yahoo will allow you to submit a list of URLS that are in a text document (or an RSS feed) I would encourage you to prepare one to help them out. These should be at the root directory of your website and be updated whenever there is a change to your pages. That way you can just submit the location of the RSS feed or the text file and let Yahoo use that to find the rest of your pages. It is a nice time saver. Personally, I like using an automated RSS feed since Yahoo can use it to determine when the last changes occurred and decide what pages to re-crawl first.

Google uses a similar technology to help it find all of your web pages. It is called a "Google Site Map". That is the subject of another article. I wrote one that has a lot more info on the Google Site Maps, for when you are ready to build one. Google also has a special way to submit these. Just follow their instructions. If this is too complicated, contact a webmaster or a SEO specialist who is familiar with this feature.

Where To Submit:

I would recommend submitting your home page to the major search engines individually, at least initially. However, there are several services that do groups of them for you - and is a big time saver for the rest of your site. The following is one of my favorites: FreeWebSubmission.com. I have always deselected Google, though, since I submit to them manually through the Google website. I submit my web pages to the following search engines manually (without a special tool) just to ensure that it is done.

Submit to Google

Submit to Yahoo

Submit to MSN

You will need a Yahoo account to submit to the Yahoo search engine. And don't fret if you don't see immediate results. Your site should normally exist in MSN within about 6 weeks, in Yahoo in 8-12 weeks, and in Google within about 3 months. (You will not likely get much search results from Google for the first year though - but hold out and keep working on the other tricks. In the long run, Google will normally give you about 60 - 70% of the search engine traffic if you follow these methods.)

Also, if you have the Alexa toolbar installed, navigate to your website and click on the "info" button on the toolbar. Then you will have to fill in information about your website. Once this is registered, you will start seeing how your website's Alexa rating looks. There have been some rumors that Google considers the Alexa description in its searches - so make sure it is relevant to your website as a whole and has at least one of your keywords.

You should also submit your website to DMOZ. This is a massive directory that is republished in several other websites. It is managed by humans, and is therefore considered to be of special relevance by other search engines. I strongly recommend reading all their rules before submitting - and follow them closely. Make sure that you try to get listed in only one category - the most relevant one for your business. It can take a month or two to get listed, but it really helps with your backlinks and overall relevancy as a website.

If you haven't used directories before - try browsing these before you fill out the form to submit your site. They are organized by category. You need to find the most relevant category to put your website before you start to fill out the form for each of these. Have a pen and paper as you browse - and write down directory paths of where you want to be.

Being in some directories just adds some good backlinks. (When another webmaster links to your website, this is considered a backlink.) Others, like Yahoo and DMOZ, tend to get some special relevance to certain search engines. After you get familiar with these well-known directories, look for niche directories that are specific to the type of business your website is about.

There are specialized directories that focus on a particular category of links. These can be valuable - you will just have to do a bit of searching to find them. These may be considered as part of your overall strategy.

Being listed in a search engine doesn't guarantee that you will have a good ranking - this is just the first step - letting them know that you exist.

If You See An Offer To Get Listed In Hundreds Of Directories And Websites Automatically - Beware! Many of these will list you in hundreds of FFA (free for all) sites. These sites are considered SP@M by search engines and I would strongly encourage you to avoid them. Did I mention to avoid these? Check out what Google has to say about these. They may get you quick backlinks, but they are from the "wrong" type of site. These are just a list of sites - and they stay there temporarily. Only the latest 100 submitted or so are displayed there and you need to be resubmitted regularly to stay there. Few humans use this - it is just a linking game to trick the search engines about your popularity (and search engines don't like it). Don't bother.

Technology Predictions for 2006 and Reflections for 2005

2006-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Source: By Sharon Housley

2005 literally took the world by storm.

The tragedies of the Asian Tsunami, the Hurricanes that blew through the US Gulf Coast and the earthquakes that swallowed parts of Pakistan have left an indelible mark on 2005. While mother nature cast a shadow on 2005, it was technology that delivered the impact that resulted in a huge outpouring of donations. The world was touched by the human element seen real-time in pictures and videos. Today's technology was able to deliver the graphical grittiness that portrayed the nightmares occurring half a world away.

Technology is usually thought of as impersonal, but something needs to be recognized; without technology the personal elements of the 2005 tragedies would not likely have been conveyed to the extent and timeliness they were. Reflecting on 2005 and looking forward to 2006, technology will undoubtedly continue play a significant role in the future both on a personal and impersonal level.

In 2005 Blogs gave birth to splogs, where senseless web scrapers generated massive amounts of senseless content. Sp@m reached a whole new level, right along side the ethical debate of content scraping. Copyrights have been stepped on and I foresee a new host of tools that will emerge to protect content.

Sp@m and phishing scams were easier to recognize, but to their credit, sp@mmers showed off their creativity, finding additional channels to inundate. From splogs to forum sp@m, 2005 tech users saw sp@m as one of life's continued annoyances. Looking into a crystal ball, I fear that social bookmarking will become the sp@m vehicle of 2006, weakening the value of a collective voice.

Sadly the blog saturation has resulted in web clutter. Due to increased competition and vast quantities of blogs on free hosted blog networks services, bloggers competing for audiences and web traffic will result in significant abandoned content, cluttering the web with useless ramblings. The ease of blogging that resulted in saturation will be its downfall. Credibility will again become important. Journalists, who have suffered from the blogosphere in 2005, will have a reprieve as credibility becomes an issue for bloggers. In 2006 web surfers are going to look for multiple sources to confirm facts, and rely on reliable respected sources, community content, and collaboration like Wikipedia is going to suffer and become less relevant in 2006. While Wikipedia scores well in search, it does not perform as well with accuracy. The Wikipedia community is haunted by sp@m and like DMOZ, it's success will be its downfall. The relevance of successful community wiki's will fade in 2006.

Cell phones have become personal homing devices, and it is near impossible to locate a cellular phone that is not capable of manipulating or taking photos, videos, graphics and text messages in addition to the traditional voice calls. It is likely the PDA will become extinct in 2006, as travelers move to a single multifunction device. In 2007 MP3 players will likely be a common feature of cell phones.

Wireless growth is still worth noting, as it has moved from hotspots, to hot zones, to hot cities. Philadelphia and San Francisco are leading the way as wireless cities in 2006.

What is in store for 2006?

Privacy is a hot topic that is not going to disappear. Google and the US Government are battling a Big Brother image. Data mining has made the collection of data meaningful. Anti-Google sentiment is growing. Google has fallen from grace, while Google has made friends on Wall Street, it has disappointed surfers who have turned to Yahoo and MSN in growing numbers. 2006 will likely result in a heat up of the search engine war with MSN and Yahoo scrambling for marketshare and Google walking a tightrope with privacy advocates on one end and monopoly theorists on the other end.

Google wants to make money, and like it or not, data is a commodity. Google will likely use the data from their various ventures to develop new technologies and personalize content. Conspiracy theorists believe that the Google's aggregate data will also be used to optimize the fees charged for pay-per-click, influence organic ranking, or worse yet, sold.

Google's growth will continue to motivate privacy advocates and those in the technology field behind the Attention Truste movement, to work together, to improve how personal information and subscription information is used online. I expect we will see a lot of energy and effort in this area.

Personalized content will be a buzz word for 2006. Whether it is users selecting Podcasts, iTunes, or purchasing Amazon recommendations, the web is learning how to cater content based on user selections and choices. Web surfers see personalized content as regaining control of what they want to watch, see, or listen to. From Tivo to podcasting, users are taking back control. Yet when the web serves content that is based on past surfing habits, who is really in control?

In 2005, marketers were told in no uncertain terms, if they are not using syndication and RSS, they will not survive. Well, they have one more chance to get it right. In 2006, marketers must use RSS as an alternative communication channel. It will no longer be cutting edge, it will be a must to survive. Web surfers no longer expect to provide personal information (an email address) for marketing materials, they expect to have a choice about how they wish to receive the content.

Vendors selling through affiliate programs lost ground in 2005. Publishers found the easy money of pay-per-click advertising not fraught with the inherent problems of affiliate tracking and cookie-killers. The increase in click-fraud and content scraping on AdSense sites will even the playing field and make affiliate programs more attractive in 2006.

The world is getting smaller, and technological advancements have not only brought us tragedy, but also have opened doors and the global market is now a viable option for small businesses. I believe the globalization trend will continue in 2006.

Top 10 Winners Predicted for 2006:

-Cyber Security
-VoIP
-Attention Data
-RSS/Syndication
-Copy Protection
-Credibility
-Privacy
-Alternative Energy (reusable fuel, clean energy)
-Content Filtering
-VideoTunes (iTunes with Video)

Web Directories For SEO

2006-01-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

Source: By Adrian Lawrence (c) 2006

If you are looking for ways to promote your website, then web directories should definitely be considered a big part of your promotional plan. Web directories provide web visitors with a one-stop destination on the web to find the information they are looking for. Further, in using web directories, you can increase the visibility of your website and derive myriad benefits offered by web directories.

Let's take a look at the benefits that webmasters derive from web directories:

1. Some webmasters might wonder why they should bother to submit to web directories when 80% of all website traffic comes from search engines. The answer is simple when you consider the following: what about the other 20%? When you are attempting to maximize the traffic that comes to your website, every little bit of promotion helps and web directories can help you gain a big chuck of that 20% of web traffic you have been missing out on.

2. Did you know that a key factor in the ranking algorithm of search engines is link popularity? By using web directories you will be creating more links that point directly to your site and the raising your ranking in various search engines across the Internet. Further, everyone knows that a higher search engine ranking is equivalent to easier accessibility and easier accessibility equals more traffic for your website.

3. The first way to increase your link popularity is to include keywords in your hyperlinks. When you submit to web directories, the links you submit should not only lead to your site, but also should possess themed keywords within the links. The themed keywords will not only make your site easier to find, it will also increase the rating of your links in various search engines - again getting more, free web traffic for you.

4. Links that are created within web directories are votes for a site, and they use your keywords within your hyperlinks to associate your link with certain key phrases. As such, the keywords you select are extremely important because they determine how often your links will be pulled up whenever a key phrase is associated with your created links. Therefore, it is a good idea to research the most popular keywords associated with your website theme before submitting your website to various web directories: the most popular keywords can make all of the difference in the world.

5. If you are submitting to various web directories, there are a few things that you need to consider. First, for a directory to be valuable, the pages you submit your listings to must, at minimum, be listed in various search engines. For instance, if you submit your links to a web directory that doesn't appear in any search engines, chances are web visitors will not only have difficulty finding your website, but they will also have extreme difficulty finding the web directory you have listed your site in. In such cases, the listing in the web directory is a fruitless endeavor. Conversely, if you list your web site in several popular web directories and you utilize keywords in your hyperlink and a short website description, you greatly increase the visibility and accessibility of your website.

6. The second consideration you must keep in mind when submitting to web directories is that when you are submitting your hyperlinks, you will derive the most benefit from submitting to directory pages that have a comparable theme to your website. For instance, if you have a website that is based on credit cards you will find that you get more web traffic from a web directory page that focuses on credit cards. Thus, when searching for web directories, look for web directories with topics that parallel the central focus of your website.

7. Here's a quick tip for you that can help you derive the most benefit from listing your hyperlink in web directories: watch out for Google Adwords because these are a good indicator of how Google at least categorizes the page. In other words, if you mirror your hyperlinks and descriptions to appear much like those seen in Google ads, you will more than likely increase your search engine ranking as well as your listing in various web directories.

8. In order to be successfully listed in any web directory, you will need to conform to the terms and conditions of the directory. Typically, web directories list a series of specific listing regulations that you must adhere to and it would pay for you to adhere to them. In addition, to improve the chances of your listing being accepted you should try to avoid promotional language and you should choose a category that is as close to your website theme as possible.

9. Webmasters have much to look forward to in terms of web directory posting. In fact, the next generation of web directories are now appearing that allow business card type pages. Not only do webmasters get the opportunity to post a short description of their website, but they are also afforded the opportunity to display their logo and contact information as well. Such offerings prove to be particularly appealing because eye catching logos and easy contact information will make a Webmaster's website that much more appealing.

10. In the end, web directories are a valuable part of your web promotional program and should not be overlooked in terms of their value. Along with the use of search engines, and article databases, a Webmaster can be pleasantly surprised at the free advertising available on the Internet. Finally, the increase in web traffic that webmasters reap can be truly astonishing indeed.

Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking

2006-01-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Source: By Scottie Claiborne

Some of the advice floating around regarding linking for your site can be pretty confusing, especially when it comes to reciprocal linking. Is it something you have to do? Can your site succeed without reciprocal links? Will you be penalized for reciprocal linking? There are so many conflicting theories. Let's try to clear the subject up a little.

Link Popularity

The founders of Google worked off a premise that has been active in academic papers for years: citation authority. They found that the more academic papers cited another's work, the more likely that cited work was to be an authority on the subject. Similarly, when a lot of sites link to one site, it's likely that site is an authority for the topic. The "topic" is whatever those links say it is. If 25 sites link to another site with the term "oak shelving," it's likely that page is an important page for oak shelving.

Manipulation of Links

It didn't take long for people who wanted to rank well for certain terms to figure out that they needed a lot of links with their chosen keyword phrases to improve their rankings in the search engines. Many schemes were born, including mini-sites, site networks, link farms, and reciprocal linking.

Reciprocal Linking

At the most basic level, reciprocal links are links you trade with other sites (you add their link, they add yours) in order to build link popularity. There are online services, group exchanges, and software available to help you link up with more like-minded webmasters, fast. As a result, many sites have grown sizeable directories on topics that have nothing to do with their area of expertise, simply because those other sites were willing to trade links with them.

Does this work? At the moment, it does seem to work. The engines (except for Teoma, which analyzes link communities) tend to count a link as a link, regardless of the subject matter of the originating site.

Will it continue to work? Who knows? As the engines look for more ways to determine which sites are truly expert and which ones are simply manipulating their way to the top, link relevance is sure to come into play. Some say it's already starting to affect rankings.

Mutual Linking

I like to separate mutual linking from reciprocal linking. Mutual linking is where the content of each site actually benefits each other's sites. If you sell shoes, you may want to recommend other sites for replacement shoelaces and still other sites for shoe cleaning supplies. You may even maintain a directory of regional shoe repair service shops. This is useful information for your visitors, who are likely to need these services as well. It makes sense for these sites to also recommend your shoes and link to your site. While it's technically still a reciprocal link, it has a mutual benefit for both sites.

While you can make a case that visitors to your shoe site might actually need weight loss formulas, like to gamble, or are concerned about the size of certain body parts, it really isn't likely that links to these sites will be clicked and followed by your visitors. They only make your site look unprofessional. The links you trade with these sites may or may not actually be helping you in the engines, but they're definitely not helping you to make more sales.

Will I Be Penalized for Reciprocal Linking?

You might. I don't say that to send you into a panic, but the truth is if you link to a site that is considered a "bad neighborhood" by the engines, it could negatively affect your site. That innocent-looking pet accessories site may be cloaking, hiding links or text, or participating in other linking schemes and just hasn't been caught yet. Why risk it for a link that probably won't even bring you traffic? Sure, people who wear shoes often have dogs, but if you're just linking to them for the link, it's probably not a good idea.

Be very aware of whom you link to. You control where your site links to and that could come back to haunt you. Link only to the sites that will help improve your credibility and your salës!

Should I Hide All My Outgoing Links?

Absolutely not. There have been many people who feel that since Google's Florida update (in Nov. 2003), adding relevant outgoing links seems to have a positive effect on rankings. Besides, if you hide or block their links, and they hide or block yours, what's the point of participating in a reciprocal linking program at all?

So. What Will Happen if I Do Reciprocal Linking?

While no one knows for sure what the future of link relationships will be with each search engine, I tend to think that as soon as they can figure out how to do it most effectively, off-topic links simply won't count anymore.

If you pin ALL your link popularity on trading links with whoever will trade with you, you could find yourself starting over from scratch at some point. If you are looking to build long-term rankings (and real business links that can attract customers), it takes more work and creativity than just sending out automated emails or joining a linking program.

Give your site an advantage by giving people a reason to link to it -- a helpful tool, a guide, an industry-specific directory, or some other useful content that people will feel good about recommending on their site. If your site is worth linking to, you won't have to rely as much on swapping links as a promotion strategy.

SEO For The Big Three

2005-12-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

Source: By Dave Davies

Ranking your website highly on one of the "big three" search engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three algorithms, three different sets of rules - and yet there are websites out there that have first page rankings across them all - how do they do it?
While all of the major search engines use different algorithms, the end goal of all three is the same: to provide the searcher with the most relevant results available. It is this one common thread that makes it possible for an SEO to rank a website highly across all the major engines. While there are a variety of factors at play and an even wider variation in the weight each of these factors are given - the possible variations that can produce relevant results are limited.

For example, if inbound links are given 0% weight then insignificant sites will rank highly for high-competition phrases. Many reputable companies such as Microsoft could lose rankings for their own names so links must and will always hold value. On the other hand, if links were to hold 100% weight then sp@mming the search engines would be a simple matter and so there are a limited number of possible variables in between these extremes that this factor can have, no matter which engine we are optimizing for.

That said, there are still three main engines with three distinct algorithms despite common requirements. To clarify how to optimize for all of them it's easiest to discuss them individually first. Due to the way their algorithms work, it is best to expect rankings on MSN first, followed by Yahoo! and finally Google (I am assuming that the phrase is at least moderately competitive). For this reason, we will discuss them individually in that order.

SEO for MSN

Proper SEO for MSN requires that a site be structured well with a distinct theme throughout and many inbound links. The advantage an SEO has while optimizing a site for MSN is that MSN tends to pick up and credit new content and inbound links very quickly. That means that with the right tactics in place, one can rank a website relatively quickly on this important engine.

While MSN has the lowest number of searches performed on it, ComScore's report back in July revealed that MSN searchers were also 48% more likely to purchase a product or service online than the average Internet user. A very important statistic for website owners that sell online.

To rank highly on MSN one needs to build a solid sized site (exactly how large will depend on your industry - look at the size of your competitors' sites for an idea), a relevant theme throughout the site that focuses on your primary keywords and a good number of links. MSN doesn't (at this time) employ an aging delay on links such as the one employed by both Google and Yahoo! so the effects of the site and inbound links can be picked up very quickly and with good SEO efforts one can rank well within a few months on MSN for competitive phrases.

SEO for Yahoo!

Until recently Yahoo! acted very much like MSN, but now it's leaning a bit more towards Google. Ranking a website well on Yahoo! requires a solid-sized site with unique content and a very good number of links.

While PageRank is a Google factor, Yahoo! does have some type of page value factor at play. Many moons ago Yahoo! was playing with a PageRank-like calculation called WebRank. They even went so far as to put out a beta toolbar testing it. This indicates that there is a factor at play in the Yahoo! algorithm similar to Google's PageRank - they just don't advertise what a specific page's value is.

Yahoo! is placing a fair amount of emphasis on the age of links though not in the same way that Google is. We will get to Google shortly, however to understand what to expect from Yahoo! one must understand that when you get a link to your website it won't deliver its full value for a number of months. While the exact number of months in unknown, it appears to be around 8 before it delivers its full weight, though it will hold some weight from day one and this weight will increase as time passes.

To rank well on Yahoo!, you must optimize your site similar to what you would do for MSN and you must build a large number of inbound links and have patience as these links age. You will not see a sudden spike 2 weeks after a large link-building campaign. You will likely have to wait 3-4 months to notice any significant effect.

SEO For Google

Virtually every webmaster and website owner is primarily concerned about attaining Google rankings because of the significantly higher number of searchers using it. Provided that you are building your website following the best practices of SEO (i.e. unique content, a sizable amount of content, and a good number of incoming links), then your rankings are sure to follow. However, because of the aging delay it will likely take longer than for MSN or Yahoo! Google considers the age of your links, your domain and even the individual page to be factors, and the longer your page has been online the better.

Essentially, ranking a site on Google requires that you take the same actions as for the other two, continue your link building efforts on an ongoing basis to ensure that you end up with more-and-more links, and that you update your content and add content on a fairly regular basis (through the addition of a blog for example).

Tying It Together

The logical process for a new website or one at the first stages of SEO is to first target MSN. At this point, you can focus your attention on continuing to build high-quality, relevant links to, and content on, your site which will continue to increase your value on Yahoo! and Google.

Analysis will be required to determine exactly what weight you will be giving to different areas. For example, if your onsite factors are optimized for MSN, then you know that you will need to make up for this in the offsite factors for Yahoo! and Google. If you figured you would need 100 links to rank on Google, then you will now need to up that number to account for the fact that you have optimized your site for a different engine.

During the analysis process you will likely want to use a tool to speed up the process of keyword density analysis and competitor link analysis. At Beanstalk we use a tool called Total Optimizer Pro though there are others out there (note: I have yet to find one that does what this one does as quickly and easily).

Conclusion

I am hoping that none of you read the title and were expecting to rank on the first page of all three major engines next week. Ranking highly on all three major engines takes time, patience and a good few rounds of tweaking to get the perfect balance of onsite and offsite optimization. Of course, as you can gather, done properly it's well worth the effort.

Purchasing Links for Pagerank

2005-12-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

Source: By Mark Daoust

It never ceases to amaze me how one company (Google) can literally support hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies and industries. What I am referring to here is the unbelievable number of sub-industries that have developed around every nuance of Google or the other search engines. Think about some of the aspects of SEO, and undoubtedly you will find a niche industry with several companies who focus on that specific aspect, and make good monëy doing so.

One such sub-industry is the linking industry. As you all (undoubtedly) know, Google bases part of its ranking algorithm on the number, quality, and variety of inbound links to a website. Lately Google has thrown in the wrinkle of looking more heavily at authority links, but the concept is still the same, and more importantly, the message is still the same to website owners: linking is important.

Because getting quality links is important, entrepreneurs have jumped into action developing every sort of flavor of a company promising to get website owners hundreds (if not thousands) of quality inbound links. Among these companies are link exchange communities, software programs, article writing systems, blog creation systems (or splog creation systems), and link purchasing. Today we are going to just focus on purchasing links as the subject has been in the news lately.

Link Buying - What Is It?

Link buying is a very simple idea. Website owners need high quality (read high PR) inbound links. Websites that are of high quality are looking to monetize their websites. The opportunity is thus created - high quality websites open a section on their website where a website owner can purchase a plain text link with the hopes of improving their website ranking.

Now, admittedly, link buying has become a bit more complicated than this. What started off simply as one website owner asking another if they would link to them for a fee is now a significant industry. We have link brokers, advanced link management systems, etc. The idea is still the same, however - buy a quality link with the hopes of increasing your ranking.

Is Link Buying OK With the Search Engines?

Well, Google does not like link buying. It is Google's view that buying and selling text links lowers the overall value and trustworthiness of links on the Internet. Matt Cutts posted back in September how Google and many of the people at Google feel about buying and selling links. In a word, they don't like it at all. Although they recognize that some people would buy links just for the traffic, it is their opinion that if someone wants to buy a link, they should add the "nofollow" attribute to the link to make sure that it does not get included in a search engine ranking.

Yahoo has also come out against purchasing links. However, blogger Jeremy Zawodny, who also happens to be an employee of Yahoo's search department started selling links on his blog. The link will be around for 1 month as he is testing various monetization methods on his site. These links, for those of you paying attention, do not contain the "no follow" attribute. Although this does not constitute an official endorsement of buying and selling links, it does mean that at least one influential person at Yahoo is at least open to the idea of using link purchasing as a valid monetization of a website.

As a sidenote, could this be a bit of a glimpse at how Google and Yahoo! Rank websites? We all know that Google puts a lot of emphasis on the meaning of links from one site to another, which is why they are fighting so hard to reduce link trading and link purchasing. Is this possibly a glimpse showing us that Yahoo does not put as much weight on links as Google? Or could it be that Yahoo is more confident in their ability to determine a page's natural relevancy?

So Should I Buy Links?

It would be so easy to say that buying links is a decent practice and that you will never get in trouble for doing so. Heck, I would love to be able to buy a few links, including one on Jeremy's blog. But the truth is, if you want to rank well in either search engine for the long-term and not face a future penalty, you should probably refrain from buying links. Google has stated several times (many times through Matt Cutts) that buying links is not an acceptable practice and that doing so can get you in trouble. Matt shows an example of where this is the case at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/tell-me-about-your-backlinks/. According to him, Google has gotten quite adept at identifying purchased links.

I have no doubt that there are thousands of examples of sites that have purchased links only to see their rankings improve significantly. I seriously doubt that Google or any search engine that places significant weight on linking can properly determine whether every link is bought or natural. You may be able to buy a link and have great success with it.

But when it all comes down to the choice you have to make, you have to realize that link buying is a risk. If a search engine catches you buying or selling a link, they will undoubtedly consider your site to be more questionable. What we must also realize is that they are no longer relying simply on scripts to identify what they consider to be sp@m, they are also using human eyes to confirm what their scripts find.

The Exception to This Rule

Every rule has its exception, and this rule is no exception. There is a legitimate form of link buying. One of the really good things that has come about from link trading, buying and selling is that we have learned that plain text links have the ability to bring in real traffic. If this is what you are after, then buy links to your heart's content.

Of course, you might want to make sure that you don't get in trouble for buying links, even if your intention is completely innocent. Although Google has gotten better at determining what links are purchased and what links are natural, they still can not determine a person's intent. To keep yourself safe, always request that the person you are buying the link from adds the "nofollow" attribute. This will protect both you and them from getting penalized.

Overall Linking Strategies

The conversation of linking schemes and methods is one that has been played out in many different forms. Many people have had success manipulating linking schemes, and there are some very good organizations out there that can get you a quality inbound link. Regardless of what new scheme you hear about or even participate in, your biggest linking goal should always be to find those high quality, one-way inbound links that occur naturally. These would be the type where someone links over to your website because you actually have some quality content to offer rather than some money or deal to offer.

Linking strategies and schemes will no-doubt evolve. I have heard of a few recently which I think can be very successful, but nothing will ever beat a quality, natural link from a source that links to you because you have something to offer.

Eight Simple Steps For Enhancing Your Website

2005-12-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

Source: By Alden Smith

To be successful with your online business, whether you are selling your own product, services or are selling for other merchants as an affiliate, you need a Web site that focuses on that subject alone. The site must be easy to build, maintenance-free, low cost, credible, and a powerful traffic-builder and customer-converter.
Having the right tools or product alone will not ensure the success of your website. There are many factors to be considered when designing your site. And unfortunately, most of these are usually ignored by Internet business owners. Below are eight simple steps to enhance your site and make it profitable.

1. Build It for Speed

There is no denying that in this day and age that people are in a hurry. You have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer's attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is imperative to your presentation.

2. Target Your Market

Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers. Is your market mostly business professionals? If so, the site must be clean and professional. Is your product aimed at teenagers and young adults? Then your site could be more informal and relaxed. The key is to know your market and build the site to their preferences.

3. Focus the Site

Make certain your web site is focused on the goal of selling your product or service. If your business offers many products, dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from one page. This can easily be accomplished through the utilization of subdomains.

4. Build Credibility

The most professionally designed site won't sell if your customers don't believe in you. Become an authority in your chosen niche. The internet is all about information, not just marketing. People go to the internet to find information on a particular subject. Providing clear concise articles focused on the subject of your site makes you an expert in your field. Providing a clear privacy statement is also away to build your credibility. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from every page on the site as well as from any location that you are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate contact information on line, including your mailing address and telephone number. Don't hide behind a computer!

5. Keep Navigation Simple

Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple and smooth navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors. Add powerful search and catalog features. Many times a lot of visitors do not have the patience to navigate through the whole website to find what they are looking for.

6. Keep It Consistent

Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than feeling as if they have just gone to another site. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site.

7. Make Your Site Interactive and Personalized

Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any questions they might have pertaining to a product. Personalization of your website is another key element that can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales. Personalization technology provides you the analytic tools to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling when the customer is buying online. It would give you an idea of what products to cross-sell and up-sell. For example, when a person buys a CD player, a disc cleaner can also be offered.

8. Content is King

Good content sells a product. Ask yourself the following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to ensure it is delivering the intended message. Always double-check your spelling and grammar.

The New Marketing Landscape

2005-12-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

Source: By Lee Traupel

Many of us in the marketing services and/or agency business are starting to see some real tangible marketing patterns emerging that businesses need to be aware of if they want to leverage their marketing dollars in this "post .com implosion economy."
Good Web Site Design Increasingly More Important

It's imperative for a company to have a quality web site today - but many firms are still throwing up web sites that are just poorly designed or overly complex. Poor navigation (menus and overall site structure) when coupled with low quality graphics is really problematical (!) - online visitors think less of your company as a result which will hurt revenue in the long run. Many think just doing a minimal job is sufficient but they aren't factoring in how close your competition is! On the web any potential customer is only one click away from seeing a high quality web site that is well designed and conveys a quality image.

A good rule of thumb when budgeting for a web site is to assume you will pay approximately $250-300 USD per page - this should include your graphics design, content development, setting up registration forms, etc. This may sound too expensive for many companies but for better or worse perception is reality in the online world! So, don't short change yourself, put some resources into your web site and be prepared to continue to do so - it's now a vital component of any company's ongoing marketing processes that needs constant upgrading like traditional marcom (PR, print, etc.) materials.

Opt-in E-Mail Trending Down but still Viable

Opt-in or permission based e-mail (meaning people give you "permission" to market to them) response rates for Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer are dropping below where they were a year ago by 30-50% on average. What's happening? The ever-increasing deluge of Sp@m is negating the throughput (response rates, purchases, etc.) of quality opt-in e-mail.

Opt-in e-mail is still a viable and excellent way to market your company but expect less results, lower costs/fees (more vendors equals more competition which is good) and the need to repeat your campaigns if you want to see tangible results. And don't get dazzled by a design firm or your in-house marketing staff that wants to design a fancy HTML e-mail message for you - 65-75% of the market today still doesn't want fancy graphics, they want a short message, delivered concisely with short paragraphs in a text format. Less is more!

Performance Based Marketing on Upswing

Publishers and advertisers are more and more willing to accept advertising which is ""performance based"" and/or based on a "cost-per-click" or even a revenue share basis. Meaning, it's not like putting an ad in the USA Today and hoping people respond to the publication - you can now work with list brokers, online publishers and marketing organizations to setup very targeted campaigns that are based on your paying a small cost for an actual response to your message via an opt-in e-mail campaign, text link ad on a web site and/or an insert in a newsletter.

Case in point, companies like Virtumundo, Inc. (they are a pioneer in the performance based market) are now willing to charge nothing upfront in many cases for an advertising campaign and to just do a revenue share with you on the back end; this is typically 20-40% of your SRP, but will vary depending upon your goods and/or services. And, they will do a test campaign prior to a full-bore campaign to make sure that the response rates will be worth their investmënt.

Another key benefit to any business that wants to leverage the shifts occurring in performance-based marketing is its inherent ability to be highly targeted. You can tie a marketing process (campaign) to a web site, newsletter or pay-per-click search engine (Overture and now via Google's Ad Words Program) with specific demographics that are highly qualified and targeted. Contrast this again with the traditional print medium where you can target to a certain extent; but not like performance-based marketing. Consider an ad again (for example) in the sports section of the USA Today - it will clearly deliver a sports enthusiast, but not a male who plays tennis that lives in the Western US, etc. And, better targeting will always deliver better results, assuming all other issues are on a level playing field.

Search Engine Marketing still a Mystery to Many

I hate to say it but most of the web sites we analyze still don't have the basic HTML fundamentals (Title, Keywords, Description) in-place so their sites can/will be indexed (reviewed by an automated bot/software agent) properly. Their title is wrong (don't repeat your company name), there are too many keywords (you want 8-12) or the wrong keywords and the description of the company is either poorly written or reads like yet another "mission statement" that has been developed by the CEO/CFO and three Senior VPs. This is basic block and tackling marketing and should be setup properly when a web site is designed.

Be prepared to deploy some marketing resources for quality Search Engine Marketing - it's fiercely competitive for web site rankings; you've got 3-5K web sites coming online every single day of the week and many are trying to drive market awareness via S/Engine ranking. What's a rule of thumb of what to pay for standard S/Engine Marketing Services: i.e. Title/Description Development, Keyword Analysis, Content Rewrites, etc.? Costs can vary tremendously, depending on your market segment, web site size, what type of services you outsource, competitive issues, etc. Generally expect to pay $3-6K for a basic 3-4 month campaign and then some modest fee for ongoing maintenance (say $200-500 per month). There are alternative sophisticated S/Engine processes that cost much more than this, but these are typically suited for companies that have a good sized marketing budget and/or a large web site that necessitates a different approach.

