SEO News Update

PPC beat Long tail keywords

2010-07-23T04:08:00.000-07:00

After most years of selling upon a internet, we have come to comprehend which a most creative selling plan is PPC advertising. Adwords Pay Per Click however has it’s drawbacks. If you have been new marketing with really small believe of keywords, you mount a possibility of losing a lot of money. It is utterly a plea perplexing to contest for same keywords with a some-more knowledge marketers who have a income to outbid their competitors. That is a reason we indicate expanding your horizons by regulating prolonged tail keywords for improved formula with PPC.

Long tail keywords have been shady treasures which most home commercial operation entrepreneurs mostly fail to notice. A lengthened tail keyword is a password as against to a singular word. Instead of regulating a keyword related to topic, you can put together to have a prolonged tail keyword such as how to get topic. Long tail keywords have been really in effect since not all people simply dig for a singular word, in actuality most internet searches will be a mixed word search.

Living in renouned make make use of of prolonged tail keyword word in your PPC ad campaign, regulating keyword collection such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool and SEO Book. These supports have been now used for working out a volume of a competitors to a stream buzzword. You will additionally be means to find out how most searches per month for any keyword word is created. In further to assisting you win a Keyword Tool PPC promotion costs for a due series of keyword phrases to urge your campaign.

Using prolonged tail keyword not usually assistance me to beat a price of PPC promotion though it additionally assistance me to get front page chain with my blogs and articles. Long tail keywords has been obliged for branch my PPC campaigns in to an online income creation machine. Before you give up upon regulating Pay Per Click promotion we indicate you cruise regulating prolonged tail keywords in your campaign.

SEO for Google PR

2010-07-22T04:16:00.000-07:00

Is Google PR really dead? Some web hosting and web development companies believe that it is a business opportunity and claim that they can do SEO and help you position websites in top of search engines results. Unfortunately, they only help you to open a paid search marketing account in Yahoo! Search Marketing or Google Adwords and take some of your budget as service fee. No matter you open an account yourself or use those service provider, you require to bid and pay for each click in search engines.

In an online forum post a discussion on Google PR, people from anywhere are speculating about what is going on. In fact, one member was quick to point out that the last big shift Google had, we saw the PR system go down as well. This begs the question... Are we seeing a Google marketing scheme just to shake people up?

What will it mean if Google's PR systems stays down?

In many ways, Google needs to be improved upon their busted PR system. There are so many areas they payed attention to forums and blogs all around the world, they would have more than enough feedback about their PR system to fix this growing PR issue.

Page ranking is a potentially a great system. It can be a great system if it directly ranks websites properly by relevancy, content and not simply by the number of links pointing to an individual website.

These days, you see a website with few medium relevant links pointing to it while its front page holds a PR of 7-8 out of 10. How does SEO company justify that?

Until then, take this old story and find other ways to build your business online. Don't worry about what Google is doing, worry about what you are doing to improve your internet marketing campaign.

Internet + Blog = $

2009-01-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

Now a day, most people ask on how to make money on the internet. The internet is packed of information to gather about on make money and there are lots of different approaches you can find to make money online.

Paying post is one of the newest blog monetizing today. These allow you to get paid on blog posting or writing some product reviews. High page rank (PR) of your blog is not the base for you to get approved. The only thing blog should be good and quality content should be indexed by google with a quantity of good content and content, blogs age should be 90 days live - minimum, at least with an existing Twenty (20) posts written from the prior of the registration.

There are quite a lot of ways to earn money online by blog advertising and blog marketing is one of the realistic but simple and efficient ways of earning money using your blog. Being compensated for posting is a pretty simple job to find by means of Internet and in recent times it is coolest trendy for individuals who like to monetize their blog|s.

Blog advertising involves blogger and advertiser, using their online form where you can register to having an access account, then registering blog|s. Generally sponsored review sites now a-day has minimum words limit and it differs on the amount of advertiser’s offered. The highest quantity of words the bigger the amount they offered.

By paying individual bloggers for their blog posts, is for them to be able to promote the web sites or product of the advertisers to wide ranging of people, and most these people most likely will be interest in visit their web site linked in the blog|s because of the written reviews by most bloggers. An additional possibly reason to having paid post is to collect or gather more backlinks and becoming a most searchable by users and be crawled by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN also most probably to increase their search rank traffic positions on search engines.

Best Game

2009-01-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

Traditionally, land based casinos was the only means to satisfy a persons gambling urge. The players had to travel long distance to get to the casino. The casinos were confined to certain areas and still now also, many places have banned land based casinos. Now a day every individual are interested in surfing online and should know how to navigate the entire internet in order to find their needs. With the coming of the online casinos, any player can have access to casino gaming with just a click of the mouse and search some information about online casino or sign up on casino forum sites and ask a recommendation on which the best online casino room sites as will as information, tips and ideas.

We know that playing casinos online is one of the most popular pastimes now a day, although this game is fun and interesting but it also requires skills and initiative for you to win. But there is so much more to the online casinos game. Casino.de has included a list of casinos accepting US players as well as the most popular casinos by player votes. I’ve noticed a few things to look out for when choosing an online casino with regard to financial arrangements that simply make life so much easier like Casino.de site is the best most popular online casino review site listing nearly 100 of the best online casinos.

Nothing Comes Easy

2008-11-05T23:32:00.000-08:00

At present whatever things in life, nothing comes easy when it comes to making money, including earning money using blog. This is mainly challenging for me as a newbie. But if you know me will, I am not the type of person that give up easily. You need to push yourself to the limits if you’re in seriously making money online.

Payingpost is a new place where you can monetize your blog/s. But before you begin getting some opportunities to review, you will ask to install the PayingPost Code first and placing onto your site. Payment will be scheduled after 2 weeks from the date they approved your post.

There is lot more about blog advertising like paying post they have a quicker system on payment process and it should be done via PayPal.

Does PPC Make SEO Lazy?

2008-02-18T16:42:00.000-08:00

SEOBOOK's Aaron Wall, in what will likely be a hot post around the social news and bookmarking universe, serves up candid and insightful thinking on the long term competitive advantage of classic search engine optimization vs. pay per click. His writing style is hungry and tone passionate. Aaron's got his Mojo on in this delightfully self-effacing comparison of SEO & PPC's long-term value.

Wall writes, "This is why I like SEO so much more than PPC. Most people are too lazy to spend years researching their topic, years building a brand, years building links, and years building social and customer relationships. We are afraid of failure, afraid of success, and afraid that we are investing too much in one place. But, if someone sees me ranking in the organic results they can't just clone it unless they know SEO well, and are committed for the long haul."

Many A-list SEOs have weighed in to the dialog regarding the Tao of SEO and PPC in tandem and separately. For additional perspective read "PPC vs. Organic," David Naylor, Lee Odden's classic 2006 "The Lame PPC and SEO Debate," and sugerrae's recent rant, "The Lazy SEO vs. The Lazy Monetizer." In a street level video interview, Rand Fishkin discusses using PPC to test organic concepts, PPC vs. SEO in China, and other useful concepts.

Posted by Marty Weintraub

Legitimate SEO Company emphasizing on Google Optimization

2008-02-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

NDDW is SEO Services Company in India that provides all Google Optimization basics while optimizing a website for their clients. They provide all emphasis on the basics like navigation, defining keywords and Meta tags, search engine friendly content, and other Google Optimization factors.

In the recent times basics have become necessary to ensure that a website is worth and paying. Even if the website is designed in a beautiful and fantastic way, no one ever visits it unless it is properly optimized. So the website is designed keeping in view the major search engines in mind. Thus following tasks are being implemented in order to create website for promotion.

Navigation - A website is designed in such a way that it is accessed by both human and crawlers. The technology that stops search engines to spider the pages is generally avoided. The standard html is generally used so that the majority of search engines are able to follow the links on a website.

Such types of fonts are used by the webmasters that the website text is easy to read.

Large graphics are generally avoided as it takes a lot of time to load. Both search engines and visitors become impatient if it takes a long time to view the content with graphics. Free hosting services that are unreliable and slow in processing are generally avoided.

The WebPages are created in such a way so that they look consistent. All the pages have consistent look, color scheme and navigation.

The most important information on the website appears above in points and marked bold so that the visitor need not have to search the entire content and navigate the whole site. Search site button is there in order to search a key phrase within the site.

Contact information is provided on the website to define the credibility. Including contact information on the website shows that there is some serious and legal business entity.

Each page of website contains unique title and description that is related to the content of the website. JavaScript is generally avoided as it is not search engine friendly.

Keywords and key phrases are defined in a natural way. Website content is written for humans not for search engines.

Each page of website focus on one or two keywords phrases, no more and no less. The keywords are incorporated into Meta tags and web copy.

Thus an optimized website brings search traffic and visitors that have a natural interest in the product or service. Optimization is a part of designing process.

NDDW also pays attention on all the basics for promoting a website starting from defining the navigation structure to the keyword basics, creation of content and avoiding JavaScript and graphics.

http://www.nddw.com

Guide Before Selecting An Online Games

2008-02-13T15:29:00.000-08:00

We know that casino games is one of the most popular entertainment for elders now a day, though there are many casino web sites which provide different casino games with various offers and bonuses, players should be careful while selecting the casino site to play for. They must look out for the casinos which will provide them quality games, where the player can trust and where there are best player services.

While selecting an online casinos you have to pay attention on certain things such as on the reputation of the casino website, on the software provider, bonuses offered by the casinos like sign up bonus, payout time, graphics, game play, speed, monthly tournaments bonus and no deposit bonus, selection of games qualifying for wager, customer services offered by the casinos also about the blacklisted countries and many more. Before playing in any casinos you have to go through the terms and conditions of the casino site and must understand it properly.

Online-casino-list.com guide have list for top online casino games to help you choose and determine which the best online casino for you to begin with.

Negative SEO - The Saboteurs Of Search - Mixx

2008-02-08T20:45:00.000-08:00

Negative SEO - The Saboteurs Of Search - Mixx

How to Fix Blog Advertising

#1 - Blog owners need to think like advertisers! This is the overarching rule. When it comes to ad placements and ad positions/formats you have to ask yourself: if I was paying to drive traffic to my blog what would that campaign look like?

#2 - The 125×125 isn’t going away but you must supplement it with “interruption sized” banner sizes and placements. My suggestion is adding in a 468×60 at the top of the site and a 300×250 at the bottom of individual post pages. Then once all three units are in place you need to ROADBLOCK the two larger ad units for the same. So for each page impression one of the advertisers would get their ad on the top of the site (468×60), an ad in the left margin (125×125) and your ad at the bottom of the post (300×250). All advertisers will get 100% exposure in the 125×125 section on the right margin.

#3 - A monthly sponsor thank you post. The sponsor post serves two purposes: a. reach the rss readers who don’t see the website based and b. get the advertisers exposure in the content area of the page where readers won’t miss them. Ideally the format allows the advertiser to add a logo and then a message that could be a description of their product/services along with a coupon code special for this site.

#4 - Creative creatives! The ad has to draw the visitor’s attention and entice a click. Adding a call to action like “click here” “get started”, etc, can help. It is important to try a number of different ads and test CTR to see what ads perform the best for you. Even when you think you have one, it will go stale over time and ideally you are swapping out your creative monthly but this is hard to do. Our most successful ad for TLA didn’t even mention our company name it was just this ad below run on TechCrunch:

Care home

2008-02-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

Today, home service contract is one’s best bet.

Resources for home aid company are too many. There are so many qualifications you need to know to assist you on choosing the right reputable agency. At the start you can use the services of a professional agency so that you learn all the details things. Some suggested questions to ask when looking for in-home care are: license agency, the services they provide, services must available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Once you're well versed to handle things yourself you can venture out by yourself and get started on your quality homes.

A standard home care protects a homeowner or a house buyer from the expenses involved in repairing or replacing bettercaring.com have 3 care categories option you choose: the Care Home, Residential Care and Finance. These will help you understand bout home care system and guide for choosing plan for your long-term care – home care or residential care even your monetary necessities.

This should make you think many times before you embark on taking money through home care insurance.

Want to know me more?

2008-01-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

Who is Ryan Yatol?

Ryan is 24 year old (A.K.A drflaco11), a link specialist for couple of years. Graduate of B.S Information Technology at Asian College of Science and Technology (ACSAT) and recently reside at St.John, Puntod, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines 9000.

He interested in everything, but his main interest is in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) such as keyword research, creating incoming links, improving SERPs rank on major Search Engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN), increasing link popularity, increasing page rank (PR) and increasing website traffic.

He also interested in monetizing blog, just like few days ago he had joined smorty. com, after he registered, he submit one of his blog to smorty and luckily it was accepted and started getting paid to his blog by writing articles. You can write anything 'bout your opinions, ideas and points of view about your advertisers sites then you will get paid for blogging. And of course you have the right to select a subject where in your most interested in but it should be unique content.

There’s a lot more about smorty.com they have a fastest way of payment process and most effective tool to increase your search engine rankings.

Things To Know Before Playing Poker

2008-01-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

Online poker was played early late 90s by the form of IRC poker. This is the typically kind of card games in the internet now a day, on which gambling was the common pastime of most elder. But before that try to and do research online to know more about poker game or sign up on poker forums and ask a recommendation on which the best poker room sites as will as information, tips and ideas.

There are several poker sites that can provide the most comprehensive online poker resource tips to help you to maximize you betting techniques and minimize losses when gambling. But regardless of which gambling you choose, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the entire set of game policies, rules as will as their ability on how to bet opponents. You also need to learn the sequence of play and the betting structure of the game.

Compokers.com site can provide you a complete set of poker online game rules from poker history to poker tournament result and as much information on great poker game all you can fine it here.

Your Ecommerce Provider

2008-01-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

The growth of technology now a day is very extensive especially on IT industry. There are billions of people today experiencing the joys of being connected online and shared the huge network with hundreds of billons user online all over the world.

It is possible for every data if you were online abuse comes from hackers and virus creators just to create chaos and harm your computer system. But you can prevent this with the element in your Internet security system called antivirus software.

It’s just as you would like to sell you product online, you need a constituents for you business like an ecommerce software. Its act like the same way to normal shopping in the groceries stores or mall and allows customers to find products that they are looking for.
But if you would like to build an online business make sure that your shopping cart software is tied up to your ecommerce merchant account features like:

Offer other alternative payment methods other than credit card
Take into account, reporting and statements
Make sure your credit card processing system is secure from fraud

There are many ecommerce companies there and I highly recommended you Ashop.com.au it’s world-class provider of shopping cart software…

The Historical Game Machine Ever

2008-01-18T21:30:00.000-08:00

We back on 18th century when slot machine was invented by a mechanic named Charles Fey of San Francisco together with Mills Novelty Company. They developed a few new slot machines and distributed. This trend consisted of few symbols such as stars, bells, horseshoes and playing card.

Slot machine is one of the classical forms of casino today. It is almost 70 years now since the first time appeared in the entertainment casino.

Now a day every individual are know how to navigate the entire internet in order to find their needs like surfing or searching some free online games such as online casino, poker, online slot machine and other reputable internet casinos reviews.

But there’s much more about slot machine like http://www.Privbetting.com is been online since 2001 and they developed the monkey slots websites to help people find the best reliable online casino review on the web.

Slot machines produce excitement to everyone who loved playing online games whether you choose to play a slots tournament online or in actual games you are guaranteed exciting, fun and the opportunity to win jackpot and bonuses prizes.

Have Fun With Online Game

2008-01-17T21:25:00.000-08:00

First thing first before you play an online casino, you need to search on the internet for some information about the game. This will give you some idea and technique in order to improve your skills by watching TV or going to the casino to watch live gambling games. The more you watch the better you will become an intelligent on those things you.

You can play casino games thru online you can find many online gambling rooms that will allow you to play free live against the computer. But if ever you want to play real game look some online casino gambling operators who follow the regulation and guidelines for your assurance and safety. The reputable operator should be fully licensed and legal. The gamble software should be proven and tested for honesty to assure their members are fairness of all games.

Online gamblers should strictly avoid those sites that do not offer information freely, as they are generally not licensed by any authority, therefore this may not be a safe place to play online gambling.

Maximize Profits Across Internet

2008-01-17T16:29:00.000-08:00

Now a day every individual are interested in purchasing items online and should know how to navigate the entire internet in order to find their needs.

If you are planning to sell your product online, choose the best ecommerce software solution that would be fit to your online business focus on the things that you are interested in, a shopping cart software that lot more than just a cart, a software can help your internet business in other capacities as well, including:

Payment Processing - as well as check, COD or other methods of possessing payments.
Inventory Control – to keep track your inventory and generate reports.
Shipping - software offer a shipping tool that calculates shipping costs for customers based on parameters.
Tax Calculation – for some states that requiring a tax for online sales.
Marketing – a shopping cart that can sell anything.
Security – protected software by encrypting information, processing credit cards through reputable processing services.

These are some classification on how to choose the right and reliable shopping cart tool.

But before that you must have learn how to use the necessary software to manage your online store and increase sales.

Why You Should Reveal Your SEO Tactics To Clients

2008-01-17T16:11:00.000-08:00

When you buy search services, some agencies merely provide a general overview of their SEO methodology without revealing any details. They claim this relieves the client from being bogged down in the minutiae of implementation. In reality though, these firms are simply trying to keep their intellectual property under wraps and create a dependence for their implementation services. With a little help though, well trained in-house teams are fully capable of implementing search strategies on their own. So why should a search marketing firm, which has spent considerable time and money developing proven methods, risk losing a client by empowering them with proprietary knowledge and skills?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is mission critical in today's business environment, and many organizations conduct SEO in-house because of the immediacy and convenience of having all hands on deck from the various departments involved in SEO planning and implementation. However, seasoned SEO technicians are hard to come by and many firms (with or without experienced people) find it beneficial to leverage expert consultants that provide on-site search training for in-house personnel.

This creates a need for search agencies that are willing to engage their clients in the details of SEO. Transparent firms educate clients on proven SEO strategies, customize a tactical-level roadmap and provide detailed documentation and training on their processes. Furthermore, they encourage the client to rely on objective analytics as proof of success. In the end, knowledge transfer and accountability empower the client and make the agency a strategic business partner.

For one thing, even if you provide information to your clients, SEO is constantly evolving so it will still be your responsibility to keep up the pace. But still, there's a benefit of knowledge transfer. With the constant changes in the industry, "[a]ctive clients can provide additional eyes and ears to industry changes and trends, as well as practical insights into the effectiveness of advanced SEO tactics."

The client should also learn the philosophies and processes behind keyword research, page selection, content development and optimization, link building, and social media marketing.

By acting on the Diagnostic Audit findings, the client can identify obstacles that are hindering their efforts to achieve top search rankings.

Finally, it is also of critical importance to understand the value of analytics. With the right training, your clients can understand the complexity of analytics applications.

Hustle Free Loan

2008-01-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

Getting a cash advance nowadays is easy. But before you choose a payday loan lender, investigate first. Look online to choose a reputable company and it has a solid privacy policy. Look for a company that offers a simple application and approval process. Choose a lender that has been in business for at least several years at least you could do to keep yourself away from financial nightmare.

But there is so much more on Payday Loan cash advance I’ve noticed a few things to look out with when choosing the right lender with regard to financial arrangements that simply make life so much easier like http://www.cashadvance1500.com/ the loan amount will be deposited directly into your checking bank account or savings account immediately after approving of your application. The loan approval criteria is based only on your personal information like employed people meet such as employment status, minimum income at least $1,000 per month, and an active checking or savings account.

For the best payday loan cash advance experience I recommend http://www.cashadvance1500.com is the right site to save your financial crisis.

Google Changes Algorithm?

2008-01-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

Google seems to be changing their algorithm early this year and making the search results more related.

For more details of the news, keep watching on video.

Online Casino

2008-01-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

We know that playing casinos online is one of the most popular past times, especially among the elderly members of our society. Although this game is fun and interesting it also requires skill, talent and initiative for you to win. This is the most interesting games I ever play, I have been playing online casino for a couple of years, and every time I’ve been on the game I experience a win, it hardly seems the time required for such a small win is rather outrageous.

But there is so much more to the online casino game. I’ve noticed a few things to look out for when choosing an online casino with regard to financial arrangements that simply make life so much easier like Dexcasinos.com site is the best guide for online casinos site since 2001. And it also reviews poker rooms, however playing at casinos online is always been their focus.

For the best online gambling experience we recommended this online casino site.