How To Choose Your Website Colors

2005-11-22T10:56:00.000-08:00

Source: By Jason OConnor (c) 2005

Color is often overlooked in the business of optimizing websites for better returns on investments. Website sales can be greatly affected by simply changing its colors. Ever come across a website that uses some funky combination of print and background colors? If you ever want to experience an eye-twisting headache, try reading yellow print on a blue background. The reason you see black type on a white background so much is that it is the best color combination for reading, both on and offline. Since it is even harder to read text on a monitor than it is on paper, we must all be especially careful with the colors we choose for our websites, or suffer less-than-optimal site traffic and repeat visitors.

Color choice should also be dictated by other, less obvious goals, when designing or re-vamping a website. It's important to realize that different colors invoke different emotions, are associated with specific concepts and say different things in each society. For instance, green often times is associated with freshness or money, which is fairly obvious if you think about it. But every color does this, and some of the emotions and concepts are more subtle. For example, white means pure, easy, or goodness and purple can be associated with royalty or sophistication. What's more, each color carries with it both positive and negative ideas. The emotions and concepts that you associate with specific colors may differ from other people's associations, but there are themes that run throughout each color. Here are some:

Red:
Positive: Sense of power, strength, action, passion, sexuality
Negative: Anger, forcefulness, impulsiveness, impatience, intimidation, conquest, violence and revenge

Yellow:
Positive: Caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Spring time
Negative: Criticism, laziness, or cynicism

Blue:
Positive: Tranquility, love, acceptance, patience, understanding, cooperation, comfort, loyalty and security
Negative: Fear, coldness, passivity and depression

Orange:
Positive: Steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, and cheerfulness, warmth, excitement and energy
Negative: Ignorance, inferiority, sluggishness and superiority

Purple:
Positive: Royalty, sophistication, religion
Negative: Bruised or foreboding

Green:
Positive: Monëy, health, food, nature, hope, growth, freshness, soothing, sharing, and responsiveness
Negative: Envy, greed, constriction, guilt, jealousy and disorder

Black:
Positive: Dramatic, classy, committed, serious
Negative: Evil, death, ignorance, coldness

White:
Positive: Pure, fresh, easy, cleanliness or goodness
Negative: Blind, winter, cold, distant

A major goal of marketers is to invoke emotion in their audience. We know that if we can cause some kind of an emotional reaction in the people we are marketing to and communicating with, we have a better chance of compelling them to buy from us. The battle between logic and emotion that rages in each of is usually won by emotion most of the time. By choosing the colors of our websites and online media with deliberate care, we are purposefully trying to invoke a specific emotional response that will increase sales. So pick your colors carefully.

Not only do colors evoke emotions, but they can communicate messages or concepts too. For example, look at ClickItTicket.com to see how color is used to communicate the new affiliation between Oak Web Works, LLC and ClickitTicket.com. The blues of Oak Web Works's logo swirl into the reds of ClickitTicket.com's logo. This can be interpreted as a melding of the two organizations, which is what the words underneath say, "in affiliation with". Also, the red of OakWebWorks.com indicates action and passion, two essentials for people who want to attend theater, sporting events or concerts.

Another online ticket website, BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com, has a different color approach. Its main colors are blue and purple, giving the site a comforting, secure and sophisticated feel. The main header on each page has all the colors in the rainbow in it, a collage of images, with the word `Tickets' in large, white font. Much of the site is white too, which gives it a clean feel.

As a general rule of thumb, when Oak Web Works designs websites, one primary color and one secondary or complimentary color will be chosen. These colors are based on the specific audience and market of our client and the messages the client wants to communicate to the rest of the world. If more than two or three colors are used, things tend to look a little messy, and the power of any one color is diluted too much, so we most often stick with two colors.

When I am not sure exactly which colors or combinations to use, I often start trying different things, then take a step back and ask myself what my chosen colors are conveying to me. After designing many websites over the years I have realized that going with my gut has often worked when I'm in doubt. You would be surprised at how creative and accurate your intuition can be.

However, if the client already has an established brand, we will always make sure to match the colors of the website with the original colors of the company. It is not wise to have print collateral material one color and the website a totally unrelated color. All marketing channels need to remain consistent, with one face only.

Since website visitors all have different platforms, different monitors, and different settings for their screen resolutions, the colors you choose for your website may not always be rendered the exact same way on your site visitors' monitors. That's why there are "Web Safe" colors that have a much higher likelihood of looking the exact same regardless of the user's computer, monitor or settings. Many graphics programs, including Adobe Photoshop, have a feature that allows you to choose "Web Safe" colors only.

Keep in mind however, that the sophistication of technology today allows for Web designers to be able to stray from the "Web Safe" colors more and more. So don't be overly concerned if you choose to use "un-safe' Web colors, chances are that most of your audience has the computers necessary to view your site the exact way you intended.

Whether you are designing sites for clients or designing your own business website, your color choice is vital. Be sure to try different colors, different shades, and different combinations before you decide. It's a lot of fun playing with colors but every choice you make comes with a set of pre-defined societal meanings and emotions, so choose with deliberate care.

Google's Jagger Update | The Dust Begins to Settle?

2005-11-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

Source: By Ken Webster

What Happened?
Webmaster's, Site Owners, Online Businesses and SEO Companies everywhere have been desperately trying to decipher the fallout from the longest and most grueling algorithm update in the history of the Internet. Webmaster and SEO Forums have been busier than ever before.

Relevancy and revenue generation are the two top goals of any SE (Search Engine). As the Internet and associated technologies mature, SE algorithms have become much more complex. This was demonstrated in Google's 3-4 week long 3 phase "Jagger" update.

The initial response was very negative and Google received more bad press from every conceivable corner than what could have been imagined, going in. Many sites fell completely out of SERP (Search Engine Result Placement) over night, seemingly unexplainably. Some have recovered, but many haven't, while others have improved traffic.

Compounding prognostication, Yahoo initiated a much milder index update during the latter phase of the Jagger update.

Google had several issues to deal with:

1) Scraper Sites
2) Faux AdSense Directory Sites
3) CSS Spamming Techniques
4) Growing "Generic" SERP Irrelevancy
5) Reciprocal Linking Abuse
6) Ballooning BlogSpam

Google had no choice but to act decisively and convincingly.

The following list is how we believe Google has handled these issues in the Jagger update:

1) Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2) Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3) Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to 1) & 2)?
4) More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5) Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6) Possible introduction of CSS Sp@m filtering?
7) Overall Blog demotions?
8) New and unresolved "canonical" issues?

Let's look at each action separately:

1) Increased Importance Placed on IBL Relevancy

Reciprocal linking abuse was growing out of hand, even "organic" SERPs were losing relevancy because the majority of active Site administrators were link-mongering anywhere and with anyone they could, regardless of relevant value. Google created that monster throwing the weight behind quantity over quality for a long time. It appears they simply started applying several published relevancy measurement factors (See US Patent Application #2005007174), which seem to have started becoming more noticeable during the "Bourbon" update.

2) Increased Importance Placed on OBL Relevancy?

The patent application mentioned above is ripe for OBL Relevancy algorithm application. The "Bourbon" update ushered in a marked hit on irrelevantly linked and broader based Directories, while promoting "niche" or "focused" more relevant topical based directories. It makes perfect sense to cut sp@m at its source. This move was subtle but at the same time was an engineering masterpiece because it addressed every form of link sp@m to some degree, including CSS spammed links. Theoretically, if a link can't be seen, it won't be selected by visitors and no measurable time is spent there, therefore it's "Relevancy Rating" starts to diminish immediately. Some even hypothesize that those kind of links can effect the overall "Relevancy Ranking" for the entire site and has potential to effect the page and Site PR (Page Ranking). We definitely saw a promotion of "Relevant" Directories almost across the board with Jagger.

3) Promotion of Relevant Niche Directories (related to #s 1, 2 & 5)?

We began seeing a Directory SERP shift in the "Bourbon" update and definitely saw a promotion of "Relevant" Directories almost across the board with Jagger. Based on those facts, no one can deny that there has been a significant algorithm re-emphasis in and about "Linking" issues.

4) More Weight Thrown Back to PR @ Top Domain?

Google had seemed to stray from earlier value ascribed to PageRank for some time in quest of content, content freshness and other goals. After Jagger3, I was surprised to find PR zero pages highly placed in important Topic SERP with a great deal of code and 2 sentences of content. One example is prominent just below Matt Cutt's Blog when doing a Google search for "Jagger Update". This particular example is mostly javascript, Adsense and intra-site links. On further inspection, the site is well done, contains a good deal of relative information and has a top domain ranking of PR6. Based on these observations one might concur that more emphasis has been placed on top domain PR. This "observed" return focus to "Authoritative" or Sites holding "Trusted" status should hold no real surprise in the quest for "relevancy" improvement.

5) Increased Importance on AdSense Placement Relevancy?

Google has declared all out war against Sp@m AdSense Sites of every kind. Many of these are/were faux directories and scrapers or other Mega-Sites utilizing auto content and auto link generation technologies and services. Matt Cutts in his Blog openly asked for and gave specific instructions on how to report these Sites to help augment the overall effect of the algo changes targeting those raging atrocities. The war rages on against all kinds of sp@m, but you can always bet that relevancy, revenue protection and growth will be at the top of the list.

6) Possible Introduction of CSS Sp@m Filtering?

Matt Cutts issued an unusually stern warning about using CSS Sp@m techniques, coinciding with the Jagger Update (strangely enough) Oct 19, 2005: Hëre is link to the article in Threadwatch entitled: Google Engineer Hammered over CSS Sp@m Comments.

There is a great deal of controversy over this issue, but it has been a growing cancer for a long time. Some almost seem to be speculating that Google couldn't figure out the algs to combat these issues yet outside of OBL Relevancy implementation, almost dismissing Matt's warning as "huff and puff" to scare CSS sp@m abusers into compliance. Google always addresses serious sp@m issues eventually and this one has been on the table for around a year, that I know of! It just doesn't make sense to ignore a warning from a top Google Engineer, does it?

7) Overall Blog Demotions?

BlogSpam became a growing problem after Blogging gained prominence in 2004. Google had to backtrack on Blog SERP prominence because many of them were not managed well, or at all, losing topical relevancy. Jagger seems to have ushered in a SERP sweep of Blogs that were not topically focused, managed with purpose, and contained adsense and link sp@m. It got to the point that it seemed that half the top SERP for almost any topic were Blog listings. Many have fallen in Jagger.

8) New and Unresolved "Canonical" Issues?

Many are complaining of incorrect indexing issues, especially for sites that were indexed for the first time during Jagger. The problem seems to stem from Google treating the abbreviated Site URL (without www) and the complete URL.

I'll use one of my own as an example:
www.precisioncompletion.com is a new unranked launch during Jagger and comes up correctly.

Do a Google search for precisioncompletion.com and look at the cache - A PR7 and the wrong website!

Half of the listings are correct and the other half pertain to that other site. Google is aware of these canonical issues being reported, and I believe they are planning to address them as the dust settles a little more on this update. Maybe I need to do a 301 permanent redirect to the full "URL" before I lose that PR7 and see if I can get it to transfer and magically pump up that PR zero!

What to expect next?

There are a large number of sites that saw crippling SERP demotions, including clean coded, relevant, W3C validated, completely "White Hat" sites that haven't ever even engaged in link exchange programs. I know, I had one that got hit, my first time ever in a Google update. Many of us in that position hope that effect is temporary "Collateral Damage" which will be rectified in subsequent alg tweaking as the dust continues to settle on the "Jagger" update.

I don't see that Google has deviated off their widely expressed intentions and historical path in the Jagger update. They will continue to fight sp@m at any level that protects the footsteps in their expressed intended path: Relevancy - Market Share - Revenue Generation (Maintenance & Growth) - Fiscal and Community Responsibility.

Ken Webster
Mountain Eagle Marketing

SEO - Effective Natural Linking Strategies

2005-11-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

Source: By Chet Holcomb

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.
However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most, if not all search engines. And let's face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase website value in the eyes of the search engine. They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer - sure it will help your SEO, but it won't be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:

1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A.

2. One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A.

3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.

4. Directory Linking = Site Directory A links to Site A.

That seems simple enough, but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't willing to spend the time or don't have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties, but we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It's possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young, low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on "linking" pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.

A Look at Local Search

2005-10-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger (c) 2005 StepForth News Editor

September has graduated into October and there is simply no more time to whine about a summer spent staring at the screen. Autumn is upon us and the retail world is gearing up for what should be the most wonderful time of the year. Not only is my birthday just two days away, Christmas is coming. With the traditional surge in consumer activity spurred by both events, I am curious about what is happening on the local search front.

For most of the last decade, search engine marketers have been able to tell their clients that one of the primary benefits of search engine advertising is instänt access to a worldwide market. The Internet is the first public medium that is global in nature, offering advertisers the ability to reach potential customers virtually any place on Earth and many smaller businesses that started marketing their services over search engines found themselves able to grow into markets larger than their general urban area.

A flaw in that strategy is that for smaller retail operations the global nature of search engines has never been a huge selling point. Most street-front small businesses cater to a slightly smaller area, often a sliver-sized slice of the city or region they are located in. Many are competing against other businesses with similar products or services marketed to the same pool of potential customers. Until recently, search advertising was a less attractive option for a wide range of street-front businesses than other traditional types of advertising such as print, radio, local TV and the ubiquitous Yellow Pages.

That is how the situation stood until about a year ago when Amazon, Google and Yahoo, along with a slew of smaller search tools introduced the concept of local search as a feature. Making a local search tool was a fairly simple stretch for the search engines. Proving a bit harder is getting consumers to refer to local search when looking for products or services. In order to get the public to adopt local search, the major engines had to make it simple to use and more effective than general search could be.

In some ways they are already there. There has been a lot of buzz and hype about local search engines over the past year. The major search engines have been rolling out technologies to support local search and each has made some sort of arrangement with local telephone directories to absorb information contained in the Yellow Pages.

That said it appears there is still a long way to go. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way early. I performed one of my less-than-scientific studies on four of the most popular local search tools, Google-local, Yahoo-local, MSN-local and Amazon's A9. To conduct the study, I used three keyword phrases, each consisting of one, two and three unique words (Xbox, Baking Goods, and Rocky Mountain Bicycles).

For example, a local-search for the Xbox Game System performed on Google, Yahoo, MSN and A9 [Xbox] produced widely different results that can be viewed by clicking on the links for each engine. Of each engine tested, Yahoo produced the best initial results for a person interested in popping down to the local store to buy something, with the first four results being local stores offering the product. Google offered a list of newspapers, institutions and marketers writing about the Xbox but did include two local shops. MSN didn't produce any results, surprising for a product designed by their parent and sold in their hometown. A9 produced a unique set of results including images drawn from the Google image-bank but did not offer information on where one could actually buy the product. Grace will be given as the search consisted of only one keyword.

Another search, this time for the two-word phrase "baking goods" produced similarly disappointing results. This time none of the search engines were able to help me find the products I was looking for. Not one of the four engines returned anything even remotely useful, aside from purchased ads from the hardware/household goods chain Canadian Tire, which (as all Canadians know), carries an assortment baking goods. Perhaps I wasn't being specific enough.

For a third test search, I used the name of a fairly well known bicycle maker, Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Using the three-word brand name I received some useful results from three of the four local engines being tested, however the bulk of results were still, for the most part, less than useful. This time, MSN wins by producing the greatest number of shops in their listings though they löse a lot of points for the stunted presentation style. Yahoo did fairly well, offering me two credible choices as the first results and a couple lower in the list. Google only offered one immediate choice. As for A9, it again offered a number of general web-drawn references, some cool images drawn from Google and nothing in the way of a local store referral.

Ok. That experiment stunk. I was hoping to write something highly positive about the state of local search. From a technology standpoint, there are a number of very interesting and intriguing things happening in the world of local search. For instance, Google, Yahoo and MSN have all integrated extremely cool mapping technologies in the bid to help consumers find their way to specific stores. A9 took this a step further in their bid to photograph every storefront in America to provide searchers with the ultimate in visual confirmation that this is indeed the door they want to walk through.

I was impressed by the information provided by Yahoo-local for shops that came up in my searches. When a user clicks on a reference provided by Yahoo local, they are brought to a page that shows a clear address, a map, detailed information about the business, and consumer generated product/service reviews. Neither MSN nor Google provided results as detailed or thorough, though that, unfortunately isn't saying very much.

The major search engines are trying to make local search portable by serving results and self-generated maps to hand held devices such as PDAs and Palm-pilots. Google and Yahoo are also both rumoured to be merging local-results with product comparison engines in their bid to help users find the best products at the best prices. Lastly, each of the engines tested are working to produce personalized results for each user by asking they register in one way or another.

I was hoping to test out a number of these technologies while researching this piece but alas, have been confounded by the apparent inability of these engines to help me find a sufficient number of sources in Seattle to buy stuff at. My memories of Seattle, a city I lived in fifteen years ago, still serves me better. I remembered a number of department stores (each of which carry the Xbox), a few restaurant suppliers who carry baking goods, and several sporting goods and bike shops that carry the Rocky Mountain brand of bicycle. Most of the shops I remember are still in business, at least according to their websites, each of which is in the general indexes of Google, Yahoo and MSN. As for A9, perhaps I simply don't get it.

2005 is not likely going to be the break-through year for local search, at least not in time for the two most important retail events in my part of the world (according to my less-than-scientific study at any rate). My friends and family will simply have to rely on their memories when choosing my birthday presents and a continent full of eager Christmas shoppers will continue to muddle through the same way we have for the last fifty years, by clogging up the streets and freeways in the final week before the holidays.

Simple Changes That Explode Your Response Rate

2005-10-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Source: By Alli Ross StickyArticle.com

A recent study by Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Amazon.com converts 12.8% of its visitors into sales. Now, why does Amazon have such high conversion rates while the majority of sites on the internet are only obtaining about a 1% conversion rate? It's simple. Amazon invests lots of time and effort into improving their conversion rate. They know that small changes to a web site can make huge impacts to your bottom line. Below are some simple changes that can make a dramatic difference in your own profits.

Headline

A change in your headline alone can produce a 1,900% increase in your income. This is one of the most crucial parts of your sales page and can pull in 80% of the orders if done correctly. Your headline should concentrate on the biggest benefit of your product. In addition, it should create enough curiosity to compel the reader into the sales copy.

One of the most powerful words in sales copy is the word "you". This is also true for headlines. Using the word "you" or "your" in your headline and sales copy transfers ownership and makes your writing much more personal.

Color of Your Background

The color of your background is a very simple change that can raise your sales by up to 30%. The most effective color is dark blue, but grey, black, and white also work pretty well. All aspects of your sales letter must be tested because different market segments respond differently.

Audio Marketing

Adding audio to your order page could catapult your sales by 437%. Audio makes your message much more personal and adds to your credibility. People also like to associate a face with a voice. Place a small picture above your recording and see how this affects your sales conversions.

Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are a powerful tool for collecting the email addresses of potential customers. It is also a good way to catch your visitors by the tail before they leave your site. You don't want any of your web site visitors to go to waste. So, before they leave, grab them with a pop-up. With a pop up you can introduce them to your other products, subscribe them to your newsletter, or find out why they didn't buy your product. It is crucial to know exactly what your visitors are looking for. When you know what your targeted visitors want, you can target your marketing and catapult your conversion rates.

Font Colors

Colors play a big part in online marketing. You can crank up your conversion rate by using red font for your heading and subheadings. Yellow highlighting can also rev up your response rates. Make sure that your copy is fast and fun. Use yellow highlighting, underlining, and bolding for things that you want to emphasize. All readers on the internet are scanners. Your sales letter will not be read word for word. Because of this, you must make sure that your most important points stand out.

Number and Text of Your Order Buttons

Long salës letters have proven to be the best for online salës letters because they limit a visitor's navigation choices, they are focused on one product, and they provide potential customers with every bit of information they could want about a product. However, if you only have one order button at the very end of your sales page, you are probably losing out on a number of salës. The key is to place multiple button links that direct the user to the order page. Place a red border around your order buttons to increase your conversion rates, but remember to keep testing. You never know when you might hit upon something that doubles your profits.

Another important factor influencing click-through rate is what text you use for your order buttons. Some of the most effective text that have been used on the internet are below.

Click here to order
Click here to grab your copy of _____________

There are so many sites that still do not include a call to action. You must clearly explain to your visitors what you want them to do. Marketers have proven that you will increase your sales by at least 80% simply by asking for the order.

Newsletters / Autoresponders

Unfortunately, not everyone that comes to your site will be ready to buy. Actually, this is usually 90% or more of the visitors that arrive at your site. However, to be successful, you must be able to stay in contact with potential customers. In order to do this you must capture their email address by offering a newsletter or autoresponder. You can do this through a pop-up or subscription form. Some of the best places for a subscription form include the top-left hand of your sales page and the very bottom of your sales copy.

Limited Choices Limit your visitors to a single choice. Your sales page should have one main goal: to sell one, individual product. You may have a secondary purpose of subscribing visitors to your newsletter, but this is not the main point of the page. The more choices you give people to surf around your site, the more confused they become and many will often just click away to somewhere else. By focusing your potential customers, you can crank up your conversion rates.

Web Site Copy

Strong testimonials can increase your sales by a phenomenal 250%. Gaining credibility is crucial on the internet where there are no sales reps on hand to talk to personally. When your visitors see that other people have risked doing business with you and have been pleased with the results, you gain trust that cannot be bought. However, when lost, it is nearly impossible to gain back.
For a testimonial to be effective, it must contain the following elements:

A good testimonial is descriptive! Avoid using one and two word testimonials. People will be much more influenced by longer testimonials that contain solid numbers and facts about the benefits they experienced.

List the customer's full name, business name, and URL.

Do NOT edit your testimonials. This is an unethical practice. However, correcting the spelling would be acceptable. So, how do you go about collecting these powerful testimonials? There are a couple of options. You may ask current customers for testïmonials. Many times, you may have many very happy customers who just never really thought about sending in a testimonial. They are very likely to be responsive if you approach them and explain to them how both of you stand to benefit.

Another option is to give a couple of your products away for free in exchange for a testimonial. This has proven to be very effective in some cases.

Nevertheless, be sure to incorporate testimonials into your overall marketing plan. Research has shown that they work best when placed right below the headline.

A strong guarantee helps alleviate any anxiety the customer may be feeling about ordering from you. Your guarantee shows that you have confidence in what you are selling. Did you know that the longer your guarantee is for, the fewer returns you will receive? This is a simple solution that will increase your bottom line and reduce the headache of filing returns. So go ahead and give your customers a one year guarantee. If you want to gain their trust even further and lower your return rate, give them a lifetime guarantee. Remember, your first-time customer is often worth much more than just their initial purchase. Your current customers are the most valuable sources of repeat sales. Always keep this in mind when marketing to a lifetime customer.

No matter what you are selling online, you can increase your conversion rates by using pictures of your products. This is especially true for ebooks.

People are visual. A three-dimensional picture of your product can:

Increase time spent at your site by 50%. Any time people stay longer at your site, your chances of making the sale are higher.
Another important feature of a good sales page are bonuses. A bonus that is related to your product increases the perceived value of your offering. People are always looking to get more bang for their buck. A bonus can be one of your best source for closing the sale.

By making the bonus a "limited time offer", you create a sense of urgency. Anticipation is one of the most powerful tools in online marketing. When used appropriately, it can drastically increase your response rate.

You are now coming near the end of your salës letter. Add some personalization with a handwritten P.S. Some online marketers even use a P.S.S. and a P.S.S.S. Test a combination to see what works best for you.

Is Google Building An Alternative Internet?

2005-10-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger (c) 2005, StepForth News Editor http://www.stepforth.com/

Google is working on its most ambitious project to date, the creation of a global data transfer network that could effectively serve as a private Internet. Since the introduction of AdWords three years ago, Google has become the world's largest media company and advertising vehicle. It has grown to rival Microsoft in scope and scale. The process has made it a fully globalized corporation.

Google has an estimated $7billion in the bank and employs many of the brightest brains in IT. It also has a reputation for being one of the best tech firms in the world to work for and has been known to use that reputation to headhunt intellect from its rivals. It is focused on the burgeoning Chinese market and appears to be performing better there than its chief rival Microsoft is. Google has the obvious capital and intellectual resources to do just about anything it wants to.

There are a number of reasons backing speculation that Google is building its own global digital communications network. Google has formally entered the telecom business with the release of a VOIP client known as Google Talk. VOIP is an acronym for Voice Over IP, which is a synonym for Internet telephone. In order to provide this service Google has had to acquire technical and physical resources that, along with other assets held by the company, point to the construction of an alternative Internet.

As Microsoft has so ably demonstrated over the past twenty-five years, there are a number of profitable ventures found in a space monopolized by a single mega-corporation. If that is the path Google is taking, building the infrastructure to capitalize on it would be considered the crucial but difficult first step. Over the past ten months, Google has been purchasing a large quantity of redundant fiber-optic lines, (commonly referred to as dark-fiber), in cities around the world. This fiber was laid during the boom years of the late 1990's but left surplus after the dot-com crash in 2000. Speculation about Google building an alternative Internet has been circulating since early January 2005 when Google started buying and accumulating lots of dark-fiber.

Telecommunications industry news-source Light Reading today reported on some of Google's recent real estate acquisitions. Google is leasing large amounts of floor space in or near major telecom interconnection facilities such as the recent leasing of about 1/10th of the rentable space at 111 8th Ave in New York, one the world's largest telecommunications interconnection hubs. It is also said to be in negotiations for large amounts of space at enormous co-location centers (known as carrier hotels) on the west coast, with the goal of linking Google's North American and Asian networks.

In early 2005, Google began issuing RFP notices to relevant tech firms for the development of a DWDM fiber optics network. The RFP process ended earlier this month and Google is currently reviewing bids from multiple tech vendors. Google is said to be planning to first establish a network in North America and then connect it with similar networks established in Europe and Asia. The construction of such a network could give Google the ability to deliver multiple branded media such as music, video, online telephone and other Internet services to every home in the United States.

DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) is a technology that exponentially increases the carrying capacity of fiber optic cables. According to an article in yesterday's IPMedia Monitor (sub req.), only a handful of the largest telecommunications providers operate commercial DWDM networks. A small number of private DWDM networks exist but few are large enough to need such capacity.

Google's need for bandwidth capacity is increasing rapidly. It currently pays the traditional telecom firms like AT&T who own the long-haul fiber lines a premium for bandwidth. Building its own data transfer network could be seen as a cost savings solution, especially as it could cost as little as $100million (in new spending) to construct one. Google already owns fiber throughout North America and around the world. It just needs to connect it all together.

Once connected, what could Google possibly do with a homebrewed state-of-the-art fiber-optics system? It could develop the kind of exclusive branded environment AOL originally dreamed of. It could capitalize on its recent innovations to provide life-service technologies such as Google Talk (VOIP) and interactive information resources such as local search alerts and the delivery of news, video and music files.

According to the IPMedia Monitor article, "... those who have reviewed the RFP say that Google's plans extend far beyond cost-saving motivation, with an architecture that puts a Google-controlled hub deep within all major metro areas."

Google's stated goal is to organize the world's information. A big part of that goal is to turn a profit while doing so. Google turns a very tidy profit each quarter but has long been seen as too reliant on one kind of income, paid search advertising. Google draws between 90 - 95% of its revenues from paid ads. The development of a Google operated data transfer network would give Google any number of ways to expand the number of productive revenue streams from 1 to 1+ more.

Then again, Google has always prided itself on its ability to organize the world's information and provide it free of charge to its users. The cost of Google's services is borne by the advertisers. Google might simply be exponentially increasing its online real estate inventory by enticing hundreds of millions of new registered users to take a look at whatever it is they are creating. Assuming it is the coolest thing on the block when released and is faster and cheaper than its competitors (as most of Google's new products tend to be), many of those new users will choose to stick around to use the services offered by a Google branded network.

Google appears to be preparing to become the world's greatest data delivery vehicle. Perhaps this phase of Internet history will be summarized with the neo-business aphorism, "If you can't beat them and you can't join them, you can just make your own reality and make lots of monëy over there." Google has $7big in the bank, much of it being investor money. From all accounts, it is preparing to light up and connect millions of miles of dark fiber, starting in North America possibly as early as the first quarter of 2006. Today we wire America. Tomorrow we wire the world. On Saturday, we'll do brunch.

SEO Success: Attracting Search Engine Attention

2005-09-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

Source: By Chesa Keane

Once a website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the web development project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create this web traffic. While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffic generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffic, maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to your website with long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies:

- Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition, and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see your website as an active, not stagnant, website. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:

-Monthly newsletter (or weekly)

-Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing database of information at your site.

-RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least.
Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.

-Checking links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and changing the link text from time to time will register as a change to the page.

-Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website.

Good links management will result in a stronger weight given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google and Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:

Reciprocal Links: Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links.

Purchase PageRank-based links: boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines by purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until you have achieved a better ranking.

List with directories: paid or unpaid directory listings that are relevant to your website will give your website additional exposure.

Anchor text: create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant keywords where possible.

PageRank consideration: link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you.

Blogs: Web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with blog posting.

Forums: Forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent of attracting traffic back to your site can get traffic back to your website, however, take care that you actually offer something of value in your posting so you are not accused of spamming.

Search Engine Listings: Listing with free search engines and directories is an essential step, although you won't see any results for months.

Gather Opt-in Email Addresses: Utilize an email list subscription function on your website with the intent of sending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space in your newsletter.

Advertise on Ezines: Purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product and/or services as well as links to your website in the process.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where you purchase advertising space based on keywords that are popular for your website if you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning you desire. It's all mathematical:

Price-Per-Click = monthly budget/number of clicks (or) Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per-click.

Some suitable combination of price and number of clicks based on your own budget will result in a campaign you can monitor and adjust as necessary. The important result to watch for is the conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.

Remember, creating a website is only the first step. Driving traffic to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan of action and follow-through. You are not going to realize success until you spend the time and energy - or pay someone else for their time and energy - to get the job done.

(c)2005. TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

Online Ad Market Grows 26 Percent

2005-09-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

Source: AP News

NEW YORK (AP) - Search-based keyword ads largely propelled the 26 percent growth -- to a record $5.8 billion -- in U.S. Internet advertising revenues for the first half of the year.

That compares to $4.6 billion for the same period last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The IAB did not release the full study, which PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted on its behalf. Although the report was not yet finished, the bureau said it wanted to release numbers during a marketing conference that opened Monday.

Internet-based advertising remains a small portion of the total U.S. advertising market, which was $71 billion during the first half of 2005, according to research firm TNS Media Intelligence.

Search ads made up 40 percent of the online ad revenues, the same share as the first half of 2004. But revenue totals for search jumped 27 percent to $2.3 billion, from $1.8 billion. Display ads made up 20 percent and classifieds 18 percent.

Click for Full Article Here

The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources

2005-09-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Edwards (c) 2005

Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder how to get more traffic to their site. This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.

Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.

However, rather than thinking "complicated equals better" in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources are extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.

Fact: "Good Traffic" equals "Targeted Traffic!"

That means the visitors come as a result of desire to find out more on a specific, niche topic, not as a result of "exit" traffic or membership in a "safe" list where members simply pitch each other in an incestuous sp@m fest.

Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking the link.

Bottom line, when you get right down to it, the best, most dependable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.

So, next time you're considering spending money on a traffic source, understand that unless it involves a targeted link that a targeted visitor can click to get to your website, think twice before opening up your wallet.

To my knowledge, only three ways exist to get a link to your site: buy it, "voodoo" it, or grow it.

** Buy Links**

Buying links actually rates the fastest way to get traffic to your website.

You simply sign up for Google AdWords at Google.com or you open an account with Overture.com.

You then run ads with a link on those sites and any time someone clicks the link, you pay for the click through a relatively straightforward bidding process based on the popularity of the keyword.

You can also buy links in ezines, newsletters, and on other peoples' websites either on a per-click basis, for a period of time (a week or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale gets made as a result of a click on the link.

** Linking "VoodDoo" **

Linking "voodoo" refers to attempting to manipulate the search engines into displaying links to your website.

You can find a large number of automated software programs online at any given time that will claim to help you get more search engine traffic.

Depending on the intensity of competition in a specific market and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently, pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn into the online equivalent of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.

** Grow Links **

I personally prefer this method to get links to my websites: growing them.

The best type of link to get involves one person telling another person, either explicitly or implicitly, they should click the link and visit the site at the other end.

One way to do this is simply to exchange links with another site which targets the same audience as your site.

You can manage this process manually or use one of the many software packages that will mange the process for you.

A search on Google.com for "reciprocal link manager software" yields a good start.

The easiest way to grow a link is through using articles other people post on their websites which link back to your website.

The reason articles work so well for "growing" links involves the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online, each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of different links back to your website by publishing a single article.

In fact, the following represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places you can grow links by publishing articles online.

~ Blogs - Your articles can not only appear on your own blog, but get posted by others on their blogs with surprising ease.

The links in these articles can point directly back to your website.

~ Article Directories - Article directories such as IdeaMarketers.com abound online.

They not only provide an easy way to display your articles to allow others to pick them up for posting on their websites, but also in and of themselves attract readers searching for content.

~ OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted content to their readers.

Since they can't produce all the content themselves, they publish articles created by others. Links from these sites can bring a steady stream of targeted visitors by giving you targeted exposure.

~ Ezines - By getting your articles published in other people's ezines, you can get a link on the most valuable real estate online, a targeted prospect's email "inbox."

Many ezine publishers run articles written by others to their targeted readers, and your link in the resource box can bring you a veritable avalanche of targeted site visitors when hundreds, even thousands of people receive your article at the same time.

Whether you choose to buy them, "voodoo" them, or grow them, getting targeted links to your site posted on the Internet represents the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your site.

Though not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate the search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term, dependable presence online.

The Blog and the Nature of Natural Linking

2005-09-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

Source: By Bill Platt (c) 2005 the Phantom Writers

Alot of people are talking, and few of them know, the soul of a search engine was created in the blog. ;-)
There has been a lot of talk about Natural Linking. From Oakland (Ask Jeeves), Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) and Mountain View (Google), California, all of the search engine companies are talking more publicly about natural linking.

Why Is Linking Important?

The whole concept of linking in the eyes of the search engine companies is that when Site A links to Site B, then Site A is making a personal recommendation of Site B. Because Site A is willing to put their reputation on the line to share the story of Site B, the search engines have determined that Site B MUST be of higher value than Site C.

Google established their PageRank system a few years back based on this conceptual idea. Over the past few years, the other search engine companies have begun to adopt the linking model in their attempt to catch up with Google's lead in the marketplace.

Because the search engine companies want to provide the best possible results to their users for a particular search, they have all climbed on the concept of link counting to determine the value of the sites that they are recommending to their users.

What Is Natural Linking?

The idea behind "Natural Linking" is that you can have for example five people linking to the same site giving the site a recommendation via the hyperlinked text.

The hyperlinked text is any text that appears between the [a href=] and the [/a] tags. When used in a HTML document, the hyperlinked text in the viewable webpage becomes a live clickable link like this: Blogger.com. When viewing this link from within the HTML coding, it will look like this:
[a href=http://Blogger.Com>http://Blogger.Com[/a].

Each webmaster who decides to link to an invidual website has a different idea and reasoning as to why his or her visitors should look at the site they are recommending. As a result, each webmaster will outline their reasoning within their links to your website.

Each webmaster in this example has shown their users why they should visit Blogger.com. In doing so, each of them has shown their link using their own descriptive text. It is this "descriptive text" that the search engines view as "natural links".

So, "Natural Links" are links that are created by individual webmasters and not by Site B's owner. In the eyes of the search engine programmers, these links will likely have a more accurate representation of the content that appears on a website. And the search engine masters understand that a stranger is always more honest in his representations than the webmaster trying to promote his own website.

What Does Natural Linking Have To Do With Blogs?

Over the last few years, you have read many an article from people pitching the importance of the blog in the search engine optimization game. But, do you know why blogs have become so important to the search engine companies?

Natural Linking

When all is said and done, the text within a link has been given more weight in the search engines than the real content on a webpage.

I heard the guffaws in the audience. I can see the look of utter disbelief on your faces as you sit in front of your computer staring incredulously at my comments. ;-)

But, wait. I can actually prove this to you.

Come back when you are done, but do click this link to view the search results for the Worst President: http://google.com/search?q=worst+president

Did you notice the results in search result Number 1? Did you go to the webpage to see if you could find the word "worst" in the text? I did too. And guess what. I could not see the word "worst" in the text either.

The same search with a slight variation, searching for the Worst President in History puts the same page in search result #4.
http://google.com/search?q=worst+president+in+history

This Is The True Power Of Blogs

The search engine companies put far more value in the natural link text than they put in the terms that show up within a webpage! The bloggers are the ones who have said that George W. Bush is the worst president in history. And, I will bet that they get a great chuckle every time someone like me points out their accomplishments.

The reason why the blogs are the best new resource of the search engines is because blogs use natural linking far more often than regular website pages.

The Challenges Facing Us Now

As we move forward to promote our website in the here and now and tomorrow, we must keep in mind the need for natural linking. The challenge for us is how to communicate our sales messages in such a way that links to our websites are perceived by the search engines as natural links.

As we face this challenge, we should consider giving other people more leeway in how they post a link to our websites. If you are using reciprocal links or paid advertising, you should by all means give the person showing your ad several choices for your advertisement. If you are using reprint articles to promote your online business, you should find a way to offer publishers and webmasters mutliple article resource boxes, or you should just give them more free reign in developing another natural link to your website.

Good luck in your linking endeavors.

Top 10 Tips for Killer Website Design

2005-09-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jan Peterson (c) 2005

Does website design make a difference in how long people will visit your website or if they'll stay and shop? You bet. You've seen the websites that scream "bad idea" and you know those folks are losing potential customers to their ineffective website design. Whether you are an internet newbie or an experienced marketer, you should understand that good website design is part of the success equation.
So here are my 10 tips on how to create killer website design that will invite potential customers in instead of scare them away.

1. Easy Navigation- The Road To Success

When people come to your website they are usually searching for something in particular. It might be recipes for a healthy low fat diet that takes less than 30 minutes to prepare or what is the best business to start online. Whatever they want, you need to have the answer. So ask yourself, why do people come to my website? When you know that then you know you should make it easy for them to find it.

I have been on countless websites that make it difficult for me to do business with them. And you know what my first response is? "Next!"

I am onto the next website to see if they can answer my question. People don't want to waste their time hunting for things that should be easy to find.

So, if people come to your website to find widgets, have a button easy to see and locate that says "Widgets". People have been trained to look to the left of the website for the navigation bar.

2. Flashing Gizmos - The Exit Ramp To A Dead End Street

You've seen those sites where the elephants are dancing and the poker chips are running across the screen asking you to click on them; the only thing they have ever done for me is give me a headache and to reach the "let me get out of here as fast as I can" button on my computer.

If you are a running a professional site, please don't use flashing graphics. Guaranteed you are encouraging people to leave your site. People have come to you for information. Not to click on an ad or have their brain scrambled.

Make your website a pleasant environment for the customer to be in. Just like a store. Think about when you go to the mall. You want to go in a store that is clean, well laid out, has good customer service and the products you are looking for. Your website should reflect this. If it is what you expect in your shopping experience, then isn't it reasonable that your customers are looking for this in your website.

What about music? Well, it depends. On most business sites I would suggest not. But let's say you have a realtor by the ocean who rents out homes for summer vacations. They have music that sounds like the ocean is lapping at the foot of your desk. I think music is appropriate in this venue, but I would definitely have it "off" as people log onto your site and give them an option to turn it on. Don't forget many people are surfing in their office environment and don't want the boss to find out. If your music is loud or on as people log onto your site and can't find a quick way to turn it off, they will leave your site faster than a cat that just saw the jaws of a Doberman!

3. Color - Enhancing The Highway Scenery

Color is an individual preference, but studies show that colors have an affect on people's emotions. Look at the top sites like Amazon; their layout is simple and so is their color scheme.

My recommendation would be to go with the flow. If you have a financial investment site, then conservative colors seem to follow. If you sell beach items, then lots of fun colors apply. If you have a bridal showër website, I would say soft pastels. Think about your audience and you will know the color scheme.

4. Page Links - I-95 To Your Destination

This is a no brainer but make sure all of your buttons are hyperlinked to a page and the right destination page. No one including Google likes broken link pages. It can be tedious but do it anyway. As you hover over the button and look down in the left-hand part of your screen, you will see the hyperlinked page. Just verify that yours are correct.

5. About Us - Is Your Map Reliable?

People usually want to know basic things before they do business with you. Who are you, how do I get a hold of you, what is your product or service guarantee, will you resell my email address, what is your privacy policy, when will I get the product, etc. You need to answer these questions to create trust between you and your potential customer.

6. Sitemap - How Do I Find My Way Around This Big City?

Let's say you have a lot of products or pages and resources. A sitemap helps people to find what they are looking for quickly without have to rummage through your whole site like a lost soul. They are not hard to create but are useful for large sites. It also helps the search engines to know what you are about very quickly.

7. Fast Loading Pages - All Lanes Are Go!

There is nothing worse than slow loading pages. You can optimize your graphics for your website. People hate to wait. You can check your page load time and page rank on Alexa.com. Slow pages equal death to an online business.

8. Shopping Cart - Need To Buy Some Souvenirs

If you are selling items or services, you need a reliable and well organized shopping cart. I have seen some websites that have a zillion products listed and to email them for orders. What a nightmare! Yes, the shopping carts will charge you a fee, but it is worth it for them to handle the transaction. There are many good shopping carts available and I would research them based on your business' needs.

9. Templates or Original Design- Chevrolet or Porsche

People often think that to have a website designed is going to cost thousands. So they opt for the templates and throw together sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach except I can tell the difference between what I call a "canned" site and one that was created from scratch. While I don't think a website that uses templates will turn off a customer, I just think it may not be as appealing.

Have fun with your online business. You can go to any number of photography sites and download professional photos from cows to race cars. This will make your site look more customized.

Again, I recommend that you shop for a good web designer. I paid around $400 for a basic site to go up. I know others would have charged me $1000 or more. That's why you need to shop and see examples of their work.

10. Customer Service - The Finish Line!

Okay so how is customer service a website design? Well, customer service should be written all over your site. From tips, to free reports, to guarantees, to fast and reliable shopping. People want to know you know what you are talking about and can deliver the goods they want. Give a little and I guarantee you'll get in back tenfold.

A truely Interesting Week in Search

2005-08-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger with StepForth News

It was a truly interesting week. On top of the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, the past five days provided search marketers a front-row view of international economic development, the growth of a media empire, the internal disruptive influence of corporate culture shifts, and a colligate game of "mine is bigger than yours." While a happy family obligation kept me away from San Jose, the week had several profoundly powerful sleeper stories that show how serious, ironic and silly the world of search is.

China is the largest emerging market on the planet and it is coming of age more rapidly than anyone could have predicted. While the Chinese paid-ad sector was worth only $148 million in 2004 according to Shanghai based iResearch Inc., international business advertising targeting the Chinese market is expected to grow exponentially while the online economy of China matures over the coming years.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are all heavily invested in the growing Chinese tech world. Google and Yahoo both made major moves this month in relation to their interests in China, the most public being Google's hiring of former Microsoft executive, Dr. Kei Fu Lee. Google and Microsoft are now engaged in a bitter legal dispute over Google's hiring policies. The decision in this case could have far reaching implications on how major tech firms recruit employees as well as on Dr. Lee's role in heading Google's efforts in China.

Google also announced it was retaining the services of three large Chinese firms to represent its AdWords advertising for the Google China site. On Tuesday Google named China Enterprise, China Source and Hotsales as authorized Google AdWords resellers and they will provide training and support to the three firms. Google was moved to hire and train experts in their bid to remain competitive with newly public rivals Baidu.com, and Yahoo's newest partner, Alibaba.

Late last week, Yahoo acquired 40% of Chinese ecommerce and business vertical search tool Alibaba.com in a $1 billion stock purchase. This makes Yahoo the largest investor in Alibaba.com, a position it is expected to use to push the Yahoo brand in the world's largest emerging market. The deal gives Alibaba control Yahoo's China business network while giving Yahoo effective control over Alibaba's overall activities.

Following on the smaller heels of fellow media giant Barry Diller, Robert Murdoch announced News Corp is getting involved in search and is going to purchase an established player in the coming months. News Corporation is an international empire that owns FoxTV, SkyTV, FoxNews, The New York Post, TV Guide, The Times Newspaper chain in the UK, and literally thousands of other media outlets, publications and production facilities. In a conference call with investors and analysts, Murdoch said News Corp is in advanced discussions to acquire controlling interest in an unnamed search engine. Speculation has turned to LookSmart and Mamma.Com as reasonable targets. Class A shares of News Corp rose quickly when news of Murdoch's plans were reported early yesterday, jumping from 16.42 to today's close of 18.11.

News Corp is both a creator and a distributor of media content, which makes their entry into the market more a challenge for Yahoo than for Google or MSN in the long run. Yahoo has been actively pursuing online entertainment distribution as a revenue channel along with paid search advertising.

That might be one of the few breaks Google got this week as the media skewered the search giant for its punitive one-year info-ban on CNET journalists. Google's PR department appeared to slip and fall in an apparent attempt to flee the scene after word of the CNET info-chill scandal made headlines early in the week.

The same day, an automatic Google Toolbar update switched the controversial AutoLink default setting from inactive to active. In other words, Google did something they said they weren't going to do and are now forcing limited but very real alterations on private websites without the permission of the owner, content creator or webmaster.

The inevitable culture shift seems to have occurred in and around the Googleplex in the twelve months since they posted their mega-successful IPO last August. While initial investors were fed the same "Don't Be Evil" line in regards to Google's corporate ethics policy the rest of the world was fed, a somewhat darker tone has emanated. Google has lost a lot of its luster over the past year, ironically while it has been getting much better at filtering sp@m from organic placement results. The word being bandied about is: Hubris (exaggerated pride or self-confidence often resulting in retribution. - source, wikipedia)

Things got a bit silly when Yahoo announced its spidered content index had grown to dwarf Google's spidered content index. Yahoo said its index now contained over 19 billion objects and documents and almost 2 billion images. Google's index is estimated to contain approximately 10 -12 billion documents and images. Their attention suddenly focused away from their own navels, Google scientists quickly glanced at their rival's and questioned Yahoo's claim of size-superiority before announcing they had doubled the size of Google's image index. The search marketing community gently reminded both that size is less important than relevancy, comparing the obsession with size to a couple testosterone driven boys who end up looking juvenile trying to outdo each other to impress an endless gaggle of girls.

What's funniest about the incident is that both Yahoo and Google have a lot of impressive stuff to brag about. Both have strong business models and post strong quarterly profits. Both moved this week to strengthen their core paid-ad businesses by giving advertisers and webmasters more control over various paid advertising opportunities. Yahoo opened the Yahoo Publisher Network to a growing group of beta testers, a move that prompted Google to offer more support to AdWords advertisers and more control over ad placement to AdSense partners. And as mentioned above, both have recently made aggressive moves into the growing Chinese market.

No review of the week could be complete without mention of the massive SES Conference in San Jose. Billed as the biggest search shindig of the year, SES San Jose is a playground of intellect, information and fun. Barry Schwartz, or RustyBrick of the Search Engine Roundtable posted coverage of several of the SES Sessions. Over at Search Engine Watch, this forum tracked the SES - Silicone Valley Parties.

Following the premise that history has a way of repeating itself, the level of activity in the sector this week may not be surprising. The past week was also the tenth anniversary of the Netscape IPO, widely considered the spark that set off the Tech-bubble of the late 90's. The events of this week are not those of a bubble but rather those of hyper inflated interest in a sector that shows no end to its potential growth.

Creating Your Online News Room: How To Build a Site The Media Will Love

2005-08-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

Source: By Bill Stoller, Publisher Free Publicity

From time to time, people ask me how public relations has changed during the two decades in which I've been seeking publicity. My answer: technology. Twenty years ago, the fax machine was a newfangled novelty. Our primary means of communicating with journalists was the telephone and the US Mail. The advent of e-mail and the web has made life easier in many regards and tougher in others - namely, thanks to hordes of clowns with money making schemes and software that "blasts" press releases indiscriminately to reporters, it's become very hard to get your e-mails through to spam weary reporters.

But there's another great advantage provided to publicity seekers by the Internet -- the ability to create an "online news room". In the "old days", the press kit reigned. Big bulky folders loaded with press releases, glossy photos and slides were standard. They were expensive to design, costly to reproduce and required lots of manpower and postage to assemble and distribute. Today, you can simply direct a reporter to a web URL, where all your press materials and high definition artwork awaits, ready to be used. It's a huge time and money saver.

A quick note: the traditional press kit isn't dead. It's still handy to create some physical kits to use with key journalists, as the very novelty of printed material can give you an edge at times. Also, some journalists still prefer a physical kit. Press kits are an important tool at trade show booths & press rooms, and special events. However, gone are the days of sending out large press kit mailings. Keep the kits for targeted use only.

Creating a useful online news room is really pretty simple. One of the main things a busy reporter wants is easy access to press releases, corporate and executive info and artwork. A well put together media room should provide a seamless walk-through.

Where Should the News Room Go?

There are two schools of thought on where to put your online news room. Some companies prefer to have it as a section on their main site, visible to all as a link on a menu bar or other navigational element. Others build entirely separate sites just for the media.

There are pros and cons to each. Putting it as part of your main site allows a journalist to "poke around" your site, absorbing more of the feel and culture of your company and its products. It also makes it easier if the reporter wants more information about a particular product than can be found in your media materials. Of course, since you'll need to provide clear links to the online news room to help such reporters find their way back, anyone visiting your site can access your press materials. This is probably not an issue but, if you feel potential customers may become confused if they wander into the online news room, this could be worth considering.

Creating a separate site allows you to tailor everything to suit the needs of the reporter and prevents the possibility of confusion for potential customers visiting your main site. The reporter however, will be unable to quickly "poke around" the main site as described above, so you may consider that in your decision. If you do choose a separate site, give it a name that incorporates your company (if you're the Acme Company, go for acmepress.com or acmeonlinenewsroom.com). Also, provide clear links to your main site throughout, and code them so that they open in a new window, allowing the reporter to see your main site without having to backtrack to the online news room.

Some Do's and Don'ts

DON'T force journalists to register or sign in for access. They're busy folks and may very well decide not to bother. Make life as easy as you can for them.

DO offer the opportunity for journalists to enter their e-mail address if they wish to be kept abreast of the latest news from your company, but don't link it in any way to the ability to access any portion of the site. DON'T confuse non-journalists who may wander into the site. Make it clear at the top of your main page of your online news room what it is and who it's for.

DO provide a link to your consumer FAQ page and an e-mail link for customer service to give non-journalists a place to go to get their questions answered. This will save you a great deal of time responding to messages from non-journalists asking "why am I looking at a press release? How do I download a new driver" or some such thing. Here's what Gateway says, "Gateway press contacts are only able to provide assistance for qualified members of the news media. They are not qualified to respond to product or technical support needs...If you are not a member of the news media, please feel free to visit our pages for Product Service and Support."

DON'T try to lay out the online news room if you're not a talented web designer. Don't use flash, heavy java-scripts and other doo-dads. The face you put forth to the media must be highly professional, and the ease of navigation and logical flow of the news room is vital.

DO hire a professional designer who has a portfolio that includes simple, easy-to-navigate, clean-looking sites.

What To Include in Your Online News Room:

Personal Contact Info. The name, address, e-mail, telephone number, fax number and cellphone number of your primary media contacts must be front and center. If you have an Instant Messaging ID, put it in there, too.

Press Releases. Place press releases in chronological order (most recent at the top). Keep traditional press release formatting and use easy-to-read fonts.

Executive photos, product photos, charts, graphs, and other appropriate artwork. Provide multiple versions -- 72 dpi (lower resolution) for online publications and websites, and 300 dpi (higher resolution) for offline publications. Put instructions such as To download, right-click and choose "save" next to the graphics. Make sure your pitch letters and press releases provide links to the appropriate artwork on your site.

Backgrounders, executive bios, white papers, investor relations info (if applicable), fact sheets, speeches, awards, streaming media of: press conferences, product demonstrations, president's speeches, etc.

Search Tool. Make it easy for journalists to find just what they want, by making all your press materials fully searchable.

Online News Rooms to Study:

The best way to learn how to put together an online news room is to see how some very smart folks have done it. Below are three outstanding examples....

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/default.asp
http://www.google.com/press/index.html
http://www.crayola.com/mediacenter/

Yahoo! Publisher Network to Compete with Google AdSense

2005-08-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor

For the past four years, Google has been the undisputed leader in search. Its rivals, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves have spent the past few years working to narrow the vast technological and popularity gap between them and the great Google. It has been a long and hard fought series of skirmishes and battles but this week, two of the three, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, signaled they might be getting closer.

In June 2003, Google made one of the wildest moves in the history of the Internet by innovating on the paid-advertising idea originally conceived by Overture. Already the most popular tool among search engine users, Google gave website publishers a revenue generating gift that kept on giving. Google's great PPC innovation was to permit AdWords advertising to appear on private websites, splitting the click-through fees 50/50 with the private webmasters whose sites delivered traffic. By giving private webmasters the opportunity to generate incidental revenues by acting as billboards for AdWords, Google saw profits from AdWords skyrocket while Internet users became conditioned to accept the small and unobtrusive ads.

The paid-search advertising market is worth billions and is expected to be worth tens of billions in a few years time. Yahoo! is betting that market will support a growing network of small to medium sized online publishers who will in turn bring more revenues to Yahoo!. Google, which generates over 90% of its enormous revenues from the AdWords program, might face serious competition from Yahoo!, which currently receives about 60% of revenues from paid-advertising.

This week, Yahoo! released a beta-test version of a similar program known as the Yahoo! Publisher Network or YPN. Open to a limited number of testers, including StepForth News, the YPN is meant to compete directly with Google's AdWords program. The beta is open, for the most part to US based users only. StepForth is fortunate to be among the few non-US based beta testers.

Yahoo! has had two long years to study the AdSense model and appear to have adopted a unique publisher-focused philosophy offering small and medium sized publishers access to syndicated Yahoo! products and services in a bid to brand Yahoo! content as well as Yahoo! generated paid-advertising. In other words, Yahoo! is not only serving paid-ads to webmasters, it is also helping them bulk site content with Yahoo! products such as search, shopping, travel, RSS, user-option personalization featured, and eventually, Yahoo! syndicated music and video services.

"Yahoo! has developed many highly successful relationships with web publishers around the world, and is building on those experiences to bring new revenue sources and compelling content to even more high quality sites," said Bill Demas, senior vice president, Yahoo! Partner Solutions group. "By helping the broader publishing community maximize the value of their sites, we aim to create an even more rewarding Internet experience for publishers, advertisers and users."

Much like AdWords, YPN will be a revenue generator for webmasters by delivering advertisements that match the topic of the document they are placed on. The Content Match feature enables publishers to place Yahoo!'s contextually-relevant listings on their sites and receive a share of the revenue generated by them. For example, ads that might appear in future editions of the StepForth Newsletter would likely be about search engines, search marketing, blogs, and/or tools for SEOs and website designers. Contextually driven advertising is cool but, profitable as it is, PPC is not the full story behind the YPN.

The Internet is the backbone network of global communications. Currently facilitating shopping, travel bookings, entertainment and instant-research, the Internet has supplanted traditional tools such as television and radio because it can easily mimic both mediums while simultaneously performing a number of other functions. Users interface with the Internet via documents that are, for the most part, created and posted by small to medium sized publishers. Yahoo! has adopted a publisher focused outlook and is looking to place its brand on information and entertainment content offered (eventually) on tens of millions of websites.

As publishers from every medium understand, the key to success is in keeping a captivated audience. One of the more interesting features of the YPN will be access to Y!Q, a context-driven search tool which is also in beta-test. Y!Q is a Yahoo! search application that uses the topic of the document it is embedded in or a trigger-word set by the webmaster to present search results in a transparent overlay. The results shown in the overlay consist of images, two news stories, and the first three organic search listings. The logic is site users will stay on a document instead of opening another search window and traveling away from the site. Y!Q is an open-beta. Webmasters interested in using Y!Q on their sites should refer to the Y!Q for publishers page .

Other integrated features in the beta include, Add to My Yahoo and Yahoo Maps, showing an inclination towards local, mobile and personalized search results.

Add to My Yahoo! will help webmasters and publishers find their way onto user monitors and personalized search results via the Yahoo! branded RSS feed and subscription service. RSS stands for really simple syndication and is basically a XML feed that delivers fresh content to people who subscribe to it. As with Y!Q, Add to My Yahoo! is already available for webmasters and publishers.

The inclusion of Yahoo! Maps shows Yahoo!'s understanding that user or webmaster generated maps are extremely important for local and mobile search users. Yahoo! has recently introduced an API for Yahoo! maps allowing webmasters to place geographic information on Yahoo! generated maps.

Yahoo! timed the release of the YPN beta to coincide with next week's Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. As beta testers, we will be using some of these features in future editions.

Crash Course in Google Ranking 101

2005-08-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jason DeVelvis

First, here's the rundown of some of the terminology I'm going to use in this article:
Inbound Links - Links coming into your site
Outbound Links - Links leaving your site
Cross Links - Links that you have "traded" with another site (i.e., they've got a link from their site to your and you've got a link from your site to theirs)
PR (Page Ranking) - Google's measure of how "important" your site is

SEO Is Not Dead

Ok, now lets talk about what you really want to hear - how to get those coveted 1-10 ranks for your keywords. Remember this - SEO is not dead. In fact, it is very much alive and important. The first thing to do in order to raise your site rank is target specific keywords. I say specific, because you need to target "keyphrases," meaning more than one word keywords. Some people use the words interchangeably (me included) so just ignore one-word keywords altogether. You will waste your money if you shoot for these, because chances are, there are other, much larger companies who already have you beat, and will continue to have you beat unless you've got a bottomless wallet.

Check Out Your Competition

Take this example, for instance, if you sell computers, you should not try to optimize your site for the keyword "computer" or "computers." First, think about all of the businesses that do anything with computers. Yeah, that's a lot. They'll all show up if you search for "computer." Now try to think of who would show up at the top of that list. I'll make it easy, it's Apple, Dell, Computer World, Computer Associates, IEEE, Computer History Museum, Webopedia, ASUSTeK, WhatIs.com, and HP. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I 99.9% guarantee you that you'll never get into that top 10 list. The HP link has almost 5,000 backlinks (discussed later) and a PR of 7/10. Good luck. Then What Should I Do?

So what should you try to target? Lets re-visit your computer store. What types do you sell? PCs, ok, what types of PCs? Custom. Ok, that's a little better, "Custom Computers" is still a vague keyword, though. (How many people build custom computers?) What kind of components do you use? Intel? AMD? SoundBlaster? GeForce? There you go, that's a little better - "Custom GeForce Computers." That returned 476k results instead of our previous 633 million with "Computer." Just a little bit less competition.

I Want More

Want to go further? Forget what types you sell, go for what do your customers want. What do they use your computers for? Gaming? Try "Custom Gaming Computers" - There are 672,000 results here, but the #1 spot has a PR of 5/10 and only 41 backlinks. That shouldn't be too hard to beat, we've just got to know who is linking to them, and beat them at the backlink game.

Oh yeah, before we move on to beating the pulp out of your competition, don't forget to SEO optimize your site for your chosen keywords before spending any time on backlinks. Otherwise, this next section won't mean much.

But I Digress...

Ok, now that your site is thoroughly optimized, how do we find out who their backlinks are? Well, you can do it by hand, or you can purchase a very helpful tool called SEO Elite that will analyze all of the backlinks to a site (and more). But, since you don't have SEO Elite yet, we'll do it the long way.

First, go to toolbar.google.com and download the Google toolbar, this will save you some time. Ok, now type in your keywords - "Custom Gaming Computers." The first link should be overdrivepc.com (if it's not, then someone may have already read this column and risen above them!) click to go there. When the page loads, go to your Google Toolbar, click on Options >"More" Tab > Make sure the "Page Info" box is checked. Then, click on the blue circle with the i in it. (This is the aptly named: "Page Info") It should drop down and allow you to select "Backward Links," choose it. Now you should be looking at a Google search page again, but this one is different, it only shows pages that link to overdrivepc.com. (Wow, that's handy!) At the time of this article, there are 41 pages that link to the site, and you can view them all. Some are other pages in the site, others are third parties.

Get Your Site Some Friends!

Follow each third party link and check out the page. Does it have to do with your business? Would their visitors benefit from coming to your site? (The answer is probably yes) If so, email the webmaster - there should be an email address somewhere on the site. Ask him or her if they would link to your site. Be willing to trade links with them, or to pay for a good link with a high PR. That reminds me - look just to the left of the Page Info icon on your Google toolbar, and you should see a green bar. That is the Page Rank of the page you're currently on. You want to target pages with higher page ranks than your own, because for each of those sites that link to yours, they effectively "give" you a little bit of their PR. Kinda like in high school when the head of the cheerleading squad flirted with the nerd in the hallway, she "gave" him more popularity.

By the way, if you can manage to get a link from the # 1 site itself, do it!

Do this for all of these links you can, then move on to the #2 listing for your keywords. Then #3, and so on. Don't get discouraged if some webmasters don't reply to you, it may take an email or two. If they say no, thank them for their time and move on. I try my best not to burn any bridges - you never know when you'll need to contact that webmaster again, and if he remembers you were polite, that will make you look good.

Whew, Finally Done.

This is a very easy way to move up the Google SERPS, no "expertise" required, just good old-fashioned hard work. It will take some time for Google to re-index those pages and realize that they have a link to you now. And it will take even longer for your PR to go up (from what I hear, it's been around 3-4 months since the last PR change [Today is 7/14/2005]) But be patient, get links upon links, and keep adding great content to your site, and you will jump up in the SERPS by leaps and bounds.

To Your Success, and Your # 1 Website!

Back to Basics in SEO

2005-08-01T02:05:00.000-07:00

Source: By Shawn Campbell

There has been a lot of talk about Google and MSN's new algorithms and Yahoo's search engine changes. When these changes finally do occur, it is always important to remember the number one rule in SEO: Don't Panic!

If there is one guaranteed constant in this business it is that there will always be changes in the search engines' rankings. Our job, as search engine marketers, is to stay on top of the changes and to monitor how the change affects our clients' site's traffic.

I am actually excited about any algorithm change, because it means that the search engines should actually get better.

What follows is a "back to the basics" on getting good rankings:

Keyphrases

First things first: Always be sure to research the keyphrases you intend on using. Find out what keyphrases Internet users most often employ to find your product or service. There is no point optimizing your site for "online web marketing" if everyone types in "Internet marketing".

Once you have a list of potential keyphrases with a high amount of Internet traffic, comb over that list and see which keyphrases best describe your product or service. These are the ones you should consider.

Here are some sites that can help you in your research:

Wordtracker
Google AdWords (Click to sign up, it is free to do the keyphrase research)
Snap
Competition

Research your competition with these questions in mind:

-What keyphrases are they using (take a peek at their keyword Meta tag)?
-What are the titles of their sites?
-When you do a search for the keyphrases you are considering, who comes up in the top five rankings?
-What is their title/keyphrases?
-Are the top ranking sites your competitors or are they industry associations?

Use the keyword effectiveness index (KEI) tool at Wordtracker to compare the effectiveness of your keyphrases. A higher KEI signifies a better ratio of demand-to-competition for a keyphrase.

Do a link search to see who is linking to your competition. In a search engine, type in "link:" (without the quotes) followed by the URL you want to verify. This will allow you to see all the important links to the site that the search engine tracks (I would recommend doing this in both Google and Yahoo).

-Can you get links from the same sites as your competitors?
-Are there industry associations or organizations that are linking to the top sites, but not to you?
-Get your link campaign going! (see the article about linking for search engines to learn why links are important)

Optimizing Your Web Site

Now that you know what keyphrase you are optimizing for, here is how to optimize your site: write good quality content that focuses on your keyphrases.

Above all else, this is the single most important factor.

Sure there are other on-site factors such as:

-Getting the keyphrase into the title (this is the second most important factor)
-Getting the keyphrase into the Meta description tag, the Meta keyword tag, the headers and sub headers, the alt tags, and into some link text (some of these factors are VERY minor)
-Having a good site map so that the search engine spiders can easily navigate your site
-Having a robots.txt to include the pages that you want the search engines to include
-Don't use frames
-Use flash wisely (not the WHOLE site in flash)
-Use external files for your java-scripts
-Use cascading style sheets (a .css file)
-Use dynamic URL's wisely (Avoid using URL's with ? or & in them)

Content is King

Oh...and did I mention that you need to write good quality content that focuses on your keyphrases? All of the points above are superfluous if you don't have good content. Content is the food that the search engine spiders like to gobble up with a voracious appetite. The items below are just the side dishes. You need good content to get decent rankings, but you need the side dishes to become a serious competitor in your market.