SEO Dictionary

2007-12-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization Dictionary

Algorithm
An algorithm is a set of finite, ordered steps for solving a mathematical problem. Each Search Engine uses a proprietary algorithm set to calculate the relevance of its indexed web pages to your particular Query. The result of this process is a list of sites ranked in the order that the search engine deemed most relevant. Search engine algorithms are closely guarded in order to prevent exploitation of algorithmic results. Search algorithms are also changed frequently to incorporate new data and improve relevancy.

Algorithmic Results
Algorithmic results are the ranked listings search engines provide in response to a Query. They are often referred to as Organic Listings in contrast to Paid Listings because their rank is based on relevancy rather than advertising revenue paid to the search engine. However, paid listings do appear alongside algorithmic results in many search engines, provided they are relevant. Improving a website’s unpaid algorithmic results is known as Natural Search Engine Optimization.

Alt Tag/Alt Text
An alt tag is the HTML text that appears while an image is loading or when a cursor is positioned over an image. Alt text is useful in Search Engine Optimization because it can include keywords that a search engine looks for in response to a query.

Analytics
Analytics refers to all the technology, programming, and data used in Search Engine Marketing to analyze a website’s performance or the success of an Internet marketing campaign.

Anchor Text
Also known as link text, anchor text is the visible, clickable text between the HTML anchor and tags. Clicking on anchor text activates a Hyperlink to another web site. Anchor text is very important in Search Engine Optimization because search engine algorithms consider the Hyperlink keywords as relevant to the Landing Page.

Backlinks
Also known as back link, backward link, or inbound links, backlinks are all of the links on other websites that direct the users who click on them to your site. Backlinks can significantly improve your site’s search rankings, particularly if they contain Anchor Text keywords relevant to your site and are located on sites with high Page Rank.

Banned
Also known as delisted or blacklisted, a banned site is a URL that has been removed from a search engine’s Index, typically for engaging in Black Hat SEO. Banned sites are ignored by search engines.

Banner Ad
A banner ad is a rectangular graphic advertisement. Banner ads are one of the commonest forms of online advertising. Their sizes vary, but most measure 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. Clicking on a banner ad will direct you to the advertiser’s website or a designated Landing Page.

Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the term used for unethical or deceptive optimization techniques. This includes Spam, Cloaking, or violating search engine rules in any way. If a search engine discovers a site engaging in black hat SEO it will remove that site from its Index.

Blacklisted
Also known as banned or delisted, a blacklisted site is a URL that has been removed from a search engine’s Index, typically for engaging in Black Hat SEO. Blacklisted sites are ignored by search engines.

Broken Link
Also known as a dead link, a broken link is a link that no longer points to an active destination or Landing Page. Search engines dislike broken links. Keeping all of your site’s links active is an important part of ongoing optimization.

Click Fraud
Click Fraud is the illegal practice of manipulating Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) revenue sharing agreements. There are numerous types of click fraud, but in a typical scenario the webmaster of a site that earns money from each click of the advertising links it publishes pays individuals a small fee to click those links. Companies thus pay for advertising to clients who had no intention of buying from them. Some companies have filed class action lawsuits alleging that ad publishers such as Google and Yahoo! have failed to aggressively confront click fraud because they benefit from increased CPC revenue.

Click-Through
Click-through refers to a single instance of a user clicking on an advertising link or site listing and moving to a Landing Page. A higher Click-Through Rate (CTR) is one of the primary goals of Search Engine Optimization.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the percentage of users who click on an advertising link or search engine site listing out of the total number of people who see it, i.e. four click-throughs out of ten views is a 40% CTR.

Cloaking
Cloaking is the presentation of alternative pages to a search engine Spider so that it will record different content for a URL than what a human browser would see. Cloaking is typically done to achieve a higher search engine position or to trick users into visiting a site. In such cases cloaking is considered to be Black Hat SEO and the offending URL could be Blacklisted. However, cloaking is sometimes used to deliver personalized content based on a browser’s IP address and/or user-agent HTTP header. Such cloaking should only be practiced with a search engine’s knowledge or it could be construed as black hat cloaking.

Contextual Link Inventory (CLI)
Search engines/advertising networks use their contextual link inventory to match keyword-relevant text-link advertising with site content. CLI is generated based on listings of website pages with content that the ad-server deems a relevant keyword match. Ad networks further refine CLI relevancy by monitoring the Click-Through Rate of the displayed ads.

Conversion
Conversion is the term used for any significant action a user takes while visiting a site, i.e. making a purchase, requesting information, or registering for an account.

Conversion Analytics
Conversion analytics is a branch of Analytics concerned specifically with conversion-related information from organic and paid search engine traffic, such as the keywords converts used in their queries, the type of conversion that resulted, landing page paths, search engine used, etc.

Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the next step up from Click-Through Rate. It’s the percentage of all site visitors who “convert” (make a purchase, register, request information, etc.). If three users buy products and one user requests a catalogue out of ten daily visitors, a site’s conversion rate is 40%.

Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA)
Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is a return on investment model in which return is measured by dividing total click/marketing costs by the number of Conversions achieved. Total acquisition costs ÷ number of conversions = CPA. CPA is also used as a synonym for Cost-Per-Action.

Cost-Per-Action (CPA)
In a cost-per-action advertising revenue system, advertisers are charged a Conversion-based fee, i.e. each time a user buys a product, opens an account, or requests a free trial. CPA is also known as cost-per-acquisition, though the term cost-per-acquisition can be confusing because it also refers to a return on investment model.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
Also known as pay-per-click or pay-for-performance, cost-per-click is an advertising revenue system used by search engines and ad networks in which advertising companies pay an agreed amount for each click of their ads. This Click-Through Rate-based payment structure is considered by some advertisers to be more cost-effective than the Cost-Per-Thousand payment structure, but it can at times lead to Click Fraud.

Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM)
Also known as cost-per-impression or CPM for cost-per-mille (mille is the Latin word for thousand), cost-per-thousand is an advertising revenue system used by search engines and ad networks in which advertising companies pay an agreed amount for every 1,000 users who see their ads, regardless of whether a click-through or conversion is achieved. CPM is typically used for Banner Ad sales, while Cost-Per-Click is typically used for text link advertising.

Crawler
Also known as Spider or Robot, a crawler is a search engine program that “crawls” the web, collecting data, following links, making copies of new and updated sites, and storing URLs in the search engine’s Index. This allows search engines to provide faster and more up-to-date listings.

Delisted
Also known as banned or blacklisted, a delisted site is a URL that has been removed from a search engine’s Index, typically for engaging in Black Hat SEO. Delisted sites are ignored by search engines.

Description Tag
Also known as a meta description tag, a description tag is a short HTML paragraph that provides search engines with a description of a page’s content for search engine Index purposes. The description tag is not displayed on the website itself, and may or may not be displayed in the search engine’s listing for that site. Search engines are now giving less importance to description tags in lieu of actual page content.

Directory
A directory is an Index of websites compiled by people rather than a Crawler. Directories can be general or divided into specific categories and subcategories. A directory’s servers provide relevant lists of registered sites in response to user queries. Directory Registration is thus an important method for building inbound links and improving SEO performance. However, the decision to include a site and its directory rank or categorization is determined by directory editors rather than an Algorithm. Some directories accept free submissions while others require payment for listing. The most popular directories include Yahoo!, The Open Directory Project, and LookSmart.

Doorway Page
Also known as a gateway page or jump page, a doorway page is a URL with minimal content designed to rank highly for a specific keyword and redirect visitors to a homepage or designated Landing Page. Some search engines frown on doorway pages as a softer form of Cloaking or Spam. However, doorway pages may be legitimate landing pages designed to measure the success of a promotional campaign, and they are commonly allowed in Paid Listings.

Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is web content such as Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) that are generated or changed based on database information or user activity. Web pages that remain the same for all visitors in every context contain “static content.” Many e-commerce sites create dynamic content based on purchase history and other factors. Search engines have a difficult time indexing dynamic content if the page includes a session ID number, and will typically ignore URLs that contain the variable “?”.Search engines will punish sites that use deceptive or invasive means to create dynamic content.

Flash Optimization
Flash is a vector graphics-based animation program developed by Macromedia. Most corporate sites feature Flash movies/animation, yet because search engine Crawlers were designed to index HTML text, sites that favor Flash over text are difficult or even impossible for crawlers to read. Flash Optimization is the process of reworking the Flash movie and surrounding HTML code to be more “crawlable” for Search Engines.

Gateway Page
Also known as a doorway page or jump page, a gateway page is a URL with minimal content designed to rank highly for a specific keyword and redirect visitors to a homepage or designated Landing Page. Some search engines frown on gateway pages as a softer form of Cloaking or Spam. However, gateway pages may be legitimate landing pages designed to measure the success of a promotional campaign, and they are commonly allowed in Paid Listings.

Geographical Targeting
Geographical targeting is the focusing of Search Engine Marketing on states, counties, cities and neighborhoods that are important to a company’s business. One basic aspect of geographical targeting is adding the names of relevant cities or streets to a site’s keywords, i.e. Hyde Street Chicago apartments. Another important element of geo-targeting is increasing your site’s presence on Local Search engines.

Geographic Segmentation
Geographic segmentation is the use of Analytics to categorize a site’s web traffic by the physical locations from which it originated.

Google AdSense
Google AdSense is an ad-serving program operated by Google that provides relevant text, image, and video-based advertisements to enrolled site owners. Advertisers register via Google AdWords and pay for ads on a Pay-Per-Click, Cost-Per-Thousand or Cost-Per-Action basis. This revenue is shared with Google AdSense host sites, typically on a PPC basis (which sometimes leads to Click Fraud). Google uses its search Algorithms and Contextual Link Inventory to display the most appropriate ads based on site content, Query relevancy, ad “quality scores,” and other factors.

Google AdWords
Google AdWords is the Keyword Submission program that determines the advertising rates and keywords used in the Google AdSense program. Advertisers bid on the keywords that are relevant to their businesses. Ranked ads then appear as sponsored links on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) and Google AdSense host sites.

Graphical Search Inventory (GSI)
Graphical Search Inventory is the visual equivalent of Contextual Link Inventory. GSI is non-text-based advertising such as Banner Ads, pop-up ads, browser toolbars, animation, sound, video and other media that is synchronized to relevant Keyword queries.

Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization strategies that fall in between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO. Gray hat SEO techniques can be legitimate in some cases and illegitimate in others. Such techniques include Doorway Pages, Gateway Pages, Cloaking and duplicate content.

Hidden Text
Hidden text is a generally obsolete form of Black Hat SEO in which pages are filled with a large amount of text that is the same color as the background, rendering keywords invisible to the human eye but detectable to a search engine Crawler. Multiple Title Tags or HTML comments are alternative hidden text techniques. Hidden text is easily detectable by search engines and will result in Blacklisting or reduced Rank.

Hit
Hit is a somewhat misleading measure of traffic to a web site. One hit is recorded for each file request in a web server’s access log. If a user visits a page with four images, one hit will be recorded for each graphic image file plus another for the page’s HTML file. A better measure of traffic volume is the number of pages/HTML files accessed.

HTML
The acronym HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, the authoring language used to create pages on the World Wide Web. HTML is a set of codes or HTML tags that provide a web browser with directions on how to structure a web page’s information and features.

Hyperlink
Also known as link or HTML link, a hyperlink is an image or portion of text that when clicked on by a user opens another web page or jumps the browser to a different portion of the current page. Inbound Links with keyword-relevant Link Text are an important part of Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

Index
An index is a Search Engine’s database. It contains all of the information that a Crawler has identified, particularly copies of World Wide Web pages. When a user performs a Query, the search engine uses its indexed pages and Algorithm set to provide a ranked list of the most relevant pages. In the case of a Directory, the index consists of titles and summaries of registered sites that have been categorized by the directory’s editors.

Inbound Links
Also known as back link, backward link, or backlinks, inbound links are all of the links on other websites that direct the users who click on them to your site. Inbound links can significantly improve your site’s search rankings, particularly if they contain Anchor Text keywords relevant to your site and are located on sites with high Page Rank.

Impression
Also known as a page view, an impression is a single instance of an online advertisement being displayed. Search engines and ad networks use impression statistics to charge advertisers on a Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM) basis.

Internet Marketing
On a fundamental level, Internet marketing is using the Internet to advertise, communicate and sell goods and services. On an advanced level, Internet marketing is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is the use of targeted keywords, crawler-friendly site architecture, Search Engine Submissions and a well-developed link network to improve a site’s Position, Page Rank and Click-Through Rate.

Internet Marketing Consultant
Also known as SEO professionals or SEO specialists, Internet marketing consultants use their knowledge of Search Engine Optimization Strategy to improve their clients’ Position and Page Rank.

Internet Promotion
Also known as search engine promotion, website marketing or website promotion, Internet promotion refers to all methods employed by a company or individual to promote a website and increase its Position and Page Rank.

Keyword
Also known as search terms or query terms, keywords are the word(s) or phrase(s) a user enters into a search engine’s Query box. A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranks indexed sites according to how relevant the Search Engine deems them to the searched keywords. One of the most important SEO Strategies companies can employ is to optimize their site pages with content that contains targeted keywords relevant to their products or industry.

Keyword Marketing
Keyword marketing is the use of keyword-optimized content and keyword-specific Link Text to emphasize a site’s relevancy to those terms and thereby increase Rank for related web queries. Keyword marketing can also be done through keyword-based ad programs such as Google AdSense. Keyword marketing is an essential component of Search Engine Optimization.

Keyword Submission
Keyword submission is an all-inclusive term for the keyword research/selection, bid cost assessment and budgeting that companies undertake to begin Pay-Per-Click keyword campaigns with advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Sponsored Search and Microsoft AdCenter.

Landing Page
The landing page is the page on which a visitor “lands” after clicking a search engine listing, email link, Banner Ad, Cost-Per-Click ad, or other ad/link. The landing page can be a site’s homepage, but is usually a page designed to appeal to users who Click-Through a specific ad or link. Landing pages are also used to monitor site traffic and measure an advertising campaign’s success. Well-designed landing pages that are relevant to a user’s keyword query will improve Conversion Rates and play a critical role in Search Engine Marketing.

Link
Also known as hyperlink or HTML link, a link is an image or portion of text that when clicked on by a user opens another web page or jumps the browser to a different portion of the current page. Inbound Links with keyword-relevant Link Text are an important part of Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

Link Baiting
Link baiting is the creation of content that incites users to link to your page from another website. The types of link bait vary tremendously, but they include highly informative articles or news stories, useful resources and sometimes controversial or sensationalistic content. Link baiting is a White Hat SEO technique used to help a site improve its Link Popularity and Page Rank. Some sites use link baiting as the centerpiece of a Website Marketing campaign.

Link Exchange
A link exchange is a quid pro quo arrangement or reciprocal link exchange between two sites. Reciprocal links usually lead to the home page of the associate site.

Link Farm
A link farm is a webpage or group of webpages that exist solely to increase the number of Backlinks in a site’s link network. A link farm is meant to increase a site’s PageRank or popularity and thus improve its search engine Position. However, link farms are considered a form of Spam and sites that rely on them are penalized by search engines.

Link Popularity
Link popularity is the measure of how popular a webpage is by the number of Backlinks it has. However, link popularity is not solely a matter of quantity. Page Rank is achieved when Backlinks are located on reputable, relevant sites rather than so-called Link Farms. Most search engines use link popularity as a factor in their Algorithmic Results.

Link Text
Also known as anchor text, link text is the visible, clickable text between the HTML anchor andtags. Clicking on link text activates a Hyperlink to another web site. Link text is very important in Search Engine Optimization because search engine algorithms consider the hyperlink keywords as relevant to the Landing Page.

Listings
Listings are the indexed sites that appear in ranked order on a Search Engine Results Page in response to a user Query.

Local Search
Local search refers to both the addition of geographical keywords (cities, streets, etc.) to Search Terms and the use of Yellow Pages-type Search Engines such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Local and AskCity to find business services in a particular zip code. Search Engine Placement Services use local SEO to help traditional “brick and mortar businesses” connect with customers in their community.

Marketing Analytics
Marketing analytics is a branch of Analytics concerned specifically with marketing-related information from organic and paid search engine traffic, such as Unique Visitors, keyword-generated sales, Cost-Per-Click advertising, Click Fraud, Search Engine Marketing, etc.

Meta Description Tag
Also known as a description Tag, a meta description tag is a short HTML paragraph that provides search engines with a description of a page’s content for search engine Index purposes. The meta description tag is not displayed on the website itself, and may or may not be displayed in the search engine’s listing for that site. Search engines are now giving less importance to meta description tags in lieu of actual page content.

Meta Keywords Tag
A meta keywords tag provides search engines with a list of keywords that are relevant to a webpage. This can improve search engine Rank for a page by ensuring it’s properly indexed. However, search engines are now giving less importance to meta keywords tags in lieu of actual page content.

Meta Robots Tag
A meta robots tag (named for a search engine Crawler or Robot) lets page authors prevent their webpages from being added to a search engine’s Index. Alternatives to a meta robots tag are Robots.txt files and password protection.

Meta Search Engine
A meta search engine derives its listings by running user queries through multiple other search engines and then summarizing the results. A meta search engine does not maintain its own Index. Listings are displayed by meta search engines either in aggregate or categorized by search engine source. An example of a meta search engine is Dogpile.com.

Meta Tags
Meta tags are HTML tags placed in a webpage that contain information for Crawlers and web browsers. Types of meta tag information include page descriptions (Description Tag), page-relevant keywords (Meta Keywords Tag), whether a page can be indexed (Meta Robots Tag), copyright, page refresh dates and redirection instructions.

Natural Listings (or Natural Optimization)
Also known as organic listings, natural listings are webpage listings that appear on a Search Engine Results Page solely because the search engine Algorithm deems them relevant to the Query. Natural listings can contain Paid Listings, but only if they fulfill the same requirements as natural listings. The best way to improve a site’s natural listing Position is through Natural Search Engine Optimization.

Natural Search Engine Optimization
Also known as natural optimization, organic search engine optimization or white hat SEO, natural search engine optimization is the use of keyword-focused copy and tags, Crawler-friendly site architecture, Search Engine Submissions and a quality Backlinks network to improve a site’s Position, Page Rank and Click-Through Rate. Because about 80% of web users look at Natural Listings first, natural SEO offers a much greater chance of long-term business success than Paid Listings or Pay-Per-Click ad campaigns.

Optimization Services
Also known as Internet promotion, site optimization, or search engine placement service, optimization services are all of the methods a Search Engine Optimization Company uses to improve a site’s Position and Page Rank and increase its Click-Through Rate and Conversion Rate.

Organic Listings (or Organic Optimization)
Also known as natural listings, organic listings are webpage listings that appear on a Search Engine Results Page solely because the search engine Algorithm deems them relevant to the Query. Organic listings can contain Paid Listings, but only if they fulfill the same requirements as organic listings. The best way to improve a site’s organic listing Position is through Natural Search Engine Optimization.

Outbound Links
Outbound links are all links from a particular webpage that lead to other pages, including pages in the same domain. An excessive number of outbound links can damage a site’s Search Engine Positioning because a Spider may perceive it as a Link Farm.

Page Rank (or PR)
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. A number from one (lowest) to ten (highest) is assigned to a webpage as a measure of its importance, specifically the likelihood that a user will arrive at that page by randomly clicking Links. PageRank is not the same thing as Rank.

Paid Inclusion
Paid inclusion is an advertising program offered by some search engines in which a page is guaranteed inclusion in the Index in exchange for a fee. Unlike Paid Placement, the rank of paid inclusion pages is determined solely by the search engine Algorithm. Paid inclusion sites may or may not be labeled as advertisements depending on Search Engine policy.

Paid Listings
Paid Listings, as opposed to Natural Listings or Organic Listings, are sites that appear on a Results Page because money was paid to the search engine for inclusion and/or position. Paid listings is used as an all-inclusive term for the practices of Paid Inclusion and Paid Placement.

Paid Placement
Paid placement is a program in which advertisers’ listings are guaranteed to appear on a Results Page when particular Keywords are searched. The ranking of paid placement listings is determined by competitive bidding. Unlike Paid Inclusion listings, paid placement listings are usually displayed separately from Natural Listings and are labeled as advertisements or sponsored links. Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) are two of the largest paid placement search networks.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Also known as cost-per-click or pay-for-performance, pay-per-click is an advertising revenue system used by search engines and ad networks in which advertising companies pay an agreed amount for each click of their ads. This Click-Through Rate-based payment structure is considered by some advertisers to be more cost-effective than the Cost-Per-Thousand payment structure, but it has at times led to Click Fraud.