-Write about your keyphrases.
-Write extra pages.
-Write about your industry.
-Write about your product or service's uses.
-How will your product/service improve the life of the consumer? Find out, and then write about it.
-Why is your product/service better than your competitor's? Think of a reason and write about it.
-What is the history of your product/service? Or your industry? Write about it.
-Who are you? Everyone always enjoys "about us" pages...
-And of course, be sure to serve the search engine spiders with a tasty main dish full of keyphrases!

Whatever you do, be sure that you don't write junk or filler copy and double check that everything reads well. Keep in mind that writing about your keyphrase doesn't mean adding the keyphrase unnaturally into the text. If you have any doubts, employ the talents of an expert to do the writing for you!

Links

Start soliciting links today! Get people in your industry to link to you. Contact:

-Industry associations and organizations
-Web sites about your industry
-Sites related to your product or service
-Suppliers
-Resellers
-Competitors who don't compete in the same region
-Sites that sell products/services that relate to yours, but don't compete directly

Submissions

Submit to all the directories you can find, so long as they are related (e.g., don't submit to the Abba directory unless your site is about Abba). Submitting to a directory should not be a mindless activity. Read the directory's directions on how to submit Very Carefully. Write your description very well, and tailor it to each directory in order to follow their guidelines. Make sure you submit (and get in) to www.dmoz.org - it is probably the most important directory out there today.

Do research and find "vertical directories" that focus on your industry, and submit to them. These directories are very important because, for example, if you have a dodo bird site, what better potential client than someone who found you through a dodo bird directory!

Search engines and directories are different. Do not confuse them. You can submit to all the search engines you can find, but it usually won't do much because the good search engines will find you anyway. Submitting to random search engines will usually only increase your email sp@m. Don't waste your money on search engine submission software for the same reasons.

Here is a partial list of the current important search engines:

Google
Yahoo
MSN

Conclusion

Build your web site for your customers, within the guidelines that the search engines set out. Don't make the site awkward by over-conforming. The site's first focus should be on what your clients want. Create good content. Good, quality content that reads well and flows seamlessly. Update it regularly. An active, living site is healthier than a stagnant, dead one (the search engines spiders like their food alive and full of life).
And remember: Content is King!

Arachnophilia, the Joy of Playing with Spiders

2005-07-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger, (c) 2005 StepForth News Editor

Spiders make great geek pets, at least virtual ones do. Here at StepForth, we keep a couple spiders on our system to test sites, pages and documents in the hopes of learning more about the behaviours of common search engine spiders such as GoogleBot, Yahoo's Slurp and MSNBot. Recently, we learned that virtual pets share a similar problem with live pets; they grow old and eventually die. While our mock-spiders are still very much alive, the information we glean from their behaviours is increasingly irrelevant to predicting how a spider from a major search engine will behave. Our pet-spiders have grown too old to showër us with the informative affection they once did.

It used to be easy to predict the behaviour of common search engine spiders. Today, predicting search spiders is not so easy and with a growing number of spiders and search databases to consider, trying to get a leg-up on where the spiders are going is rather tricky. In previous years, Google, Inktomi and other electronic 'bots could be relied on to visit a site on a regular basis. The working environment was a bit simpler a few years ago, easily summed up with nine letters, G-O-O-G-L-E-B-O-T. GoogleBot was at one time the only important search spider around. While others existed, even as recently as two years ago, Google fed search results to most of its competitors.

Visiting on a somewhat regular monthly schedule, Googlebot would compile information on all the documents in its database, a process that took about one week and then rearrange their listings during the eagerly anticipated GoogleDance. Search engine optimization firms were often able to anticipate the unscheduled start dates of the GoogleDance by examining spidering activities in their weblogs and noting PageRank and back-link updates that generally preceded a shift in Google's rankings. When the shift actually happened, changes stemming from it were fairly significant as many of the search results would be altered based on new data found during the monthly spider-cycle.

What a difference a couple of years can make. Today there are four major general search engines and several vertical search tools, each with a unique algorithm and spidering schedule. So just how important is it to know the spidering schedule of the various search engines?

In previous years, most SEOs would say it was extremely important to know when a spider was going to visit a client's site. SEOs worked with fairly fixed deadlines, hoping to have clients' optimized content uploaded about a week before the expected GoogleDance began. Even then one was not entirely sure that the date they predicted for the Dance was correct but with a somewhat regular spider/update cycle, SEOs had fixed windows of opportunity with subsequent weeks to tweak and rework content if rankings didn't materialize during the last update.

Today's spiders have become almost intuitive and it is less important to know when a spider will visit as it is to know where a spider will visit. Most spiders visit an active website very frequently. According to three months worth of stats compiled by ClickTracks, spiders from Ask Jeeves visit at least once a day while MSN and Yahoo spider the index page of the StepForth site several times a day. Google only visits our index page, every four days on average. Compared to previous years, even the least frequent visitor, GoogleBot is gobbling up content. With daily or even weekly visits, the increased number of visits gives SEOs a much faster turn around time from completing optimization on a site to seeing results in the Search Engine Results pages.

A major shift in the way search engines think about content is seen in where spiders will visit, the frequency of visits, and what drives them there. Previously, search engine spiders would consider a domain or URL as the top level source of information. It would go to the index page and spider its way through the site from that point. That is no longer the case as search engine spiders are today better able to contextualize content found on unique documents within a domain and schedule spider frequencies accordingly. For example, on a site dedicated to the sale of Widgets, the document that refers to the highly popular Blue Widgets will see more spider traffic than a document referring to the less popular Red Widgets. Similarly, a document that changes regularly will see more visits as the search engines tend to know when changes are made on documents in their database. In other words, search engine spiders tend to know your website as a collection of unique documents contained under a single URL or domain, as opposed to a collection of topically themed documents under a single URL or domain. Based on the number of searches for relevant keywords performed by search engine users, the number of incoming links, the frequency of change, and the frequency of live-human visits to a document, the 4 major search spiders are now setting their own schedules.

While the timing of spider visits has changed radically, many standard behaviours remain the same. Spiders still travel where links, both internal and external, take them. The difference today is those links often lead to internal pages. In previous years, most links lead to the index or home page of a site. With the advent of PPC programs such AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, webmasters and search engine marketers are creating product specific landing pages, each of which might be relevant to organic searches. This has allowed savvy SEOs to optimize landing pages for organic rankings as well as PPC conversions. Search engine results now tend to be more relevant to the specifics of any given topic as opposed to a general overview of that topic.

Of all the spiders, the most active by far is MSNBot. Visiting each document in its index at least once per day and often more frequently, MSNBot has been known to crash servers housing sites with dynamically generated content as the 'bot sometimes doesn't know when to quit. After MSNBot, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo are the busiest of the major bots. Oddly enough, the quietest is GoogleBot, which visits each document in our site at least once per month but with little or no discernable pattern.

In order to prompt spiders through the site, we suggest creating a basic, text based sitemap appended to the back of your website. The sitemap should list every document in your website. To jazz it up, add a short description of the content of the document linked to below the link. Add a link to the sitemap to the footer of each page in your site. That will help with Ask, MSN and Yahoo. For Google, a slightly more complex solution is available through the creation of an XML based sitemap.

About two weeks after implementing the HTML sitemap on your site and uploading your XML sitemap to Google, start to watch your server logs for increased spider visits. Be sure to watch for where the spiders are going and which documents receive the most frequent visits. You may be pleasantly surprised at how friendly modern spiders can be.

How to Get Great Organic Search Engine Listings

2005-07-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

Source: By Judith Kallos

All too often I find site owners are confused (or in denial) about how to achieve the search engine rankings they desire on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). So, I am pleased to offer you my version of "Organic Listings 101."

Several times each day I get approached by site owners wanting to be in the top 5, 10, top page for organic (free) listings. The organic results are those that display to the left and below "Sponsored Sites" or "Sponsored Results" at Google, MSN and Yahoo!. These "Sponsored" advertisement boxes are part of Pay-Per-Click programs where site owners bid for positioning.

What we're going to discuss today are the free listings that are gained by how your site is ranked based on a combination of unique variables (algorithm) of each search site. Which, to muddy things up further, evolve without notice.

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
~Aldous Huxley

Let's first set the stage so that we have realistic expectations here. When I started my consulting practice back in the early 90s, it was relatively easy to get found. The volume of sites and the level of competition were not one iota of what they are today. Fast forward to 2005 and you have close to 12,000,000,000 (yes, that's billion) pages with a good 10,000,000 being added daily.

So how do you get visibility in the SERPs? Shuffling or adding keywords in your Meta tags won't do it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn't the end-all-be-all either. You have to have a well rounded, smart, long term marketing plan for your site that includes certain basics for you to rise in the organic rankings.

Issues for consideration to gain improved organic listings:

- Look at your Web marketing plan as a long term effort. New sites are in Google's sandbox for 6 months or more, and it will take time and effort to be viewed as more relevant than the sites that are already online in the free positions you seek.

- Part of putting your plan together is to do a search with your top keyword phrases on the various search engines so that you are aware of the competition and the volume of sites already successfully ranking for the terms you are targeting. This gives you a real-world understanding of the level of competition you will be up against.

- Understand that how your Web site ranks has nothing to do with how good you are at what you do. It has to do with how good your site is and how good others including the search engines think your site is. That requires a long term realistic marketing plan to grow your site to be the best most comprehensive resource on your product or service for your site visitors. It doesn't happen overnight or just because you say you want it to.

- Forget about trying to rank for one-word keywords - much too difficult and in some cases downright impossible. Concentrate and target 2-3 word phrases instead of one-word keywords and you'll get more targeted visitors as well. There are several tools to assist you in investigating what keyword phrases your target market is actually using. Use these tools to your advantage!

- Make sure each page within your site targets and is optimized for only one or two, 2-3 word keyword phrases each. Niche is what works for organic listings! The more you are about; the less you are about any one thing. Search results are based on numerous factors; one being relevancy for the terms the searcher is using. If you are targeting 10, 20, 30 terms per page, that page is not strongly about any given topic vs. another site that has a page or pages concentrating on just one or two phrases each. Keep in mind that less is more when it comes to targeting keyword phrases on a page by page basis.

- To "top" the sites already out there, you have to do just that! Top them! What makes your site better and more valuable to your site visitors? If you don't have anything unique and of quality or value to offer, you'll nevër push those who already hold these positions out of your way.

- Plan on adding new information to your site on an aggressive basis. Daily, weekly, minimally monthly! Resources, white papers, "how tos" not only add value but will naturally work wonders as keyword targeted pages. Offer the type of information those seeking your product or service will find useful and search for and that other sites will want to link to. Don't even think of cheating and using content generating software...You'll get nowhere with that approach. You need to have well written content of value; not keyword stuffed ramblings.

- Plan on having lots of patience. Rome wasn't built in a day and attaining great organic listings no longer happens in a day, a month, or even a year. Any business that hopes to succeed needs to take a consistent and informed long-term approach. This applies to organic listings ten-fold.

Yes, without a doubt, all of the above recommendations require your time, effort and a realistic understanding of how organic listings are accomplished. But this is the reality of how great listings, over time, are attained. It is really quite simple - strive to make your site the best it can be; THE site for your product or service and your rankings will improve!

There are no short cuts or trickery for fast top 5, 10, top page organic results. If someone tells you otherwise, they are trying to use what you don't know to get into your pocket book. Make a commitment to continually build your site to be the best it can be to your site visitors and your organic rankings will happen. Web sites and rankings are a work in progress after all!

Without implementing the above, you are left with only one choice in order to get visibility to those searching for your product or service. You will need to invest in a well planned Pay-Per-Click program and the corresponding budget necessary to reach your goals.

Google PageRank Update Analysis

2005-07-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Source: By Dave Davies (c) 2005

For those of you not yet aware, Google is currently updating the PageRank they are displaying in their toolbar. Each update causes a stir among the SEO community and webmasters trying to get their websites to the top of the Google Rankings.

What Is PageRank?
Without getting into too much detail, PageRank is essentially a score out of ten as to the "value" of your site in comparison to other websites on the Internet. It is based on two primary factors; the number of links you have pointing to your website and the value of the links pointing to your website. The value is calculated based on the PageRank of the page linking to you and debatably the relevancy of the page linking to you (there is no hard evidence to back up the relevancy factor in regards to PageRank that I have seen, however it definitely is a factor in your overall ranking).

If you are interested in more information on PageRank you would do well to visit the many forums and articles on the topic and also visit Google's own description on their website at http://www.google.com/technology/ where they give a brief description of the technology.

What's New?
The most current PageRank update will undoubtedly cause a largër stir than usual in that many sites have shown drops in their visible PageRank while at the same time showing significant increases in their backlinks. This fact reveals that one of three things has occurred in this latest update:

1. Google has raised the bar on PageRank, making it more difficult to attain a high level, or
2. The way they are displaying their backlinks has changed, or
3. The way they calculate the value of an incoming link has changed.

Any of these are possible and has been noted in the past as something they are willing to do. Additionally, it is possible for all to occur at the same time.
As we don't like to use clients as examples, I will use the Beanstalk site, backlink counts, and PageRank changes as the meter by which the following conclusions are drawn, however this information was attained through looking at a number of client websites and their competitors.

Google Raising The Bar To Lower Yours
In the past few PageRank updates it has become quite apparent that Google is continuously raising the bar on PageRank. In their defense, with all of the reciprocal link building, link renting, etc. going on this was a natural reaction to the growing number of high PageRank sites that attained those ranks simply by building or buying hundreds and thousands of links.

There is no doubt that this is a factor in the changes in this current update. If your site has maintained it's PageRank, and the PageRanks of your second-level pages, then you have done well in holding steady and, if your competitors have not been as diligent their positions will slip.

New Backlink Calculations
I mention this one only to bring to light that it is a possibility for your future consideration during other updates. The Beanstalk website went from 750 shown backlinks on Google to 864. It should be noted that Google does not show all backlinks (if you want a more accurate backlink count go to Yahoo! and enter "link:http://www.yourdomain.com" (don't forget the http://)).

When the Beanstalk site showed 750 backlinks on Google we were showing around 12,000 on Yahoo! (about 6.5% showing on Google). The Beanstalk site is currently showing 864 on Google and 15,500 on Yahoo! (about 5.6%). If anything then, Google is showing less links than before which negates the possibility that a website's PageRank is dropping due to a decrease in links but being hidden by an increased number being displayed.

In short, while the backlinks Google chooses to display has certainly changed over time, it does not appear to be a major factor in this update. If you see an increase in your sites backlink counts during this update, you undoubtedly have an increased number of links.

The Value Of Links
Separate from the number of links you have is their value. This appears to be an area of significant change in this update. Areas that appear to have reduced value in regards to affecting PageRank are:

1. Multiple links from the same site or run-of-site links
Intelligent and relevant reciprocal links do not seem to have been penalized, probably due to the increased relevancy factor. If you reduce the value of irrelevant links and raise the value of relevant ones, then there is no need to penalize reciprocal links as, done incorrectly, they will penalize themselves.

2. Links with text around them that indicate they are purchased, such as "Partners", "Advertising", etc.
Google has and is actively trying to reduce the value of paid links. This appears to have been moderately successful where there is clear indication that the link is paid for.

3. Links from sites that hold little relevancy (this factor is based on educated speculation)
The relevancy factor appears to have become more important. Links from sites with content related to yours are showing positive results while sites with largër numbers of less relevant links are showing drops in PageRank.

What Does This Mean?
For those of you who have been proactive in your link building, and focused on relevant sites using the Google Directory, searches or a tool like PR Prowler it means, "stay the course". Those of you who have been building or buying links based only on PageRank with little concern for their location, or how they are presented - you will need to adjust your link building efforts accordingly.

What Do I Do - My PageRank Dropped?
The first thing not to do is panic. Take a deep breath, PageRank is one factor of dozens that Google uses to determine the ranking of your page, it is not the only thing. Visit your main competitors' sites - there's a good chance you'll see that they too dropped PageRank. The plus side to these kinds of updates is that they're universal. It's not as if Google has it in for you specifically and so when they do an update, the positive and negative impact is felt by all.

If you've noticed that everyone around you has stayed the same or increased in PageRank try to remember this, there's nothing you can do about where you're currently positioned in regards to PageRank and it will probably be another 3 months before Google updates the public PageRank again so ... start building some good quality (high relevancy, solid PageRank) links. Work towards an increase in the next update.

Panicking won't help, intelligent reaction will.

What Happens Now?
Traditionally the search engine results will begin to fluctuate based on the new visible PageRank 3 to 7 days after they are visible. This does not have to be the case as Google's had these numbers all along but its worked this way in the majority of cases in recent history. So monitor your search engine positions over the next week or two and watch for changes. Try to hold back on making major changes to your site during this time as often the final positions will differ from those that can be viewed during the shuffling. In a couple weeks time evaluate where you stand and tweak your site as necessary but don't spend too much time on that ... you have a solid link building effort to undertake.

The 3 Principles of Image Optimization

2005-07-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Source: By George Peirson

Are you losing visitors to your web site due to slow page load times? Is your site being penalized because the images on your site are too large? Are you able to capture your visitor's attention in the first 10-15 seconds that they are on your site?

All of these problems can be caused by an improperly optimized web page. In other words, the page loads too slowly and your visitor leaves before you have had a chance to hook them.

Optimizing a page for quick load times can be broken down into 3 broad categories: the basic coding of the page, scripts that are used on the page, and images. Of these three, images that are too large can have the most significant impact on load times and therefore have the greatest potential for improved page loading times if properly optimized.

A Brief Primer On Image Types

There are many image formats in common use on web sites, the three most popular being GIF, JPEG, and to a lesser extent Flash content. We will be limiting our discussion to GIF and JPEG images, with a specific focus on still images.

Each of these image formats has their strengths and weaknesses. GIF or Graphics Interchange Format was developed by CompuServe before the Internet boom as a way to share images on the CompuServe service. Due to limitations with screen resolutions and color depths at the time, GIF images were limited to showing up to 256 colors, more colors were imitated by Dithering, a process of fooling the eye into seeing one color by using 2 or more sets of color dots spaced too closely for the eye to distinguish separately.

Imagine a chessboard with black and white squares. When viewed closely we can distinctly see the individual squares, but if we back off far enough we will no longer be able to discern the individual squares and instead we will see one large grey square, the black and white squares merging together in our eyes to form one solid color. This is the concept behind dithering.

The JPEG file format on the other hand is a newer format that can handle millions of colors easily. The initial drawback to JPEG images is that they do contain many more colors, and each color requires some coding for display, making the file size larger.

Speeding Up Image Load Times

The main idea behind making an image load faster is to make the file size smaller. This can be accomplished in two ways, you can either make the dimensions of the image smaller, or decrease the amount of coding that is required to display the image.

The easiest way to reduce an image's file size is to reduce the image's physical dimensions. In other words, the smaller the image, the smaller the file size. Imagine an image that is a square 80 pixels by 80 pixels. The number of pixels contained in the image is 80x80 or 6400 individual pixels. If we reduce the image size by one half to 40 pixels by 40 pixels we then have 40x40 or 1600 pixels. So reducing the image size in half reduces the file size to one fourth of the original.

This is our First Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Use the smallest image dimensions that will work with your layout. And likewise the fewer images on the page, the fewer image pixels, therefore the smaller the page size.

Since GIF and JPEG image formats use different methods of saving image information, they tend to be better at showing some types of images and worse at showing others.

GIF images, since they are limited to 256 colors per image, are better at displaying images with large solid blocks of color and images with very small physical dimensions. The GIF format will produce smaller file sizes than JPEG for these types of images.

JPEG images are better at showing gradients or subtle changes from one color to another. Therefore JPEGs reproduce photographs very well, or any other image with gradations. The JPEG format will produce smaller file sizes for these types of images than the GIF format will.

This is our Second Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Choose the correct image format for the image you are using. Most web pages will contain a combination of GIF and JPEG images.

Decreasing the coding is called image compression. Both GIF and JPEG images can be compressed but the process is different. In GIF images we try to limit the number of colors, in a JPEG image we use software algorithms to remove redundant information from the file.

Whenever we compress a file we will losë some image quality. We have to reach a balance between a small file size and acceptable image quality.

This is our Third Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Find the least acceptable level of image quality. Most images can handle some compression with very little quality loss, and all images can stand more image quality loss and still be acceptable. Your job is to decide how much quality loss you can accept. In other words, the lower the quality, the smaller the file size.

GIF images can usually be reduced from 256 colors to 128 colors or less, the fewer colors used the smaller the file size. JPEG images can almost always be reduced to a quality setting of 80% and frequently can be reduced down to as little as 15-30%. So when you use a higher compression level (smaller number) the file size will be reduced. Experiment with the image, try smaller and smaller settings until you find the smallest setting that still displays an acceptable quality.

The fastest loading page will have no images and the slowest loading page will be completely filled with full resolution images. If you work towards controlling your images using the principles outlined above you will have a very lean web page that will load quickly and be viewed favorably by the search engines.

Google Sitemaps Explained

2005-07-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Source: By Titus Hoskins

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy]
Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and it's often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating Sitemaps, Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing the Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps won't improve your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps - mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags. To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

[url]
[loc]http://www.yoursite.com/[/loc]
[priority>1.0[/priority]
[lastmod>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00[/lastmod]
[changefreq>daily[/changefreq]
[/url]

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code, and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file! File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - http://www.yoursite.com - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place on that page in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important? You have certain pages on your site that are more important than others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change that particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly updating your site in Google's massive index or database. Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting a simple text file with all your URLs.

There is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing as you read this. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML file.

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, you're probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a generator (Google XML Generator) which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps, but it's encouraged because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic information. If you already have another Google Account, gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request to the following URL:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a PHP Generator that you can place on your server. This generator will spider your site, and produce a XML sitemap file. Download the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them at: Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com, and you can index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site. It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non- compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority, changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site, you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file. This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages to your site - then you will need something like the PHP or Python generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably the wisest route to take.

The Factors that Play a Role in a Web Site's Ranking

2005-07-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

Source: By Courtney Heard

Have you ever had a proposal, estimate or quote for search engine optimization work and wondered what goes into the pricing? What makes one site need more work than another? Why do some sites increase rankings faster than others? Why do some sites get more traffic from their top page ranking than yours?
There are so many aspects of a web site that can decrease or boost your search engine rankings. Each web site is as unique as DNA and as such, will react differently to different marketing treatments.

What are these different factors that go into your web site's ranking? Below is a list of the most important aspects:

1. The State of Your Site Prior to the Optimization - Your web site can have many different attributes that contribute to its ability to rank well or not so well. Your site's PageRank for example, if your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, it's going to take a lot longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking well. If your site is poorly designed, contains frames or is written entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be required to redesign your site so that it is search engine friendly. If your site has very few incoming links, a fair amount of link development will have to be done in order for you to see the rankings and traffic you're after. A web site that has been around for a while and developed its PageRank, has a search engine friendly design and obtains links on a frequent basis, will be able to reach top positions much faster than other sites, once an optimization campaign is under way.

2. The Keywords You Are Targeting - Some keywords are less competitive than others. If you search Google for a keyword or keyword phrase, you'll see at the top of the results how many web pages are listed in those results. That is the amount of web sites that are competing with yours to reach top page placement for that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword phrase "web design" has approximately 303 million web pages listed in the results, whereas if you search for my name in quotations, "courtney heard", you will see that there are only 508 web pages listed in the results.

It is therefore, much easier to rank well for the keywords "courtney heard" than it is for web design. This is why you must choose keywords wisely. With tools such as wordtracker.com, you can find out approximately how many searches are performed for a given keyword or keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords are, the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site and the longer the optimization will take.

3. The Size of Your Target Market - If your site is targeting a global market, it will take a lot more effort to reach the top ten search results than if your site is targeting a regional market. It also depends on what sort of market you're targeting. If your site sells a product that only a small group of people will be interested in purchasing, your site will be optimized easier than if the product or service appealed to the global population. For instance, the keyword phrase "real estate" will require a lot more effort to reach top page placement for than "real estate canada" and even "real estate vancouver".

4. Competitor Sites SEO Campaigns - You might find that once your optimization campaign is under way, your site jumps and slips and jumps and slips several times. This can be due to many things, but the one we'll look at is your competitors' sites SEO campaigns. If your competitors are aggressively optimizing their own sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our 5th and final point...

5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign - Your own link development and SEO campaign should be thorough, covering all the aspects of a well optimized site and utilising all your resources for obtaining incoming links. If your SEO campaign isn't approached properly, your competitors can surpass you in the rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition and adjust your efforts accordingly.

As you can see, there are many, many things that make your site unique in the services it requires. Some sites can reach top page placement by just changing a title tag, while others wait 6 months to even be listed on Google. The bottom line is, educate yourself, ask questions, choose the right SEO company and be patient. In time, your top page placement will come.

Designing Your Web Site to Maximize Traffic

2005-06-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Source: By Brendon Turner

Designing your site to maximize traffic from the search engines is not a difficult task but it does require you to think ahead and plan your SEO strategy carefully. If you have not yet built your web site and are still in the initial planning stages then you may have an easier time of it. If you already have an existing web site, then you may need to take the time to read up on these SEO strategies and make some changes to incorporate them into your web site.

I will discuss 13 ways in which you can improve on your existing web site or boost a brand new web site into the stratosphere of high rankings. These are NOT SEO tricks but rather tried, tested, ethical and true methods that we know to work effectively. We all know that in reality there are no real SEO tricks. True success is achieved through hard work, research and implementation of a thorough and complete SEO strategy.

Without further ado hëre is a checklist of important items to consider and implement into your SEO strategy.

Using Javascript or Other Unspiderable Code

If you intend to use Javascript on your web page it is best to use it sparingly or not at all. Search engine spiders cannot read Javascript and it is possible that along with ignoring it when they come across it on your page, they may also get hung up on it if you are using a lot of it. If you really need to use Javascript you can safely use it by putting the code into a separate JS file and calling it with a single line of code which you place between your [head] and [/head] tags within your web page. The code used to include your JS file looks like this:

[SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="replace-with-JavaScript-file-name.js"][/SCRIPT]

Using Style Guidelines Effectively

If you are using CSS style commands, do not include them within your actual web page source code. You don't want search engine spiders to have to wade through 100 lines of unreadable code before they reach your actual content. Instead, place your style guidelines into a separate CSS file and call them with a single line of code from within your and tags by using the following code:

[link rel="stylesheet" href="replace-with-style-file-name.css"]

Primary Keyword Layout

Examine your web site from a source code point of view and ensure that your primary keywords or phrases will be spidered first. When search engine spiders read your page they read the source code just like we would read a book from left to right - top to bottom. We know that search engines place higher relevancy on keywords and phrases which appear closer to the top of a page so it stands to reason that if you've got a large table full of graphics appearing at the top of your source code before your primary keywords, then you can achieve higher rankings by adjusting your layout and placing a well written search engine optimized paragraph above that table full of graphics.

Spiderable Text Present on Each Page

Many times I have seen some very pretty web sites, but their chances of ranking high for any relevant keywords have been dashed by the use of only graphics and very little or no text on the pages. It is very important to your SEO strategy that you make sure that you've taken the time to write some quality textual content for your pages. Don't write nonsensical text filled with blatant sp@m. Instead, take a few extra minutes and write 4-5 quality paragraphs which clearly explain the theme of your site and the particular page you're writing for.

Proper Use of Robots.txt File

On several occasions I have performed an analysis of a client's web site only to discover that they had inadvertently blocked spider access to their web site by incorrectly formatting their robots.txt file. It is critical that you know what you're doing when you use a robots.txt file. If you are unsure of the correct syntax when modifying or creating a robots.txt file, I recommend you not use a robots.txt file at all. This may sound counterproductive, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Accidentally blocking the spiders can result in a loss of all your rankings. It would almost be like starting over again to repair the damage. For help on correctly formatting your robots.txt file, visit robotstxt.org.

Dead Links and 404 Errors

If you are not checking for broken links on your web site, then you should start immediately and make this a part of your SEO strategy. You can nevër be 100% sure of your link integrity, especially when your site has 100, or more, pages. Aside from losing potential customers into a vortex of 404 errors, you risk more than that from a search engine perspective. When a search engine spider visits your web site and finds broken links, the impression left is that your site is not regularly maintained and updated. Not much is known about how the engines view this, but your crawl status may be assigned a low priority by visiting search engine spiders. In other words, the spiders may not visit your site as frequently as they visit sites with 100% link integrity. So make sure you download some link checking software and begin a regular schedule of verifying your link structure.

Using Images For Primary Navigation Links

Many webmasters like to use fancy looking navigation links but, in doing so, they fail to establish a theme for their sites. For instance, using a graphical link back to your home page does not tell the search engine spiders what that link is about unless the spider actually visits that page. If you use optimized ALT text on that graphical home page link, then that would be a step in the right direction. But to maximize the effect and clearly define the theme of your web site, you need to use a text link that has your primary keyword or phrase within the link text. This is called Link Reputation.

Home, Site Map and Contact Page Links

The Home, Site Map and Contact pages are your site's primary pages and should be your SEO strategy top priority. It is essential that these pages be spidered and exposed to your site visitors. To ensure that they are spidered, place links to them near the top of your source code on every page of your web site. Your home page is, of course, the main entrance to your web site so you want that to be the focal point in the search engines. Your site map page should (if properly optimized) have links to all of your sub pages and use primary keywords belonging to each sub page within the link text pointing to those sub pages. Your contact page is just as important because it's used by visitors who have questions or who wish to order products and services.

Redirected Pages

When a web page has outlived its usefulness, webmasters will, on occasion, redirect visitors hitting that page to another page. Search engine spiders, however, take a dim view of page redirects. If you change the content of your site and find that you have no further use for a page, do not place a redirect on that page. Instead, remove the outdated content and replace it with something relevant. Include a text link to your home page or to a new replacement page. When you remove a page or place a redirect on an outdated page, you're cheating yourself out of better rankings and search engine traffïc. Moreover, using page redirects can result in the removal of your site listing in search engine databases with a consequent loss of revenue.

Excessively Small Type Font Sizes

Text in a font smaller than font size 2 is normally reserved for copyright information and the legal jargon often seen at the bottom of web pages. Use font size 2, or greater, for the majority of text on your page. Font size is a major factor in SEO strategy because the font size used defines the relevancy a search engine spider assigns to the content it finds on your page. An example of this would be the text within heading tags (H1 through to H6). Text surrounded with H1 tags has a higher relevancy placed on it than text surrounded with H6 tags. Visit the W3.org website for a better understanding of how on-page text is viewed by search engine spiders with regard to importance and relevancy. Search engine spiders tend to follow the W3 HTML standard.

Hidden Text, Door Way Pages and Other Tricks

Nowadays search engines are pretty smart and trying to trick them is not a wise course of action. Take some time to stop and examine your approach before proceeding with your SEO strategy. The rule of thumb is that if it looks like sp@m or could be perceived as sp@m by the search engines, then it probably is sp@m. The last thing you need is for a competitor to report unethical SEO tactics to the search engines. Such tactics could result in a loss of existing site listings as well as a ban on future submissions. So, to ensure the longevity of your online business, stay away from any technique that looks unethical.

Using HTML Frames

In short, don't. Frames are not very search engine friendly because search engines cannot read a framed source document that tells your browser to load more than one page in your browser window at the same time. Thus, achieving a high PageRank on your home page is difficult. Frames also make it hard for search engine spiders to find all of your sub pages.

Non-Spider-Friendly URL's

If the URLs for your web site contain characters such as &, $, =, %, etc., that is they are dynamic in nature, then search engine spiders may not be able to read them. And, if they can't be read, then the search engine spiders won't be able to follow them to index your pages. However, there are solutions available to fix this problem. For example, webmasters who have sites hosted on servers with Unix operating systems can use Apache mod_rewrite to rewrite URLs that contain a session ID, or other nasty characters, into search engine spider friendly URL's.

SEO, of course, is not just limited to the 13 areas covered in this article, but if you apply the SEO strategies outlined in these 13 areas to your web site, you will find that your site rankings and traffic improve dramatically.

How to Write Title Tags for Your Web Pages

2005-06-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Source: By Donald Nelson (c) 2005

When it comes to search engine optimization, the single most important sentence that you will write for your website is the title tag of your main page. If you write it properly then you will have taken a big step towards getting your site well placed in search engine queries for your important keywords.
Before I give you a step-by-step guide to writing title tags, let's define what they actually are and see why they are important. When you look at a web page in your browser, the writing in the blue strip above browser's commands (file, edit, view, etc.) is the title tag. On your actual html document the title tag is in the head portion between the notation [title] and [/title] .

The title tag is important because it "tells" the search engine what the page is about, and in the case of your main page, what your website is all about. I remember back in my school days that we used to take standardized examinations in which we had to read a story and then answer the question: "What would be the best title for this essay?" Choosing a title tag is something like answering this kind of question. You've got to pick out the gist of your enterprise and highlight it in a sentence. So, take a look at your web page and get ready to begin, following these steps:

1. Make sure your three or four most important keywords or keyword phrases appear in the title tag.

The most important words should appear near the beginning of the sentence, and they can be repeated within the sentence for added emphasis. For example if I am offering low-cost web design, then my title tag might look like this: [title] Web Design: Affordable, Low Cost Web Design from the Acme Web Design Company [/title]

2. Leave your branding and salës pitch for another part of the web page.

Although it is a natural tendency to want to put your company name at the beginning of the title tag, you should remember that unless you are very famous like Coca Cola, people are not searching for you. So, put your most important keywords at the front of the title tag, and establish your brand name with your logo and other elements of the web page. If your company name includes your keywords, like our hypothetical Acme Web Design Company, then put it in the title tag, but not necessarily at the beginning.

Similarly, the title tag is no place for your salës pitch, so keep out flowery or extraneous adjectives, unless they are actual terms used in searches for your product or service.

3. Place your geographical or niche-defining term in your title tag.

If you are trying for a top ten or top twenty position for a term such as "web design," then you are really in for a difficult struggle. However, suppose the Acme Web Design Company is located in Columbus, Ohio. Then instead of attempting the almost impossible task of getting the top rankings for the term "web design," it would be far better to get a high ranking in the geographical niche using a title tag such "Web Design, Columbus, Ohio: Low Cost Web Design in Columbus, Ohio by The Acme Web Design Company".

4. The title tag can be longer than you think.

Some guidelines say that the title tag should be no longer than 70 characters. It is true that only the first 70 characters will show in the top bar of the browser, but search engine robots will read the rest of the tag and the search engines will not penalize you for going over the 70 character mark. Take a look at highly ranked sites in heavily competitive categories and you will see examples of long title tags. Write the tag according to your need to get your important words and phrases included in a sentence that best describes what your product or service is about.

5. Vary the title tags on the inner pages of your website.

Even with a long title tag, it is not possible to highlight all the possible terms which someone might use to find your website. This is not a problem if you make use of the other pages of your website. Instead of simply having a title tag that says "services" our web design firm could highlight "low cost, web design services..." on that page. The "contact" page could be used to emphasize the geographical location once again, and so on. Many websites make the mistake of repeating the same title tag on each of the inner pages of the site. Avoid this and use each of your page's titles to target important keywords and keyword phrases.

So, take a look at your website's title tags, and see if you can improve them. The effort that you make will be well rewarded.

How You Can Benefit From Google's New Sitemaps

2005-06-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

Source: By Titus Hoskins

Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML powered Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems more like a hug than a strong impassioned embrace!
It does use XML technology which allows for the crawling and updating of your site's web pages. You can even include your entire web site (all urls) with this indexing program. For anyone targeting the search engines, especially Google, this program (still in beta) is a Must Have.

If you require timely updating of your most popular pages Google's new Sitemaps may prove indispensable. It's a little premature to assess the importance or impact of Google's new program but anyone wanting to give their site a competitive edge should be gearing up.

How it works:

There are several ways to set-up a XML Sitemap, perhaps the easiest way is to use the open-source Generator which you can download from Google. This is a Python file that you can upload to your webserver and this generator will create a sitemap from your 'URL lists, webserver directories, or your access logs'.

It would probably be wise to check with your hosting provider to see if they can accommodate this Generator on your webserver. It you have a small site there should be no problem but if your site runs into the 1,000's of URLs or pages - check to see how much bandwidth such a system will take up. It's better to be safe than sorry!

Once done, you have to then submit your newly generated XML sitemap to Google - the search engine will use this XML sitemap to update and index your site whenever you make changes on your site. You will need to have a Google account.

You may also submit text files containing URLs from your web site to be included in Google Sitemaps but these text files will have or will be given low priority for the time being.

To get started on your own Google Sitemaps Account you can go to: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

What's great about it:

Besides seeing Google finally grab the RSS wildcard, it gives you better control of how and when the search engines update your web site pages. Perhaps, the most important aspect for Internet Marketers, you can now assign the importance that's given to any of your particular pages. As most marketers know, certain pages on your web site are more important than others; these pages earn money, build your contact list, or direct your site's visitors in the right direction. In other words, you can place more emphasis on your web site's 'bread and butter' pages. A Big Plus!

With Google Sitemaps you can decide the importance placed on these pages by using the priority XML tag. This rating system is relative - it only relates to the pages on your own site.

Likewise, you can also indicate how frequently your pages change by using the changefreq XML tag. More or less instructing Google when your page will be updated or changed. This is a win-win situation for everyone - Google gets the freshest content for its users and you gain more control of the frequency of the updates done with your site or web pages. This may have a direct influence on the profitability of your web site.

For those who are actively marketing thru the search engines and keywords - Santa may have come a little early this year. Of course, the jury will be out for awhile but Google Sitemaps will probably have a positive impact on your bottom line.

What it means for Google:

For those of us who have been following and watching the RSS wildcard for the past couple of years - it takes away some of the frustration and a little of the puzzlement from Google's seemingly total disregard of RSS.

RSS is not a fad, it is not a trend and it's not going away. Instead, its importance is growing. It is fast becoming 'the' way data is moved on the web. One could even speculate that in the very near future all web pages will have an RSS component - perhaps a hybrid of 'XML/HMTL' or an embedded XML code that will work with all browsers, search engines and servers.

For Google to ignore the growing importance of RSS, blogging, podcasting, broadcatching, the RSS featured Firefox browser, MyYahoo, not to mention all those orange XML logos popping up on most of the major sites on the web - is beyond comprehension. Why Google does not have an RSS search on its main search engine page still seems baffling. Bringing out a homepage and not including an RSS feature is just foolhardy (They may introduce this feature later).

For those firmly in the RSS corner, Google's continued disregard for RSS became more than a little frustrating to observe. It was downright rude! Perhaps Google was waiting to incorporate RSS in a program like this new XML sitemaps? Can this mean that Google has finally accepted the importance of RSS and they're starting to make amends? More importantly, could there still be a few more RSS goodies in the Google Jar left to be announced?

One can only speculate but when it comes to RSS and Google, let's just hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Link Building 2005

2005-06-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

Source: By Brett Hart

Success in life comes through building and sustaining both personal and professional relationships. As human beings, we strive to be at the right place at the right time in order to make the right connection. We quickly learn that each right connection links to another and before we know it, we are part of a network.
Do you wonder why your site does not receive the traffic you believe it deserves? The only people visiting your website are current customers. Where are the new customers the web designer promised you? One of the most overlooked steps in creation of a website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We like to think that search engines will crawl our website and shazaam, like magic, we appear at the top of the results for our keywords. Unfortunately, it rarely works that way. We need to build relationships or "links" to our sites. While this can be a daunting endeavor, it can be very rewarding.

We are going to look at link building theory and practice. How do you let the world, more accurately the web, know you are open for business? Where do you begin building links? What about link building software? What are directories? Who are your top competitors? Who links to them? How do you ask for a link? Do you want reciprocal links? How many links do you need? These are the questions all website owners and link builders need to answer.

Search engines look at links as votes. The more links your website has, the more votes it has to be number 1, or the "authority" on your subject matter. Not all links are created equal. Links from more popular websites are weighted heavier then links from less popular sites. Search engines are smart enough to know that content is related, so, links from relevant sites are more important then links from sites which are irrelevant.

The link text will help you rank better for your keywords. If possible get into the major directories. Avoid FFA's or "Free For All" link farms.

How Do You Let The World Know You Are Open For Business?

PR or public relations. The way most link builders will approach this is to create a press release that is disseminated to the right people. How do we know we reach the right people? In a recent talk with Eric Ward, the father of link building, I learned that most of the press release web services allow a person to subscribe to items that interest them. If a person runs a widget website and is interested in widgets, they will receive any press release that is related to widgets. Often, they may list the new widget information on their own website. That's an easy link. The press release itself is another link. Yes, it may cost a bit of money to draft and the service may not be free, but you have built several links with a simple press release.

Link Building Software

Link building software automates the task of collecting relevant sites and their contact information, based on keywords. Many of the available software packages include an automatic contact manager that allows you to contact sites with very little effort. It is generally excepted that you should not use the automatic contact features. Instead use the software to identify sites and contact them manually. Many webmasters feel the automated emails to be sp@m and will reject, with prejudice, any site that asks for a link using them. Software should be used in addition to other link building strategies.

The Directories

The major pay for inclusion directories include Yahoo and Business.com. These directories charge to be included in their database of websites. They are often used by major search engines to help determine rank. Don't forget the free directories such as the ODP and joeant.com. The ODP (Open Directory Project) is at http://dmoz.org. They are selective on the sites they include. Not all websites will be able to obtain a link at the ODP. joeant.com on the other hand is very easy to get into. You will have to join to enter your site into their database, it's very easy to do, and is a super easy link to obtain.

Who Are Your Top Competitors?

It is important to seek out your top competitors, the websites that are ranking on the first page of search results for your keywords. Knowing who is at the top, and who links to them is the first and foremost part of link building.

Who Links To Them?

Returning to our link building is like life analogy, imagine you operate a linen laundry. As a linen laundry owner, you wouldn't want to network with people who are involved in high technology or manufacturing. You would want to network with people who are in the hospitality or closely related industries. Restaurants, hotels or people who interact with them on a frequent basis. That is if we have a website that deals with the latest widgets and widget reviews, we wouldn't want to waste time seeking links from automobile manufacturers (unless the widgets are automobile related). We want links from other widget and widget related websites.

The easiest way to determine who is linking to your top competitors is to use the link: command in your search engine of choice. The Google link command seems to be broken, so use a search engine other then Google. For an example we will use a fictional company Widgetreviews, with the URL of http://www.widgetreviews.com. Widgetreviews is at the top of the search engines for your search term "widget reviews". Because of this, we want to see who links to Widgetreviews. Just enter "link: www.widgetreviews.com" (without quotation marks) into your favorite SE, other then Google of course.

Follow this procedure for the top 5 or 6 sites that use your keywords. Compile a list competitor websites and their incoming links. We will use the list as a source for our link building strategy.

Asking For A Link

We now have a list of website pages that link to widgetreviews and so can see if we can get our site listed on the page as well. You will need to visit the pages listed. It is important that when you write an email to a webmaster that it is obvious you have visited the site yourself and that it is not a machine generated email (sp@m). You will need to determine the email address of the person you need to send your request to. Be sure to state why you deserve to be listed on their page, as well as a few compliments about their website, and your contact information. Be courteous and succinct. Most webmasters have little time to deal with their daily tasks. Most important, ask for link text that uses your keywords, not your company name. Using our widget example, you would ask for a link with the text "widget reviews", or in HTML
Widget Reviews.

Reciprocal Links

Generally, reciprocal links are not weighted as heavily as non reciprocal links. I usually only offer a reciprocal link if I really want a link from a high traffic site that demands a reciprocal link.

How Many Links Do You Need?

Your work at link building will never end. The good news is that as your site becomes an authority on your subject matter, websites will link to you on their own.

Your Options

You have three options when it comes to link building. Hire someone, don't worry about it or Do It Yourself.

The first option is a good option, but, it can be very expensive. Professional link builders often charge $20 a link + the cost of the link (yes, websites sell links). As you can see, this can add up quickly. Building a hundred links through a professional link builder could easily cost $2,000!

The don't worry about it option doesn't cost a thing. But, don't expect any traffic. The World Wide Web is a collection of links. Each site pointing to other sites. Without links, your otherwise brilliant and insightful website will slowly die a horrible lonely death.

This article is written with the DYI'er in mind. I wish you good luck in your link building adventures!

Great Site Ranking in Google The Secrets Out

2005-06-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

How many years did you register your domain name for?

If it's only one then that's a point against you in Googles eyes.

Why?

Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain registered for a longer period implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and serious about their web site.

This is just one of the unusual factors now considered by Google when indexing and ranking a website. Factors you could never even have guessed at in some cases.

How do I know this?

Google have recently filed United States Patent Application 20050071741 on March 31, 2005.

In which many of the search giants secret ranking criteria is revealed and it makes very interesting reading. You have got to read this if you're serious about ranking well in Google. The days of Spaming Google are drawing to a close. With this patent they reveal just how hard they're coming down on Spam sites. You Do Not want to get caught out.

Below you will find the hard facts, I recommend you bookmark this page now. You will need to reference it each time you optimize a new site.

- First of all Links. It's common knowledge that Google relies heavily on inbound relevant links to rank a site. Now they explain exactly how it works. :)

This is a major factor so I'll take a few paragraphs to explain what is going on.

As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a link. Google seems to also consider historical factors. Googles 'sandbox' or aging delay begins countdown the minute links to a new site are discovered.

Google record the discovery of a link and link changes over time. The speed at which a site gains links and the link life span.

With this in mind fast link acquisition may be a strong indicator of potential search engine Spam.

Gone are the days of pages and pages full of link farms. You must grow your links slowly to stay below the radar and be careful who you exchange links with. That means no more buying hundreds of links at once or other underhand tactics.

PR is now very valuable.

Your link anchor text should vary but remain consistent with your site content. No more using your main keywords on every link exchange you gain. That's 'anchor Spam'. Instead vary them around your top five to ten keywords.

Link exchanges are still very important but you must work and utilize them ethically. If you don't and you get caught the recovery from a ban can be months in coming and your host and IP may also be recorded.

Softly softly seems to be the message. The fact is fewer but better quality links will benefit you more anyway and likely to be more long-term which is good to.

- Site click through rates (CTR) may now be monitored through cache, temporary files, bookmarks and favorites. Via the Google toolbar or desktop tools. Many have suspected for some time that sites are reward for good CTR with a raise in ranking. Similar to how Adwords works.

CTR is monitored to see if fresh or stale content is preferred for a search result.

CTR is monitored for increases or decreases relating to trends or seasons.

- Web page rankings are recorded and monitored for changes.

- The traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored over time.
- Sites can be ranked seasonally. A ski site may rank higher in the winter than in the summer. Google can monitor and rank pages by recording CTR changes by season.

- Bookmarks and favorites could be monitored for changes, deletions or additions.

- User behavior in general could be monitored.

As Google is capable of tracking traffic to your site you should closely monitor the small amount of copy returned in search results. Ideally you want to integrate a call to action in there to increase CTR.

Clicks away from your site back to the search results are also monitored. Make your site as sticky as possible to keep visitors there longer. As mentioned above it may also help if you could get your visitors to bookmark you.

- The frequency and amount of page updates is monitored and recorded as is the number of pages.

Mass updates of hundreds of files will see you pop up on the radar.

On the other hand to few or to small updates to your site could see your rankings slide. Unless your CTR is good. A stale page that receives good traffic may hold it's own and not require an update. So don't update for the sake of it.

Depending on your market fresh content may not be a requirement. If the information your pages contain does not go out of date then updating may not be necessary. If your market is more news based for example then changes regularly are a must. In general changes don't necessarily have to mean fresh content. They could involve simple edits to current content.

A further indicator that Google is really cracking down on Spam is made clear in the following extract from the Patent. Mention is made of changing the focus of multiple pages at once.

Here's the quote -
"A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.

Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate Spam. For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a 'stable' period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a "doorway" document.

Another indication may include the sudden disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."

There's still more to look out for:

- Changes in on page keyword density is monitored and recorded as are changes to anchor text.

- The domain name owner address is considered, most likely to help in a local search result.

- The technical and admin contact details are checked for consistency. These are often falsified for Spam domains.

- Your hosts IP address. If you are on a shared server it's possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or Spaming. If so your site will suffer since you share the same IP.

The impression I get here is that Google have learned from the Spam attack they suffered in early 2004 and are determined to eradicate it.

So what do you do?

There's a lot to take onboard here and consider. But you can't go far wrong with your SEO if you try to grow your site as organically as possible. If you know what you're doing you can take short cuts. Carry on with link exchanges but consider each site carefully and slow down in your gathering of them. Vary your anchor text. Add small amounts of good quality content to your site regularly. Check your search engine listings and edit your site to include a call to action in them if possible. Make your site more 'sticky' to encourage visitors to stay a while. Encourage visitors to Bookmark your site. Oh and register new domain names for at least two years.

Before you do anything remember to reference the above info first. It may just save you months of misery as your site gets banned and 'Sand boxed'.

Overall keep it ethical and you can't go wrong.
Do not be tempted to Spam. Stick to the guidelines above and you are much more likely to outlast and out rank your competition.

Cosmetic Changes at Google Precede Larger Overhaul

2005-06-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor

Google is undergoing some of the most sweeping changes in its short, seven year history. As of next week, Google will have finished sorting what might be its largest algorithm shift ever as the final points of the 3.5 part Bourbon Update were installed last Monday. This update has been staggered into three and a half sections in order to avoid a massive amount of dislocation in established rankings as was seen in previous major updates. While changes stemming from the Bourbon Update have not actually manifested into a full reordering of Google's search engine results pages (SERPs), many individual webmasters have reported fairly significant losses or gains in ranking over the past few days.

There are dozens of factors behind changes at Google but the greatest is the enormous valuation of the company itself. With share prices nearing the $300 mark and current market capitalization topping $80 billion, Google is considered the most valuable media company in the world, surpassing the $78 billion value of Time-Warner and rising far above Yahoo's estimated value of $56 billion. Most of Google's riches are newly found, having been generated after their August 2004 IPO. In their race to outlast, outperform and outsmart their competitors, Google has changed its PR strategy and its appearance to suit the legions of suits swirling in and out of their Mountain View offices.

While money may move mountains, it takes a community to change an institution. The search environment has changed substantially over the past three years and in that time, every major player in the search sector has changed as well. Today, Google has become a lot more complicated, so much so that it has stopped trying to look simple. This change in corporate attitude is best reflected in two places, the homepage and the About Google section.

Google's homepage used to be quite simple. Recently, Google created a personalized portal interface google.com/ig offering users instant access to several of these new features. For folks with Google accounts such as Gmail users, subscribers to Google Groups, Google desktop users and other account holders, personalized versions of the once sparse homepage presents instänt entry points to the various applications the individual uses. Many industry observers have suggested Google's adoption of so many new features and an all-in-one interface show they are moving towards presenting themselves as more of a portal like Yahoo or MSN. Google has always been a bit different than its competition. Even when borrowing and innovating on competitors' ideas, Google has, until today at least, managed to keep itself at an arm's length from the mainstream in appearance and operation. The maintenance of that image gave Internet users an alternative view of Google, one that propelled Google to a position of almost total dominance of the search engine sector. While that dominance might have slipped over the past year, Google is still the most popular search appliance in the world.

One of the ways Google has acted differently than others is in the appearance of not taking itself too seriously. Its corporate ethics policy was limited to the three word phrase, "Don't be evil". Its front page interface retains the double-entendre induced "I feel lucky" button, even though the button is rarely used. The prospectus issued during their August 2004 IPO was specifically written to appear idealistically anti-corporate. Since its introduction, Google has practiced projecting a simple, youthful image that required very little in the way of explanation, so long as their search engine lived up to users' expectations.

Google strives to live up to user expectations and, for the most part, has met and exceeded them time and time again. There is one long-held expectation that Google may not be able to live up to any longer though. Many of us assume Google's relatively informal public attitude will continue to carry over into the later part of the decade. It won't. By comparison, Google will almost certainly continue to be perceived as the search engine driven by youthful energy. Whenever competitors such as MSN or Yahoo try to appear as down-to-Earth as Google does, their efforts seem obvious and forced. Does anyone remember that poor-fellow in the butterfly suit wandering aimlessly around New York last year? Google's communication style is maturing and the best place to view these changes is on the About Google section of their site.

Google has published information about itself on pages found behind the About Google link for several years. While documents found in the About section have never been totally static, a facelift over the past few weeks has radically altered the look and feel of the section. Along with the traditional organic search engine results and highly targeted paid-ads, Google is actually a series of 30-someodd search-based applications ranging from alerts and answers to wireless search and weather information. Driven in part by an inventive entrepreneurial spirit and in part by a desire to keep up with products offered by competitors, Google has been rapidly adding new features and tools to their core search service for the past three years.

Google's About Google page was once much smaller than it is today. It has grown slightly largër every time Google adds another offering to it. The biggest changes are found behind the increasing number of links on the About page. Today's version of the About page has five boxes added to the left hand side of the page advertising Google Desktop, Blogger, Google Code, Google Mobile, and My Search History. In the center column, Google continues to show four main site sections labeled, Our Search, For Site Owners, Our Company, and More Google. Collectively, those sections contain a larger number of links than they did previously and the number of documents found behind those links has grown as well. Serious Google users should take an hour or two to tour these changes and learn more about the staggering range of features, services and search-enhancements Google currently offers.

For webmasters and SEOs, an examination of the new Google Webmaster Guidelines is a definite must. Google has recently changed its webmaster guidelines which are also considered to be a primer on "ethical SEO" practices in relation to Google placements. Google has recently updated its webmaster guidelines to include information on "supplemental listings", crawling frequencies and prefetching. Google has also posted information on its new Google Sitemaps experiment.

Google Sitemaps is perhaps the most important new feature for SEOs offered by Google in a long time. Said to be an experiment in spidering, Google Sitemaps invites webmasters to feed site data directly to Google through an XML sitemap page. Webmasters and SEOs can now tell Google exactly which sections of their sites to crawl, and providing they are keeping their XML sitemap current, when and where to look for changes to their sites. This experimental initiative will especially help webmasters working with database driven sites or large Ecommerce sites where documents are subject to frequent change and are often found behind long-string URLs. Google has been kind enough to provide detailed information on establishing an XML feed and setting priorities for Googlebot.

As it grows, Google appears to be running into the same problem other webmasters with numerous sites or services encounter, the rapid dilution of a domain's unique topic focus. In order to keep themselves accessible, understandable and relevant, Google's teams of engineers, programmers and public relations specialists are involved in what appears to be a massive overhaul of the interface, public documents and the basic sorting algorithm that produces organic results. As in previous years, how this all plays out in the end is entirely up to the searching public. From the SEO/SEM perspective, it is a good thing Google is in the midst of this update. Web workers have been demanding a greater degree of transparency from Google for some time and perhaps these updates are the beginning of a new commitment to communication from the Googleplex.

Preparing Your Website For Visitors

2005-06-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Source: By Christine Stander

Designing and developing a website today is not as easy as it was let's say four years ago. There are so many elements to take into consideration and various media strategies to contend with.
Color, technology, screen resolutions and cross browser compatibility are but only a few of them. Lately you also have to contend with and create instinctive navigation, search engine optimize your site effectively and ensure that all action pages are merely three clicks away from any given landing page to ensure effective conversion.

With all these considerations, where does one start?

Starting Out Right

I have always been one to believe that if you spend enough time planning your site upfront, you will definitely reap the rewards upon its launch.

Prior to jumping straight into the development of the website, you would have

1. Established the demand for a specific product or service in a given industry.
2. Researched and documented the strategies of the nearest competitors.
3. Estimated the intended traffic and market audience the site would receive.

Only once you have established these points you turn to design.

Designing an effective yet attractive site is the most time consuming part within the production process.

Assisting the Process

It is very important that the initiator work closely with the designer(s), copywriter(s) and developer(s) ensuring that they have access to all information regarding the project, including:

1. Target audience
2. Competitors
3. Technology to be used (XHTML, Flash, Java etc.)
4. Site Map, or basic structure of site including pages and on page requirements

Once an initial design has been produced it is advisable that a web analytics or user behavior expert be brought into the discussion to ensure that the proposed design will convert as expected.

Visitors do not like to think when they are on a website. Present them with the content that they are looking for and make it easy for them to find related information or make the desired action such as purchasing, downloading or signing up to whatever it is that you wish them to do.

There are a few generic details to look out for to ensure that the design is on the right track, including:

1. Name of Site: The name of the site (and logo) should be clearly visible and legible within the header of the site. This instills brand awareness and if a catchy name and logo are chosen, you will mostly likely find that your return visitor rate increases.

2. Instinctive navigation: Is it always clear exactly where you are within a site when you are on any given page within the site?

3. Underlining of Links: Ensure that all links are underlined. This way the outgoing page path and related information is immediately determined and visible to the visitor on page load.

4. Actions: It almost seems redundant to say, but ensure the actions you would like your visitors to take are always clear. During a page heat map research project, it was proven that the most attention lies on the right hand side of the page. The top right corner being the most effective area for actions to take place.

The design is one of the first, but none the least the most important area of site production that needs to be taken into consideration. Equal parts of design, development and content are needed to effectively prepare your site for visitors.

Having previously dabbled in all three of these areas myself, I can appreciatively say that developers prefer to be handed an accurate story board of the site that they are intended to build, including a detailed page by page briefing. Just like site visitors, it is not in the developer's job description to determine where design meets copy or the initial ideas of the initiator of the project.

Ensuring that the various departments converse at least once pre-site design is vital, and will ensure that the website launched will depict the story board initially requested.

It was quite a change for me as a previous "old school" developer to change to the W3 Standards, but I must admit that it really is the best way to ensure cross browser compatibility. No more having multiple browsers open to ensure the design is always standard. I will recommend this to anyone still developing "old school".

Ensuring content delivers the most effective message, capturing the audience whilst still enticing the search engines is the third part to the equation. Also confirm that your page titles accurately convey the message of the page.

Gone are the days of writing M-amount of key-words within content to try and push your pages higher. Content is king in the land of search engine optimization. You will often find thatjust by writing relevant, on-topic content the copy is optimized by default. Both spiders and visitors will appreciate this from your site.

Bring on the Traffic

It is great watching these areas coming together and preparing for the website launch. Now that your site is built as optimally as it could be: great design, relevant persuasive content and development strategy that reaches all markets, all you require is the traffic.

Consulting with a media strategist at this time is definitely recommended. They would be able to confirm the best methods for your niche of the market. Whether you should concentrate solely on natural search or tie in with a paid search marketing campaign. A mail shot is always a good idea - especially if the site has been revamped. The latest craze is Affiliate Marketing, a very effective way to market your website with proven returns on investment. A media strategist would be able to confirm whether your site needs all four or if one of these areas would suffice.

Follow Through

Your site is launched, you have an effective media strategy in place and traffic is booming. Is this the end of the site lifecycle, certainly not!

Don't let the attention of your site slip merely because it has launched and expect it to fend for itself on the World Wide Web.

Acquire a good log file analyzer program and keep tracking and measuring the performance of your site.

To ensure that your site stays at peak performance you will constantly be required to analyze the traffic, visitor navigation through the site as well as your search engine optimization levels.

Involve your visitors. Place feedback forms on your site and request that visitors tell you where, or if they require more detailed information, or have suggestions for improvement of the experience.

It is for them that you have built this site, and without them, your site would be a lonely satellite in a populated galaxy.

Search Engine Optimized Copy - The Down and Dirty Details

2005-06-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jon Wuebben Professional Website Copywriter

Today, being on the first page for your most popular keyword phrase is like having the most memorable prime time television commercial in 1973.
Essentially, that's where the power of advertising is going. It's all about Search. And Search is only going to become more important over the next ten years. If you can get on that coveted first page organically, well then, more power to you! I know you probably have read other articles about writing SEO copy and how it relates to achieving high search rankings, there are plenty of them to go around. But some of the articles are complicated; some are too long, others boring. Still others don't explain that great SEO copy is rarely effective just on it's own - in order to get those high rankings (which is the goal after all), you have to do other things too. So, we decided that what most people really needed was a "down and dirty", easy to understand, ten step method. You ask, and we deliver. Below are the official ten steps in order:

1) Check your Competitors

Who are your competitors? Do you know? If you don't, you may want to go online and do a search for your product or service. Who is on the first two pages? That is your target. Those are the companies that you want to compete with. Because right now, they are getting your customers. Take a look at their website. Notice the copy. Analyze their business. Are they successful? What are they not doing right? Look for the holes. You're going to meet the needs of their customers (that they are not fulfilling) so they become YOUR customers.

2) Research your Keyword Phrases

Remember, Keyword Phrase research is critically important. It can also be a little tricky. Do you know what keywords or keyword phrases your customers search for when they look for you? Are you sure? See what your competitors are using. You can do this by right clicking on their home page, selecting "View Source" and then checking their keyword meta tag. Next, go on to Overture.com (Owned by Yahoo), click on "Visit the Advertiser" section, and use their Keyword Selector Tool. Its great - and its free. You can also use Wordtracker.com, but it does cost $7.50/day.

3) Write Good Copy

Now it's time to start writing. Or re-writing. And if you can't write, you can hire a website copywriter to do it for you. The bottom line is to write about benefits, not features. Don't tell them how great your company is. They will discover that for themselves when you overwhelm them with your service and deliver the perfect product that meets their every need. Make the copy to the point and snappy. Make it sure it has impact, and asks the potential customer for their business.

4) Integrate Your Keyword Phrases

After you figure out which keyword phrases you want to use on your site, you need to integrate them into the copy of your site. Think Home Page and Services page as the most important pages to use them on. Essentially, you want to them to make up 5% of the total words on the page. It's not that hard actually. Just don't use them all over the place like some stupid copywriters do - you could get de-listed from the search engines. Definitely use them in your headlines and sub headlines. That will get you extra points, so to speak.

5) Check your Links, Build if necessary

Do you have any inbound links pointing to your site? If not, no amount of awesome copy is going to get your site high rankings. Links are very important. And even more so for Google. Go to linkpopularity.com and see what you have. Also check your competitors. If they have more than you, you need to get some high quality links. You can either do that yourself or hire someone to do it for you. It can be time consuming and expensive. But you gotta do it. It makes you look important to the search engines. A good way to do it is to make sure you are listed on directories, including DMOZ and industry related sites. Go to incominglinks.com to see which ones you should be listed on. Then write articles and submit them to article submission sites. That could potentially give you hundreds of links for frëe.

6) Use Go Rank's Analytical Tools

GoRank.com is a fantastic frëe resource for SEO. They have a Keyword Density Analyzer, Link Popularity Analyzer, Top 10 Keyword Analyzer, Research, News and lots of other great stuff. It's a great tool and something I use every day. It will help you in your SEO copy efforts.

7) Submit to the Search Engines

After you've ensured that your website copy and all the other important SEO considerations have been completed, it's time to submit to the Search Engines. Do it manually. Go to the search engine and do it yourself. Definitely don't pay someone to do it for you. You may have to resubmit a few times, but eventually, your site will get noticed.

8) Tweak the Copy as necessary, Add New Content

After your site has been up for a while, go back and take a second look. Ask friends and customers what they think of it. Can anything be improved? You'll be surprised what you may hear. If something isn't working, fix it. Make it sound better. The other thing that you should also be doing is adding content regularly. Build free resources into your website. This will make your customers and potential customers happy, and it will make you appear to be more important in the eyes of the search engines. Adding articles to your site is a great way to give your customers new, frëe content. Write about things that they would find interesting.

9) Partner with a Great SEO Firm

You may want to also consider partnering with a great Search Engine Optimization firm. There are probably a hundred very good ones out there. There are also 1000 bad ones. For the good ones, check-out TopSEOs.com and MarketingSherpa.com. They both list reputable firms. Whoever you go with, make sure they have a list of client success stories complete with stats to back it up.

10) Measure Your Success!

Finally, measure your success (or progress). Get a software program that will provide you with some web metrics as it pertains to your site. WebTrends and Statcounter are great ones. There are quite a few others as well. As you can see, Search Engine Optimized copy is only part of the overall SEO story. There is a lot to it, so make sure you cover every area. After all, we want to get your web site to the very top!

Why Blogs Have Become the SEO Equalizer

2005-06-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Source: By Hunter Waterhouse (c) 2005 Keyword Text

Alexa Weighs In...
For those who are unaware of Alexa, it offers an interesting tool to webmasters. The service is designed to value websites based on the number of people who visit those sites and the activities of those people while they are on a site.

Keep in mind that their results are skewed to the activities of those who use the Alexa toolbar. If your website is Business-to-Business oriented, then the results may be useful to your needs. If your site is Business-to-Customer oriented, then the Alexa results are far from accurate in documenting the importance of your website.

reason why the Alexa results are skewed to the Business-to-Business market is because most people using the Alexa toolbar are involved in Business-to-Business activities, either as an user or provider of B2B services.

On May 24, 2005, Alexa's ranking of the Top Ten English Language websites were as follows:

http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.msn.com
http://www.google.com
http://www.passport.net
http://www.ebay.com
http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.fastclick.com
http://www.google.co.uk
http://www.aol.com
(This info came from: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500)

What Eight Of The Top Ten Websites All Have In Common

Sure, five of these top ten sites are search oriented sites, but that is not the answer.

Passport.net is owned by Microsoft and must be accessed when someone is logging into the msn.com network. Fastclick.com is a site that helps advertisers buy advertising across a huge network of sites. These two sites do not fit the profile.