Position
Also known as rank, position is the place a website occupies relative to the first listing on an Algorithmic Results page in response to a Keyword query. The first page displays Listings in the one through ten positions, the second page eleven through twenty, etc. Businesses trying to get their site into a top ten position will often employ a Professional Search Engine Optimization company. Consumer studies have shown that most search engine users click only on sites that occupy the top ten positions.

Position Reporting
Position reporting is the monitoring of daily changes in search engine Position for indexed URLs that have been optimized for specific keywords by a Search Engine Optimization Company. Position reporting is also used to generate a Search Engine Ranking Report.

Professional Search Engine Optimization
Professional search engine optimization is the modification of a website by an SEO company in order to increase its Position and Page Rank and improve its Click-Through Rate and Conversion Rate.

Query
A query is a question or instance of questioning. A search engine query is a user’s request for the information (i.e. webpages) in a search engine’s Index that is most relevant to a Keyword or set of Search Terms. Query is sometimes used to mean the actual keywords a user enters in a search box.

Rank
Also known as position, rank is the place a website occupies relative to the first listing on an Algorithmic Results page in response to a Keyword query. The first page displays Listings in the one through ten positions, the second page eleven through twenty, etc. Businesses trying to get their site into a top-ten rank will often employ a Professional Search Engine Optimization company. Consumer studies have shown that most search engine users click only on sites that occupy a top-ten rank.

Reciprocal Link Exchange
A reciprocal link exchange is a quid pro quo arrangement or link exchange between two sites. Reciprocal links usually lead to the home page of the associate site.

Registration
Also known as search engine registration or search engine submission, registration is the submission of a URL to a Directory or Search Engine for inclusion in its Index. Registration is usually free but can also require payment. Registration is a basic but important part of Search Engine Optimization.

Results Page
Also known as search engine results page, the results page is the collection of ranked Listings displayed in response to a search engine Query.

Robot
Also known as Crawler or Spider, a robot is a search engine program that “crawls” the web, collecting data, following links, making copies of new and updated sites, and storing URLs in the search engine’s Index. This allows search engines to provide faster and more up-to-date listings.

Robots.txt
Also known as robots exclusion protocol, Robots.txt is a text file stored in a site’s root directory that tells a search engine Crawler which site pages and sub-folders should not be included in the search engine Index. However, there is no guarantee that a Crawler will comply with this request. Robots.txt is an alternative to a Meta Robots Tag or password protection.

SEO Professional
Also known as Internet marketing consultant or SEO specialist, SEO professionals use their knowledge of Search Engine Optimization Strategy to improve their clients’ Position and Page Rank.

SEO Services
SEO services are all of the tools used by a Professional Search Engine Optimization company, including Analytics and Keyword Marketing.

SEO Specialist
Also known as Internet marketing consultant or SEO professional, SEO specialists use their knowledge of Search Engine Optimization Strategy to improve their clients’ Position and Page Rank.

SEO Strategies
SEO strategies are the techniques used in Search Engine Optimization to improve a site’s Position and Page Rank and increase its Click-Through Rate. A few SEO strategies are keyword research and content writing, optimized HTML code, and improved Geographical Targeting.

Search Engine
A search engine is a website that enables users to Query an Index of stored webpages gathered by a Crawler for information relevant to specific criteria expressed via a Keyword or Search Terms. The Rank of information/websites on the corresponding Search Engine Results Pages is determined by relevancy as measured by the search engine’s Algorithm and/or payment made to the search engine by indexed sites. Sites ranked solely by relevancy are known as Natural Listings or Organic Listings in contrast to Paid Listings.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing is an inclusive term for all techniques used to market a website via search engines, including Pay-Per-Click advertising and Natural Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)
The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is a non-profit professional association founded in 2003 to increase awareness of the benefits of search engine marketing and provide educational resources to members and consumers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the modification of a website for the purpose of improving its natural Rank on Search Engine Results Pages. This is done through a combination of SEO strategies such as directory and search engine Submission, website optimization, content writing and improved Link quality. Please see our SEO services for details.

Search Engine Optimization Company (SEO Company)
A search engine optimization company employs SEO Strategies to improve a website’s Search Engine Placement.

Search Engine Optimization Consultants
Also known as SEO professionals or SEO specialists, search engine optimization consultants analyze a website’s Position and Keyword strength and offer solutions for improvement.

Search Engine Optimization Software Systems
Search engine optimization software systems enable marketers to generate site data and automatically customize Submission schedules. However, automated submissions should generally be avoided in favor of submissions catered to each search engine’s rules.

Search Engine Optimization Strategy
Search engine optimization strategy refers to the specific optimization plan an SEO company employs for the site promotion of an individual client.

Search Engine Placement
Search engine placement means the tactics used by Site Optimization firms to improve their clients’ Rank. The term search engine placement is sometimes used to mean the Position of a website on a Results Page.

Search Engine Placement Services
Also known as Internet promotion, optimization services or site optimization, search engine placement services are all of the methods a Search Engine Optimization Company uses to improve a site’s Position and Page Rank and increase its Click-Through Rate and Conversion Rate.

Search Engine Positioning
The term search engine positioning can be used in two different ways. The first is to describe the ordering process of indexed websites being ranked by a search engine Algorithm in response to a Query. The second refers to the use of Search Engine Optimization to achieve a higher search engine Position.

Search Engine Promotion
Also known as Internet promotion, website marketing or website promotion, Internet promotion refers to all methods employed by a company or individual to promote a website and increase its Position and PageRank.

Search Engine Ranking Report
A search engine ranking report is a monthly, weekly or daily report of the Position of a company’s website Listing in relation to their top Keywords. Position Reporting enables companies to monitor the success of an SEO strategy or Cost-Per-Click advertising campaign.

Search Engine Registration
Also known as search engine submission or web submission, search engine registration is the submission of a URL to a Directory or Search Engine for inclusion in its Index. Registration is usually free but can also require payment. Search engine registration is a basic but important part of Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Results Page (SERPs)
Also known as a results page, the search engine results page is the collection of ranked Listings displayed in response to a search engine Query.

Search Engine Submission
Also known as search engine registration or web submission, search engine submission is the submission of a URL to a Directory or Search Engine for inclusion in its Index. Registration is usually free but can also require payment. Search engine submission is a basic but important part of Search Engine Optimization.

Search Terms
Also known as keywords or query terms, search terms are the word(s) or phrase(s) a user enters into a search engine’s Query box. A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranks indexed sites according to how relevant the Search Engine deems them to the search terms that were queried. One of the most important SEO Strategies companies can employ is to optimize their site pages with content that contains targeted search terms relevant to their products or industry.

Shopping Search
Shopping search engines or search engines with a shopping feature (such as Google Product Search, formerly known as Froogle) allow users to comparison shop by providing lists of sellers and prices in response to a product Query. Some shopping search sites require Paid Inclusion or offer Paid Placement.

Site Optimization
Also known as Internet promotion, optimization services or search engine placement service, site optimization refers to all of the methods a Search Engine Optimization Company uses to improve a site’s Position and Page Rank and increase its Click-Through Rate and Conversion Rate.

Spam
Spam refers to any and all Search Engine Marketing techniques that violate search engine guidelines or attempt to gain increased Rank for a site using content that is irrelevant, deceptive or of little value to users. Types of spam include Hidden Text, content that contains nonsensical Keyword repetition, deceptive Cloaking or numerous Doorway Pages that redirect users to the same Landing Page. If a search engine detects spamming the offending site will be Blacklisted or lose Position. Spam is a Black Hat SEO technique.

Spider
Also known as Crawler or Robot, a spider is a search engine program that “crawls” the web, collecting data, following links, making copies of new and updated sites, and storing URLs in the search engine’s Index. This allows search engines to provide faster and more up-to-date listings.

Submission
Also known as search engine registration or search engine submission, submission is the providing of a URL to a Directory or Search Engine for inclusion in its Index. Submission is usually free but can also require payment. Submission is a basic but important part of Search Engine Optimization.

Title Tags
A title tag is an HTML tag which contains a sentence of text describing the contents of its associated webpage. Title tags are a very important part of Search Engine Optimization because they are frequently used as the text links that lead to sites from a search engine’s Results Page. The best title tags contain strategic keywords that will help a site be indexed properly and appeal to human search engine users.

Three-Way Link Exchange
A three-way link exchange is a Reciprocal Link Exchange established between three domains. However, unlike a two-way link exchange, not all three sites link to each other. Page A links to Page B and Page B links to Page C and Page C links to Page A. Page B does not post a reciprocal link to Page A and Page C does not post a reciprocal link to Page B. Three-way link exchanges are used by owners of multiple websites to increase the Link Popularity and Page Rank of new or smaller sites.

Unique Visitor
Unique visitor is a web traffic measuring term which means the registering of at least one hit on one page of a web site from a unique IP address during a specified report period (typically anywhere from twenty-four hours to a month). A subsequent hit(s) by the same IP address is not counted as a unique visitor during that report period. Unique visitor count can be an effective way of measuring the success of an SEO strategy.

Web Analytics
Web analytics is a branch of Analytics that uses web traffic records to study the behavior of website visitors. Data such as Unique Visitors, Hits, page views, and the connection between Landing Pages and Conversion Rates are used to improve a website or marketing campaign.

Website Marketing
Also known as Internet marketing, website marketing is using the Internet to advertise, communicate and sell goods and services. On an advanced level, website marketing is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is the use of targeted keywords, crawler-friendly site architecture, Search Engine Submissions and a well-developed link network to improve a site’s Position, Page Rank and Click-Through Rate.

Website Optimization
Also known as search engine optimization, website optimization is the modification of a website for the purpose of improving its natural Rank on Search Engine Results Pages. This is done through a combination of optimization strategies such as directory and search engine Submission, Keyword Marketing and improved Link quality.

Website Promotion
Website promotion refers to the marketing aspects of Search Engine Optimization, such as Keyword Submission, Paid Inclusion, and other techniques to increase a site’s exposure.

Website Promotion Services
Also known as search engine marketing, website promotion services is an inclusive term for all techniques used to market a website via search engines, including Pay-Per-Click advertising and Natural Search Engine Optimization.

Website Submission
Also known as search engine registration or search engine submission, website submission is the submission of a URL to a Directory or Search Engine for inclusion in its Index. Registration is usually free but can also require payment. Website submission is a basic but important part of Search Engine Optimization.

White Hat SEO
Also known as natural search engine optimization or organic search engine optimization, white hat SEO is the legitimate use of keyword-focused copy and tags, Crawler-friendly site architecture, Search Engine Submissions and a quality Backlinks network to improve a site’s Position, Page Rank and Click-Through Rate. White hat SEO does not involve the use of Cloaking, Spam or any other Black Hat SEO techniques.

XML
XML is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language, a simple and flexible text-based programming language used in conjunction with HTML. XML is useful for data exchange and the creation of customized tags.

XML Feed
An XML feed is a form of Paid Inclusion or Search Engine Submission in which an XML document is used to provide a search engine with information about multiple web pages. An XML feed is particularly useful for multimedia sites or database sites that draw a variety of relevant search queries.

Source: http://seo-jakarta.blogspot.com/

Search Engine Visibility and Site Crawlability

2007-12-19T14:41:00.000-08:00

By Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch

At the recent SES Chicago. Laura Thieme and Matt Bailey, both experienced presenters, showed how webmasters could tame the dynamic Web site beast and improve search engine visibility and site crawlability.

This is the first of two articles outlining the SEO problems they identified with dynamic Web sites and solutions. I'll expand on both.

At the very highest level, dealing with large dynamic Web sites requires IT and marketing to collaborate. The person responsible for the technical search engine optimization is an important member of the team. Without the cooperation of technical SEO support staff, your Web site can end up poorly optimized for search engines.

Keyword Research and Deployment

Do your keyword research up front. You need to understand the language potential customers use to find the products or services you offer. You also want to understand related topics that interest these potential customers.

You then want to match up this understanding of the marketplace with the available content you have, or are willing to develop, and design a logical and clean hierarchy around that.

Laura said embedding keywords into your page names (i.e. the URI) is a powerful SEO tactic. In fact, she recommends existing sites embed the most important keywords for each page into their URI (and then 301 redirecting the old page location to the new page location).

Don't use the same titles and headers for all the pages of your site. That's another reason to do keyword research. The long tail of keywords enable you to create a different title and header for every page of the site.

Large sites also have issues with pages being found and indexed. Make sure the most important keywords for your site appear in the title and header for the home page.

Robots.txt Files

Matt pointed out that it's surprising how many sites have problems with their robots.txt file. He provided a tutorial on how robot.txt files work. You can also find good tutorials on the Web.

I've seen many sites that have problems with Robots.txt. While it's a powerful tool for directing the way search engine crawlers see your site, it's easy to make a mistake. A single mistake can have catastrophic consequences. So use robots.txt, just use the file with great care.

To illustrate how easy it is to make a mistake, we worked with a client a while back that implemented new versions of their site on a staging server separate from the one used for the main site. This allowed them to look at the site live before launching it.

They didn't want this duplicate site indexed by the search engines, so they implemented a robots.txt as follows:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Experienced readers are already cringing because they know where this is going. Unfortunately, one day during a site update they copied the whole site from the staging server to the live server, including the robots.txt file.

It took 3 weeks before anyone noticed, and that happened because traffic to the site was already crashing. Ouch. Again, use it, but be careful.

Site Maps

The Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site, as well as when each URL was last updated, how often it usually changes, and its importance relative to other URLs in the site. The protocol was designed to enable search engines crawl the site more intelligently. In principle, this should help the search engine find all of the pages on your site more easily than crawling it naturally.

Matt had a great point when he told the audience you're better off letting your site being found naturally by the crawler. He referred to Sitemaps as a "fast track to the supplemental index".

I couldn't agree more. We don't use Sitemaps on our clients' sites.

The two best solutions for the crawlability problem -- lots of pages not being indexed -- the following two steps are the best solution:

1. Build an efficient and clean global navigation system on your site. There is no better way to help a crawler find your site than a logical and simple navigation structure. If you do this, the crawler will find its way around.
2. Get third party sites to link to your site. No on-site search engine optimization strategy will work unless you get these links.

Advanced SEO Training Course held in Sydney

2007-11-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

Sydney, NSW (PRWEB) November 27, 2007 -- Bruce Clay Australia has announced that they will be running a three day Advanced Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Training course from the 17th to the 19th of March, 2008, just after AdTech, Sydney. The Training course, delivered monthly in the United States, has been run twice in Australia during 2007 and positively received by all attendees.

The training is consistently rated #1 by TopSEO's and is a must for any individual or organisation serious about SEO. Bruce Clay, the president of Bruce Clay, Inc, will be delivering the training and it will include the methodologies and techniques used by our in-house analysts as well as access to the SEOToolset™, which includes over 60 SEO related tools and detailed training materials. The training is designed for all those involved with search engine optimisation activities including webmasters, marketing and responsible management.

Bruce Clay SEO training also offers a Certification Program that recognizes your SEO skills, proficiency with the SEOToolSet™ and adherence to ethical practices. If you would like more information please contact the Sydney Bruce Clay office.

Jeremy Bolt, a Director of Bruce Clay Australia said "We recogised a gap in the Australian market for a quality SEO training course that delivered a comprehensive methodology and toolset, and not just people talking about their own experiences or selling their services. This course gets into the detail, the How-to's, the latest and nothing is held back."

The training attracts Marketing professionals with an interest in Search Engine Marketing, IT professionals who are keen to build search engine friendly websites and business owners that appreciate the leads and resulting benefits that can come from a successful SEO campaign. In 2007, attendees included representatives from some of Australians leading media, telecommunications, entertainment and travel websites.

With the increasing penetration of search engine marketing (SEM), having a clean search engine friendly website is even more important to increase quality scores and reduce SEM campaign costs.

Source:
Bruce Clay - Australia

U.S. Firms To Outsource SEO/SEM Service To Philippines

2007-10-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

Manila, Philippines (AHN) - A group of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) practitioners said U.S. SEO and SEM firms are considering outsourcing their business to the Philippines.

SEO Philippines said the U.S. firms see the country as an alternative outsourcing site to India, the world's leading call center and business process outsourcing hub.

Marc Hil J. Macalua, founder of SEO Philippines, said that demand for time-consuming and labor-intensive SEO tasks, such as article writing, link building, and HTML editing, is growing and U.S. firms tend to outsource these tasks. He said the tasks can be outsourced to freelance individuals skilled in SEO/SEM programming and writing.

The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) said SEM is definitely another sector that the Philippines can participate in. BPA/P chief executive officer Oscar Sanez said there are already local companies that do programming, software development and application or content-building and marketing.

The Philippine BPO industry, which is focused on call center and transcription services, can capitalize on the multi-billion SEO/SEM market of the U.S. The SEM Professional Organization estimated the value of the North America SEO/SEM industry at $9.6 billion in 2006. The international group predicted the 2006 value to increase twice to $18.6 billion by 2011.

Resources: Windsor Genova - AHN News Writer

How To Find Keywords With High CPC - by Robbins

2007-09-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

There’s no doubt about it. The key to online prominence lies in mastering the art of finding the right keywords.

Keywords are the specific words that internet users type in the search engine fields to find the information they need. If your website contains these exact keywords, in their proper density level, you’d have a great chance of appearing in a good position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Whether you’re selling your own products, or promoting your affiliate links, or inviting people to subscribe to a membership program you have developed, you would need a website to carry out your marketing approach, and you will need visitors to come to your website to experience the success that its potentials promise. And the key to generating a lot of visitors for your website lies in the selection of the correct keywords.

Keywords take on a more important role when it comes to online endeavors enrolled with Pay Per Click (PPC) programs. Keywords would attract the ads that the PPC programs can assign, and once your visitors would click on such ads, you will earn a specified amount. There are some ads that pay a measly $0.05 per click. But there are also some ads that pay as much as $50.00 per click. How can you secure for yourself the latter option? Well, you must be able to determine the most profitable keywords beforehand.

Finding profitable keywords isn’t really difficult, for as long as you know what you’re doing. There are three ways by which you could accomplish this.

1. Go to http://www.adsensearena.com . This is, by far, the easiest as well as the most cost-efficient approach. The said website has long been a secret of people in the know. No one knows how the website came about. No one even knows who maintains its pages. But everyone agree that the information it contains are pretty much accurate, save for some entries which are a little bit dated. The website http://www.adsensearena.com contains a comprehensive list of keywords together with their corresponding Cost Per Click (CPC). Simply do a manual search and look for the keywords that command a high CPC. Then build a content website based on what you will discover.

2. Create an AdWords account. AdWords is Google’s service for PPC advertisers. Creating an account won’t cost a single cent, but it would give you access to a control panel where you could view the bidding for certain keywords. All you have to do is to find keywords that command very high bids. This would give you an idea about how much the CPC of those keywords could be. Interested with this approach? Visit https://adwords.google.com today.

3.A number of online marketers offer keyword lists of the hottest topics today. These are subjects that have little competition, and which can be profitably exploited for your AdSense PPC campaigns. Often, these lists come with reports detailing the expected CPC of each of the keywords in the said lists. The online marketers who distribute the same would require a fee, of course, but if you have made content sites the engine of your online enterprise, these keyword lists could prove valuable for your endeavors.

There are three basic components to a successful PPC campaign. These are your website’s page impressions, or the number of unique visitors who get to load up your pages; your website’s Click Through Rate (CTR), or the number of visitors who get to click on the ads displayed on your website; and your ads’ CPC. The right keywords would attract ads with high CPC, and you’ll be able to solve 1/3 of the equation. The other 2/3? This is where marketing strategies would come in.

About the Author

Nial Robbins owns the work at home directory website located at: http://www.NDR-HomeBiz.com Come by and visit us today! Also, be sure to check out our "top pick" work at home opportunity at: http://www.NDR-HomeBiz.com/pips.html

Black Hat Pay Per Click Methods

2007-08-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rob Kerry last August 24, 2007

Rob Kerry has written a very interesting article on Search Engine Watch about playing dirty with PPC. While these techniques aren't something I would recommend using myself, it's very useful to be aware of black hat pay-per-click methods as it's possible your competitors could be applying them.

In the article Rob discusses how you can duplicate a competitors ad text to replace their ad by outbidding them...

Pay-per-click is a competitive process simply by design, so there’s always going to be people who choose to use dirty tactics rather than having to pay the higher bid prices. Whether you should join in with this philosophy is something your company must decide, as the best dark tactics also have some of the biggest risks.

Black hat PPC is rarely discussed in the industry, especially not as much as black hat SEO. It mostly consists of using flaws and weaknesses in systems such as Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter to your advantage.
Non-Compliant Ads

One such flaw is the lack of pre-moderation on the AdWords system, allowing changes that meet a set of automated rules to go live instantly 24/7. Unfortunately, the human side to moderation doesn’t seem to work 24/7, giving a time period in which non-compliant ads can be published.