The one thing that eight of our top ten sites have in common is that they are content driven destinations and they add new, original, and exclusive content on a daily basis.

Blogs Are The Great Equalizer

Blogs are the great equalizer because they simplify the task of adding content to a website on a daily or weekly basis. They make it simple for the average joe to add content to their site on a daily basis with just a few clicks of the mouse.

What is more, the spider search engine companies recognize this and make it a point to spider the blog networks on a regular basis, sometimes a daily basis.

It may take a spider search engine up to three months to spider your site if you go directly to their submission page to add your domain to their database. On the other hand, with a blog, you can put a story about your domain on a blog with a link to your domain, and your website can generally get crawled within a week or so of putting your link on the blog.

Blogs Require A Commitment On Your Part

Daily additions to your blog should be your goal. If you do not have time to do daily additions, you should at worst do a weekly addition to your blog.

Just like in the real world of websites, if you don't update your blog on a regular basis, the spiders will save their time and resources by not spidering your blog on a daily basis. If however you do update on a daily or near daily basis, then the spiders will visit your blog with the same fervor you bring to your blog.

Additionally, it sometimes seems like the search engine spiders are giving some additional weight to the results culled from the blogs. The point in this additional weighting is that blogs are filled with personal comments and recommendations rather than sales pitches.

Blogs Are Easy To Set Up, Even For The Rank Amateur

There are in fact several blog programs available that you can either load into your own domain or that you can use from a third-party, remotely-hosted server.

To see a list of the blogging programs that are available, check-out this link:

http://keywordtext.com/redir/blog-list

My personal favorite is Blogger.com which happens to be owned by Google. Blogger allows you the ability to use the software from their servers or to integrate the blog software into your own site with very little effort on your part.

I was able to integrate their software into our own site and to customize the display of the blogger to fit our domain's format, and I was able to pull that task off in just about 30 minutes --- with most of that time dedicated to the custom display of our blog.

Add to the simplicity of setting up the blog, the fact that since blogger.com is owned by Google.com, they will always be very keen to spider our blog on a regular basis.

From launch of our website, to the spidering of our site by Google took just about ten days. Within three days of the launch of our site, Google had spidered the main page of our site. Within ten days, Google had already spidered the whole of our website.

Compared to other websites we have launched, this was the fastest turn-around time from new release to traffïc from the search engines. We believe the difference in this case study had to do more with the addition of the blog on the day of our launch than anything else we may have done to promote our domain.

Equalize Your Site With The Sites Of The Big Boys

The big sites on the internet got to be that way because they consistently add new, original, and exclusive content to their websites.

While you and I may nevër have as much content on our sites as the big boys do, we can benefit from the lessons they teach to us.

Now that you have also learned this important lesson, it is time to put this knowledge into action. Make it part of your daily or weekly schedule to add fresh, interesting content to your website. Your banker will thank you.

You Might Want to Consider Outsourcing

2005-06-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

Source: By Merle

Running your own online business can take a lot of your time. You have to wear many hats and perform many tasks: including accounting, web design, marketing and promotion. This is not to mention constantly coming up with new content for your site or to distribute it in article format for free publicity.
There are only so many hours in the day and to be honest, one person can only do so much. So what's the answer? I have one word for you: "outsourcing." This is where you hire someone else to perform a specific job or task for you. Outsourcing frees up time you can spend on more valuable aspects of your web business.

So what kinds of things might you want to farm out? Great question! Customer service can take up a lot of time; answering emails, dealing with technical problems or billing issues. Imagine the freedom of assigning those aspects of your business to someone else. If you want to offer live customer support on your website, there are companies that will serve up 24/7 live operators to answer any questions your site visitors may have when you can't be around to answer them yourself.

How about software creation? If this is the field you're in or one you'd like to enter but aren't a programmer yourself, you can hire top notch techies to write the stuff for you. Some will work for pennies on the dollar. Imagine having a top notch software package you can own and sell -- and keep all the profits.

How are your writing skills? An online entrepreneur need ads, articles, press releases and other written items to promote the business. And if you'd like to offer free or paid ebooks and reports, you'll need to be a pretty good writer. So what if you didn't pay attention in English class? Hire someone to do it for you. There are plenty of talented writers online who are looking daily for assignments such as this. When the work is done it bears your name on the finished product.

Running marketing and ad campaigns such as Pay-Per-Click advertising can take up a ton of time, with all that testing and tracking. Again, this is another area you can farm out.

Ever have an idea for a new website but never took the time to research it? This happens to many busy entrepreneurs. So many projects, so little time. Research is another area you may want to consider letting someone else do for you.

So now that you know how outsourcing can help you to become more productive, where do you find people to hire? Fortunately, there are plenty of sites that exist for you to post your job needs -- and plenty of hungry freelancers who will come to bid on your jobs. This works especially well for those on a budget who have a firm idea of what they can afford to spend.

Let's examine a few of your options:

1) RentACoder:

Review resumes and work histories of over 96,577 registered coders. Post your needs, and coders will email you their bids. Posting a job request is free and you are under no obligation to accept any bids unless you decide to. When you accept a bid, the money is put into escrow and not released to the programmer until the job is finished.

2) Elance:

Outsource your small projects such as graphic design, logos, web development, writing and more. Select a category and describe your project. You'll need to authenticate yourself by inputting a credit card. There is no charge to post a job in the "basic level" but there is a refundable fee to post in the "select level." You'll receive bids on your job and then select a winner.

3) Smarter Work:

Post your project in one or more of many categories to choose from, such as administrative support, graphic design, translation, research, software and more. They have over 70,000 clients and service providers from over 170 countries. It's free to register.

4) PHP Career:

If you have a PHP related job then this is where you'll want to post it. Free of charge to post your job needs, but donations are appreciated.

5) Guru:
Free access to over 451,000 professionals with over 160 categories to choose from. Post in website design, graphic design, photography, writing and programming and more. Fee is 5 to 10% of project fee which is deducted from the final payment. You'll receive quotes and be able to select the applicant of your choice.

6) WorkAHolics4Hire:

With this service you'll be assigned your very own "project manager." You get to see the work in progress and review it to make sure it meets your needs. You'll need to contact them for a free assessment of your needs.

7) FreeLanceWorkExchange:

Post a project for a wide variety of jobs and get responses from qualified work-at-home pros. Post all the jobs you want with no transaction fees. You may have your listing placed higher for a fee of $20.00. Categories range from writing, web design, Internet research, data entry, programming, and graphic design.

8) FreeLance Writing:

If you need a writer, this is the place to look. Provides companies with a handful of free tools to locate freelancers. They also offer industry news, job opportunities, editorial content, and networking opportunities.

When posting your job on one of these sites you'll want to make sure you give very specific detailed instructions as to your project needs. If you're vague, you may get applicants who can't do the job or who don't meet your qualifications.

Many small businesses are outsourcing their needs in order to keep up with the many tasks and challenges they face as online entrepreneurs. If you find you can't keep pace with your many online tasks, you may want to consider it as an option.

Trouble at the ODP / Dmoz

2005-05-31T08:58:00.000-07:00

Source: By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor

The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of web sites and documents existing online at this time. While many search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN maintain largër databases of electronically spidered sites, the volunteer editors at the ODP read, sort and classify all submitted content before it is added to their search-database. Started in 1998 in reaction to difficulties webmasters had getting their content into Yahoo's then human edited directory, the Open Directory Project was a simple and effective idea.

Founded in June 1998 by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel, the ODP drew its early inspiration from the first major open-source cooperative initiative, the GNU Project. It was even originally named after the GNU project, launched as GnuHoo. The name was quickly changed to NewHoo in order to avoid confusion between the two projects. Over time, the NewHoo morphed into the more organized Open Directory Project. The ODP is owned and operated by AOL's Netscape division which has pledged to keep the directory 100% free as part of Netscape's social contract with web users.

Over the years, inclusion in the ODP became increasingly important, especially after Google began using it as the primary database for a Google directory. Getting a site listed at the ODP almost guaranteed a beneficial visit from Googlebot as a listing there was seen as a vote of confidence from a live-human reviewer.

For the past twenty-four months however, webmasters and search marketers have expressed extreme frustration while waiting for their sites to get listed in DMOZ. The Open Directory is a volunteer driven initiative, and like other non-paying projects they often have a hard time finding good help. Submissions to categories are backed up for months and in some cases, even years with many of the over 1500 unique directory categories lacking volunteers assigned to edit them. A backlog in sites awaiting review is one thing but recently, accusations of bribery, favouritism and editors lashing out at critics have caused many to lower their previously favourable estimations of the Open Directory.

The submission backlog, incidentally, grew so rapidly that the ODP editors opened a discussion forum known as the Resource Zone specifically to address questions and concerns from webmasters. After operating for over a year, the collective of ODP editors that ran the Resource Zone elected to close down the most used service available on the forum, the Site Submission Zone. While the forum was established to discuss ODP issues in an open and public space, the Site Submission Zone took far too much energy to maintain and moderate. Editors felt it did not offer users enough relevant information as much of what could or perhaps should be said to site owners would fall into the confidential category.

For several months, there have been accusations that some ODP editors are accepting payments for faster attention. Stemming from the Blog, Corrupt DMOZ Editor which was started in December 2004 by DMOZ editor Ana Thema, the blog lists several entries detailing systemic corruption throughout the Open Directory editorial structure. In her February 8 posting, Ana states, "Links are a commodity. Links from DMOZ are a hot commodity. Everything in this world is a commodity: everything. If you disbelieve that someone would be so corrupt as to sell submissions into the ODP, then Dorothy, this is your wake up call." In other posts she claims she uses at least a dozen unique editor names and maintains a network with dozens of other ODP editors. Reading Ana Thema's blog is much like watching one's first episode of the corrupt-cop drama, The Shield .

Another issue critics have had with editors at the Open Directory Project is one of favouritism. Editors have almost total control over their sections of the directory. While there is a hierarchy of editors with Meta-Editors having the power to re-edit categories that have received complaints, most meta-editors don't have a lot of spare time. This has led to some "fixing" the listings to favour their friends and associates. There are stories of search engine marketers becoming editors at the ODP and then gently favouring sites that would benefit their clients. A more sophisticated story tells of a search engine marketer manipulating ODP results to generate stronger Google page-rank scores for his clients. Another tells of ODP editors networking with each other to provide reciprocal favours.

In a case of reverse favouritism, Ana Thema posted a story at corruptdmozeditor.com from another DMOZ editor that states, "My arch competitor had a dupe content subdomain that they set up for traffic overflow and I changed their dmoz listing to the subdomain with duplicate content and it slaughtered their rankings for a couple of months. Speaking as someone with 4 years of sabotaging experience, switch their listing from www. to non-www from time-to-time. Switch them from www.example.com to www.example.com/index.html, stuff like that."

After complaining about abuses and neglect, some webmasters might expect an apology or a reasonable explanation from the Open Directory Project. None has been forthcoming though the Resource Zone was intended to be a space for DMOZ editors to communicate with DMOZ users. A growing problem for the ODP is the lack of patience users and editors are showing with each other in various search related discussion forums. A post over at the Search Engine Watch Forums likens the accountability of some ODP editors to Seinfeld's character, the Soup-Nazi. According to the post, criticize these editors and, "NO SOUP FOR YOU! NEXT!"

In its defense, the Open Directory Project is staffed by volunteers, all of whom are humans with real lives, real jobs and other responsibilities. Given the backlog of submissions and the deterioration of the directory, it is rather difficult to see them being able to straighten out the mess quickly or easily. While many DMOZ editors put up with a lot of abuse, almost all of them (with the possible exception of Ana Thema) take great pride in the size and scope of the Open Directory Project.

For search engine marketers however, the question of relevance vs. effort comes into play. At one time, a listing at the Open Directory was mandatory in order to guarantëe strong listings at Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Today, while still helpful, the strength of a Open Directory listing has been diluted by the search engines themselves. In an article titled, ...Time for The ODP to Close?, Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan suggests three ways the venerable DMOZ could reorganize and revitalize itself. Whatever it does, it should do it soon as the importance of the largest human edited directory of websites is decreasing as quickly as the backlog of submitted sites is increasing.

Get Improved Search Results with RSS

2005-05-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

Source: By Satyajeet Hattangadi

RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS?
RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood.

RSS allows publishers to "syndicate" their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.

It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers.

However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.

Why Search Engines Love RSS

Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes,or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines.

For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.

Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.

But where does RSS figure in all this?

RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche.

By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site's content without having to write a single line on your own.

It's like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!

How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings?
There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.

1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content

There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme.

Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for.

Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.

2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content

RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.

These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.

3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering

One thing I nevër anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily. To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.

What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.

How does this benefit you as a marketer?

Well, for example, let's says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.

Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.

But, since your site has RSS feeds, it gets indexed more frequently. So the chances of getting your page indexed quickly are much higher.

This gives you an advantage over the competition, as your review will show up sooner in the search results than theirs.

Imagine what an entire month's advantage could do to your affiliate salës!

Why Javascript Feeds Are Not Effective

Some sites offer javascrïpt code that generates content sourced from RSS feeds for your site.

These are of absolutely no value in terms of search engine rankings, as the googlebot cannot read javascrïpt and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.

What you need is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content that's part of your page.

This is achieved using server side scripting languages like PHP or ASP.

A good free ASP script is available from Kattanweb.

An equally good PHP script is CARP.

But, if you're looking for an easier solution, you should check out Express RSS.

So in conclusion, besides optimizing on page and off page factors, adding RSS feeds to your pages should be an important part of your strategy to boost your search engine rankings.

Screwed: Is this an Inevitability in SEO?

2005-05-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Source: By Courtney Heard

By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This an absolutely wonderful thing to see, as in the past in our industry, not enough of our consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that accountability will come and the bad guys will be weeded out.

While this is a good sign, it's the cause of my having to answer the same questions over and over. The consumers in the SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some of the people who call themselves experts in the area of Search Engine Optimization. They hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them and I am utterly astonished. Below are some of the most asinine claims I hear through the grapevine.

"We Can Guarantee Your Rankings"

Don't be fooled! Ask the company what you will be ranking for, immediately! 9 times out of 10, a company that guarantees you rankings, is guaranteeing that you will rank for your own company name, which means people on Google or MSN or Yahoo! would have to know your company name before searching. How does this produce new customers and visitors to your site? Chances are, as soon as these search engines index your site, you will rank within the top ten for your company name, if not first, because it is unique. Why bother paying someone for something that is already going to happen, anyway?

Guaranteeing rankings is highly unethical. It is impossible to guarantee rankings unless you have access to Google's database itself, and even then I'm not sure it's possible. Keep in mind, we are working with a 3rd party. A highly guarded 3rd party that doesn't, under any circumstances, reveal it's secrets. No one outside of the companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due to the fact that these search engines and the rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn't know how to guarantee rankings! If someone is telling you they'll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:

"No one can guarantee a -#1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever." - http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

An ethical SEO company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow search engine guidelines, and they will guarantëe customer satisfaction, but at no point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantëe your rankings.

"Your Site Needs to Be Continually Resubmitted to Get On and Stay On the Search Engines"

When will I see the end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years? We're talking about the days when Webcrawler was the biggest search engine and all computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. And the good folks at Google will once again back me up on this one:

"Submission is not necessary and does not guarantëe inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index, and cannot predict when or if they will appear." - http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2

"Meta Tags Are Not Important Anymore"

Sure they aren't. If you don't want a decent ranking on MSN. The new MSN search places a lot of value on the keywords and description meta tags. Without these tags in your site's code, your ranking on MSN will suffer. Just as importantly, if your keywords and description meta tags don't use proper language, your rankings will suffer. The description tag is also what MSN uses as the visible description for a site in the search results. And of course, to prove I'm not the one blowing hot air, this is what MSN themselves say about it:

"Site descriptions are extracted from the content of your page each time MSNBot crawls your site and indexes its pages...

...the best way to affect your site description is to ensure that your web pages effectively deliver the information you want to see in search results." - Click-here to see the page this is found on.

"Your Web Site Has Been Sabotaged"

This one is truly unreal. I can't believe it's even been used as an excuse for why an SEO company hasn't achieved decent rankings for you. But alas, more than one SEO company has told potential clients of ours that the reason they are not ranking well, or why their search engine optimization campaign is not effective, is because someone else has been sabotaging the site. Some of the clients who have been told this are small businesses, like bed and breakfasts or pet sitters. We always explain to these potential clients that the likelihood of someone even having the initial idea to sabotage a web site, the site in question would have to be a fairly large one, and the target of a lot of hatred. Why? Because sabotaging a web site's rankings takes a massive amount of time and energy. We're talking months, maybe even years of hard, hard work. Why would anyone devote months or years of their life to taking down a pet sitting site? Or a bed and breakfast?

Once again, these are some hefty claims and it is a clear sign that the company who is running your SEO campaign is unwilling to be held accountable for their actions or lack thereof.

Don't Put Up With It

The bottom line is, your search engine optimization company works for you. You are paying them. Hold them accountable as you would any other vendor. Keep reading these articles, read info at the search engines, educate yourself and if something your SEO says smells a little rotten, don't be afraid to call them on it.

Is being screwed an inevitability in the SEO world? Damn near. But thanks to the increasing interest of our consumers in self-education and their increased questioning, our industry will slowly climb out of the gutter and someday down the line, send this article into antiquity. In spite of my pride, I'd be overjoyed to see that day come.

More Things Change, More Microsoft Stays The Same

2005-05-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

Source: By Trevor Bauknight

In the last few weeks, I've been watching a sleeping giant stir to life and wondering aloud what it would do when it awoke to find a dedicated army of the normal-sized working feverishly to lash it to the ground. Would Microsoft dedicate itself anew to genuine competition, relying on the merits of its products, or would it throw its considerable weight around and ensure for another generation that "good enough" remains the standard? The answer is becoming clearer, and while Microsoft has been hinting at the former with a few recent announcements, it looks as if the software giant is ready to start grinding bones instead.

The second part of a two-part BBC report on Microsoft outlines the company's strategy to deal with the increasing level of competition it's facing on a number of fronts. Probably as a direct result of its own ability to keep the price of desktop PC software more or less constant while the price of the hardware side has plummeted, the frëe, open-source software (FOSS) community has emerged as Microsoft's chief competition. That community worked silently for years, building a remarkable distributed development and collaboration infrastructure that is now bearing such sweet fruit as the Firefox browser, the excellent OpenOffice.org productivity suite and, of course, Linux, the OS kernel of the People. We make heavy use of all those products at CafeID and couldn't be more pleased with them.

The Beeb reports that Microsoft intends to confront these challenges in a disturbingly familiar way. Twelve billion dollars can buy a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

What Is FUD And Why Should You Care?

The fifth of the five key battles, according to the BBC article, is over "serious software" and the competition Microsoft faces from the Open Source community, described above. The company has only recently begun to even acknowledge this threat, for fear, no doubt, of legitimizing it. But Chairman Gates is rolling out the same tired arguments against OSS that he's rolled out before. He warns of "interoperability" issues as if some other company is responsible for the tendency Microsoft has to intentionally break interoperability in order to remain exclusive. There are standards for interoperability, and the Open Source community embraces standards. Microsoft can take its file formats and go home, obviously; but any attempt to portray "interoperability" as a lack of quality, dedication or competence on the part of OSS developers is absurd.

Gates also refers to the supposed advantage Microsoft has in terms of total cost of ownership (TCO), at least "if you look at the entire software stack." It's true enough that Microsoft enjoys a certain level of inertia that keeps it moving forward in the absence of innovation and quality. The cost for a large enterprise to execute a switch, even to a free software platform, outweighs the cost of simply upgrading its Windows installations. It's also true that the few companies providing the level of support, training, warranties and indemnification that businesses need charge a premium. But for smaller organizations without a large existing investment in Microsoft technology, switching or starting out with Linux and other OSS alternatives makes perfect sense from a financial standpoint.

Alistair Baker of Microsoft UK chimed in with more FUD, asking "do you really want to have your security issues discussed by the Linux developer community on a public bulletin board?" I suppose most businesses would say "no," but how attractive is the alternative having them ignored for years only to be finally offered a security solution on a subscription basis? Gates and Co. have long held up OSS development as insecure because vulnerabilities are exposed to the public; but, by the same token, vulnerabilities are more readily discovered and fixed and the fixes distributed than in the closed world of proprietary commercial software, which isn't exactly a paragon of security.

The arguments that Microsoft makes to scare people away from its rivals are insidious; but it's the ability the company has to stifle competitive development in new markets, combined with the bait-and-switch tactics it uses to gain customers, that is more worrisome. I'll call it the "Wal-Mart Effect." For example: You know Wal-Mart is building a big-box down the street, so your own business options, if you deal in a product that Wal-Mart carries (and who doesn't, really?), are severely curtailed. The store opens, people flock there for the low, low prices until the places they used to buy groceries, hardware, clothes and toys all shutter their doors. At that point, Wal-Mart switches its customers to a new pricing model and they have little recourse.

A New Pricing Model for Microsoft?

In the software world, the "Wal-Mart Effect" might take the following form: Microsoft buys the premier maker of anti-spyware protection software and gives the product away free. Customers find the product valuable (never mind that the inherent insecurity of Windows made the product necessary in the first place) and they use it, even rejoicing when Microsoft announces that the product will remain free to legitimate Windows users. Microsoft then announces that it will enter the highly-competitive anti-virus market and will deploy its AV product on a subscription basis. Or maybe it just rolls both of these security enhancements directly into Windows, calls it "Windows OneCare" and there you are, a Microsoft "subscriber" with attendant disincentives to switching to non-MS products.

It may sound a little bit far-fetched, but the company-wide trial of Windows OneCare starts next week, and Microsoft plans to offer it as a commercial service next year, using an annual subscription model. Some are speculating that the subscription model would be extended to cover all of Windows or possibly all Microsoft software. MS already uses such a model in its high-dollar Enterprise Agreements with large installations, so the idea that it would like to move to subscriptions for all its software at all levels is not unreasonable.

One might argue that the current situation, in which OS upgrades are a practical necessity, is already a subscription model, and I'd agree. The problem seems to be that Microsoft is having trouble meeting its end of the bargain, as the woeful tardiness of the next update to Windows, code-named "Longhorn", illustrates. It's increasingly apparent that Microsoft will have to ship some of Longhorn's features (like IE7) in an interim release of Windows XP that will actually provide at least some kind of upgrade to those "subscribers" who bought the XP upgrade rights.

So Is This Good Or Bad?

There have been positive developments in recent weeks. Among them was the announcement that IE7 would finally be fixing some of its longstanding problems with regard to standards-compliance so that we can all get back to concentrating on our content and design without having to worry about the browser choices of the target audience. Whether this is in response to the success of the open-source Firefox browser or out of respect to the World Wide Web Consortium doesn't really matter. What matters is that it could have been step in the right direction for Microsoft.

Unfortunately, however, it appears that Microsoft is trying to talk interoperability and standards while the company walks the other way. Money can't buy what the Open Source community has built, and with the explosion of interest in Linux and other open-source alternatives, including interest among national governments in China, Brazil and Germany in moving away from reliance on a single American company, the subscription model may not make much difference anyway.

Microsoft's tendency to turn first to the spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt is growing weaker and weaker by the day, as open-source alternatives gather momentum. It would seem that a company with tens of thousands of talented employees, billions of dollars of cash in the bank and access to virtually every personal computer on the planet could do better; but, unfortunately, it's not clear after all these years that Microsoft can.

Increase Your Search Engine Ranking - What Works Now?

2005-05-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

Source: By Dan Meiyers

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic format. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you visit Google and type in "link:" (without the quotations) followed by your site address (no space after the colon), you will be shown the sites that are linked to your site as per Google. Example link:www.yoursite.com. Note that searching link:yoursite.com will return different results than searching link:www.yoursite.com . To find your site's link popularity on other search engines search the phrase "free link popularity check" and try one of the many link popularity tools available on the Web.

If you find that there aren't many sites linked to yours, or that the sites that are linked have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

Internet Explorer 7.0 and CSS2

2005-05-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Source: By Mark Daoust (c) 2005

As many of you know, Microsoft has announced that it will be releasing Internet Explorer 7.0 this summer to those who are on the XP operating system in a project code named "Rincon". The move is reportedly being done to improve the security of the IE browser. However, with browsers such as Firefox gaining market share, many people speculate that the new Internet Explorer will come with more than just security enhancements. Features such as tabbed browsing, built in anti-spyware, and RSS aggregating are all features that appear to be coming with the Rincon project.

The real question, however, for any website owner and developer is whether Microsoft will create a browser that interprets CSS2 in a standard way. Currently, Microsoft does not support all of CSS2's functionalities and also adds some functionalities that CSS2 didn't initially support. The result is nothing more than a major headache for those developing a website that is accessible to all people, regardless of the browser they are using.

So will Microsoft finally adhere to the official CSS2 specifications? Don't bet on it. A look at Microsoft's history and their current position in the marketplace seems to point to the idea that they will continue to buck the open source development trend and try to mold the marketplace according to their vision.

Microsoft Views Incompatibility as a Competitive Advantage

Most website developers develop a website for Internet Explorer first, and for the secondary browsers second. The reason for this is obvious. If you have a website that works in Firefox, but appears broken in Internet Explorer, the site appears broken to over 90% of its visitors. On the flip side, if the site works fine in Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, only a small percentage of your website visitors are inconvenienced.

Microsoft, being the vast market share holder in the browser market, can influence the behavior of website owners and web surfers. Because not every site is optimized for browsers such as Firefox, web surfers who try to make the transition to Firefox will find themselves on familiar sites that appear broken to them in Firefox, but not Internet Explorer because Internet Explorer does not follow a standard set of rules that any browser can comply with. The result is that these surfers who try to make the transition over to Firefox will go back to the more familiar Internet Explorer.

Keep the Advantage, Eliminate the Disadvantages

There are a few reasons for people making the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. There is the obvious group of people that truly believe Microsoft is evil, so they will do anything to avoid a Microsoft product no matter how much it inconveniences them. Microsoft is not worried about these people so much because they will always represent a small group. What Microsoft does need to worry about is the real advantages of making the switch to Firefox.

Security

Security is probably the top reason people make the switch to Firefox. Now that most people have been introduced to spyware, awareness of PC security is becoming a bigger issue. Any person who does a little research will quickly realize that most spyware programs focus on the vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer, since that is what most surfers use. Making the switch to Firefox not only gives surfers new security features that are not available with Internet Explorer, but they also remove themselves as the target of spyware creators.

Since security is one of the biggest reasons people leave Internet Explorer, the people at Microsoft have decided to make security a major priority. And, in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, they should be commended for finally looking to improve the security of their browser. Who knows how many countless computers were infected with spyware programs due to the vulnerabilities Internet Explorer presented.

Features

Firefox also offers unique features that users cannot get with Internet Explorer. Features such as tabbed browsing, RSS Aggregation, and others have proven to be more than just nice ideas or some programmer's pet hobby. Unfortunately for Firefox, they have proved to be the market testing for Microsoft, without Microsoft having to spend any monëy on development. Look for Microsoft to continue to copy the successful features of Firefox in the future, and ignore those features that are not successful.

Back to CSS2

What is CSS2 really? CSS2 is nothing more than a set of recommendations for controlling layout and design of websites put forth by the World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C's goal for their recommendations is to avoid market fragmentation on the Internet, thus creating a more uniform and more enjoyable surfing experience for web users. Ironically enough, Microsoft and the W3C have the same goal, although Microsoft would like to have uniformity on the web as a result of everyone using Internet Explorer.

As long as Microsoft is able to hold onto its market share through segmenting the market, they will do so. They will have this ability as long as they have an overwhelming majority of the market share. Unfortunately for those who make their living designing and developing websites, there are only two hopeful outcomes to make life easier: either Microsoft loses enough market share that they decide to adopt the W3C's recommendations, or Microsoft successfully eliminates all browser competitors and is the only option for web surfers. Until one of these two options occurs, expect Microsoft to continue to interpret the web as they see fit, and in a way that will keep users on Microsoft products.

Transfer Your Web Hosting the Right Way

2005-05-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Source: By Derek Vaughan

You've heard the horror stories, and lived through your own: web hosting providers that didn't live up to your expectations. Reasons often stated for switching hosting companies include - additional features not available, technical support not able to quickly solve problems, billing irregularities or over billing, and most importantly for the majority of web hosting customers: poor email performance.
If you have had it with your current hosting provider, and you're ready to transfer hosting companies - Cheap Hosting Directory recommends a few things to think about to make the transition a smooth one. They also asked the opinion of a major player in web hosting about the subject.

1. Backup EVERYTHING you want to take with you- I know that you already perform regular backups of all your site data, right? Right? (Sigh) - well at the very least, you absolutely MUST back up everything that you expect to have access to after you drop your hosting service.

Do not make the mistake of forgetting to copy some files, designs, graphics, databases, or emails prior to discontinuing your current hosting service. Otherwise you will find that once you are no longer a customer, all of your data is wiped clean to make room for paying accounts.

2. Make certain that your new host supports all your current software and services - Many customers switch web hosting providers in order to gain access to enhanced features or software. Even so, you need to put together a checklist of core software and services that you must have to keep your site running smoothly. If you are running any scripts or calls that are written in a certain version of software, make sure your new provider carries that version. At the very least, make absolutely certain that critical systems such as shopping carts, merchant accounts, payment gateways, ecommerce software, and databases are fully compatible with your new provider's systems.

3. Research your DNS settings ahead of the transfer - One fundamental step in transferring your site to a new web hosting provider is going to be to change name servers for your domain. Don't wait until the last minute to investigate and understand this process. It is a change that must be made with your registrar of record. It is common to change hosting providers, but much less common to change registrars. Therefore, it is possible that your DNS changes will be made with a registrar account that you rarely access or have reason to administrate.

Therefore, be sure you know where your domain name is registered before moving the account. If you're not sure, find out where your domain is registered by doing a 'whois' lookup prior to switching. A great site for looking up your domain's information is WhoIs.sc. This lookup will tell you where your domain is registered, and where your name servers are currently pointed.

Access your domain registration account prior to moving and read up on the process to change your DNS. Also investigate on your new host's site - and find out where you will need to point your DNS to resolve to your new hosting provider. Both of these pieces are absolutely critical for transferring your web site.

4. Perform an online background check on your top candidates - You would never hire a new employee without checking their references and background. It should be the same for a new web hosting company. Use online resources like Google.com to research potential new web hosting services. Type in search terms like 'problems with newwebhostname' or 'technical support problems with newwebhostname'. You can also refer to online review and ratings sites like WebHostingRatings.com which contains a searchable database of customer comments on web hostïng companies, or WebSiteHostDirectory.com which sorts top hostïng companies into categories for easy analysis.

5. Mystery shop your new host's technical support - It's a fact that every web hosting provider lists as one of their core competencies "top level technical support". So if every company claims to have great, fast, available, expert support - how do you know if they can really deliver? Why not try calling their support line? You can see how long it takes for someone to actually get on the line with you. You can also have a tricky pre-sales question or two ready to ask. Possibly you can ask if they support the latest versions of the software you're using. I would even suggest calling the support numbers at different times of the day - once during peak hours, and once during a slow time like the middle of the night. Make certain that you're comfortable with both the courtesy and the technical competency of the support staff - because they're the ones that you'll be talking to if you ever really need help with your web site.

6. Look for a money-back guarantee - Many hosts are currently offering a free trial period or a money-back guarantee. This is your assurance that you can get out of the deal if your hosting company doesn't perform. Be certain to actually read the terms of the guarantee before you sign up. Some hosts require that you request your refund after you drop the service - your money is not automatically sent back to you.

I typed in the search phrase 'web hosting money-back guarantee' into Google. You can easily use this technique to locate web hosts which offer money-back guarantees. Clicking the first link took me to the following page: iPowerWeb.com. It describes the unconditional 30 day money-back guarantee for iPowerWeb. Mr. Tracy Conrad, COO and Vice President at iPowerWeb gives this advice: "The trick is to make sure that you select a provider who will help you through the transfer process. At iPowerWeb we have a team dedicated to personally handling the transfer process for our customers".

7. Ask for a special offer - In the highly competitive business of web hosting services, each customer sign up is precious. You will often see special offers listed on the company's web site or in advertisements. Unknown to each buyer is the fact that sales people are often given "extra special offers" to close sales of customers that are right on the edge of buying, but are resisting. The special offers are designed to close the sale. Make sure that you ask for each and every special offer they can give you. You have nothing to lose, and you may find that the offer that's being given today is fairly generous. But you won't know unless you ask. Don't be shy about getting the best possible deal - it could save you real money over the long haul.