One of many reasons affiliates use this technique is that it allows them to show a different display URL to the actual click-through URL on the ad. This means that over the weekend, their affilaiteredirect.com site can now appear to be amazon.com/music - resulting in a substantially increased CTR from the brand recognition.

You can use this trick in many different ways, as long as it doesn’t hit an automated rule such as trademark infringement. Bringing this to an in-house scenario, you may want to outbid your competitors on their brand terms or use ad copy that a human editor would normally decline. The key to doing this is to test what times and days an editor declines non-compliant copy, plus re-instating the original ad before the end of your blind-spot timeframe. (Some bid management tools can do this for you.)
Same Search Term Multiple Ads

A big restriction on most PPC networks is the inability to have multiple ads from one company displayed for the same search term. You may want to do this in order to advertise multiple products or to flood the ad space and push your competitors off the first page of the search results.

Getting around this restriction is a little trickier, as a new PPC account will be needed for each additional advert you wish to display. This could be achieved by creating a number of phantom companies with a unique bank account, credit card, and address, or you could get a little help from your friends. In either case, it’s often a good idea to use pre-paid credit cards so your phantom company or helpful friend never gets into debt. You’re then ready to start bidding, although be careful not to leave any footprints that associate the accounts to one another.

It’s best to use the first trick I mentioned so you can link directly through to your main site out-of-hours without fear of getting caught. You can also flood the search results for your competitors’ non-trademarked brand terms so they don’t have a single brand name PPC listing.

It’s best not to be too evil toward your competitors though, as someone will eventually find out, and you may get reported to Google. Your best line of defense when this happens is to use your existing affiliate program (or create a fake one) and blame it all on a maverick affiliate of yours. (Remember to use different affiliate IDs for each ad’s click-through URL.)
Copying Competitor Ads

A final example of playing dirty is to copy a competitor’s ad (title, copy, and display URL), and run it on your account with a different click-through URL. As Google AdWords doesn’t allow duplicate ads, you can wipe your competitor from the paid search listings simply by using the same display URL. As long as you bid more than the competitor’s maximum bid, your campaign should replace theirs.

The user will be expecting to land on your competitor’s site when clicking through, so it’s best to create a landing page mentioning the competitor, perhaps in the form of a damning review, e.g., “Product A has been proven to be inferior to Product B...” If doing this on a large scale, try to do it on weekends; once again, so it’s harder for your competitor to monitor and analyze.

Remember, all these examples could risk your PPC account and should therefore be used with caution.

About the author
Rob is a UK-based SEO Consultant and the Forums Editor at Search Engine Watch. See more articles by rob

7 Steps to setting up your pay per click advertising campaign

2007-08-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

Pay-per-click is a competitive process somewhere is searching Google or Yahoo for what you sell. And unless your website is optimized to get a listing at the top of search results, there’s a chance they will buy from your competitors instead. So there’s always going to be people who choose to use dirty tactics rather than having to pay the higher bid prices. Whether you should join in with this idea is something your company must decide, as the best dark tactics also have some of the biggest risks.

Here are 7 easy steps to get your first pay per click advert up and running:

1. Decide what you want to achieve

Having a goal for your pay per click advertising is vital, and stops you frittering your money away. You may be keen to sell things from your website, or capture the information of people that visit for future marketing, such as email newsletters.

Beware of using PPC adverts just to “drive traffic” to your website. When people click adverts they are looking to solve a problem or make a purchase. You might as well use that intent to generate revenue for yourself… leave the ego boost of a big expensive website with lots of traffic (but no direct revenue) to the big boys with their deep pockets.

2. Sign up

While several search engines run pay per click, you should concentrate on the ones that attract the majority of the traffic in the UK – Google and Yahoo! It’s very easy to sign up for Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Both often run promotions where new advertisers can get free adverts when they sign up for the first time. These offers are an excellent way to find out if PPC can work for you, without risking any of your own cash. At present, when you sign up to Yahoo Search Marketing you get £60 of free credit on your pay per click account.

3. Set a budget

Not only is pay per click one of the fairest advertising models, because you only pay for clicks, but you also have full control over your budget. You can set a daily, weekly or monthly ceiling. When that budget has been spent, your advert automatically stops appearing.

When you first try pay per click, you should set a tight budget and stick to it. In general, PPC is scalable: so if you spent £50 and get £500 revenue, it’s likely you’ll get about £1,000 revenue from £100 spent.

4. Use lots of search keywords and phrases

With pay per click, you are effectively bidding money to get your advert shown when people search for specific terms. Think about what you sell, and all of the different things people might type into a search engine to find it. Ask friends who aren’t connected with your business what they would type. Remember, your buyers may not use standard industry terms – that’s an opportunity for you.

When you’ve picked a load of search words and phrases, pick some more! You almost can’t have too many. The PPC systems will help you estimate how many people search for the terms you have picked, and over time they will measure how many clicks you get for each term.

Read Choosing keywords for your pay-per-click campaign for a detailed guide on selecting successful keywords and phrases for your pay per click campaign.

5. Build ads for each product or service

Once you have chosen your search words, you should now write adverts for each product or service you sell. Be as specific as you can, and use trademarks of your products where possible, especially when they are well known.

Pay per click adverts are very short, forcing you to get to the point quickly. Another great feature of PPC is that you can write lots of different adverts, and the system will work out for you which one performs better (and will use that advert more often). To help you to write powerful pay per click adverts we have a specific guide on How to write a killer pay-per-click advert.

6. Build landing pages

If someone clicks your pay per click advert for a red widget, the worst thing you can do is send them to the home page of your site and make them search again for red widgets. Most people will just hit the back button.

Ensure that every PPC advert goes directly to a landing page. That should either be full details of the product itself, or a specific landing page you have built just for people clicking on your advert.

7. Track results and keep tweaking

The way pay per click advertising systems are built, makes it easy for you to track exactly what works and what doesn’t. You don’t have to spend long to get the most out of the system. Get into the habit of checking your results once a week, and tweaking. Don’t touch anything that works – instead change everything that isn’t performing. Over a number of weeks you will build a collection of powerful PPC adverts and search terms that could help to generate significant revenue for your website.

Author
Start a Small Business Guides
www.bytestart.co.uk

Top Paying Keywords: Top Paying Google Adsense Keywords List

2007-08-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

Top Paying Keywords: Top Paying Google Adsense Keywords List

Is Meta Tags Important Anymore?

2007-08-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

A moment ago, I’ve read somewhere in forum says that meta tags are not important as now. These things bother me a lot. My friend and I are having a debate about the value of the meta description tag. He says that search engines don't index them anymore and so you don't need to use one. I think that he's wrong and that search engines will use them in the search results pages to describe your site, but if you don't include one, you might find a snippet of text from your page being used instead.

But Kalena's answer that it depends on each search engine. For example, Google and Yahoo will sometimes use part of your META Description tag, but they will usually use a snippet of text on your web page that includes the exact search query entered. But if your site is listed in the Yahoo Directory, Yahoo will often use your editor-created description from there. If your site is listed in the ODP, Google may use your ODP description.

As Ammon Johns says in this post at forums, the most valuable use of the META Description tag is to write it in a way that is going to convince relevant visitors to click on your link if it is shown in the SERPs. Always write a unique META Description for each page on your site and make sure it accurately describes your page and the content users are going to find on it so you only attract clicks from qualified visitors looking for exactly the information you are offering.

Ron says: There's some excellent 'meat' in those links you give, he particularly like the 155 character suggestion in the last one.

As you suggest, I try to limit the meta description to 155 characters, which is what Google will likely show if it includes the keyword phrase being queried. Since most of the other snippets on the SERP will likely be gibberish, your well-written 155 characters will likely get the click.

It’s better to have a unique meta description tag for each of page, but it doesn't mean that search engines rank web pages based on it. Search engines looks the page content as a whole, and also at those links pointing to that particular page.

The Description meta tag can be used on all the major search engines to increase click-through rates, and more importantly, to pre-qualify visitors who won't be interested and thus lower the bounce rates and increase conversion rates.

However, all the major search engines also have certain quirks about when to use more trustworthy data for snippets too. Yahoo will use the description from its Yahoo directory for example. Google will use the description from a dmoz listing for the precise URL (thus usually only a root domain), and so forth.

You have to know enough to know when to use the NOODP and other snippet controlling meta tags; to understand how Google determine the best snippet to use on a searc term by search term basis; and to recognise that no matter what, there are times when the snippet is going to be pulled from the page.

There are still mllions upon millions of web pages out there that use the same meta content for every page, describing the site rather than the page, and even then making a poor job of it. There are millions more pages out there that are auto-generated by poor CMS systems and may have no meta content at all.

The search engines have to deal with all of these pages and issues, and have developped a system that is about te best all-around system they could create within realistic resources.

Making the systems and limitations of the search engines work to your benefit is what SEO is all about.

link:www.yourwebsite.com -OR- link:[_]www.yourwebsite.com

2007-08-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

Some people doubt on how to get their backlinks on Google search. Recently, I’d read an article on Google Reader shared items about the correct syntax on how to get your backward link on google search.

Question: What’s the difference between these 2 Google backward links search?

Dear Kalena...

As always, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Much appreciated! Here is yet another question: I have been recently mystified by Google's link:www.yourwebsite.com search feature. If you do the search with a space between the colon and www you get different results. Example link:www.yourwebsite.com vs. link: www.yourwebsite.com

Can you explain the difference?

Thanks!
Marco

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

That's easy. The first search is the correct query to use for determining the number of backward links pointing to your site that Google considers significant (note this is not your *true* number of backlinks. To see a more accurate list, you need to view your site within Google's Webmaster Tools).

The second search is a malformed query. What you're actually searching for with that query is all documents that have references to the word "link" and "www.yourwebsite.com" on the same page. Look at the cache for one of the listings for the second version and you'll see both items highlighted.

Its a sort of. The backlinks shown in Google are the ones that Google think are important. Generally, they are links from pages with higher PageRank or "TrustRank" as it's known in the biz. If you want to see all your backlinks, Google's Webmaster Tools has much larger coverage.

11 Reasons Why Search Engine Industry Is Hot Profession

2007-08-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Are you currently seeking employment? Looking for a new profession? Considering a career change? Then a job in the field of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) should be at the top of your list. Here are 11 reasons why:

1) The Search Industry is HOT
The first dot-com bubble may have burst 6 years ago, but the current bubble is getting bigger and stronger every day. One of the main reasons for the current dot-com boom is the skyrocketing growth of the search engine industry. No longer the territory of geekdom, search has exploded into the mainstream over the past few years and businesses are falling over themselves to get seen by online searchers. And they'll pay big bucks to search engines for the privilege.
Have you noticed that Google shares recently hit USD 500 EACH? It's not a coincidence. Search giants like Google, Yahoo and AOL can't fail to make money because everybody wants a bit of the search action. There's no denying, search is HOT, HOT, HOT.

2) It's Considered one of Four Jobs on the Cutting Edge
According to a recent article on MSN Careers, the position of Search Engine Optimizer is considered one of four jobs on the cutting edge right now. Who gave it this title? A representative from the world's largest specialized recruitment firm - Robert Half International Inc.

Search Engine Optimization is considered a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing. If you're unsure what a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) does, below is a definition provided by MSN Careers:

"Search engine optimizers (SEO) increase a firm's Web site traffic by improving its search-engine page rankings. This is an especially important task in today's Internet-driven world, where many customers first learn of an organization and its products or services through the Web. Because of a shortage of experts in this relatively new area, many top SEOs receive multiple job offers. SEOs typically supplement their knowledge of how various search engines operate and determine page rankings with strong marketing skills, as well as the ability to communicate effectively and program using HTML."

3) The Pay is Fantastic
A job in the search industry can be unbelievably lucrative. As noted recently by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide, "There are quite literally more jobs than there are skilled marketers and salaries can skyrocket to almost embarrassing levels."

Have you seen the type of salaries that search engine marketing and search engine optimization consultants are currently commanding in the US? Clearly, the search industry is making some people rich. Here are some typical salaries in USD:

Entry level SEO/SEM position = $30-45K
Three to five years experience / online account managers = $50-75K
Five + years / organic SEO specialists = $75-90K
Senior management level = $70-120K
SEM Director = $95-150K
VP Level = $100-315K

Additional Salary links:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3591061
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=10543

4) You Don't Need a College Degree
Because the search industry is relatively young, there are only a handful of online courses and certifications offered in the field of Search Engine Marketing (Search Engine College being one training provider).

Most search engine marketing practitioners are self-taught, learning the trade by experimenting with their own sites, researching trends, attending conferences and participating in discussion forums and so employers don't generally require SEO / SEM certification or a tertiary qualification as a pre-requisite for a position in the industry.

However, candidates who hold a marketing degree or specific industry certification in Search Engine Marketing may well have an edge over their fellow applicants when it comes to interview selection.

5) You Can Learn it all Online

Everything you need to know to become a Search Engine Marketer, you can learn online. All the information is out there, you just have to find it. To become an expert in SEO / SEM, you need to do research, research and more research. Read everything you can get your hands on relating to search on a daily basis, including articles, forums, ebooks, blogs and newsfeeds. Then you need to put this knowledge into practice by experimenting with your own sites, or finding guinea pig sites to practice on such as those of friends, family or charity sites until you find the methods that give you the best results. Programming knowledge is not a pre-requisite for SEO / SEM jobs, but it does help to learn basic HTML. There are plenty of free HTML tutorials online.

If you don't fancy years of research or are in a hurry to jump-start your career in search, consider taking an online Certification course in one of the many Search Engine Marketing disciplines such as the Certification Pathways provided by Search Engine College. These type of courses are usually tutor-led and designed to fast-track your training and ensure you gain the right type of skills to make you immediately employable within the search industry.

6) You Can Be Your Own Boss

Because most of the work you'll be doing is online, Search Engine Optimizers and Search Engine Marketers often have the freedom of choice to work for an employer, work from home and/or freelance. Many SEO / SEM freelancers end up hiring workers and starting their own company due to the massive demand. This gives search engine marketing experts the work from home lifestyle that others can only dream of.

7) Search Marketing Has the WOW Factor

Once they know what they're doing, it's very easy for a Search Engine Marketer to wow their clients. The difference that a successful SEO or PPC campaign can make to a client's bottom line is substantial. I've seen online conversion rates for a client zoom from 1% to a massive 5% after just two small tweaks to their web site. And although rankings are not as important as actual conversions, clients still get very excited to see their site listed in the top 10 search results for certain keywords. It's the WOW factor in action.

8) The Demand is Strong and Growing

As mentioned in relation to search engine salaries, there are literally many more jobs than there are skilled marketers to fill them. This extreme demand means Search Engine Marketers can pick and choose their jobs and/or clients. The more skilled marketers are head-hunted regularly. For Search Engine Optimization firms, there are more than enough clients to go around and rarely a need to advertise for new business. That's why you often find SEOs turning away clients or recommending their competitors during extremely busy periods.

Experts in select specialties such as Pay Per Click Advertising (a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing) are currently enjoying even higher demand than usual, as advertisers out-bid each other to have their site shown for popular keyword searches on Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

9) The Industry is Hip and Groovy

There's something very trendy about people in search that I can't quite put my finger on. There's a constant buzz around them. If you've ever been to a search engine conference or to Google’s headquarters you'll know what I mean. Maybe it's the fact that they've come from so many different professions. Or that the age range of search marketers varies from teens to Baby Boomers. Or their whacky dress sense. Maybe it's the smell of money and happiness that they give off. Maybe it's the fact that they are constantly in the media. I don't know. All I know is that it's no longer uncool to be a geek. In fact it's downright hip to be square.

10) The Skills Are Portable and Global

Skills in search engine marketing are portable and global. You don't need to be at a desk, in an office or on the phone all day. You don't even need to meet your clients. Of all my clients, I've probably only met 20 percent of them and spoken to half of them on the phone or via chat. You can be on vacation for six months out of the year in various locations and still conduct business. You literally only need a computer and an Internet connection. The Internet is the universal equalizer. You can service clients in any country in the world, in many different languages. You can compete with one man operations and Fortune 500 companies on the same level playing field. The flexibility of the search industry is a huge advantage over other career options. Have laptop, will travel!

11) Job Satisfaction is High

Search is a fascinating industry. With all the hype, daily gossip, corporate take-overs, start-ups and geek toys, I can guarantee that you won't get bored. This combined with the flexible work hours, low start-up costs, ability to be your own boss and the excellent income keeps job satisfaction high for Search Engine Marketers. So what are you waiting for? Go get a job in search!

Resources: Kalena Jordan

August 05, Google PR Update

2007-08-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Long waiting for Google PR update is now at bestow. Predicted last mid July 2007, it is only a month late based on previous Google trends. This comes as no surprise for us amount of minor Algorithm changes we have seen nearly week on, for around the last 2 months. The last thing Google wanted to do was post an update with some of the bugs that we've seen in the last couple weeks in the SERPs.

The update looks to have started on Sunday, August 5th when Google started giving new sites (PR 0) more Authority. In conclusion about the update starting on the 5th has to do with a brand new site having its Google traffic increase around 5x overnight. Next observed sites that had been incorrectly assigned higher PRs notice a significant decreases (this seems mainly to happen to PR2 sites showing as PR5 or PR6), as well as domains that had expired seeing a PR drop, or a complete loss of PR.

Recently, observed the new website mentioned above which was setup in the end of June drop from a PR4 (this was an incorrect value which actually belonged to another site that google had assigned to both domains) to a PR0, then this afternoon jump back up to PR4 which is inline with the total number of links, and strength of links that are linking to the site.

Estimated in that the PR update should be done by Wednesday night or Thursday at the latest. The big thing was haven't seen finish is the main domain PR update, and update of PRs for internal pages.

Resources: Daryl Quenet

Is meta tagging dead?

2007-05-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

A moment ago I’ve read an article ‘bout meta tags and it refreshed my memory on how to write meta tags. But there are some webmasters says that, meta tags is face out on SEO trend. But two tips I found did help:

· Meta Description Tags: Google displays up to 160 characters (including spaces) or about 25 words

· Meta Keyword Tags: Search engines that support meta tags index up to 1000 characters (including spaces)

Back to basic about the meta tag that still has relevance; the meta description tag. Meta descriptions have three primary uses:

· To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly
· To serve as a short, text "advertisement" to click on your results in the search results
· To display targeted keywords, not for ranking purposes, but to indicate the content to searchers

Great meta descriptions, just like great ads, but for keyword-targeted pages, particularly in competitive search results, they're a critical part of driving traffic from the engines through to your pages. The important there is much greater for search terms where the intent keyword of the searcher is unclear or different searchers might have different motivations.

It's significance sayings of SEO guru Danny Sullivan has said he no longer writes meta keyword tags and doesn't think they are worth the time. The few good rules there to follow the meta description tags are still very useful SEO tools that take advantage of their use in pulling in search traffic.

Lets Support "DoFollow"

2007-05-11T16:11:00.001-07:00

Most of you will know by now, that links left in the comment sections of a blog do not register as an SEO benefical link (search engines ignore them); that is unless you’ve implemented ‘DoFollow’ on your blog. Implementing DoFollow is a practice which has recently been made popular by Andy Beard (who lists different ways to remove NoFollow), Randa Clay (who designed a custom logo for the ‘I Follow’ gang), and helped by a WordPress plugin.
I for one, am in complete support of removing the NoFollow from blog comments, and I’ve removed it from this blog. It’s great all around. It encourages more comments, a stronger community, and increases the links to your blog.

However, here is one simple tip that I really think will boost your Page Rank and SEO, giving you more ‘authority’ in the search engines.

For most of us, leaving a comment on a another blog is quickened by the fact that your ‘details’ are automatically filled in. Your name, email address, and website address; all you have to do is write the comment, and hit enter.

Now here’s the thing; if the blog you’re commenting on has removed NoFollow, and your comment link now possesses ‘Google Juice’, is it wise to always point to your homepage? According to some SEO experts, we should be deep-linking at every opportunity. With Google continually working on producing more relative results, they know that an article on any given keyword, will generally give the searcher what they’re looking for a lot better than a homepage. For that reason, their algorithms are designed to pull up articles with links pointing directly to the article.

Therefore, wouldn’t it be an idea to replace the link to the homepage in the comments section, to one of your best articles? Of course, you’d change the article you’d point to every few weeks of commenting or so, to spread the weight.

Google aren’t stupid, they know that if a site has lots of deep-links to various pages, it must be a credible, and respected site. In turn, Google reward such a site by ranking it higher in the SERP’s, and granting a higher Page Rank.

Of course, if you really wanted to (in the words of John Chow) be evil, instead of putting in your name as the anchor text, you could change it to the article title, or a keyword. However, I strongly recommend you don’t do that as it’ll probably annoy the blog owner and their readers. In fact, if someone did that on my blog, I’d probably delete the comment altogether.

Source: iffect.net
Author: Armen

Google - PR & Backlinks - by Andrew Williams

2007-03-08T12:28:00.000-08:00

Here are some observations that I have made recently:

1. On several of my own sites, I have some pages with zero page rank despite having links pointing to them PR 5 pages on the same site. These pages are now 2-3 months old. Shouldn't they have PR by now?

2. Most of these pages rank well despite the apparent PR 0.

3. Doing searches on Google show up a lot of anomalies. Many top ranking pages have PR 0.

For example, go to http://www.prsearch.net/

This is that great search tool I mentioned last week which gives you the PR and backlinks of the search results. Do a search for Bratz dolls..

Here are the top 10 sites when I search:

#1 PR 6 Backlinks - 151

#2 PR 7 Backlinks - 5

#3 PR 0 Backlinks - 18

#4 PR 4 Backlinks - 2

#5 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#6 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#7 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#8 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#9 PR 6 Backlinks - 46

#10 PR 0 Backlinks - 11

4. Backlinks at Google don't tally with known backlinks. This has been reported a lot in various publications recently. Google use to only show backlinks from PR 4 or more sites, but it has been reported that backlinks from lower PR sites are showing and backlinks from some higher PR sites seem to be missing.

Reading through these observations, it is clear that something is going on.

It might look at first glance that PR is not being updated since lots of pages which should have PR don't. I don't think this is the case, and I will explain in a moment what I believe is going on. However, before we do that, let's consider some of the other stuff listed above.

Look at those top 10 results again.

How can it be that 6 pages with PR 0 rank in the top 10 for a competitive term?

Also, how can it be that some of those PR 0 pages don't have PR, yet they do have backlinks? Look at position 10. PR 0 yet 11 backlinks reported by Google. Go look at those backlinks and they all have PR 0 as well. So is Google now reporting backlinks from pages that are PR 0?

It all seems very weird, yet I believe the answer to this is very simple. Google has not updated the Google Toolbar for some time, yet in its own database, PR is largely up to date. This means that pages that appear to have a PR 0 may in fact have much higher PR.

From a webmasters point of view, this is a real pain. Imagine putting up a site, adding a page to get some link partners, but not getting any PR on the links page for several months. You contact other webmasters for a link exchange, but the other webmasters ignore your request because you are PR 0!

Could it be that Google have decided to update the Google Toolbar far less frequently, or not at all, so that webmasters cannot find out the true PR of pages in the index?

If so, why would they do this?

Google use to show only backlinks from pages with PR 4 or more, yet now appear to show backlinks from pages with much less PR, even PR 0. Does this mean that Google have changed their policy on which pages they show as backlinks?

Possibly, though doesn't it make more sense that Google still only shows PR 4 pages as backlinks, but since PR on the toolbar has not been updated, we see these backlinks as significantly less PR than they actually are?

For any search engine to return the most relevant results possible, those engines must try to stop webmasters using techniques that get their web pages better rankings. For Google, this includes manipulating PR.

Google state this clearly in their Program Policies for use for Adsense advertising.

Read through the section "Site Content" and look at the last point in the bullet list. Google specifically mentions PR manipulation. If Google is applying these rules to Adsense advertising, does it not make sense that they also apply these rules in their algorithms?

If Google is trying to:

a) prevent reverse engineering of its algorithm, and

b) prevent webmasters from using techniques that might get a webpage ranked higher than it deserves based on its content,

Then surely, not updating the PR on the toolbar is a good thing for Google.

In doing so, it makes it very difficult:

a) for webmasters to find out why top ranking pages rank so well, and

b) for webmasters to get links from other webmasters (which is a way of manipulating PR and increasing rankings).

I know Google want to make their engine the best it possibly can be, and they should be applauded for that. It makes it easier for searchers to find things of relevance. I believe that the whole idea of Pagerank was based on the premise that quality sites would get links from other sites because of their quality, not because of artificial linking like link exchanges. Link exchanges have just gotten out of hand and made a mockery of the Pagerank idea.

So what can you do about it? Well, my suggestion is the same as always. Add quality content to your sites. Other sites will naturally link to yours because your site offers value to THEIR visitors. In addition, write some quality articles and submit them with your own resource box that links back to your site. Submit these to sites that reprint articles, and you will naturally grow your own backlinks and PR through quality content. Your rankings will improve, and Google should love your site for the value it adds to the internet.

How To Appear On The First Page Of Google Search Results - By: Evan Mangan

2007-02-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

Once you create a website for your business, you quickly figure out that people are not flocking to it. When you assess the different ways of driving traffic, your options include advertising your website address, promoting your website address through Public Relations and gaining media coverage, encouraging other sites to link to you and getting placed in online directories.

However, these marketing activities will deliver small and sporadic volumes of traffic. The single biggest thing you can do to drive traffic is search engine marketing. Here is why: it is estimated that 80% of traffic to most websites comes from search engines. There are roughly 500 million searches performed everyday and 88% of that traffic comes from the top 4-5 search engines, Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Of these, Google is by far the largest. Approximately 90% of people searching do not go past the third page of results and few go beyond the first page.

Therefore, if you want to drive traffic to your site it is imperative that you get onto the first three pages of Google and the other top search engines. Surprisingly, the majority of small businesses have not figured this out yet and for those who have, the majority are asking the question, How can I get my site to appear on the first page of Google search results?

Different Options

There are two main methods of appearing on the first page of search results.

Paid for results or Pay Per click (PPC)
This is where you pay to appear in the sponsored links section of the results page. In Google, this is at the top of the page and the right hand side. You decide which search keywords e.g. London restaurant, you would like to appear in. You appear in the search results and you pay for every user who clicks through to your site. The cost will vary by keyword and can range from 10p to several pounds or dollars per click, depending on how many other companies are bidding for that keyword.

Natural results achieved through SEO
Natural results are when you appear in the main list of results. You do not pay to appear or when a user clicks on your link. However, to appear on the first three pages of results, you need to implement a number of design and content changes to your website, which are termed Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.

Which is best?
Both have their merits, but natural results are by far the most preferable because once you have invested in SEO, you do not have to pay for the traffic that is generated.

PPC is a great solution if you:
Have just launched your website and you need immediate presence on the first page of result or if you have not yet successfully optimised your site to appear on the first page. Remember, there are thousands of websites all looking to appear on the first page of search results for certain keywords.

Spiders and Links: The Basics of How Search Engines Work

Without getting bogged down in the technical details of how search engines work, here are a few basics that you should be aware of.

Search engines want to ensure that the most relevant sites are displayed to customers who are searching for keywords e.g. London restaurants.

Each page is ranked by the search engine on different criteria.

Each search engine uses different criteria when calculating the ranking of the site, but there are some commonalities such as:
Automated Spiders are sent by the search engine to index each page on your site. These spiders log the content of your site. This allows the search engine to know whether the key words that a user is searching for appear within your site and on specific web pages. However, in addition, the search engines have decided that it is not sufficient to simply have the keywords appear in the site. They believe that the most useful and relevant sites for the person who is searching are those which have a lot of other relevant sites linking to it.

The important points you should take out are:
You want to make it as easy as possible for the spiders to visit and index your site.
You need to have relevant keywords on your site that are easily found by the spiders.
You need to have many other sites linking to your site.

Four Components of SEO

In order to optimise your website to appear in natural search results, there are four components that you will need to address.

1. Design: What to do when designing your website

Many small businesses make the mistake of designing their website and then start thinking about driving traffic to it. The problem is that the way you design your site can result in your site being ignored by the search engine spiders, which means you will receive very little traffic. When designing your site, ensure you avoid the following pitfalls and ask your marketing agency to confirm that they have been avoided.

Avoid flash sites
Sites are designed in HTML or flash codes. The spiders that are sent to your site by the search engines cannot read flash.

No frames
Some agencies design sites within frames. For example, the menu on the left might be within a frame and the main body of the page within another frame. It makes designing the site easier as the only thing that changes from page to page is the content within the frame. However, spiders cannot read what is inside a frame so you will not get indexed and noticed by search engines.

No dynamic pages
Some sites are developed with a database which generates dynamic pages. You can tell if there are dynamic pages on your site if there is a ? within the page URL. Again, most but not all of the search engines can read dynamic pages.

Text within graphics
To ensure text is read uniformly by different browsers, design agencies often put text within a graphic. It looks great, however, a spider cannot read what text is in a graphic and simply moves on.

Keywords
At design stage, think about the keywords you want to be found by on search engines and incorporate that into your design. For example, if you were to design your site so that a page was allocated to the most popular keywords, it would be easier to include more keywords on the page which would be found by the spiders.

2. Content: What to do when developing your content

Keywords

Choosing the keywords that you want to appear in search results for is one of the most important things you can do. Think of it as planning the location for a physical shop. Choosing keywords that people search for a lot (i.e. generates a lot of potential traffic) and then ensuring that those keyword are peppered around your site (i.e. more chance that the spiders will index them giving you a good chance of appearing high in search results) could result in your being positioned on Oxford street as opposed to a back alley.

Invest time in choosing the keywords. Think about how you would search for your product or service. If you are running a restaurant, you should immediately think beyond the generic search keyword of restaurant and consider descriptive keywords such as seafood restaurant or family restaurant. You also need to think of target keywords, so consider London restaurant or London seafood restaurant.

Once you have decided on your keywords, you need to place them throughout your site. The main areas are:

Web page title
This is what you see written in the title bar of the browser. It is also what you see when you bookmark a page. This should explain what the purpose of your site or your page is and include keywords, but always in such a way that makes sense to a user who reads it.

Meta tags
The tags are not visible to users but they explain what the content of the page is. Keywords should be placed in here as they are easily searchable by spiders.

Homepage content
Your homepage is searched by the spiders and you should ensure that your keywords appear near the top header. They should also be sprinkled throughout the homepage. See keyword density for guidance on this.

Keyword density
A question often asked is how many times your keywords should appear on a page. The guidance for SEO is that each page should have a minimum of 250 words; your keywords should account for 2 - 8% of the word on the page. That means they should appear between 4 and 16 times.

Two important points to bear in mind are:
1. You need to balance the need to write your copy for your users, in order to sell your product, and the need to write your copy for search engines, in order to be found.
2. To help you achieve both objectives you should focus on a couple of keywords for each page rather than a large number.

3. Links

Inbound links are key
To combat a lot of sites achieving high page ranking by simply stuffing their sites with keywords, the search engines have placed a higher weighting on the value of the number of sites which link into a site. The rationale is that if a site is linked to by lots of other sites, then it must be offering popular and relevant content.

Therefore, your site might be designed in a way that is easily searchable by spiders and your content might be sprinkled with keywords, but you need to have other sites linking to you in order to achieve success.

Audit your links
Ensure you know how many other websites are linking into your site and set a goal for increasing that figure. You should have at least 100 quality links.

How to get links
There are many creative ways to generate links to your site:
Ask friends, customers or suppliers to link to your site.
Post comments on forums or discussion groups with a link back to our site.
Register your site with sites such as stumbleupon and if users like your site, they will bookmark it, creating a link to your site.
Issue an online press release which should result in online media coverage and links back to your site.
Register your site with multiple directories.

4. Maintenance:

Once you achieve a high ranking in the search engines, it is important to realise that you need to maintain your ranking. The criteria the search engines use in the algorithms constantly change and what works today may not work next week. Your site will need to be tweaked to bring you back up the rankings

Reciprocal Link Strategy

2007-01-30T13:55:00.000-08:00

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory.

One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website. This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings.

Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are:

1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
2. Link partners must relate to your site content
3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible

Reciprocal linking helps in two ways:

1. They increase your web site traffic, from people who click on the links.
2. Reciprocal links also play a major role in boosting your rankings in
search engines.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

· Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
· Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
· Don't send automated queries to Google.
· Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
· Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
· Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
· Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
· If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.
· Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Ways on gathering sites for link Exchange

One way to find link partners is to do searches in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN! To find sites which complement yours but are not direct competitors.

You can also find sites to link exchange by searching for the following phrases in the search engine:

"Submit a URL" +"your keyword(s)"
"Submit an URL" +"your keyword(s)"
"Submit Website" +"your keyword(s)"
"Submit a website" +"your keyword(s)"
"Submit your website" +"your keywords(s)"
"Suggest link" +"your keyword(s)"
"Suggest a link" +"your keyword(s)"
"Suggest site" + "your keyword(s)"
"Suggest a site" + "your keyword(s)"
"Suggest URL" +"your keyword(s)"
"Suggest a URL" +"your keyword(s)"
"Suggest an URL" +"your keyword(s)"
"Suggest Website" +"your keyword(s)"

NOTE: Must include the quotation mark to ensure the search engine only return pages with the exact search phrases you enter. Also try to replace "Submit a URL" with any of the following search phrases: Add site, add link, add a link, submit URL, submit site, submit link, link exchange or visit the site http://www.inboundlinker.com/.

This hustle free strategy will help you to get the link forms automatically base on the given keyword.

Guidelines:

In link building campaigns, the golden rule must strictly follow:

§ Always stay out of bad neighborhoods.
§ Obtain links exclusively from relevant sites.
§ Stay out of FFA (Free for All).
§ Don’t join external link exchange programs or link farms.
§ Don’t send a "blanket" email to hundreds of sites asking for a link.
§ Don’t consider links with redirect.
§ Obtain links from pages with specific pagerank as discussed with the client.
§ Only gain links over an extended period of time, so that you don’t get a sudden increase in the number of links to a page.

At Internet Advantage must follow a well-established methodology based on a full understanding of your needs and requirements of client. It is very important that the staff responsible for the link campaign is familiar with their website, their competitors, the market they are aiming at and their core business in order to work efficiently and achieve the most valuable links. However, the best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features providing real value to your visitors. People will discover your website.

One-Way Linking Process

2007-01-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

There are some ways to get one-way links. There are thousand of sites for any categories of site have. All you have to do is to follow your competitor’s link backs and then approach relevant ones for link request. How you'll find link backs list of your competitors? It’s very simple just use linkdomain: www.yourcompetitorurl.com in yahoo search to find link backs of that site. Then sort a relevant to your site and then make an email request. You should know here that one-way links are many times more effective than reciprocal link building.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

· Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
· Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
· Don't send automated queries to Google.
· Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
· Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
· Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
· Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter"
approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
· If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.
· Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Ways to get one-way links

· Create a useful, interesting web site so that other sites will naturally link to it.
· Submit your site to major directories, such as Yahoo! and DMOZ.org, in the appropriate
category.
· Write articles and submit them to newsletters, which are then archived online.
· Submit brief, useful hints to newsletters for the same reason.
· Submit articles to article directories.
· Publish articles on your site and invite other sites to publish them on their sites, with a
link to you.
· Write testimonials
· Participate helpfully in forums that allow a text link to your site in a signature.
· Buy ads in newsletters on your topic that are archived online.
· Locate industry-specific directories and submit your site to them.
· Create simple web-based free software
· Create downloadable software, which contains links to your site.
· Get listed in business directories.
· Create a blog and get it listed in blog directories.
· Join business associations, which list their members' sites online.
· Submit your downloadable software to software directories, such as
· ownload.com
· Use PHP rather than JavaScript to ensure search engines parse your headings and links.

Method:

Search engines are getting smart. Reciprocal links are important still, but they don’t get as much points as one-way links anymore. How do you build these one-way links? SEO experts often say, “have great content, great tools, people will link to you automatically.” This sounds a lot easier said than done. Other people will say something like “write great articles and publish them.” Yes, it is a great way to get incoming links and get people to know about your site; however, there are only a few reputable sites.

These are the strategies that can get you one-way links legitimately. It has been used by many webmasters effectively already.

This entry will talk about the two ways One Way Link Strategy

1. Create one more site with a different web hosting company. This site called “the helper site”.
2. Build 100+ reciprocal links to the helper site.
3. Before you start your linking, do the deep linking first to easily crawl your link page of your
helper site.
4. Now you are ready for one-way link exchange. What you do is gather a list of site you want
to submit links to.
5. Create links to all the A Sites on your “helper site”.
6. Now, write emails to all the webmasters on “A sites” (one email at a time), letting them know
that you like their sites and want to do a 3 way link exchange. Tell them that you have put
their link at your “helper site”, and ask them if they can link back to your main site. Reverse
the email and email all the webmasters on “B sites”.
7. Now you have seen clearly how to build one-way links to both of your sites. Here is some of
my notes about this strategy:
· Never link from the main site to the helper site
· This strategy works better if helper site has a PR3+ rating already.
· The success rate is around 20% depend on how well done your helper site is. If your
helper site looks like a link farm, then you won’t get the links.
· Use gimmicks. [Ex: sound play with a mouse over.]

Other techniques to getting One-way links:

Visiting competitors site
A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors' sites and the sites you'll find there are potential reciprocal links partners.

Fulfilled links
A strategy, which you can assure that the site you contacted, is proven and tested to our previous client’s.

Blog Posting
Make a blogs comment on same industry blogs. Try to visit http://www.technorati.com/ to search related blogs.

Directory Submission
Submit on related directories to archive immediately.

3-way linking
Make an alternative ways such as 3-way linking and buying links for prior posting.

About the Author

Ryan Yatol. Link Specialist of several sites around the internet. Looking to get TOP on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL etc.

Secrets of Getting Links

2007-01-30T13:29:00.000-08:00

Obviously, you want to increase your site's relevancy, right? Good. That's the goal here: to make sure you start building the right kind of links for your site in order to improve your search-engine results.

To this day, the best way to build links is still doing it by hand. Here are the steps you should follow when building links:

1.Set a goal

Link building takes a lot of time, but it is very effective and easy to do, so you want to keep at it. Set a goal for the number of links you want as a way to stay motivated through the process.

Depending on the sites you ask and your approach, your results will vary. But a general rule of thumb is to set your linking goal at four-to-six times higher than the number of links you actually want to receive. You need to set your goal higher because most sites will not want to trade links, for various reasons.

2.Make sure your site is worth a link

This means your site must offer something of value to entice other sites to link to yours.

If all your site does is sell products or services, you need to get busy creating some additional linkable content. Examples of linkable content include how-to articles, product reviews, tools, tips and so on. Creating content can be tough, but if you don't have some on your site already, you've got to do it. Adding linkable content not only will encourage others to link to your site, but it will improve the overall quality of your site for your visitors.

Make it easy on yourself by writing about something you know that relates to your site. This column is a perfect example. It teaches without trying to sell something. The best part of creating linkable content is that if you do it well enough, you will find that people will link to your site without you even asking, and that's the easiest way to build links.

You're not a writer? You can always add free tools or free downloads. Also, consider creating a links page prior to requesting a link trade with a site. You can usually expect a better reception from a potential link partner if they can see where you will place the link to their site.

3.Determine the type of sites you want to trade links with

This takes some thought. You need to figure out all of the different types of sites that could potentially trade links with you. Focus on sites that are related to your target market.

Here's a good example:

I worked on a site related on finance, so I approached sites that related on my industry such as credit, loan, stock exchange and marketing etc.. Once we accumulated links from those sites, we then developed a section of our site on finance and asked for links from all of the sites we could find that addressed finance. In the end, we significantly increased the number of links to our site from other sites in our target market. Plus, we added about 10 additional pages of content to our site that our visitors enjoyed and we continue to link to. This helps significantly in search-engine placements.

4.Get equipped to evaluate your link partners

To make the most of your efforts, you don't want to spend too much time going after links from sites that the search engines don't think are valuable. While it isn't perfect, the Google Toolbar can help you decide which sites are quality link partners and which aren't. The toolbar integrates with your Web browser. It helps you by displaying the "page rank" of each site you visit. Put simply, page rank is a rough indicator of what Google thinks of a site. You can rest assured that if Google thinks it is a good site, it probably is. The higher a page ranks the better. One strategy is to try to link up with sites that have pages ranked as high as or higher than your own.

5.Locate quality link partners

There are many ways to find link partners, but the easiest way to find quality link partners quickly is to start at Open Directory and Yahoo!. Open Directory and Yahoo! are good places to start for three reasons:

These directories are both so difficult to get listed in that each potential link partner you find there is likely to be of a higher quality than those you would find elsewhere.