Summary

The decision to transfer your web hosting can be a difficult one - but once you've decided that a change is in order, take the steps to ensure a successful transfer. You're transition to your new web host will be easier, you'll experience less site down time, and hopefully you won't have to make another web hosting change for a long, long time!

Study: Search Engines Increase Coverage

2005-05-17T23:47:00.000-07:00

Source: By John Stith

As we go through existence, we find there are great questions in life: What is life's meaning? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? And finally, just how big is the Internet? A recent study attempted to put some of the Internet question into perspective and they discuss how much is covered by the big search engines.

First, we need to discuss just big the Internet is. WOW! It is insanely large. Antonio Gulli of the University of Pisa (Universita di Pisa) and Alessio Signorini at the University of Iowa have been working on this topic for a while and have published an abstract documenting just how big the internet is or could be and also how big search engines are and how much of this vast world of information is covered.

They state previous estimates on the size of the Internet are now obsolete. The studies done in 1997 and 1998 respectively were much smaller in their scale. The first in 1997 was around 200 million pages and 1998 was around 800 million pages. Not even close anymore. The current study estimates around 11.5 billion pages. That's a lot of pages. They break down that total by coverage of search engines.

Break It Down

One point they do mention is that the search engines underestimate their own coverage areas. Google, the largest engine claims to cover 8.1 billion pages, the abstract says 8.8 billion pages at a coverage rate of 76.2%. They were closest to their estimate of coverage area.

Yahoo ranked second and they severely underestimated their coverage rate. Yahoo estimates coverage of 4.2 billion and were closer to 8 billion or a 69.3% coverage area.

MSN claimed it covered 5 billion pages and the study showed 7.1 billion or 61.9% coverage. This is their beta too. They could give Google a run in the future. Ask Jeeves/Teoma ranked 4th, estimating 2.5 billion covered and the study said 6.6 billion or 57.6%. The indexed web hit about 9.4 billion or 81.4%

Methodic Madness

The method these gentlemen used was based on the 1997 study. The original study utilized 35,000 queries in English; the new study covered over 438,141 queries in 75 languages. This gives the study some international meaning, not just the U.S. spin and gives a much stronger estimate than originally done back in the 90s.

The primary flaw to this abstract is that it only covers the accessible pages search engines can find. There are billion of pages in various systems search engines haven't grabbed. Search Engine Watch says some estimate over 500 billion pages.

Keep in mind too that even though Google returns 9 million hits, less the 50,000 talk about her battle with Hepatitis C and even then, how many of those pages would actually be significant. Relevancy is still the key to it all. All those sights are pointless if they don't give good, reliable information.

Uses for this information are myriad. It gives some basis for what we're dealing with on the Internet and how big it might be. It could help with marketing, especially as companies prepare to move into the other markets, like China. With Google getting access to the mainland in Shanghai and owning a percentage of Baidu and Yahoo already in China, this makes this study even more relevant.

How To Control Search Engine Robots

2005-05-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

Source: By Michael Rock

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to leave some code in your web site to tell the search engine spider crawlers to make your site number one? Unfortunately a robots.txt file or robots meta tag won't do that, but they can help the crawlers to index your site better and block out the unwanted ones.
First a little definition explaining:

Search Engine Spiders or Crawlers - A web crawler (also known as web spider) is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches.

A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit. As it visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, recursively browsing the Web according to a set of policies.

Robots.txt - The robots exclusion standard or robots.txt protocol is a convention to prevent well-behaved web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website. The information specifying the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called robots.txt in the top-level directory of the website.

The robots.txt protocol is purely advisory, and relies on the cooperation of the web robot, so that marking an area of your site out of bounds with robots.txt does not guarantee privacy. Many web site administrators have been caught out trying to use the robots file to make private parts of a website invisible to the rest of the world. However the file is necessarily publicly available and is easily checked by anyone with a web browser.

The robots.txt patterns are matched by simple substring comparisons, so care should be taken to make sure that patterns matching directories have the final '/' character appended: otherwise all files with names starting with that substring will match, rather than just those in the directory intended.

Meta Tag - Meta tags are used to provide structured data about data.

In the early 2000s, search engines veered away from reliance on Meta tags, as many web sites used inappropriate keywords, or were keyword stuffing to obtain any and all traffic possible.

Some search engines, however, still take Meta tags into some consideration when delivering results. In recent years, search engines have become smarter, penalizing websites that are cheating (by repeating the same keyword several times to get a boost in the search ranking). Instead of going up rankings, these websites will go down in rankings or, on some search engines, will be kicked off of the search engine completely.

Index a site - The act of crawling your site and gathering information.

How can the robots.txt file and meta tag help you?

In the robots.txt you can tell the harmful 'web crawlers' to leave your web site alone, and give helpful hints to the ones you want to crawl your site. Below is an example on how to disallow a web crawler to search your site:

# this identifies the wayback machine User-agent:
ia_archiver
Disallow: /

ia_archiver is the crawler name for the wayback machine that you may have heard of, and the / after disallow tells ai_archiver not to index any of your site. The # allows you to write comments to yourself so you can keep track of what you typed.

Type the above three lines into notepad from your computer and save it to the root directory of your web site as robots.txt. Web crawlers look for this document first at a web site before doing anything else. This helps the crawler to do its job, and helps the web site owner tell the spider what to do. Say for instance you have some data that you don't want the crawlers to see. (Like duplicate content for other browser referrer pages)

You can deter crawlers from indexing the 'duplicate' directory by typing this into your robots.txt file. Or if you would like to have the robots.txt file created for you, visit Rietta.com. To validate your robots.txt file to make sure it works properly you can visit SearchEngineWorld.com.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /duplicate/

The * after user-agent says that this action applies to all crawlers and /duplicate/ after disallow tells all crawlers to ignore this directory and not search it. For each user-agent and disallow line there must be a blank space between them in order for it to function correctly. So this is how you would create the above two commands into a robots.txt file:

# this identifies the wayback machine
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /duplicate/

One thing to note that is very important: Anyone can access the robots.txt file of a site. So if you have information that you don't want anyone to see don't include it into the robots.txt file. If the directory that you don't want anyone to see is not linked to from your web site the crawlers won't index it anyway.

An alternative to blocking indexing of your site is to put a meta tag into the page. It looks like this:

{meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"}

You put this into the {head} tag of your web page. This line tells the robot crawlers not to index (search) the page and not to follow any of the hyperlinks on the page. So as an example {meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"} tells the robot crawlers to not index the page, but follow the hyperlinks on this page.

Did You Know That Google Has Its Own Meta Tag?

It looks like this:
{meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,nofollow,noarchive"}.
This tells the Google robot crawler not to index the page, not to follow any of the links, and not to keep from storing cached versions of your web site. You will want this done if you update the content on your site frequently. This prevents the web user from seeing outdated content that isn't refreshed because of storage in the cache.

You can use the meta tag to specifically talk to Google's robots to avoid complications or if you are optimizing your site for Google's search engine. This concludes this month's article.

Note: All <> tags were replaced with {} for posting purposes

Top 5 Press Release Writing Mistakes

2005-05-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Source: By Ted Kushner (c) 2005

Did you know that using online press releases is one of the most powerful ways for almost instantly driving hundreds or even thousands of potential targeted customers to your new product, web site or newsletter?
Within hours of having your press release distributed over the Internet your press release could be picked up by some of the major online news networks like Google News and Yahoo News.

And then within days or just a few weeks they will begin to show up in the natural search engine results of the major search engines.

Nowhere can you achieve so much publicity for so little effort. But let me explain what I mean by 'so little effort'.

Even though press releases are a powerful marketing tool that everyone should be using as one of their marketing methods you need to do a little research before just whipping one up.

As someone who uses press releases quite often in marketing of new products and web sites I have seen and learned how to avoid some common errors in writing my press releases.

Avoiding these errors can mean the difference in driving a few hundred visitors to your new web site or product to receiving thousands of targeted hits for the same amount of effort.

So what are these mistakes? And how do you avoid them?

Mistake #1- Not Focusing on a Main Theme

You need to determine what the key purpose of your press release will be about. You don't want to target multiple items in the same release.

If you just released 10 new software products this week you don't want to talk / write about all of them at one time. Pick one and focus on it and get your audience excited about it.

Once their curiosity is peaked they will click on your link to get additional information and that is what you want. You can always do multiple releases for each product.

Mistake #2- Not Researching the Keywords You Want to Target Before Hand

You want to do a little keyword research based on the concept of your press release. Why would you want to do keyword research for a press release? Because you need to optimize your press release so that it will rank high in the natural search engine results once it gets picked up by Google, MSN or Yahoo.

I normally target a keyword that has a decent amount of monthly searches but has little to moderate competition from highly optimized web sites.

You can determine this by doing a search on Google and seeing how many web sites are competing for the same term. You also want to see if the keyword is being used in the title and if the web site(s) have the term in their top level domain name.

By targeting the keywords that are moderately popular but don't have many competing web sites that are not highly optimized for your keyword, you will stand a greater chance of ranking in the top ten search engine results once your press release gets indexed.

Mistake #3- Not Creating a Compelling Headline

Just like an article or sales letter you need to create a catchy title to grab your reader's attention. Since press releases are normally only displayed for a short period of time, when they are first released you need to get the most bang for your efforts.

Look at the following titles - which one grabs your attention the most?

"Bad Breath Resources at Bad-Breath-Cures.com" or "Proven Little Known Secrets for Curing Bad Breath Fast at Bad-Breath-Cures.com"

I also always use my main keyword in the title. As your title will become the key factor in your rankings in the search engines.

Mistake #4- Not Formatting Your Press Release Correctly

Writing press releases is not rocket science. But you do need to take some time in formatting your release correctly so that you stand a chance of being picked up by the various news and web site outlets.

How carefully you format your press release can determine your PR score with some press release services like PRWeb. The higher your PR score the greater chance of you being picked up by some of the leading news outlets.

For additional information how to correctly format your press releases go to: PRWeb.com

Mistake #5- Using the Wrong Press Release Services

You want the most coverage but at a reasonable price. Using the wrong service could cost you hundreds or thousands of wasted dollars.

Below are some of the press release services I have used and found to be effective:

PRWeb.com

pressbox.co.uk

WebWire.com

24-7PressRelease.com

While there are some free services out there, I've found that paying a small fee to a few online press release services can afford you a wider coverage then using one who charges you a hefty fee just to submit your release for you.

By paying a small fee you get to track your stats online and target additional industries and groups giving you a wider coverage for your press release then if you went the free route.

So by using press releases effectively you can learn how to add this handy little technique in your marketing arsenal to drive tons of highly targeted traffic to any program or web site you choose in a matter of no time.

Shopping Cart Options

2005-05-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Source: By T. O' Donnell

The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports, and the number of people that support *it*.
Why? Because credit card processors and shipping services mutate all the time. Your cart will require updating. Which service works today may go out of business tomorrow, and leave you with the orders piling up.

Other important criteria are how easy it is to set up, and add products, and how easy it is for the customer to use.

When you set up your shop, test it using a wide variety of the oldest and buggiest browsers you can find. If your web store works under them you're home and dry.

Below are the cheapest, simplest, and most effective carts I've found:

1. Oscommerce (free)

A very good, full-featured, cart. Uses Php and MySQL. Not easy to set up for a 'newbie'. Cookies are used to track the order. If you have PhpMyAdmin installed in your web account, it's easier. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Technical support is limited to the Oscommerce forums, which are not helpful to newbies.

Also, it may be a while before an update is available to a payment module. These are done by unpaid enthusiasts.

Good point: Oscommerce is supported by thousands of unpaid enthusiasts; this means updates do eventually arrive, and it's less likely to go out of business, unlike a commercial cart.

2. X-Cart (commercial)

Similar to Oscommerce. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Lots of features and add-ons. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. Has an affiliate program add-on, and lets others sell products through your cart.

3. Dansie Cart (commercial)

A well specified cart. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Apparently the Perl code is obscured, to make it harder to copy, which is annoying if you want to customize it.

4. Interchange (free)

A version of the old Akopia / Minivend carts. Complex product with lots of files and a lot of setting up to do. A complete solution, and includes the option of third party credit-card real-time order processing. Encrypts orders.

5. Agora (free)

A Web-Store/Commerce.cgi hybrid.

6. The Commission Cart (commercial)

A CGI-based shopping cart which also functions as an affiliate program. Other webmasters earn commissions by signing up and linking to your site.

7. ShopFactory (commercial)

Has a nice little wizard-based set-up. If you have a lot of items in your shop, this is an option worth checking out.

This is a very valuable feature. A person who's set up CGI scripts before will get the most out of this. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad points: It's ugly, awkward, and uses JavaScrïpt too much.

8. WebGenie Shopping Cart Pro (commercial)

A simple, wizard-based option. Uses Javascript a bit, but the main work is done by CGI scripts. It saves the credit-card information on your server.

It's for someone who hasn't set up a CGI script before. Expensive for what you get, but it works. Option to buy it on hire-purchase.

9. Actinic Catalog (commercial)

Most suitable if you have lots of items in your store. It's a 'wizard'-based PC program; you type in your information, and the program sets up the store.

You should set up the default store as-is, then customize it later. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. A little complicated for an internet newbie; there's quite a lot in it.

10. Order Maven (commercial)

A clever little program. It's a standalone Windows executable, which the customer downloads. The customer starts it up, chooses the product, enters their details, and sends off their order like an email, with the credit-card details encrypted. It costs $29.00 at the time of writing. No secure server or order page needed; it's all done on the customer's PC at their leisure.

You need to customize it. Make sure you write your mail server URL into the code. For the customer, the order module is a 160kb download.

NOTE: Try to avoid carts that use cookies and javascript only, or that tie you into only one secure server and credit-card processor. Also avoid web-based services that you lease only. They can go out of business, leaving you flat.

Having read the above you should have eliminated quite a few programs from your shopping list. They either won't work properly with all browsers, or they won't encrypt your order, or they want to tie you into their manufacturers' secure order system at $40+ per month.

Another option is to get a bespoke system set up for you by a specialist company. These cost thousands of dollars. Aren't you glad you read this far?

Secret Sauce in Web Site Marketing

2005-05-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Source: By Scottie Claiborne

Web site marketing is about getting people to your site, then convincing them to take action: buy, join, subscribe, read more, etc. I'm going to give you the secret to unlocking the potential in your website. Right now. Absolutely for free. (Of course, if you WANT to send money, feel free to do so!
The Secret is Words

Hmm ... not very exciting, is it? You were expecting something flashier and unexpected probably... like special meta tags or coding or a secret search engine ranking recipe. The truth is that many websites just need more descriptive copy.

When many business owners set out to build a website, they start by looking at images, themes, and color schemes. They worry over technology like flash and javascript, wanting their site to be "cool" and outdo the competition. Their focus is on the visual and the interactive elements of the site. They pony up thousands of dollars to designers and coders to get that cool, interactive site they feel they must have, then they get someone in the office who's not busy at the moment to throw together some copy. It's almost an afterthought.

All You Need is Words

Ok, maybe that isn't all you need, but words are The Most Important aspect of your site. The professional that most people think they can do without -the copywriter- is the one who can have the biggest impact on the success of your site. No matter what your website looks like, plain and simple or a triumph of visual graphic art, if the words are right it will convert.

Search Engine Rankings & Customer Conversions

Search engine spiders can't read pictures. They can't read Flash very well, although they are making strides in that direction. The same goes for javascript and other non-html technologies; for the most part search engine spiders ignore what they don't understand and look for what they do understand: text.

The words that are visible to people reading the page are the key element that search engine spiders use to determine what your page is about. (The other key element is links- we'll cover that in a future article.) Once the engine knows what the page is about, they can show that page to people who are searching for the words found on that page. That sounds pretty simplistic, but it's amazing how many pages only contain a picture and a few words, or flash animations, or other non-text items.

Sometimes the text on the page is really an image and not text at all, making the information virtually invisible to search engines. Some designers will tell you that putting the text from the image into the alt attribute of the image will solve the problem, but alt text is virtually ignored these days by the major engines. It's too easy to put irrelevant information in an alt attribute.

While the site owner often thinks the picture says it all and the web designer thinks it is cutting edge, the customer wants to know more. The web is a research tool as well as a marketing medium and when viewing a commercial site people want to know all the benefits, sizes, colors, and configurations.

Words Make All the Difference

A company rents cotton candy machines in Kalamazoo, SC. Their Cotton Candy Machine page has a big picture of a Cotton Candy Machine with "Cotton Candy Machine- $45" under it. Their page title says "Cotton Candy". That's all. A searcher typing in "cotton candy machine rental Kalamazoo" will not be able to find this page, because the search engine doesn't know that is what the page is about!

A potential customer who does find the page may look at it and think, "Hmnn... the other rental place has their machine for $40, I'll call them instead."

You need pictures and words in order to sell effectively.

Let's take our cotton candy example and redo that page in order to get more search hits and more customers calling to book it:

Title: "Cotton Candy Machine Rental in Kalamazoo, SC"

Picture: Nice photo that we already had.

Heading: "Cotton Candy Machine Rental"

Copy:

Add excitement to your next party or event with our Cotton Candy Machine for rent! The sweet aroma and taste of fresh cotton candy can turn any party into a festival.
You can also raise funds for your organization with our Cotton Candy Machine! Sell cotton candy at your next carnival, festival, or even gatherings such as school PTO meetings or church get-togethers.

The low rental price of just $45 includes delivery, and we can even supply you with cotton candy flosssugar and cones.

Why Rent a Cotton Candy Machine from Our Company?

We are the only company in Kalamazoo, SC that offers a cotton candy machine with a safety bubble for your protection. Our Cotton Candy Machine is cleaned and sanitized after every use and inspected for proper operation before delivery. We'll even review the operating procedures with you when we drop it off.

Page footer on every page: Our Company Party Rentals in Kalamazoo, SC. Call us today! (999) 999-9999

The Payoff

A search engine will know that page is about cotton candy machine rental in Kalamazoo and your customers will know the benefits of renting from you. By taking the time to put all the information about a product or service and repeating the key terms where they make sense you can:

Help search engines to know what the page is about
Give people a reason to buy
Reinforce your company services or offerings
Spend less time on the phone/sending e-mails giving out basic information
Identify the location for local businesses
None of that requires a special copywriter, designer, or programmer. You can do it yourself!

Don't be tempted to sneak in extra words... hidden text is penalized these days and stuffing words in your image alt attributes is a waste of time; most engines completely disregard it. And semi-visible or tiny text looks very unprofessional to your clients- it's just not needed. If you can't work it into the visible copy, you don't need it on the page.

Write a page title that reflects what the page is about, a good meta description, keywords that appear on the page, then put all the information you have about the product or service on that page in visible text for your visitors to read. If your writing skills are lacking, hiring a web copywriter, or even better an SEO copywriter. It may very well be the best investmënt you can make in your web marketing strategy!

Exactly Where Search Engines Want To See Your Key Terms

2005-05-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Source: By Anik Singal, Kurma Group (c) 2005

Note: In the examples below, I am going to place a * (asterisk) in the html - some websites convert the html into a link automatically, so to avoid that...

1. Use Your Keywords in Text Links for ALL Links - Inbound and Outbound.

Below is an example of a text link:

<*a href="url">your link text with keyword<*/a>

Whether you are linking to pages within your site, or to pages outside your site, don't use graphics for your navigation links. Also try to include your best keywords in the link text that navigates to pages optimized for those keywords.

2. Use Your Keywords in the Page's Title Tag.

This is a title tag:

<*title> keywords in your title

Always make sure your keyword is included in this tag. Try to make your keyword or keyphrase the first word. Each page on your site should have its own title tag, with its own keyword.

3. Put Your Keyword in Your Description Tag. This is what a description tag looks like:

<*meta name="description" content="keyword in your description">

Try to include your keyword or keyphrase into the description at least once. Twice is better, but no more than that.

4. Even Though Most Engines Don't Care, Place Your Keywords in a Keywords Tag. <*meta name="keywords" content="some keywords">

Google no longer looks at this tag - nor do most of the other major engines - but it cannot hurt to put in a few keywords for those small, specialized engines that consider this tag additional relevant text on your page. Include your most important keyword for the page first. Then add a few related keywords or keyphrases. Most people separate them with commas, but you don't have to.

5. Make Sure You Use Your Keyword in Your Heading Tags.

This is an example of an Heading tag:

<*H1>keyword in your headline<*/H1>

In html, H tags are for "headers." They range in size from H1 (the largest) to H6 (the smallest). ALL H tags are given more weight than regular text. Bïgger H sizes count more than smaller H sizes.

So be sure your keyword for that page appears in an H1 tag, an H2 tag, and an H3 tag on each page. Make sure your H1 tag appears as close to the top of the page as possible.

6. Put Your Keywords in Bold Text in Several Places on the Page. Below is the HTML for making text bold:

<*b>keyword in this phrase<*/b>

Bold text is given more weight than regular text by the search engines, so put your keyword into a boldface phrase once or twice on the page.

7. Use Your Keyword in Text Early - and Often.

Regular text is usually enclosed in a body tag (<*body> ) or a paragraph tag within the body tag. Here's an example of a paragraph tag:

<*p>Your keyword: that's what the page is about, so use that keyword in the first sentence of text on your page.<*/p>

Use your keyword once or twice in the first sentence of text. A good rule of thumb is to repeat the keyword two-three times in each paragraph. There are many opinions about exactly what your keyword density should be.

Shoot for about 3% of the text, perhaps more if your text is over 500 words. Or even better, and simpler - just use your keyword 2-4 times in each paragraph, and keep your paragraphs no longer than 5-6 lines each. Just don't overdo. Better to have slightly fewer keywords, and then tweak your page later, than to be penalized for keyword stuffing as soon as your site gets spidered.

It will not hurt, and may help, to throw in a related keyword once in each paragraph as well.

8. Use Your Keywords in Alt Tags.

Include your keyword in alt text for each image on your web page. This is the text that displays when you move your mouse over an image, as well as in speech synthesizers for the blind. Below is an example of an alt tag:

<*img src="url" alt="keyword in a phrase that describes the image">

There, those are all the places you should be placing your keywords!

What Constitutes Search Engine Relevancy?

2005-05-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Source: By Chris Richardson

Relevancy. It's something that drives the search engine industry in almost every aspect. From providing quality search results to contextual advertising, relevancy is crucial to any search engine's success. The question is how do you define relevancy? More importantly, how do search engines define relevancy?

These questions continue to give the debate life because what may be relevant to one person may not be relevant to another user and/or a search engine.

So what determines relevancy? Because this subject has such a gray area, there are no clear-cut answers. Search engines have their own methods for determining relevancy and it's usually based on their respective algorithms. However, we've all dealt with queries containing results that leave you scratching your head in confusion. Of course, there are other searches that can yield exactly what you are looking for. But why the disparity?

Obviously, all search results are predicated on the keyword(s) used in the query. If you are using general terms (movie, car, business), you can expect convoluted or less targeted search results. By the same token, if you are searching a more specific query (Nike shoes, Volvo, House of Flying Daggers DVD), odds are the results will be more relevant.

When dealing with search engines and relevancy, I'm reminded of a quote featured in a SearchEngineWatch blog entry by Greg Price. While discussing relevancy and search engines, Greg offered this: "Perhaps Udi Manber said it best at PC Forum a few weeks ago when he told the audience that search engines are not mind readers." Due to the lack of clairvoyance on the part of the search engine industry, Greg suggests learning how to properly refine search queries.

In light of the relevancy debate, Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.com had an idea concerning a test to determine what engine is the most relevant. In order to conduct this test, Barry developed RustySearch.com, a "white labeled" search engine "that randomly select(s) results from one of the top four engines and ask(s) you to rate the search engine results, individually, from one to five."

RustySearch.com is not only going to help measure the relevancy of the big four (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask.com), Barry is going to factor these rankings and announce which search engine is the most relevant (does the winner receive a prize ;)?). In order to cut down on external biases, Barry also made sure to hide which search engine supplied the results that are being ranked.

Currently, Barry has not revealed when the relevancy competition will be complete, so please stay tuned.

However, until the relevancy test is decided, other avenues to consider when it comes to search engine relevancy are the vertical search engines. Vertical search engines are considered niche because they normally subject specific. For instance, the Thomas Global Register is designed to search industrial-based products, while Jayde.com concentrates on the B2B (business-to-business) world. If you were searching for something within these areas of interest, you would be better served using an engine that concentrates on that subject.

However, just like Greg points out, very few of the average Joe Internet users are aware of such tools. That's why he stresses refining your search keywords. Hopefully, this practice will return results that are more relevant to your area of interest.

Another factor that can impact the relevancy of results has to do with the multiple meanings of individual words. This is pointed out quite well by Black_Knight on the SEW forums, who posts: "When someone searches for 'thunderbird' there are so many possible options. Do they mean the car, the TV puppet show, the drink, the email client, the mythical beast, or something else entirely? There isn't enough contextual info in the word alone."

In order to counter this, Knight suggests the engines should keep a record of search history conducted by specific users and supply results based on previous searches. Meaning, if the person querying the "thunderbird" keyword was looking for Ford's model and his search history reflected that, the results could be supplied based on previous contexts.

Of course, relevant results can also be delivered by refining your query as well. In other words, try and be specific when conducting searches and leave the general keywords alone.

Which search engine has the biggest share of monthly searches?

2005-05-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Source: By Andrew Goodman

Another -- slightly different -- question is: which search engine refers the most traffic to business websites? Studies deriving from referral logs are the best way of answering this question. Web metrics companies like WebSideStory release periodic news releases with stats of this nature -- basically aggregated stats from all of their clients' site stats, as opposed to panel-based measurements of online user behavior. These can help to provide an extra data point when considering the extent of Google's dominance.

Dan Shapero of Net Applications recently passed along March numbers from his company's Hitslink stats application. It provides aggregated statistics from 40,000+ URL's on things like browser usage and search referrals.

The numbers are a bit unusually presented. Global stats are included but are a small percentage of the total, so for example "Google UK" doesn't make the top six just because Net Applications doesn't have a huge global customer base, and those customers are generating relatively little traffic. In addition, the stats don't distinguish between paid and unpaid referrals. But "content targeting" referrals are not included, just search.

All that being said, this set of numbers confirms the "Google Domination Factor":

Google 44.5%
Yahoo 17.0%
MSN 10.9%
AOL 3.2%
Dogpile 0.8%
Ask Jeeves 0.9%

Remember, there could be dozens of others on the list all around 0.5% or less, many of them being global Google, MSN, AOL, and Yahoo sites as well as a couple hundred additional tiny niche referrers. So this doesn't mean Ask Jeeves' US-based market share is 0.9%, but it does seem to mean that in the U.S., Google refers 45X more traffic to web pages that matter than Ask Jeeves does.

Another thing this could mean is that Yahoo refers a lot of traffic to larger companies who are participating in its pay-per-click or paid inclusion programs, but these same companies are not Hitslink clients. Intuitively I feel this is the case. I have no proof that Hitslink skews towards the smaller marketer, but I get the feeling it does at least exclude most of the Fortune 1000 companies who may be seeing higher CTR's from Yahoo by virtue of taking advantage of paid inclusion and PPC. That doesn't mean this is bad data -- it may mean that it's very realistic data for SME's to look at. I believe many assume Yahoo "typically" refers about as much traffic as Google. Of course many companies are atypical, but the most typical SME pattern is in fact to see the Google - Yahoo split in terms of search referrals as somewhere around 65-35. For the facts as they relate to your company, all you need to do is to look at referral logfile data over the past 12 months to see if there is a pattern. Obviously that pattern will depend heavily on how much you are spending on paid traffic.

There were few changes in the Hitslink data from February to March, but Google did gain a bit of ground at MSN's expense, which runs counter to some of the panel-based behavioral studies which have suggested MSN Search growing a bit lately at AOL's expense. Maybe so, if you watch a panel go about its daily business, but not so if you look at traffic that's actually clicking through to client sites in any tangible way.

The breakdown of Hitslink clients is as follows:

Commerce sites: 43%
Corporate sites: 18%
Content sites: 10%
Other (gov, org, SEM companies, and more): 29%

76% of Hitslink's customers use pay-per-click programs to drive traffic.

A New Culture At Microsoft?

2005-05-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Microsoft News

Source: By Trevor Bauknight

It was like a refreshing breeze on a stifling summer day this past Friday as news of Microsoft's plans for IE7 spilled out onto the Web. An IEBlog entry by Chris Wilson, a member of the IE development team, finally dropped two details that may change website development permanently. That is to say, it's refreshing, if you believe it, and it may change website development permanently, if it actually happens.
The announcement that Microsoft would include proper (AKA the way spelled out in the standard everybody else has chosen to follow) PNG support and would remove the "major inconsistencies" in its CSS implementation may actually, for the first time since the divisive release of Internet Explorer, make it possible for web designers to create a page that looks and works the same on all browsers without resorting to crazy tricks to make it work.

The first beta version of the new browser is due out sometime this summer, and Wilson states that he and the rest of the development team are looking forward to the feedback they'll get when they do the release. Judging by the feedback the brief announcement generated, I can only say that I hope they get it right with the release.

It used to be easier to be skeptical of Microsoft's intentions. After all, IE6 is undoubtedly one of the most hated pieces of software ever to be foisted on the Internet population. Its inclusion as "part of the OS" in the initial release of Windows XP in 2001 only served to muddy the waters of website development and its widespread adoption-by-default ensured that creating a website that conformed to the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was useful to about 15% of the people who might actually see it and that your work had just begun.

So What's Actually Happening?

We won't know until summer, it appears. A March 9 posting by Wilson hinted that the development team would be posting some details later and solicited feedback on specific things people wanted to see. The 4,000-odd responses that generated (many of them unhappy in tone) made it pretty clear that people wanted to see a relatively small set of improvements. Almost everyone who responded seriously asked for improvement to PNG support, so that transparency would finally work and the Web could finally move away from GIFs. Most also demanded changes to the support of Cascading Style Sheets in some way.

So Wilson says that's what they'll be doing. Well, that's not all. They do have a few small security matters to address; but that should be child's play after nearly five years of what looked for all the world like the abandonment of the program. According to Wilson, the PNG fix is already coded. According to Wilson, it had been "on our radar for a long time." Small wonder. The first PNG standard was adopted nine years ago and was supported by other browsers prior to the release of IE5.

Microsoft has the luxury of moving slow and doing what it wants to do with respect to standards. They ship the browser with every copy of the OS, and practically every PC maker ships a copy of the OS with the hardware; so most people end up with IE by default and moving over to something else has been a pretty big hassle prior to the development of Firefox, the stand-alone browser component of the Mozilla project that grew out of the open-sourcing of Netscape. One begins to suspect that the recent buzz about Firefox may be spurring action in Redmond; and like another recent pleasant development, Microsoft appears to be planning to retaliate by actually improving its offering rather than by destroying the competition by sheer economic might.

Changing Culture At Microsoft?

A few months ago, at the height of the malware onslaught, Microsoft bought a company called GIANT, which made what was considered to be the top-of-the-line anti-spyware utility on the market. MS rebranded the GIANT program, and released a beta version to the public without announcing how future updates to the program would be conveyed. There was a good deal of speculation and skepticism surrounding it, and many (myself included) wondered aloud if it wasn't a cynical ploy to generate income from a problem caused initially by the innate lack of system security in Windows. But Microsoft came through, and eventually announced that future upgrades to the program would be frëe (at least to anyone running a legitimate copy of Windows, which leaves out a lot of people).

Microsoft may have finally awoken to the realization that its customers would be far better served by actually being able to use their computers without having to pay for extra third-party software to protect them. Maybe someone in Redmond is forced to use an unprotected Windows box with an always-on, non-firewalled connection to the Internet just to see how sick a computer can get. Or maybe they just realized that the Open Source Software community not only isn't going away, but is also releasing some great software.

But whether it's the recent press about Firefox or something else, this all seems like a positive development at this point. We're just glad that the possibility of finally separating our content from our style and being able to present it consistently to visitors is just over the horizon. Moving the CafeID website from tables to CSS was relatively easy. Getting it to look the same in both IE and the family of Other Browsers is still not fully accomplished. We're looking forward to that day.

After years of ignoring the Open Source community (for fear of giving them legitimacy, I suppose), Microsoft seems to have finally realized that it has competition. Apple, while providing much of the inspirational and R&D muscle in the PC industry, is safely locked away on a different hardware platform (currently) with no apparent intention of going head-to-head with MS. Only Linux has presented itself as a legitimate alternative for PC owners, and what little it lacks in usability it more than makes up in reliability, speed and security. Firefox is just another in a long line of Open Source projects getting it right, adding polish to a solid core. And in spite of its 85% market share, MS has an uphill road when it comes to making a better browser.