Yahoo! and Open Directory greatly boost a site's link popularity when they list a site. Your site will receive a little bit of that boost each time someone from one of those directories links to you.

The links you build don't help your link popularity in the search engines unless the engines know about the link. The search engines crawl the sites listed in Yahoo! and Open Directory on a regular basis, so by starting your linking campaign here you can be sure the search engines will find you new links quickly.

To find partners, simply start searching for terms that are related to the types of link partners you decided are best (step No. 3 above). While surfing your potential partner's Web site, keep your eye on their page rank (step No. 4).

The Importance of Deep Link

2006-12-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

Deep linking is as important a consideration as back linking! It does not matter which page visitors use to enter our websites. If they like what they read on our internal pages, they are more likely to view other pages on our websites. If they view other pages on our website, they are likely to find our homepage, and we will get a chance to tell them why they should buy our products or services.

Deep links to our website help to ensure that the search engines will have good cause to show our internal webpages as well as our homepage. For every page in our website that gets great SERP, our chances of getting a sale are increased significantly.

We have 15 pages on our website, eight of which provide real content to our prospective clients. All eight of these pages have a significant number of back links pointing to them. 48% of our visitors land on our home page. 37% of our visitors land on our internal pages. As a result, 85% of our traffíc lands on our website as a result of our back links, either directly or through our natural search placement in the search engines. The remaining 15% arrive on our website through bookmarks, personal referrals, and paid listings.

What Are Deep Links?

Deep links are links that go to specific pages within your website. For example, let's say that you have a home improvement website that has a large number of pages and articles on it telling people how to do projects. If all of your back links are pointing only to your home page and you have none pointing to specific article pages, then you are not getting the full benefit of your linking activities.

Think about it this way, if I go to your website and find a piece of information that I find particularly helpful or interesting and I want to tell other people about it, how will I do it? When I tell all my friends on my blog about this great page of yours, am I going to link to your home page? No, I am going to copy and paste the actual webpage address out of my browser, into my blog. That is deep linking and what is considered to be natural linking by the search engines.

What Are Natural Links?

Natural links are those links that are created by people other than the website's marketing team. Suppose I posted a link in my own blog that said that the "most easily understood tutorial, I have read, for creating a php-xml parser" was: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0 , and I put my quoted text into the link. That is a natural link, because I created the link with no prompting from the management at SitePoint.com.

Difficulties In Creating Deep Links

There are a few problems that you will run into when trying to create deep links to your site. One problem is that if you ask a Webmaster of another site to link to you, they will most likely just link to your home page. When you submit to directories, the vast majority of them will only allow you a link to your home page, not a deep link. Even if they do allow you to submit a deep link, they will not allow you to submit 10 deep links.

Success Tips For Creating Deep Links

Deep linking is quite a bit easier when utilizing free reprint articles as a part of your link building campaign. This is because you can put whatever link you want to put in the "About The Author" box. The About The Author box is required to stay intact in all websites that are using your article. If you intend on writing a large number of articles to promote your domain, then you will want to optimize your results by putting a different deep link into the About The Author box for each of the articles that you write.

Another method of doing this is free and easy, but requires a bit of time. Take keywords in each page of the text on your website and make a hyperlink on that word or phrase to another page on your site. This is very easily done if you know how to do basic HTML. The ultimate goal here is to have every page of your website linked to, at least once, by another page on your site. You will want to spread these out among your domain's webpages, instead of having just a couple of pages linking to the other 50 pages.

Four SEO Firefox Extensions: Optimize your Website!

2006-12-13T07:27:00.000-08:00

Successful Search Engine optimization (SEO) often requires knowledge about how a particular website is performing within the context of search engine algorithms and rankings. In terms of earning money online, SEO is important because it increases the total quality and number of visitors from Search Engines by improving the position of a site's listing on specific search engine results page (SERP). More web traffic equals to more definite ad views, possible ad clicks as well as affiliate or product sales.

For bloggers or webmasters who run their own SEO campaigns, SEO toolbars can be very helpful in determining the value of link exchanges as well as other important factors such as keyword density and backlink popularity. Here's a short list of the four must-have SEO extensions for the Firefox browser.

Firefox you say? Don't you have anything for us Internet Explorer faithfuls? Aye, we do. Of the four extensions below, note that RankQuest and SearchStatus are available for both Firefox and IE fans. However, if you ever get the urge to try the very awesome and sexy Firefox browser, click on the button below to get more info and to install it for free.

SEOpen - Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar.

Screenshot:

I've tried SEOpen for a while and I especially like the right-click option to access the SE tools. It even includes an option to translate webpages into English via Google's translater. It's basically got all the basic elements an SEO enthusiast would need and the toolbar is really, really skinny and space-saving.

SearchStatus - Display the Google PageRank and Alexa popularity score anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other seo tools.

See screenshot:

For every site you visit using, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy. The SearchStatus Mozilla/Mozilla Firefox extension appears unobtrusively at the bottom of the browser on the status bar.

I have Search Status installed and particularly adore the nofollow and keyword highlighting options. It's pretty clean and does not require an extra toolbar on your browser. You can insert it into the status, menu or even the navbar. Available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

SEO Quake - Quick view of site parameters in the Search Engine Results Pages "SERP"(Google, Yahoo, MSN, Yandex, Rambler are supported). Some IP and domain tools are included.

And

SEObar indicate some SE-dependent parameters.

Gives you a quick view of the site parameters in the Search Engine Result Pages for Google, Yahoo and MSN. How does it work? It builds itself into your search results, allowing you to view a large number of SE parameters, which include information that ranges from PageRank and Dmoz listing to the Technorati index.

Rankquest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar - Provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

I think RankQuest is one of the toolbars that offers the greatest range of SEO tools. Not only including the usual link checkers, RankQuest also allows you to generate adwords, remove duplicate keywords and generate site maps. Very useful addition to the SearchStatus. Available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Screenshot:

There you have ... all the mystial SEO tools at your disposal for web domination!

Thousands of Reciprocal Links & Getting Nowhere in Google - by Aaron Wall

2006-12-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

SEO Question: I have traded hundreds (maybe thousands) of links. I am ranking great on MSN, but am nowhere on Google. What gives?

SEO Answer: Your site is associated with sites of similar link profiles. If most of your inbound links and/or outbound links are of low quality that may preclude your ability to rank. As your reinforce the identity of your site as being associated with low quality sites you are digging a bigger and bigger hole.

Your site may stay in the search index but just have it's rankings suppressed for your targeted keywords. The reasons search engines may want to leave sites in the index that are using ineffective search spamming methods are:

* maybe they will keep focusing on the outdated methods
* no reason to make it easier than necessary to reverse engineer exactly how to spam (even Matt Cutts pushes this line of thinking when describing how and when Google chooses to contact some websites that were removed for spamming)
* anything that blurs the line to what is effective outside of what Google really wants you to do is a plus for their relevancy

Sometimes you will see an older site that heavily relied upon reciprocal linking ranking well and think that you can just duplicate their link profiles, but typically it is not that easy. Largely because:

* when search was less sophisticated and there was less content on the web it was much easier to get quality links
* they probably have a few decent quality links you will not be able to get
* they likely built their link profiles over time, during a time when search was less sophisticated
* their domain might be trusted more (and thus given higher authority and more leniency for algorithmic infractions) because of its age

Recently I pulled the reciprocal links page off a friend's domain and got them about a half dozen average to decent quality links. Their site went from nowhere in Google's search results to the top 30 for their core term in a month. And I still haven't even built any linkage from sites I would consider core trusted seed sites or sites that are extreme topical authorities (in other words, in a few months they are probably going to be doing far better).

Algorithms will continue to advance, and what happened at one point in time, in one engine, with one site, is probably not enough to call it a representative sample. But if you think of search from the eyes of a search engineer, how hard could it be to detect mass reciprocal linking? What website content quality is typically associated with sites sharing that footprint?

Consider the math as well. Time is worth money. And my friend was paying $500 a month for a large scale reciprocal linking campaign. All they needed to do was stop doing that and get about a dozen reasonable links and they were suddenly a market player.

I often get asked about optimizing reciprocal linking methods, but unless they are associated with real social relationships that pull you into your topical clique I generally think they are not worth the effort and have a poor risk to reward ratio, at least if you are intent on building a long-term brand, and want to rank well in Google.

See your site through Google's eyes

2006-11-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

Seriously, this is the CSI episode for SEO. When it comes time to SEO your real estate blog or website, you need to stop looking at your site with human eyes and start looking at it with search engines eyes. Because, while your page might look great to you- all those pretty pictures and Flash animations stimulating your cerebral cortex, a search engine only sees the text. That’s right, search engines are text driven, all that fluff your designer spent hours toiling away at on her Mac is completely invisible to your favorite search engine.

As rapidly as technology advances, search engines are far from an intelligent technology capable of appreciating the beauty of a cool design or hearing the sounds and recognizing movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the Web, looking at particular site items, predominately text, to get an idea of what a site is about.

Tool: iwebtool’s spider view shows you your real estate blog or website how a search engine sees it.

Forensic accounting: 7 items a search engine can’t see

1. Images (always provide “alt” tags for images, they get rid of validation errors
and provide search engines with searchable text)
2. Flash movies
3. JavaScript
4. Frames
5. Password-protected pages
6. Directories
7. Audio/Video files (A notable exception to this rule are podcasts and vodcasts
which carry searchable text making them search engine friendly media types)

Read also: Optimizing your Flash site

Author: Mary McKnight

White Hat SEO Vs Black Hat SEO -Posted by webmaster under Search Engine Positioning

2006-11-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

White Hat SEO Vs Black Hat SEO

There are a lot of search engine all over the internet. If you do a little research about search engines than we come to know that there are 3 major search engines on the internet and we are very familiar with them. On the internet every person uses these search engines for different kind of searches.

1. Google 2. Yahoo 3. MSN

Every online business wants their self at the top of these top3. There is a king who is leading the market of search engines that is Google. So the majority of people on the internet use Google to find their desired service and information. All the search engines have their own algorithms the methods that evaluate the importance of a website. They also have given the guideline and criteria of a quality website. Everybody has to optimize their website according to the guideline. There are two kinds of people in SEO. One is that who follows the rules and regulation give by the search engines and the other is that who don’t follow them. Am talking about the two techniques

1. White hat SEO 2. Black hat SEO

These techniques are very important to know because all your success based on them. Here the most important thing to choose is that what technique you are going to use. If you going to cheat the search engine just for getting the top results that means you are going to use the Black Hat SEO technique, if you think that you’ll follow the roles of search engines and will make the website for humans. That means you are going to use White SEO technique. This is very important to know the distinguish between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO.

White hat SEO:

As the name shows itself that an ethical way of SEO (search engine optimization) is called White hat SEO. The entire guide lined given by all search engines on their guideline page. There you can read all the requirements that a search engine wants in your website. Search engines don’t want that anyone who break their rules with the unethical techniques. As they want to give the best results to the person who is looking for an information. Search engine says that make pages for humans neither for search engines. Here I want to show you the some original guidelines quotes given by the major search engines that will make you easy to learn white hat SEO.

All search engines webmaster’s guidelines are about White Hat SEO

Google’s Guidelines:

Quality guidelines - basic principles

* Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.” * Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” * Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links. * Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links. * Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. * Don’t send automated queries to Google. * Don’t load pages with irrelevant words. * Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. * Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware. * Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. * If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

You can read the complete Google’s webmaster guideline at the link given below Reference page: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Yahoo’s Guidelines

* Original and unique content of genuine value * Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary

What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted

* Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results * Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page * Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages * Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames * Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value * Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking * The use of text that is hidden from the user * Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees * Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity * Pages built primarily for the search engines * Misuse of competitor names * Multiple sites offering the same content * Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation * Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

You can read the complete yahoo’s webmaster guidelines at the link given below Reference page: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html

MSN’s Guidelines:

* Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages. Ensure that all tags are closed, and that all links function properly. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively, and people may not be able to reach all of your pages.

* In the visible page text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your site.

* Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page’s keyword density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view. * Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are visible to users. * Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page, such as link farms.

You can read the complete MSN’s webmaster guidelines at the link given below Reference page: http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER

Black hat SEO:

Those people who use black hat SEO techniques they feel search engine as an enemy. They don’t follow their guidelines and use all the unethical ways to achieve the top ranking. They know that their success will not for long time.

Here are some black SEO techniques

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are also called entry pages, jump pages and gateway pages etc. these pages are full of keywords made for the search engine to have high rankings. These don’t give any information to the humans on these pages usually the phrase written “Enter”. As far as search engines are concern they don’t like doorway pages at all. Well you can have these keywords by their proper placement in the content and also in title and Meta tags.

Link Farms

The strategy is all about creating sites for ranking purpose. So they can get more back links which will help them in SERPs. These sites don’t have any purpose. Search engines don’t like this as all. Have multiple domain linking to your main websites is good but have the same content or not useful information isn’t good at all according to Google.

Identical Content

Don’t use identical content within your sites. Copied content won’t work on search engine. Never make your content by just copying the other websites material. King Search engine Google banned the sites using this strategy.

Clocking:

Cloaking is a method that allows you to show different pages for human and different ones for search engines. That is also not an ethical way of SEO as major search don’t like these methods. People also use to hide their strategies from SEO firms. The reason is that they actually miss leading the search engine as well as they miss leading the people as well. Search engine can’t reach the actual page Meta tags. Therefore they usually banned these sites.

Hidden Text:

This strategy is also for adding extra keywords within the website. For that purpose they hide those keywords by coloring them. People can’t see that words but search engine do. When they come to know they kick out the website.

Automated software:

Don’t use any automated software for the promotion purpose. They don’t really work and sometime they caused for banned a website. Don’t relay on them.

Gray hat SEO:

Use of black Hat SEO to achieve the white hat SEO results this term is called Grey hat SEO. Black hat SEO is wrong but not that wrong. They online get wrong when we miss use it. Like clocking not well but If we do the proper use and after clocking the page the people get the exact information what they are looking for. That’s only about the negative minded people who feel the search engines as their enemy and use the right techniques in wrong way.

Conclusion:

The people who are using the Black Hat SEO they actually are not only cheating with search engines they are also making people fool to show them that they are on the top and we can take your sites at top of every search engine guaranteed. Here I want to mention that no search engine refer anybody who offers guaranteed top ranking because nobody can give you that without following the roles and regulations. It might be possible but not for the long time for very short you can have. What will happen next your website will go into the darkness? They won’t inform you. There are no searches for you in the search engine. You’ll loss the 60- 80 % traffic. Now you can’t claim to any person or search engine. Your query to search engine will be delete as spam. This plenty will be a great financially loss for you. Search Engine Marketing Rankingtown.com will make you the Top search engines with high rankings

Google Makes SEO List, Checks It Twice - By Jason Lee Miller

2006-10-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

If you're good this year, SEOers, Google will make sure there are no major changes to how websites are ranked, as the company has done in previous years, just before the Christmas holidays. But if you're bad, expect to be put in SEO Time Out by being busted 30 ranks.

Webmasters have often complained in the past that Google has updated its algorithm just before Christmas, knocking the mom-and-pop stores off the map for a while.

According to Matt Cutts, who's not making any promises, all should remain as it has been:

I know that webmasters are especially sensitive to quality/webspam/ranking changes in Q4 because of the holiday season.

If we've got something that evaluates well and that we think will improve quality, we can't just pause for 1/4th of the year, but if anything big launches I'll try to be available to answer questions and help get a handle on any changes.

(Right now I'm not expecting radical changes in webspam ranking, but I know better than to make a promise.)

However, if your site suddenly drops in rank by 30 places, then that's the equivalent of a lump of coal. In what the forums are calling the "place 31 phenomenon," it appears that Google is dropping sites by 30 spots for 30 days as a penalty for breaking the rules.

The speculation is that a sudden burst of links, or other SEO tactics on the black side of the hat, will put a webmaster in the penalty box until he or she fixes it.

Domain names and Filenames

2006-08-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

To a spider,
www.domain.com/, domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html and domain.com/index.html are different urls and, therefore, different pages. Surfers arrive at the site's home page whichever of the urls are used, but spiders see them as individual urls, and it makes a difference when working out the PageRank. It is better to standardize the url you use for the site's home page. Otherwise each url can end up with a different PageRank, whereas all of it should have gone to just one url.

If you think about it, how can a spider know the filename of the page that it gets back when requesting
www.domain.com/ ? It can't. The filename could be index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.html, etc. The spider doesn't know. If you link to index.html within the site, the spider could compare the 2 pages but that seems unlikely. So they are 2 urls and each receives PageRank from inbound links. Standardizing the home page's url ensures that the Pagerank it is due isn't shared with ghost urls.

Example: Go to
UK Holidays and UK Holiday Accommodation site - how's that for a nice piece of link text ;). Notice that the url in the browser's address bar contains "www.". If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you will see that the page has PR5. Now remove the "www." part of the url and get the page again. This time it has PR1, and yet they are the same page. Actually, the PageRank is for the unseen frameset page.

When this article was first written, the non-www URL had PR4 due to using different versions of the link URLs within the site. It had the effect of sharing the page's PageRank between the 2 pages (the 2 versions) and, therefore, between the 2 sites. That's not the best way to do it. Since then, I've tidied up the internal linkages and got the non-www version down to PR1 so that the PageRank within the site mostly stays in the "www." version, but there must be a site somewhere that links to it without the "www." that's causing the PR1.

Imagine the page, www.domain.com/index.html. The index page contains links to several relative urls; e.g. products.html and details.html. The spider sees those urls as www.domain.com/products.html and www.domain.com/details.html. Now let's add an absolute url for another page, only this time we'll leave out the "www." part - domain.com/anotherpage.html. This page links back to the index.html page, so the spider sees the index pages as domain.com/index.html. Although it's the same index page as the first one, to a spider, it is a different page because it's on a different domain. Now look what happens. Each of the relative urls on the index page is also different because it belongs to the domain.com/ domain. Consequently, the link stucture is wasting a site's potential PageRank by spreading it between ghost pages.

How much PageRank do we need to move up?

2006-08-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the details. Why the values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actual PageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So the total PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web * 1, which equals a lot of PageRank spread around the web.

The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn't believed to be a PageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts - each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page's PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.

Whether or not the overall range is divided into 10 equal parts is a matter for debate - Google aren't saying. But because it is much harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end than it is at the lower end, many people (including me) believe that the divisions are based on a logarithmic scale, or something very similar, rather than the equal divisions of a linear scale.

Let's assume that it is a logarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages to move a site's important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages to move it up another point, 1000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to the next, and so on. That's why moving up at the lower end is much easier that at the higher end.

In reality, the base is unlikely to be 10. Some people think it is around the 5 or 6 mark, and maybe even less. Even so, it still gets progressively harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end of the scale.

Note that as the number of pages on the web increases, so does the total PageRank on the web, and as the total PageRank increases, the positions of the divisions in the overall scale must change. As a result, some pages drop a toolbar point for no 'apparent' reason. If the page's actual PageRank was only just above a division in the scale, the addition of new pages to the web would cause the division to move up slightly and the page would end up just below the division. Google's index is always increasing and they re-evaluate each of the pages on more or less a monthly basis. It's known as the "Google dance". When the dance is over, some pages will have dropped a toolbar point. A number of new pages might be all that is needed to get the point back after the next dance.

The toolbar value is a good indicator of a page's PageRank but it only indicates that a page is in a certain range of the overall scale. One PR5 page could be just above the PR5 division and another PR5 page could be just below the PR6 division - almost a whole division (toolbar point) between them.

Outbound links PageRank Calculation

2006-08-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Outbound links are a drain on a site's total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.

When PageRank leaks from a site via a link to another site, all the pages in the internal link structure are affected. (This doesn't always show after just 1 iteration). The page that you link out from makes a difference to which pages suffer the most loss. Without a program to perform the calculations on specific link structures, it is difficult to decide on the right page to link out from, but the generalization is to link from the one with the lowest PageRank.

Many websites need to contain some outbound links that are nothing to do with PageRank. Unfortunately, all 'normal' outbound links leak PageRank. But there are 'abnormal' ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. PageRank is leaked when Google recognizes a link to another site. The answer is to use links that Google doesn't recognize or count. These include form actions and links contained in javascript code.

Form actions
A form's 'action' attribute does not need to be the url of a form parsing script. It can point to any html page on any site. Try it.

Example:
form_name="myform" action="http://www.domain.com/somepage.html">
a href="javascript:document.myform.submit()">Click here (/a>

To be really sneaky, the action attribute could be in some javascript code rather than in the form tag, and the javascript code could be loaded from a 'js' file stored in a directory that is barred to Google's spider by the robots.txt file.

Javascript
Example:
a href="javascript:goto('wherever')">Click here (/a>

Like the form action, it is sneaky to load the javascript code, which contains the urls, from a seperate 'js' file, and sneakier still if the file is stored in a directory that is barred to googlebot by the robots.txt file.

The "rel" attribute
As of 18th January 2005, Google, together with other search engines, is recognising a new attribute to the anchor tag. The attribute is "rel", and it is used as follows:-

a href="http://www.domain.com/somepage.html" rel="nofollow">link text (/a>

The attribute tells Google to ignore the link completely. The link won't help the target page's PageRank, and it won't help its rankings. It is as though the link doesn't exist. With this attribute, there is no longer any need for javascript, forms, or any other method of hiding links from Google.

Inbound links PageRank Calculation

2006-08-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

Inbound links (links into the site from the outside) are one way to increase a site's total PageRank. The other is to add more pages. Where the links come from doesn't matter. Google recognizes that a webmaster has no control over other sites linking into a site, and so sites are not penalized because of where the links come from. There is an exception to this rule but it is rare and doesn't concern this article. It isn't something that a webmaster can accidentally do.

The linking page's PageRank is important, but so is the number of links going from that page. For instance, if you are the only link from a page that has a lowly PR2, you will receive an injection of 0.15 + 0.85(2/1) = 1.85 into your site, whereas a link from a PR8 page that has another 99 links from it will increase your site's PageRank by 0.15 + 0.85(7/100) = 0.2095. Clearly, the PR2 link is much better - or is it?

Once the PageRank is injected into your site, the calculations are done again and each page's PageRank is changed. Depending on the internal link structure, some pages' PageRank is increased, some are unchanged but no pages lose any PageRank.

It is beneficial to have the inbound links coming to the pages to which you are channeling your PageRank. A PageRank injection to any other page will be spread around the site through the internal links. The important pages will receive an increase, but not as much of an increase as when they are linked to directly. The page that receives the inbound link, makes the biggest gain.

It is easy to think of our site as being a small, self-contained network of pages. When we do the PageRank calculations we are dealing with our small network. If we make a link to another site, we lose some of our network's PageRank, and if we receive a link, our network's PageRank is added to. But it isn't like that. For the PageRank calculations, there is only one network - every page that Google has in its index. Each iteration of the calculation is done on the entire network and not on individual websites.

Because the entire network is interlinked, and every link and every page plays its part in each iteration of the calculations, it is impossible for us to calculate the effect of inbound links to our site with any realistic accuracy.

Internal linking

2006-08-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Fact: A website has a maximum amount of PageRank that is distributed between its pages by internal links.

The maximum PageRank in a site equals the number of pages in the site * 1. The maximum is increased by inbound links from other sites and decreased by outbound links to other sites. We are talking about the overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank of any individual page. You don't have to take my word for it. You can reach the same conclusion by using a pencil and paper and the equation.

Fact: The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases.

The more pages that a site has, the more PageRank it has. Again, by using a pencil and paper and the equation, you can come to the same conclusion. Bear in mind that the only pages that count are the ones that Google knows about.

Fact: By linking poorly, it is possible to fail to reach the site's maximum PageRank, but it is not possible to exceed it.

Poor internal linkages can cause a site to fall short of its maximum but no kind of internal link structure can cause a site to exceed it. The only way to increase the maximum is to add more inbound links and/or increase the number of pages in the site.

Cautions: Whilst I thoroughly recommend creating and adding new pages to increase a site's total PageRank so that it can be channeled to specific pages, there are certain types of pages that should not be added. These are pages that are all identical or very nearly identical and are known as cookie-cutters. Google considers them to be spam and they can trigger an alarm that causes the pages, and possibly the entire site, to be penalized. Pages full of good content are a must.

What can we do with this 'overall' PageRank?

We are going to look at some example calculations to see how a site's PageRank can be manipulated, but before doing that, I need to point out that a page will be included in the Google index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. That's according to Google. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can't be included in the calculations.

For the examples, we are going to ignore that fact, mainly because other 'Pagerank Explained' type documents ignore it in the calculations, and it might be confusing when comparing documents. The calculator operates in two modes:- Simple and Real. In Simple mode, the calculations assume that all pages are in the Google index, whether or not any other pages link to them. In Real mode the calculations disregard unlinked-to pages. These examples show the results as calculated in Simple mode. pagerank, page rank

Let's consider a 3 page site (pages A, B and C) with no links coming in from the outside. We will allocate each page an initial PageRank of 1, although it makes no difference whether we start each page with 1, 0 or 99. Apart from a few millionths of a PageRank point, after many iterations the end result is always the same. Starting with 1 requires fewer iterations for the PageRanks to converge to a suitable result than when starting with 0 or any other number. You may want to use a pencil and paper to follow this or you can follow it with the calculator.

The site's maximum PageRank is the amount of PageRank in the site. In this case, we have 3 pages so the site's maximum is 3.

At the moment, none of the pages link to any other pages and none link to them. If you make the calculation once for each page, you'll find that each of them ends up with a PageRank of 0.15. No matter how many iterations you run, each page's PageRank remains at 0.15. The total PageRank in the site = 0.45, whereas it could be 3. The site is seriously wasting most of its potential PageRank.

__________________________________________
Example 1

Now begin again with each page being allocated PR1. Link page A to page B and run the calculations for each page. We end up with:-

Page A = 0.15
Page B = 1
Page C = 0.15

Page A has "voted" for page B and, as a result, page B's PageRank has increased. This is looking good for page B, but it's only 1 iteration - we haven't taken account of the Catch 22 situation. Look at what happens to the figures after more iterations:-

After 100 iterations the figures are:-

Page A = 0.15
Page B = 0.2775
Page C = 0.15

It still looks good for page B but nowhere near as good as it did. These figures are more realistic. The total PageRank in the site is now 0.5775 - slightly better but still only a fraction of what it could be.

NOTE:
Technically, these particular results are incorrect because of the special treatment that Google gives to dangling links, but they serve to demonstrate the simple calculation.

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Example 2

Try this linkage. Link all pages to all pages. Each page starts with PR1 again. This produces.

Page A = 1
Page B = 1
Page C = 1

Now we've achieved the maximum. No matter how many iterations are run, each page always ends up with PR1. The same results occur by linking in a loop. E.g. A to B, B to C and C to D. View this in the calculator.

This has demonstrated that, by poor linking, it is quite easy to waste PageRank and by good linking, we can achieve a site's full potential. But we don't particularly want all the site's pages to have an equal share. We want one or more pages to have a larger share at the expense of others. The kinds of pages that we might want to have the larger shares are the index page, hub pages and pages that are optimized for certain search terms. We have only 3 pages, so we'll channel the PageRank to the index page - page A. It will serve to show the idea of channeling.

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Example 3

Now try this. Link page A to both B and C. Also link pages B and C to A. Starting with PR1 all round, after 1 iteration the results are:-

Page A = 1.85
Page B = 0.575
Page C = 0.575

and after 100 iterations, the results are:-

Page A = 1.459459
Page B = 0.7702703
Page C = 0.7702703

In both cases the total PageRank in the site is 3 (the maximum) so none is being wasted. Also in both cases you can see that page A has a much larger proportion of the PageRank than the other 2 pages. This is because pages B and C are passing PageRank to A and not to any other pages. We have channeled a large proportion of the site's PageRank to where we wanted it.

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Example 4

Finally, keep the previous links and add a link from page C to page B. Start again with PR1 all round. After 1 iteration:-

Page A = 1.425
Page B = 1
Page C = 0.575

By comparison to the 1 iteration figures in the previous example, page A has lost some PageRank, page B has gained some and page C stayed the same. Page C now shares its "vote" between A and B. Previously A received all of it. That's why page A has lost out and why page B has gained. and after 100 iterations:-

Page A = 1.298245
Page B = 0.9999999
Page C = 0.7017543

When the dust has settled, page C has lost a little PageRank because, having now shared its vote between A and B, instead of giving it all to A, A has less to give to C in the A-->C link. So adding an extra link from a page causes the page to lose PageRank indirectly if any of the pages that it links to return the link. If the pages that it links to don't return the link, then no PageRank loss would have occured. To make it more complicated, if the link is returned even indirectly (via a page that links to a page that links to a page etc), the page will lose a little PageRank. This isn't really important with internal links, but it does matter when linking to pages outside the site.

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Example 5: new pages

Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank because each new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages have been added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We'll use the calculator to demonstrate these.

Let's add 3 new pages to Example 3 [view]. Three new pages but they don't do anything for us yet. The small increase in the Total, and the new pages' 0.15, are unrealistic as we shall see. So let's link them into the site.

Link each of the new pages to the important page, page A [view]. Notice that the Total PageRank has doubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A's PageRank has almost doubled.

There is one thing wrong with this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn't get into Google's index, so they wouldn't add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn't pass any PageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one other page. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is, surprisingly, page A [view]. You can play around with the links but, from page A's point of view, there isn't a better place for them.

It is not a good idea for one page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many new pages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than one important page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to and from the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-models of a site to find the best links that produce the best results for its important pages.

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Examples summary

You can see that, by organising the internal links, it is possible to channel a site's PageRank to selected pages. Internal links can be arranged to suit a site's PageRank needs, but it is only useful if Google knows about the pages, so do try to ensure that Google spiders them.

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Inbound and Outbound links

Examples of these could be given but it is probably clearer to read about them (below) and to 'play' with them in the calculator.

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Questions

When a page has several links to another page, are all the links counted?

E.g. if page A links once to page B and 3 times to page C, does page C receive 3/4 of page A's shareable PageRank?

The PageRank concept is that a page casts votes for one or more other pages. Nothing is said in the original PageRank document about a page casting more than one vote for a single page. The idea seems to be against the PageRank concept and would certainly be open to manipulation by unrealistically proportioning votes for target pages. E.g. if an outbound link, or a link to an unimportant page, is necessary, add a bunch of links to an important page to minimize the effect.

Since we are unlikely to get a definitive answer from Google, it is reasonable to assume that a page can cast only one vote for another page, and that additional votes for the same page are not counted.

When a page links to itself, is the link counted?

Again, the concept is that pages cast votes for other pages. Nothing is said in the original document about pages casting votes for themselves. The idea seems to be against the concept and, also, it would be another way to manipulate the results. So, for those reasons, it is reasonable to assume that a page can't vote for itself, and that such links are not counted.

Google's PageRank Explained and how to make the most of it... by Phil Craven

2006-08-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.

PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

From here on in, we'll occasionally refer to PageRank as "PR".

Notes:
Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to. For this reason, links into a site cannot harm the site, but links from a site can be harmful if they link to penalized sites. So be careful which sites you link to. If a site has PR0, it is usually a penalty, and it would be unwise to link to it.

How is PageRank calculated?

To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

That's the equation that calculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough.

In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.

We can think of it in a simpler way:-

a page's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it)

"share" = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

A page "votes" an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.

From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,.....PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.

Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.

Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren't given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly, as we'll see later.

Ok so far? Good. Now we'll look at how the calculations are actually done.

For a page's calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandoned completely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solely on the PageRank "voted" for it by its current inbound links, which may have changed since the last time the page's PageRank was calculated.

The equation shows clearly how a page's PageRank is arrived at. But what isn't immediately obvious is that it can't work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, A and B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind. This is what happens:-

Step 1: Calculate page A's PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page A now has a new PageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B. But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn't been worked out yet, so page A's new PageRank value is based on inaccurate data and can't be accurate.

Step 2: Calculate page B's PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page B now has a new PageRank value, but it can't be accurate because the calculation used the new PageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.

It's a Catch 22 situation. We can't work out A's PageRank until we know B's PageRank, and we can't work out B's PageRank until we know A's PageRank.

Now that both pages have newly calculated PageRank values, can't we just run the calculations again to arrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the new values and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be using inaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always be inaccurate.

The problem is overcome by repeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly more accurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because the calculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations are sufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn't produce enough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisiely what Google does at each update, and it's the reason why the updates take so long.

One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page's actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.

NOTE:
You may come across explanations of PageRank where the same equation is stated but the result of each iteration of the calculation is added to the page's existing PageRank. The new value (result + existing PageRank) is then used when sharing PageRank with other pages. These explanations are wrong for the following reasons:-

1. They quote the same, published equation - but then change it

from PR(A) = (1-d) + d(......) to PR(A) = PR(A) + (1-d) + d(......)

It isn't correct, and it isn't necessary.

2. We will be looking at how to organize links so that certain pages end up with a larger proportion of the PageRank than others. Adding to the page's existing PageRank through the iterations produces different proportions than when the equation is used as published. Since the addition is not a part of the published equation, the results are wrong and the proportioning isn't accurate.

According to the published equation, the page being calculated starts from scratch at each iteration. It relies solely on its inbound links. The 'add to the existing PageRank' idea doesn't do that, so its results are necessarily wrong.

SEO and URL Structure By Shari Thurow

2006-08-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

One of the most hotly debated topics in the search industry is the importance of a Web page's URL structure (the Web address) for ranking purposes. Some SEO (define) experts feel placing keywords in the URL is vitally important; a Web page simply won't rank well without keywords in the URL. This group often cites SERPs (define) with keywords highlighted as hard evidence for its viewpoint.

On the flip side, other SEO experts believe keywords in the URL don't make or break search engine positions. Yet this group recognizes how important keywords are from a usability perspective: both search engines' and site visitors'. This group doesn't give much emphasis to keyword-rich URLs for determining relevancy.

I wanted to explore this topic because how search engines handle the wide variety of URL structures is constantly evolving.

URL Structure as Interface

The people who least understand issues with URL structure and SEO are the very people who create them: Web developers, programmers, and software developers. It seems the most important item to them is getting the database to function without any consideration for the interface. Therein lies the problem. Too few IT and technical staff have any education, training, and experience in user-centered design (UCD).

After keyword research, the first component in creating a Web site is to come up with the site's information architecture. Remember, information architecture and interface are two different things. How information is grouped on a Web page and overall on a Web site is information architecture. One way to remember this is information architecture equals grouping and categorization.

In other words, information architecture is how a Web site's information is organized. Before anyone creates interface prototypes, information architecture must be determined. If interface designers (often IT staff, to the detriment of the Web site) are brought in too early in the Web development and SEO process, the information architecture might be compromised.

After Web site owners determine how information should be categorized or grouped on a site, the interface talent should work on initial prototypes. Keywords, general Web copy, graphic images, multimedia files, and URL structure are all part of this interface. An effective interface communicates keyword focus to both search engines and site visitors. For this reason I classify Web site usability as an intermediate-level SEO skill, one that few advanced SEO professionals possess.

Dynamic URLs and SEO

It's pointless to optimize a Web page without giving search engines easy access to that page's content. Navigation schemes and URL structures often act as a stop sign to search engine indexing.

URL structure can be a confusing topic. For example, people tend to assume a dynamic URL contains funky characters (e.g., "?," "=," "&"), as in "http://www.site.com/products.asp?product_no=25," as opposed to "http://www.site.com/hikingboots.html."

At first glance, it might seem the first URL is dynamic and the second one is static. However, a static-looking URL can be database-driven, and the dynamic-looking URL can actually be a static URL.

In truth, search engines don't wish to crawl Web sites with too many parameters in the URL. Search engine software engineers have a considerable amount of search data. They recognize URL patterns that are potentially problematic. Content management systems often generate problematic URLs.

Additionally, search engines limit the number of characters they'll crawl in a URL. This is partially due to known problems in URL structures and partially to Web site usability. Go to any SERP. Look at URL structures. Which is easiest for you, the searcher, to remember? Static-looking, shorter URLs are usually the easiest to remember.

Information Architecture of the URL

Perhaps the most striking observation I've made in my years of training companies is how IT staff and Web developers ignore URL structure as an important element of a Web page's interface. The typical statement I hear is, "Our site is database-driven. We don't have an information architecture."

But a database-driven Web site still communicates information architecture to both search engines and end users through the interface.

I performed a search usability analysis on a large commerce site recently. The main problem with the site's interface was product pages were only made available through a site search engine. Immediately, I knew the site had problems with search engine visibility because the commercial Web search engines don't want search results in their search results. It's a bad user experience for searchers. Additionally, the URL structure has too many parameters, resulting in a large number of characters in the URL.

The result? Because this database-driven site practically orphaned important product pages through the URL structure, search engine spiders didn't access this content easily.

Even database-driven sites have an information architecture. For example, what does the following URL communicate: "http://www.site.com/videos/flash/2006/running.swf"?

You can immediately see you're looking at a Flash video file about running that was either created or posted in 2006. It looks like the site might have a video repository, and maybe it has other video file formats than Flash. What I just described is how information is organized -- an information architecture.

Conclusion

What does this have to do with SEO? If related items are grouped together and cross-linked well, keyword focus is communicated to search engines and site visitors. If the interface uses important keyword phrases in navigation labels, headings, URLs, and so forth (in other words, if the interface supports a site's information architecture), the interface also communicates keyword focus. A page's linkage properties also become more keyword focused.

A long time ago, I read on some black-hat Web site that one of the authors made a bold statement about "poor" white-hat SEO professionals. I have no idea why the author made the assumption that white-hat practices (such as Web site usability and search-friendly interface design) aren't a growing and profitable industry. Don't discount interface design as a part of the SEO process. Personally, I find it delivers the highest ROI (define) over time.

Top Ten SEO Myths

2006-06-27T01:47:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an SEO firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.

Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance

Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.

Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly

Honestly, I nevër submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don't even do that. If you submit your site once, you're good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffïc or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically.

Myth # 3: SEO is Too Expensive

Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective förm of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper to set up and maintain than a PPC campaign or banner advertising. With PPC and banner advertising, you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, all clicks are Frëe. You simply pay for the set up and monitoring of your site's pages.

Myth # 4: PPC Is More Effective Than Natural SEO

In the short term...true. In the long term...false. Why, you ask? Organic SEO is preferred by searchers over 5 to 1 to PPC. People trust organic searches to return relevant results. People also know that the ads to the right of the page are sponsored ads. They have long ago figured out that anyone can bid on any term they want, as many often do, without even a hint of relevance. So, long term SEO structuring can indeed be more effective than PPC, especially when considering the preferences of search traffïc. A top 5 ranking may take some time to get, but once you are there (and provided you can maintain it), you will get better results than from a PPC ad.

Myth # 5: Hiring an SEO Specialist "In House" is Cheaper

The problem with hiring someone in house is that they are paid hourly or by salary. Most SEO firms charge per item or project. It doesn't matter how long it takes us, you pay a one tíme charge. When you hire a firm, it's like having a team of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat rate saves you monëy and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Additionally, most SEO firms have specialists who write, submit, redesign sites, post pages, etc... Hiring one person who can do all these things competently is highly unlikely.

Myth # 6: I Can Only Optimize My Homepage for Key Terms

You can and should optimize every page on your site. Each page should have its own key terms, with no more than three phrases per page (preferably one).

Myth # 7: All I Need to do is Write Content with the correct Keyword Density and My Site Will Rank Well

Wrong...especially if you want to rank on Google. You will need off-site SEO as well as on-site SEO. Keyword density may work on MSN (for now), but it will take more than that to rank well for all search engines.

Myth # 8: I Shouldn't Aim for the Most Competitive Keywords and Phrases

If the keywords you are competing for are very competitive, should you optimize your site for them? Of Course! I would optimize for some high, medium and low competitive key terms. Cover all your bases. The worst case is that you won't rank well for the high competitive key terms and that's ok. You can always work to improve them. Don't shy away from top key terms just because they are competitive. You may nevër know how close you could rank for them unless you try.

Myth # 9: Only Work With Companies That Give You A Guarantee

Guarantees would be nice if they were worth the paper they are printed on. In fact, most guarantees from SEO firms have the same stipulation in them. This stipulation usually states that as long as they get one of your key phrases to the top of any major search engines, they have fulfilled their end of the agreement. This is irrelevant to the competition of the term. In other words...it's easy to be number one for terms no one is competing for. Don't be deceived by high rankings listed on SEO sites as they can be misleading.

Myth # 10: SEO Requires a 1 Year Commitment on My Part

It certainly shouldn't. Don't lock yourself into a year contract with any company unless you already have an established, favourable business relationship. SEO, in most cases, should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable. Often, both the long and short term maintenance contracts that many firms insist on including with each job are unnecessary. As an example...If you have a new site optimized, especially right after an update, you may not see results for three months. Why pay for maintenance in the interim time?