At the same time, it looks as if the sleeping giant may be stirring. We just hope the new browser wars don't hold back the Web for another ten years.

Surviving "The Google Aging Delay"

2005-04-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Google Tips

Source: By Lawrence Deon (c) 2005

Google has always been the search industry's innovator and that's just what Google's aging delay symbolizes, the evolution of search innovation... yet another significant step forward for Google.
Google's success as a search engine can undeniably be attributed to its ability to consistently return the most relevant search engine results. That's what kept the search giant on top of the pack and leading the multi-billion dollar search industry & that's what's going to keep them there!

That said, is it any wonder why Google incorporated the infamous aging delay into their ranking criterion? The simple truth is, Google's aging delay is a full frontal assault on artificial link inflation.

With the induction of multiple clever off-page reciprocal-linking strategies engineered to artificially inflate link popularity and PageRank, Googles aging delay wasn't only necessary and long overdue; it was the next logical step in the evolution of search.

The confusion and misunderstanding of the aging delay among site owners is nothing short of amazing. Many of my clients are confounded because their new sites are well positioned in Yahoo, MSN & the other large search engines while their sites are no where to be found in Google's search engine results pages (SERPs)... except for perhaps on the most obscure search terms.

Current and unconfirmed speculation has been misplacing the blame on Google's 'sandbox' effect. While this is a possibility I believe it's also highly improbable.

The sandbox holding period is typically anywhere between 90 to 120 days, the aging delay appears to be much longer. I've seen new sites delayed for up to 6-8 months.

The premise of the sandbox delay theory suggests that new sites are being penalized for gaining too many links too fast. To date I haven't seen a scrap of evidence to support that claim.

The sandbox theory is further disproved by the fact that newer sites engaged in procuring relevant links experience the same delay in climbing Google's SERPs as other new sites utilizing scores of purchased text links. This lends credibility to my thought that new sites are not being penalized on the premise of acquisition or quantity of inbound links and; supports my theory that it's the reciprocated links that are being delayed by an aging filter.

It just doesn't seem 'reasonable' for Google to penalize sites for acquiring legitimate directory listings & building an optimized reciprocal link based network. In my opinion, mainstream SEOs are confusing the existing sandbox effect, with Google's new 'aging filter' that arrived on the search scene earlier this year.

It seems more likely that Google's aging filter is weighing the 'maturity' of inbound links and not the new site itself. Meaning that in addition to the traditional ranking criterion, the age of a site's inbound links are also considered.

My own theory is that newly acquired inbound links are placed on a 'probationary' status until they've 'matured' before they're considered. For example, a new and relevant inbound PR 6 link would not be given the same weight or consideration as a 'grandfathered' PR 6 link until the aging delay expired.

By placing newly acquired links on a probationary period and delaying the ranking of newer sites Google has effectively offset the immediate free ride to the top of their SERPs. Purchasing volumes of brokered links to that end is today a moot point. After all, your site will still be delayed regardless of the amount of links you purchase and you won't see any return on investmënt (ROI) for at least 6 - 8 months.

Existing Site owners interested in immediate (ROI) are now strongly motivated to build new pages or expand existing sites in order to avoid Googles lengthy aging delay. With the 'all-the-rage' mini-network strategy shifting to more of a long-term commitment, it seems likely that's exactly what will happen!

Whether by clever design or not, the only alternative to riding out the aging delay that produces immediate results in Google's SERPs is to advertise through Google's AdWords Program. So it seems that Google's solution vis-a-vis the aging delay has turned out to be an excellent vehicle to promote Google's own AdWords Program as well. Hmm...

How do you survive Google's aging delay? By taking pro-active action!

I haven't seen any new sites with new domains appear at the top of Google's (SERPs) since early to mid 2004. I've consulted with and tracked many of my clients' new sites and despite the fact they have hundreds of number 1 positions in Yahoo, Alta Vista, AllTheWeb & MSN for their keywords, I've yet to see any remarkable results in Google until the 6 - 8 month period.

The trend I've noticed suggests that new sites are initially indexed; ranked accordingly in Google's SERPs for a week or so and then literally vanish from the SERPs for several months. In most cases they can't even be found with the most obscure search terms... including their own name and address.

If you're launching a new site don't panic. Once you've registered your domain name and configured the hosting, you should set up a few temporary pages. Obtain links to them from other sites in Google's index to start the aging delay count down. I recommend launching a site immediately with enough content to set up and facilitate the requirements for directory listings to start. The sooner Google is aware of your domain the better. Just don't hold your breath waiting to see results... It could be as long as 6 - 8 months!

Gauge your optimization efforts by where your site ranks in the other search engines. Provided you're not engaged in unethical practices and followed Google's Webmaster's guidelines this should give you a ballpark indication of where Google will rank your site after the aging delay, just be patient.

To that end, don't keep tweaking and changing your pages source code and trying to manipulate your rankings until your site has been in Google's index for at least 6 - 8 months. In other words, there's no need to reinvent the wheel because it doesn't seem to matter what you do, your site will still be delayed regardless.

Don't keep submitting your pages to Google either! It won't make any difference.

Examine your server logs to confirm Googlebot's crawl and then forget about it. Googlebot will find your site again if you're actively reciprocating links so your time would be better served building an optimized reciprocal link network to get your site out there and linked to as early as possible.

If traffic from Google is crucial to your marketing and promotion plan, and I don't know anyone who would argue otherwise... budget to run an AdWords campaign for a few months until the site is indexed and positioned. You might even consider running an Overture campaign as well!

If you purchase non-directory links, reallocate that budget to Adwords advertising.

It's pointless to purchase links when you can invest in an AdWords or Overture campaign. Purchasing links is an investment you won't see a red cent ROI for at least 6 - 8 months while an Adwords campaign will drive targeted traffic to your site that can convert immediately. Keep in mind that Lycos, HotBot, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Iwon, Netscape & Teoma also receive paid results from Google! MSN, AllTheWeb, AltaVista & Yahoo receives paid results from Overture.

Do other search engines have an aging delay?

Google provides primary search results to other search engines. It only seems reasonable to expect that your site may be delayed in Google's partner sites as well.

One-way you may be able to work around this, and I can't emphasize this enough; is to make sure you submit your site to DMOZ, the open source directory. Google, in addition to the other major engines, receives directory results directly from DMOZ.

Yahoo and its partner sites don't seem to be utilizing an aging delay, nor does MSN, so focusing your early efforts on these search engines might give you a competitive edge in the Yahoo network.

At the end of the day when it's all said and done surviving Google's aging delay is just a matter of time. The days of purchasing immediate link popularity and PageRank are over and in due course you will see Google give your site the recognition it deserves.

10 Steps to a User Friendly Website

2005-04-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Website Usuability

Source: By Kalena Jordan

As a busy search engine optimization consultant, I don't have a lot of time to manage my website. But recently I learned the hard way about the fickle nature of website visitors and the damage that having a user-unfriendly site can do to a business. Now I give my website usability much more priority than ever before.
Here's what happened. I had written a research report late last year and was selling it as a downloadable e-book via the site. However, I was relying on an offline press release and links from other sites to lead visitors to the specific page from which the report could be purchased. Although this report resulted in considerable press attention, much of the media coverage did not include a link direct to my report page, or in some cases, even my website, meaning that interested parties were forced to conduct a search for my site.

It wasn't until I received an email from a potential customer advising me that he had searched my home page and couldn't find a link to the report that I had my "Duh!" moment. I had forgotten to include a link to the report page from my home page! My old website had no site map or site search tool either, so potential customers finally arrived at my site, only to click away in frustration after not being able to easily find information on my research report. Goodness knows how many salës I missed out on due to this oversight. Embarrassed, I quickly added a link to my home page and made a mental note to study up on website usability, pronto.

Since then, I've learned that improving your website usability isn't time-consuming, it isn't expensive and it's certainly not difficult. It simply involves common sense and dedication to the task. Below are 10 easy steps that anyone can implement to make their website more user friendly:

1) Create a Site Map

No matter what the size of your website, you should include a detailed, text-based site map, with a link to every page and preferably, a short description of what each page offers. An excellent example of a site map can be found at: SEOConsultants.com. The advantage of using a site map is that you don't have to link to every page from your home page, but you should link to your site map from every page. Not only are site maps useful for visitors looking for specific information on your site, but they are great "spider-food", meaning they are a way for search engines to easily find and index every page on your site.

2) Use a Logical Navigation Structure

When designing your site navigation menu, use logical headings and link descriptions. For example, "web site design services" is much more intuitive to a visitor than "Internet services". Use Cookie Crumbs to show visitors where they are on your site at any point. These are headings you often see at the top of websites and search portals showing what category and page you are currently browsing (e.g. Home > Travel >UK > Bristol > Bed & Breakfasts). Guide Visitors to specific pathways throughout your site. You can do this using Call-to-Action links instructing visitors what page they should view or what action they should take next e.g. "Click Here to Order", "Bookmark This Page", or "View Our Catalogue Now".

3) Check for Errors Regularly

There's nothing worse than browsing a site or following a link only to find it leads nowhere. Make sure you check your site at least once a month for any broken links. There are low cost link checking tools such as Link Defender available to help you keep on top of this. Make sure your HTML code is designed to display correctly in different browser versions. Also ensure that your site hosting provider is stable and reliable to avoid any unnecessary downtime of your website. Services such as InternetSeer can help you monitor your site uptime free of charge. Make sure your site does not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes. If you're not the world's best speller, have trusted friends and colleagues check your site copy for errors. When proofing your site, remember to take into account regional spelling usage for different audiences worldwide, e.g. British versus American English. A webmaster service such as Net Mechanic can be used to check for many of these errors via the one location.

4) Use a Consistent Design and Layout

Common sense rules here - make sure you use a consistent design and layout for each page on your site. This means using the same general colour scheme, logo, consistent navigation menu, header and footer in the same location and consistent link attributes (e.g. always underlined). This way you never alienate your visitor or cause them to become confused and losë their momentum to keep looking.

5) Include a Site Search Tool

A user friendly website provides the visitor with the ability to search the site for specific keywords. Thought this one was too hard? Me too. Until I discovered Atomz Site Search. This is a software program that provides site-wide search for websites of 500 pages or less, for free. It's a quick and painless way to setup and customize your own site-wide search tool. They also offer a paid version for larger sites.

6) Ensure All Forms Work

It sounds obvious and it should be. If you're going to make your site interactive with feedback forms, newsletter sign-ups, guestbooks and the like, then make sure they work! Double-check each form field is large enough to accomodate even the longest of names. Think about your international visitors when creating fields such as Zip Code. Make it clear which fields are required by marking them with an asterix. Test the form to make sure it submits correctly and displays the right confirmation message upon completion.

7) Ensure Shopping Carts are Functional

This is vital for any type of e-commerce site. Ensure you have adequate product descriptions, pictures, specifications and crystal clear pricing. Include information on shipping and freight costs and integrate any taxes within your price list. If selling internationally, include a foreign exchange calculator such as the free one provided by XE for visitors to compare costs in their local currency. Make sure your shopping cart pages are protected by SSL or a secure certificate to give visitors the confidence to reveal their personal and credit card information without threat or risk. Provide simple instructions for completing the online transaction, give them the ability to back out easily and provide a help email address or phone number on every page of the process in case they get stuck. For instant transactions, provide a receipt immediately and confirm their transaction was successful. As with your online forms, test, test and test again. It only takes one bad experience for you to lose a potential lifetime customer.

8) Include Obvious Contact Details

With all the scams proliferating the web these days, people are understandably sceptical when it comes to online business. To build trust, you absolutely, positively need to display contact details prominently on your site. If you're not willing to provide a way for people to contact you, why should anyone be willing to buy from you? You should include your business address (preferably your street address and a postal address), a telephone number and at least one email address. If you are concerned about sp@m email harvesters, you can either hide your email address within a HTML encoder such as Natata or use a contact form for people to submit to contact you with (although many people, including me, find the latter annoying).

9) Use Easy to Understand Language

The Internet is no place for verbosity. People are in a hurry - they want to find what they seek quickly and easily with the least hassle possible. You can help them in this quest by ensuring your site pages use simple language and easy to grasp concepts throughout. For example instead of "brand-building web information architects", use "website designers specialising in brand promotion". Keep the text on each page to a minimum, using bullet points and sub-headings to get your main points across or to demonstrate your product benefits. Use the old WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) adage when composing your body copy to keep the user's interests at top of mind. Remember your international visitors by avoiding regional word usage or technical jargon that could alienate. Want your visitor to take a particular action? Spell it out for them in plain English.

10) Make it search engine friendly

Last, but by no means least, make sure your site is search engine compatible. A user friendly site is generally a search engine friendly site too. Use body text and headings in place of graphical text. Use a text-based navigation menu instead of a graphical or drop-down javascript menu. Avoid frames, Flash or any code that could trip up a search engine spider trying to index your site. Use logical Title and META tags for each page, tailoring these to match the content found within. Scatter target keywords and search phrases throughout your body copy to give your pages better ranking potential on engines and directories for related searches. Don't compromise the readability of your copy to achieve this - hire an expert copywriter to strike the right balance if need be.

So there you have it. 10 easy steps to making your websites more user friendly. You have no more excuses for avoiding usability. Implement one of these per week and your visitors will repay you with loyalty.

PayPal: The King of Online Sales Transactions

2005-04-27T00:37:00.000-07:00

Paypal

Source: By Merle MCPromotionsPress.com

We love PayPal. They've been doing business online almost as long as I have, and they're constantly improving and adding new features to their service.
According to their website (PayPal.com), they have over 63 million accounts and more than 53,000 people who sign up for new access every day. They deal in transactions totaling over $48 million per day.

PayPal makes it easy for anyone to take payments over the Net with no need for a merchant account. What that means to you is lower fees and a level playing field. If you've been hesitant to start your online business because you thought you couldn't afford your own merchant account, PayPal is all you really need.

There are three types of accounts:

Personal: For your personal shopping use. You cannot accept debit or credit card payments, but sending and receiving money is free.

Premier: For buying and selling under your own name. Send payments for free, with low fees for accepting money.

Business: This is perfect for your online business. Add your own name to be included on your customer's credit card statements. Sending money is free, but you are charged small fees to accept payments.

There are no set up fees and the fee you pay PayPal when accepting cash is based on your sales volume for the month.

Standard Rate: $0 to $3,000 - pay 2.9% and .30 per transaction Merchant Rate: $3,000 to $10,000 - 2.5% and .30 per transaction $100,000 and up - 1.9% and .30 per transaction.

To apply for the merchant rate, you'll have to have one month of sales that meet the ranges above and fill out a short application to get approved.

Many of the options I'm going to point out to you are for "business accounts" only, so you'll want to go that route when registering or upgrade your current account to that level.

Paypal has added so many new features over the years, it's hard to keep up with just how powerful it is. I'm amazed every day at the variety of features that can make your life as an online entrepreneur run as smooth as silk.

Let's take a look at some of these options:

1) Shopping Carts: If you sell multiple items on your site, PayPal has a built in shopping cart. Just copy and paste their buttons for an immediate store front. No third party software needed.

2) Subscriptions/Recurring Payments: If you sell a service that needs to be paid for monthly, you can set up this type of payment option on your site. This is great for trial periods and membership sites.

3) Donations: Maybe you don't sell anything, but you have a very informative site or newsletter. A PayPal button suggesting your readers make a donation is one way to help defray your costs.

4) Optional PayPal Accounts: One of the drawbacks to using PayPal used to be your buyer had to register for their own PayPal account. This is no longer true and you can select in your control panel to make it optional, not mandatory.

5) Customized Payment Pages: You can add your website colors and logo to PayPal's payment pages. You can create and save up to three different page styles for a seamless checkout process.

6) Logo Center: If you accept PayPal on your site you'll want to add logos to your website letting the world know. You'll find many shapes and sizes to use.

7) Invoicing: Send your customers detailed invoices via email. You can include detailed line items, descriptions, tax and more. You can save up to 10 customized invoices for later billing purposes.

8) Payment Request Wizard: Did you know you can add payment buttons to your Outlook and Outlook Express messages? This is a quick and easy way to get paid faster.

9) PayPal Debit Card: If you have a PayPal account you'll want to get a debit card to go with it so you can easily access your funds at at any ATM. The card has a Mastercard logo so you can go shopping and the money will come out of your PayPal balance. You can also use it to draw out cash from your account up to $400.00 per day. You'll also earn 1.5% cashback on your purchase.

10) Refunds: Anytime you receive a payment, you can easily refund it by clicking a button up to 60 days after the sale.

11) Mass Pay: Easily send payments to large groups of people. This would be an easy way to pay your affiliates if you run your own affiliate program.

12) Packing Slips: If you sell hard goods you can create packing slips for your shipments.

13) Shipping Calculator: Easily add shipping costs for your "buy it now" buttons or your PayPal shopping cart items.

14) Seller Protection Policy: If you meet their guidelines you can protect yourself from liability and PayPal will absorb the chargeback at no cost to you. Covers up to $5,000 on any fraudulent transaction and is for tangible goods only.

15) Auto Return: You set the url for your buyers to come back to after they make their payments. Great for setting up your download page for what they purchased and makes for immediate delivery.

Since eBay also owns PayPal, they've also integrated some pretty cool tools for eBay Sellers:

1) End of Auction Emails: When your auction ends, wouldn't it be nice if you could send a customized email with all of the details included automatically? Now you can. This is great for putting nervous buyers at ease when they are waiting to hear from you.

2) Auction Logos: If you want to offer an option in your eBay listings so buyers can pay you directly you can manually add a PayPal logo to do so.

3) Post Sale Manager: If you sell many items on eBay it can be a full time job tracking it all. With PayPal Post Sale Manager you can easily manage invoices, shipments, and feedback on everything you sell.

4) Shipping Center: USPS and UPS have teamed up with PayPal to offer you integrated service in one location. Calculate shipping costs, print shipping labels, track shipments and much more.

5) Buyer Financing: Add promotional financing to your "big ticket" items so your eBay buyers can more easily afford to purchase with monthly payments. Buyers are approved within 30 seconds and you get paid your full price immediately.

6) eBay Gift Certificates: Send eBay Gift certificates to your friends and family so they can buy anything on eBay as long as the seller accepts PayPal.

As you can see, PayPal is all you need to run your online business. If you thought all you could do was accept or send payments, you're missing out on the powerful features that makes PayPal the perfect business partner for any entrepreneur. And as partners go, that's one thing you can both agree on.

Search Engine Metrics Organic Search versus Paid Placement

2005-04-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

Online Advertising

Source: By Lawrence Deon (c) 2005

Let me preface this report by citing advertisers in 2004 have spent 4 Billion dollars on search engine marketing according to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).
Website marketers cited Search engine positioning was the top method to drive traffic to their sites (66%), followed by email marketing (54%). Source: Direct Marketing Association. Accordingly, the most cost effective way to market your web site online is to obtain several top 10-search engine rankings in the major search engines for your keywords.

According to a recent Jupiter Research Survey, searching on the search engines is one of the main uses of the Internet among 79% of users. Source: September 2002 Jupiter Research Survey. So that being the case, whatever your promoting you'll want to make sure it can be found on the first page of the search engines results page.

The reason is numerically simple. An Iprospect Survey in 2002 reported that 78% of web users abandon their search if the first 3 pages don't provide an answer to their question, and 28% don't scroll past the 2nd page of results. Source: Media Post article reporting results of Spring 2002 IProspect survey.

Combine those facts with the Internet's explosive growth rate of 1.8 Million people worldwide going online every week for the very first time, Source: Official Guide To Internet Promotion and you can soon appreciate what a top 10 ranking can mean to you.

Google receives approximately 39.4% of all search engine traffic. Yahoo receives approximately 30.4%. They're simply the largest search engines being utilized online today.

Bringing up the rear is MSN at 29.6%, and AOL 15.5% then Ask Jeeves with 8.5%. Source: Nielsen//NetRatings January 2004

How much traffic is that? Well, Google and its partner sites were reporting a whopping 250 million searches a day in February 2003.

Overture and its partners were reporting over 167 million searches per day. Inktomi reported 80 million followed by LookSmart with 45 million per day.

FindWhat reported 33 million while Ask Jeeves reported 20 million, Alta Vista reported 18 million and finally Fast reported 12 Million searches per day. Source: Searchenginewatch.com 2004.

With all said, you can easily see how your search engine rankingsare directly proportional to the traffic your web site receives, and your site traffic is directly related to your potential to profit online.

Oh, and in case your wondering how much monëy is spent online; a recent Forrester Research Report indicated that online spending reached $95,700,000,000 million in 2003! That's a cool 95.7 billion dollars. Projected online spending is estimated to grow to $229 billion in 2008! A whopping 139% increase in online spending! Source: Forrester Research

Now with these facts in mind I'm confident you can clearly see what a top 10-search engine ranking can mean for your bottom line. Although it does leave a question unanswered in my mind, what has a higher ROI... organic search engine optimization or paid search?

According to SEMPO's key analysis, the U.S. & Canadian SEM Industry Size Estimate by tactic in 2004, organic SEO accounted for 12% of the market share or $492,057,200 while Paid Placement accounted for $3,341,878,176 or 81.8%.

Interestingly, 9 out of 10 respondents are actively engaged in organic SEM marketing programs accounting for 89% of the respondent advertisers. This trend can be contributed to the average cost of popular keywords continuing to escalate.

If the escalation continues to rise it could make paid search engine advertising exponentially cost prohibitive for all but the largest advertisers... the 900lb gorillas!

Simply put, ROI is outpacing inflation: SEMPO's key analysis indicates advertisers could afford to pay on average 33% more for their keywords and remain profitable, while they say prices have gone up 26% on average in the last 12 months. That leaves a 7% advertising margin to maintain current profits for 2005!

SEMPO's data also noted that advertisers will get smarter about managing their paid placement programs before they cut back on spending.

This is also consistent with a report released by Nielsen / NetRatings indicating that the growing demand for search engine advertising is outstripping the supply of currently available advertising space.

These findings seem to indicate the inventory of keywords is approaching a critical demand problem however; most advertisers felt they still have some degree of price flexibility in their paid placement programs before they reach the threshold of diminishing returns.

Is there any wonder why organic search engine positioning has gained popularity for online marketers in 2004? Could it be higher (ROI) return on investments?

SEMPO also cites that 43% of advertiser respondents have shifted their budgets away from other marketing programs for Organic SEO.

So what does it all mean? Let the numbers speak for themselves.

Organic SEO is undeniably gaining favor over the lower ROI paid advertising. This is evidenced by virtue of the fact that paid advertising is becoming less profitable.

Although paid advertising will continue to hold a large portion of the market share, as paid advertising returns diminish and keyword costs soar, my early 2005 forecast is for the materialization of a progressive organic SEO market trend to facilitate the need for advertising space.

Log File Analysis and SEO

2005-04-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

Log File Analysis

Source: By Kalena and Jerry Jordan

If you own or manage a website, you are probably already aware of the importance of your log files or site statistics. Such data can give you insights about your site's usability, errors in your HTML code, the popularity of your site pages and the type of visitors your site attracts. But did you know it can also highlight the success or failure of your search engine optimization campaign?
There is specific data about your web site that you should be looking at in your log files on a regular basis. Several variables should be examined monthly or even weekly to ensure your site design and page optimization is on the right track:

1. Entry Paths

Most sites can be developed and analysed around the concept of visitor pathways. If, for example, your site is a Business to Business (B2B) site and you service small, medium and large businesses, there should be pathways through your site designed for each class of visitor. An extremely simplified example would be:

Clients coming to the site through an optimized home page:

home page ---> small business page ---> order page ---> order confirmation page

home page ---> medium business page ---> order page ---> order confirmation page

home page ---> large business page ---> order page ---> order confirmation page

The site entry pages for these pathways are often optimized home pages or optimized content pages. The final page of this route is often the action that you want clients to take on your site (e.g., sign up for your newsletter, buy your products online or contact you for further information). You can easily determine how effective your pathways are by tracking the entry paths on a regular basis via your site stats.

You should have some idea of the main pathways that clients take through your site, both for monitoring the effectiveness of your page optimization and conversions, and for the purpose of subsequent site redesign(s). A good starting point to track the pathways through your site is via the graph or chart called "Entry Paths" in your log files / site statistics.

2. Top Exit Pages

These are pages from which most visitors click away from your site. Why is it useful to track these? Because exit pages can tell you:

a. If there is a technical problem with the page that is causing visitors to leave your site. For example, if there are broken links, or the form on the page is not working properly etc.

b. If your site design is breaking the strategic pathway, for example, you may have links to external sites that are inducing clients to click away before buying your product or signing up for your newsletter.

c. If there is something on these pages that is encouraging visitors to leave your site. For example, an unprofessional design or confusing layout.

In your log files / site statistics, the graph or chart called "Top Exit Pages" is the place to learn why visitors are leaving your site.

3. Single Access Pages

These are entry pages that are viewed once before the visitor clicks away from your site. Similar to Top Exit Pages, Single Access Pages can tell you a lot about why people are not staying on your site for long.

Have a close look at the search terms used to find your site. Single Access Pages can often indicate that your target search terms are too broad. For example, you may be getting a lot of traffic by targeting "printer cartridges" but if you only carry a particular brand of cartridge, then people seeking other brands are not going to find what they truly seek when they arrive at your site so they will leave immediately. This can be resolved by narrowing down your search terms to be more targeted and focused on your niche products and services, for example, by changing "printer cartridges" to "HP printer cartridges" and so on.

To see what pages of your site are viewed once, look for the graph or chart called "Single Access Pages" in your log files / site statistics.

4. Most Requested Page(s) and Top Entry Pages.

Tracking these pages is key to measuring the success of your SEO campaign. If your optimization is effective, the Top Entry Pages and Most Requested Pages should be those that you have optimized for target keywords. The Top Entry Pages are particularly relevant as you consider the pathways through your site. Do the most popular entry pages have any relationship to the start pages for your plotted visitor pathways? Or are visitors entering and navigating your site via ways you didn't intend? You can use this information to continually tweak your page optimization to guide visitors to the right pathways.

To see your most requested pages, look for the graph or chart titled "Most Requested Pages" in your log files / site statistics. Also look for "Top Entry Pages".

5. Page Refreshes

Why are visitors refreshing pages on your site? Are the pages not loading properly? The "Page Refreshes" variable is another one to monitor on a monthly basis via your site stats to ensure that there are not site usability issues for visitors.

6. Referring Domains and Referring URLs

Where are your visitors coming from? Are they coming from sites that are linked to yours? Are blog authors or forum members talking about your site? Referring Domains will tell you what sites are linking to yours, while Referring URLs will list the actual pages where the links are located. These can be little gold mines because you can often find valuable sources of traffic via links to your site that you didn't even know existed.

In terms of an SEO campaign, these links can all add to your site's overall link popularity, an important factor in the ranking algorithms of many search engines, particularly Google. Monitoring these metrics can tell you if your site requires a link-building campaign or help you measure the effectiveness of various online and offline advertising campaigns.

In your log files / site statistics, Look for the graph or chart titled "Referring Domains" and "Referring URLs".

7. Search Engine Referrals

How many of your visitors are coming directly from search engines? What percentage of overall traffic does this represent? This is a good variable to track to help you keep up with how many search engines are listing your site (both free submission and paid submissions), how much traffic they bring and whether to renew your paid submissions. It can also tell you whether you need to increase the number of search engines your site is submitted to in order to build on your link popularity. As a very rough guide, you should be receiving at least 30 percent of your site traffic via search engine referrals.

To see search engine referrals, look for a chart or graph called "Search Engines" within your site statistics.

8. Search Phrases

This topic is related to search engine referrals generally, but gives added insight into what terms you were actually found for in the search engines. Do these terms match what your site was optimized for? Are there any surprising terms that you might want to develop site content for? Some log file analysis programs will even break down what specific phrases your site was found for in which particular search engines. The more detailed the data you have, the more closely you can tweak your optimization campaign to your precise market.

To see the search phrases your site was found for, look for "Search Phrases" or "Search Phrases by "Search Engine".

9. Landing pages for PCC Campaigns, etc.

If you run a pay-per-click campaign or dedicate specific pages to advertising product specials, you may use special landing pages or tracking ids to monitor your traffic and conversions. Your site logs can help you track these by showing you how many visitors they each had and what they did after they visited those pages.

10. Metric values that show a radical change from developing trends

Any site metrics that show a dramatic change from one month to the next could pin-point a problem with your site or with your optimization campaign. For example, if your search engine referrals have dropped dramatically, it could indicate that you have been penalized in a search engine (or more than one). Noticing changing trends early gives you the chance to investigate problem areas and make adjustments if necessary.

Please note that all log file analysis and site statistics programs are different and use slightly different terms to describe the metrics listed above. If you're confused, ask your site admin or hostïng provider to highlight these for you. Remember, your log files are gold mines filled with nuggets of information about your optimized web site. If you keep digging on a regular basis, you'll eventually strike it rich with success.

Sticky Sites Rule the Net

2005-04-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sticky Sites

Source: By Bonnie Jo Davis

All of these dilemmas have the same cure - CONTENT. Content that is pertinent to the subject of a website and updated regularly makes a site "sticky." Sticky sites drive and keep occupied all the visitors you could possibly handle. Search engines drink from the fountain of fresh and interesting content provided by savvy webmasters who enjoy increased rankings and sales.

You too can enjoy these benefits with just a little effort and a small budget if you create or find content appropriate to your topic. Add some or all of the following types of content to your site and your traffic will increase and visitors will return often.

Articles - There is no doubt that free reprint articles are the best way to populate websites. You can maximize the benefits of articles by writing them yourself or by offering a small fee to writers for customized versions of their popular articles.

Quotes - An interesting set of quotes on topic will help motivate and inspire visitors. Add and delete quotes regularly to keep your site fresh. Find quotes at Annabelle.net and BrainyQuote.com.

Puzzles - People love games and puzzles. Appeal to the child that exists inside all of your visitors and they will reward you with their time and attention. One place to get a new monthly puzzle is http://tinyurl.com/6spgk. Consider investing a small sum to have a custom crossword puzzle developed for your site.

Forums - Follow in the footsteps of successful websites by adding free forums to your site. Look over the forum software at YabbForum.com and PHPbb.com. Ask loyal visitors to serve as moderators for specific topic threads.

Feedback/Guestbook - Allow visitors to ask questions or comment on an issue raised by your site or your blog. Make this information public (so long as it is in good taste) and searchable by visitors.

Reviews - Unbiased reviews are universally popular. Add reviews of books, software, hardware, scripts, movies, television shows, schools or spas to your site and visitors will return again and again.

Case Studies/Success Stories - Everyone loves a success story. Interview your best customers and add their stories to your website to bolster your credibility and satisfy your content needs. Be careful to make the success story interesting and motivational rather than commercial.

Jokes - A sense of humor is often lacking on the internet. Imagine how impressed you would be by an attorney who has such a good sense of humor that he keeps all the best attorney jokes on his website. Follow in the footsteps of that attorney and visitors will look forward to visiting your site.

Newsfeeds - Does your site cover a topic that frequently generates breaking news? Add current news to your site via feeds available at such websites as News4Sites.com and enjoy a higher rate of return visits from your readers.

Resource Directories - Instead of the usual reciprocal link campaign consider adding a resource directory to your site that actually points your visitors to valuable sites that compliment your own. List only the sites you choose and do not incur search engine wrath by insisting upon reciprocal links. All links in the directory should open to a new browser window.

Newsletter & Archives - You don't have to recreate the wheel and attempt to create a huge list for your newsletter. Offer regular updates by e-mail or blog to current and potential clients and include links to pertinent articles or resources. Keep archives publicly accessible and search engines will visit often.

Blogs - Why should you jump on the current trend of blogging? Search engines adore blogs and visit them often because they tend to be updated frequently. You can use a blog to replace your e-mail newsletter and to feature your product or service reviews and other bits of pertinent information that do not merit a special e-mail to your customers.

Job Listings - Consider adding fresh job listings to your site that fit your topic. For instance, you could feature telecommuting jobs if your site topic is "work at home." Make sure you have the permission of the employer prior to posting their openings on your site.

Testimonials - Request testimonials from current and past clients and sprinkle them throughout your website. Remove outdated testimonials and add fresh ones on a regular basis. Give your clients live links (opening in a new browser window) to their website within the testimonial.

Please remember that you need permission to use content created by someone else and at all times follow the rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. You can read the full text of this law at Thomas.loc.gov.

The internet was conceived as a method of sharing information with people around the world. If we all return to these roots by filling our websites with topic appropriate content then we will be rewarded by search engines. Forums complaining about the lack of website traffic will disappear and be replaced by recommendations of interesting websites to visit.

(c) 2005, Davis Virtual Assistance. All rights in all media reserved.