Additionally, you may not be happy with the results of an SEO firm or even the level of service. A long term contract may only ensure that you receive a full year of bad service. So, don't lock yourself in with a year contract, at least until you are comfortable with whom you are dealing with.

Hopefully, I put a few common SEO myths to rest. Feel frëe to contact me with questíons you may have regarding these or other SEO myths you want more information on.

25 Ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site

2006-06-27T01:39:00.000-07:00

1. A calendar of events. This is ideal for sites like real estate sites to show upcoming open houses; book stores to promote upcoming book signings or writers' meetings; collectors' sites to show meetings across the country, etc. Be sure to allow visitors to send in their own event to be posted to the calendar.

2. Maps. Consider real estate sites, hunting or fishing sites, camping sites, hotels, or any outdoor recreational sites for maps. Be sure to add content at the bottom of the map that describes the map and outlines its purpose as it relates to your site.

3. Before/after experiences. This is perfect for products or services you're selling where customers can write in and discuss how this particular product or service helped them. These could turn out to be mini articles, or use them as testimonials.

4. Pictures from your customers. You could set up a special place where past customers could post their pictures and journal entries on your site. This is ideal for vacation sites, recreational sites, wedding sites, baby sites, photography studios, etc. How could you use this idea on a Halloween site? On a flower site?

5. Online coloring sheets. Use your imagination here. If you set up some coloring sheets about your vacation property, kids could color those sheets and post them online before their trip in their own special online area. After the trip, their parents could post pictures and a journal of their trip. This is their "Web site" about their trip, all hosted on your site as a perk for booking through your vacation site. What are they going to do with this information? They're going to tell their friends, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Edna, etc. They're going to link to it. You can use this perk as part of your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) when differentiating yourself from your competition. You'll be building one-way links from your past customers, plus visibility for future customers. Win/win situation. You'll think of many ways of adding coloring sheets (or similar creative activities for kids) to your site, if your site is the type that would work for kids.

6. Blogs or forums certainly add fresh content to a site.

7. Articles or new pages of interest to your target audience. Write new content on a regular basis – once or twice a week should be your goal.

8. An expert Q&A on the main page of your site. Get an expert to answer questions, and post one question/answer a week (or a day – whatever you can handle) on the main page of your site. Have past Q&A's in a searchable archive on your site.

9. Product reviews. If your industry has products or software to review, consider writing candid reviews of those products. Publish the reviews on your Web site as well as publish them in a few of the online publications. Readers are always interested in totally candid reviews, where the writer lists the positive as well as the negative aspects of a product. If you have a landscaping business, how could you use this idea? What products do you, as an expert, prefer to use, and why?

10. Short tips. If your product or service lends itself to short tips, write up a series and publish them on your Web site. Send them out in your newsletter. Get your readers to send in tips as they use the product. Offer a discount off additional products if they submit tips.

11. FAQ's. FAQ's are content – content that your target audience wants to know. As you get questions from your readers, add additional Q&A's to your FAQ's to keep them current.

12. How-to guides. People love "how to" guides. If you sell online plumbing parts, why not have a "how to" guide on installing a new toilet? Make it easy on your customers, and they'll come back to you again and again. Create a series of "how to" guides. Be The Toilet Guy on the Net. May not sound too glamorous, but if you're highly visible on the Net and are converting traffic to sales, you can afford to be glamorous OFF the Net!

13. Content that solves a problem. Why do people visit the Web? To look for information or to comparison shop. If you can solve problems for your visitors, you're giving them just what they're looking for online. For example, let's say that you sell Oriental rugs. Your potential customer might be looking for decorating ideas for her office. Her office is very small, and she's trying to think of a way to add color. Most of the wall space is taken up with windows and metal bookcases. You've created a series of content that shows pictures of problems/solutions that your oriental rugs have solved, including one with an Oriental runner. Not only does the content have pictures, it also has text describing each problem and the corresponding solution. Your potential customer found your page in the search engine results.

14. Historical data. Let's say that you sell steel pipes. What's the history of steel pipes? Creating a page outlining its history is quite appropriate. In fact, taking it a step further, creating pages that compare steel to copper and other types of piping; what causes rust; how strong is steel; how valuable steel piping really is (how steel piping is used in almost every building, etc.); how long will steel last; and on and on and on will create a whole section of extremely valuable content to a Web site.

Here's the catch. Is this valuable to the target audience of the steel pipe company? Think of one target audience: vocational education classes all over the US. This would be a great resource for them. If they linked to this site, all of them being .edu's, wouldn't this be a great link popularity builder for the site? Think about that for a minute. We're talking about quality content and quality link building.

Another example of historical data would be a hotel on St. Simons Island. The hotel could certainly provide historical data about the island on its Web site as well as tour information, etc.

How could a site that sells mustang parts use this strategy? A site that sells wedding dresses?

15. Interviews � the easiest way of building content yet! Interview an expert in your industry. Send the expert a list of questions and let the expert answer in his/her own words. Don't change any of the expert's answers, except to correct misspellings or grammatical errors. Always be upfront with the expert, and always maintain the integrity of the article and yourself. Write a series of interview articles, and highlight them on the main page of your site.

16. Seasonal articles. Is your industry "seasonal" in any respect? If so, seasonal articles are always extremely popular.

17. Statistics. Offering stats on your site is also another way of adding content to a Web site. If the stats aren't your own, always indicate where you're getting them. Quote the source! How could financial or mortgage sites use this strategy?

18. An advice column. This can be used for a dating site, or it can be used for other sites as well. How could an SEO site use this strategy? How could a decorating site? What about a plastic surgery site?

19. Winners of the month. Let's say you have a site where you sell cut flowers. Get your Web audience to send in pictures of bouquets and arrangements they've made with your flowers. Post the pictures online. Pick a winner of the month, and have that winner's picture posted on the main page of your site. Give the winner a $25 gift certificate.

20. Using the flower example, create video tutorials for creating flower arrangements. Make sure you sell all of the materials they'll need to create the flower arrangements they can make if they follow the video tutorials.

21. Again with the flower example, have customers send in an outline of how they created their flower arrangement, the materials they used, as well as the picture. Provide this information on your Web site. Link to all of those materials in your online store. Be creative. Can you do something similar with your own Web site in your own industry? What if you had a costume site? An art site? Give it a few twists and use it on a hunting or fishing site.

22. Send out a monthly newsletter offering your own tips, tips from customers, sale items, holiday ideas, the winner of the month, etc. Encourage readers to post their ideas to the blog. Post past newsletters on your site for more content.

23. A biography about someone's life, if it relates to your industry. You can see how this would work well if you have a Civil War site or a used book store.

24. News events pertaining to your particular industry.

25. Community-related page, if this is a local Web site. For example, you could discuss local restaurants, little league baseball, school openings, etc., on community-related pages or a blog.

We've only just begun with ideas. It all depends on the industry you're in and the products or services you sell. Put your creativity hat on and brainstorm.

In Conclusion . . .

Remember to think "quality" when it comes to creating content. These ideas should help get you started.

And think about this point as well. If you start creating quality content, what is certain to follow? Quality links. Sites will begin linking to your content, because you're doing what you should be doing: giving your customers what they want to see when they visit your Web site. They want to see new and exciting "quality" information that's updated on a constant basis. You become the trusted source of that information.

Don't try to take the easy way out. Success isn't dished out in soup lines. Success comes with hard work.

Using your blog to get one way links - Joe

2006-06-08T23:54:00.000-07:00

Blogs are a great tool. They allow you to add new, fresh content to your site. They are also a great way to build readership. Think about all the blogs you read. I'm sure that if you're reading this, you're also likely subscribed to a few or at least check them on a daily to weekly basis. Why? Is it because it is entertaining, informative or both? Blogs have been given a bad name because of splogs. Darren Rowse has a terrffic blog (http://www.problogger.net.) where he posts daily with tips for bloggers. Darren has discussed the "Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers", which consist of tips from highly successful bloggers who tell you what they do and make suggesstions as to what you should do.

So, how does all this help you get one way backlinks. Preferrably, you want people to link to you naturally. The best way to do that is to give them something worth linking to. Let's say I was an MS Office guru. My blog might be about relatively unknown tips and tricks on how to use MS office or for creating calenders and spreadsheets. Many people who work with MS office would be interested in that. They may like the tips so much that they list it on their blog or site.

What makes a good blog? Information? Yes! Consistency? Absolutely! However a great blog has to have its own style and flare. A blog that invites its readers to participate in the post is a golden rule. That's almost a guaranteed way to ensure that people will be coming back for more.

If you want to get traffic to your blog, one of the best ways is to leave comments on other blogs. Keep in mind, however, that it has to be done in a smart way. People can always tell when something is spam, so avoid being so obvious. Limit your posts to those blogs that are at least somewhat related to your blog. If a blog is about automobiles and you try to plug your aquarium business, you'll do more harm than good. Go to blogs that are related and take part in the discussion. The more informative and intellectual your comments are, the better chance your post will stay around long enough to be read. That is how you can start to build your readership. If you can convince people what you have to say is worth reading, they will come and read it.

Regardless of what you do to get people to your blog, the proof is always in the pudding. If you can't keep them coming back, all the advertising and work you put into creating traffic will mean nothing.

How to improve bottom line when using AdWords & AdSense PPC

2006-06-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

First of all every one have to understand about the AdWords. Then he has to understand the Google Adwords. Let see what is AdWords: Many search engines provides an inexpensive advertising venue for businesses to advertise products or services to a targeted audience. Advertisers have the ability to control their budget, target their advertising based on keywords. Advertisers are also free to determine the ad contents. Unlike other search engines Google, to its credit, clearly denotes search listings that are paid placement. In fact, Google AdWords appear in a separate section down the left side of the screen.

Every novice is scrambling for news about the net - AdWords and AdSense that is. You've got to hand it to Google. AdWords is pay-per-click advertising program, but the Google AdWord pay-per-click advertisement management is other side of the coin, AdSense, makes it a powerful advertising program. Let's take a look at AdWords and how it works. Google AdWords allow for nearly instant traffic, which can be turned on and off. Traffic results can be measured, providing information on what is successful, what isn't and what needs to be changed. AdWords can be found that work by running a test campaign.

Adwords...
Any one can create his very own advertisements or can have Google's team design the advertising campaign for self with AdWords. When creating AdWords advertisements, they appear on the internet right away. Complete control of a budget as customer only pay when his ad is clicked on and he can set his very own daily limits for what he is thinking to pay. Minimum budget or locked in time is not a matter that has to run campaign. Choose the keywords want to target, so getting targeted traffic from the ads - people who are looking for specifically what he has to offer.
Advertising is doing so; it can make changes as needed when rely on Google for quick and knowledgeable support. Additionally, access performance reports that keep he informed on how well.

AdSense...
A powerful punch, to the Adwords program as well as giving website operates the ability to make money from their website displaying ads by Google, is the AdSense. It allows making ad content more accessible and useful. With own keywords and attributes, describe the content so users can easily find it when they search Google. The other cool feature is that you can choose to share a lot of your content, or just a little. You can post individual items by completing a simple UI form, or you can submit a bulk upload file with multiple items in standard formats including TSV, RSS.

So, as an AdWords advertiser, getting an advantage in that website operators are providing high quality content to browsers and because of the keywords, appearing ads on the websites in clear view of individuals who are looking for particular products or services.

AdWords and AdSense are welcomed additions to the world of e-business and internet marketing that will get targeted traffic to website at minimum costs by advertisers to the website operators to make money for having the ads displayed on their websites.

Out-sourcing vs In-sourcing

2006-06-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

Organizations are turning to external suppliers for outsourcing everything from payroll processing to facilities management. The goal is better quality at lower costs, but too often the outsourcing results are disappointing-to-dismal -- simply because many buyers lack a clear outsourcing methodology.

Using the outsourcing concepts in this outsourcing survival site, managers responsible for outsourcing will learn to avoid typical pitfalls and ensure success. Readers learn how to:

1. Determine core competencies that should be kept in-house rather than outsourced
2. Align outsourcing with overall corporate strategy
3. Use outsourcing to support transformation strategies such as restructuring and TQM
4. Evaluate, compare, and select vendors
5. Develop targeted RFPs (requests for proposals), negotiate win-win contracts, monitor how vendors perform, and evaluate financial savings
6. Handle "recompetition" as contracts end.

The opposite of outsourcing, that is, a service performed in-house. It is a reaction to outsourcing that conjures up visions of employees aggressively defending their core competencies against cost-cutting senior managers and third party providers. The act of bringing together a function that was performed outside the organization (outsourced) to being performed inside the organization.

Of course outsource has captured current attention but this is not mean that in-souring is far. In-souring is current trend. What is less well publicized and understood is that "in-sourcing" also occurs in our economy. In-sourcing happens when foreign companies establish jobs in the United States. Conventionally known as foreign direct investment, insourcing has risen in recent years as more foreign firms set up operations in America.

8 Essential SEO techniques

2006-06-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

1) Title Tag - The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it's own title tag.

2) ALT Tags - ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the images didn't show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the visitor what it's about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don't over do it because you could get dropped in the results or even worse banned for life!

3) Link Popularity - Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool out of all them. Most search engines don't even consider web sites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site. Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it comes to getting your site a good ranking. Your keywords should be in the links you get and keep the keywords short. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

4) Keyword Density - This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag, once in the heading tag, once in bold text, and get the density between 5% to 20% (Don't over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

5) Page Size - Your web page's speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

6) Rich Theme - Search engines are looking at themes more and more. Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that's related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. Try to get 200 web pages or more.

7) Web Site Design - This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in all of today's leading edge browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both a lot.

8) Insite Cross Linking - This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

10 Tips for SEO Copywriting - Christopher Conlan

2006-06-04T22:42:00.000-07:00

I found a great article written by Christopher Conlan about copywriting tips. I couldn't agree better with what Christopher wrote about SEO Copywriting.

10 SEO Copywriting Tips

SEO Copywriting is a skill. For most people it's really something you learn over time by doing it, paying close attention to what your competitors are doing and reading up on how to write copy for websites, blogs, press releases and articles.

There are some simple rules that will help the beginning SEO copywriter and keep the experienced "know-it-all" like myself grounded!

First let's start by really defining SEO copywriting.

SEO copywriting is the art and science of combining three elements:

(1) Valuable Content: providing the reader with content that affords them the opportunity to learn, experience or clarify a product, service, position or opinion. Key factors in creating "value" in your content include organization, a high level of detail, a birds-eye view, reader perspective, usability and specific calls to action.

Your content must provide the reader with "news you can use" if you will. The overall reader experience must take into account a variety of different levels of knowledge/proficiency with the topic. Here's where defining and organizing your thoughts come in. Start with a bird's eye view of the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How, then expand into greater detail on a point by point or step by step basis.

(2) Readability: The user must be able to understand what the heck you are talking about. A good rule of thumb is to write for the reader first, then make a second and third pass for the search engines.

(3) Structure and Formatting: Search Engines are becoming smarter about assessing the "value" of your content, but they still rely on a variety of distinguishable factors which are outlined below. There is no hard and fast rule for any of these tips. Use them all "sparingly" and remember #1 and 2 above.

10 SEO Copywriting Tips

(1) Use Bold, and Italics: Just like a regular old human reader the search engines give more weight to words and phrases that are in bold or italics. Just don't go too crazy or you'll irritate the search engines and give your reader a headache (unless you're selling aspirin, but that's a different article on subliminal copywriting!).

(2) Internal Hyperlinks: You are your own best resource, so use and to a certain extent abuse yourself. Hyperlink to other resources/pages of your site which are relevant to the copy you are writing. This will benefit the reader, increase the amount of time they spend on your site and help you with the search engines. Don't forget your ALT tags.

(3) External Hyperlinks: Incorporating links to external resources which will benefit the reader can help you in two ways (a) they provide a third-party validation to a certain extent of your "expertise" and (b) afford you the opportunity to pick up some extra coin if that resource provides reciprocal linking or has an affiliate program.

(4) Use Bullet Points: Using a bullet point or numbered system helps break up your copy into consumable pieces, aids in the clean design of your page and makes it easy for the reader to "go back" and reference previous points without wasting time reading through dense copy.

(5) Content "Mass": Never have less than 400 words on a page. If the content you are providing is in fact valuable you should be able to come up with around 1,000 words.

(6) Use Examples: to beef up your content with relevant keywords. (See #8).

(7) Keyword Density: I like to try for 7% density for no more than 4 sets of keywords or phrases per page. Segway to #8.

(8) Break your keyword sets/phrases into tiers or alternates to enable a better flow while maximizing density and penetration (based upon Yahoo!'s Keyword Selector Tool, WordTracker, WebCEO or a like keyword recommendation program).:

Example: Target: SEO Copywriting Tier 1: SEO Copywriting Tier 2: SEO Copywriter Tier 3: Writing copy for SEO Tier 4: SEO copywriting services

Example Sentence: "Instead of spending time evaluating SEO copywriting Services become a SEO copywriter yourself by following these guidelines and you'll be writing copy for SEO in no time."

(9) Write for what the reader is searching for, not what you think they should be searching for. Remember that your job is to provide the "solution" to the problem, not create a greater problem by making the reader/searcher feel dumb. If they are searching for Ham and Green Eggs instead of Green Eggs and Ham, give them Ham and Green Eggs - "The Searcher is Always Right" to paraphrase a service industry mantra.

About the Author

Christopher Conlan is Managing Director of Kaboodle Ventures, a SEO Specialist located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mr. Conlan has over 17 years experience in direct marketing public relations, sales, web development and search engine optimization. Visit Kaboodle Ventures at http://www.kaboodleventures.com/SEO_Copywriting.htm

SEO Latest Spam Techniques by - Gord Collins

2006-06-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

Search engine rankings are extremely competitive and Website owners are under pressure to do all they can to gain visibility in search results.

Those pressures come from many quarters: there are branding restrictions, style guidelines, legal issues, navigation needs, sales conversion demands, site interaction demands and more.

The fact remains, though, that search engines were designed for information purposes. This presents hurdles to businesses that try to exploit the search engines in order to attract users who seek in information, then try to sell them something. To overcome these hurdles, many businesses use increasingly ruthless tactics -- tactics that lead them into dishonest territory -- to gain those higher search rankings.

Exploiting the Engine

The exploitation of search engines today is a serious issue, but, like it or not, most businesses see it as something that must be done -- an online business imperative. To exploit a search engine, however, most organizations must exploit a search engine optimization company. In these arrangements, exploitation, or the gaining of something for nothing, becomes the central theme for interaction between client and SEO provider.

Thousands of SEO providers are now in business, and each ranking promiser is more famous than the next. For numerous of these service providers, quality is not an issue. What matters is making promises that beat the competition and win them the client. Faced with these enormous and often unreasonable pressures, ethical SEOs will withdraw from an optimization project. Unethical SEOs, however, will take on the project, saying, "No problem. I'll take care of it."

"Taking care of" an impossible situation means spamming. The client's demand for the impossible and expectation of something for nothing pushes the SEO or Webmaster to that sorry path of search engine spamming. This approach involves the study and nurturing of a growing list of tricky spam techniques.

The best way to diffuse the issue is to bring these methods to light. If everyone knows about a spamming technique, it will cease to work. This is the way to defeat search engine spam, and is the purpose of this article.

Who's Responsible?

Search engines value popular, content-rich sites; however, many Website owners either can't or don't want to spend the money required to create that type of content and popularity. The needed resources, such as researchers, Web content developers, copywriters and skilled SEOs, aren't available, or are beyond the financial resources of the company.

This is the something for nothing scenario that launches all spam projects.

TrafficPower is a SEO provider that was made infamous by Google's taking action to ban the company and its clients from their index. A Google rep was quoted as saying "I believe that one SEO had convinced clients either to put spammy JavaScript mouseover redirects, doorway pages that link to other sites, or both on their clients' sites. That can lead to clients' sites being flagged as spam in addition to the doorway domains that the SEO set up."

Now, it seems Traffic Power's clients are suing the company, but the damage is done. We still have to wonder who the guilty parties are.

In reality, when a site utilizes spam tactics, it is the client who's ultimately responsible, not the SEO provider. The client has control over a Website and its deployment. When spamming occurs, the Website owner is solely responsible.

The Lure of Top Listings

It is well publicized by some shady operators that rankings are cheap and easy to get. That lie -- and the expectation it generates -- forces some SEOs to offer a guarantee of top 5 rankings. This, in turn, puts pressure on all SEO providers to provide similar guarantees.

Besides angering search engine companies, such guarantees are misleading. Top rankings can't be put on a schedule like an advertising buy. Search engine-organic results are not for sale, and it is this element of honesty that ensures their continued popularity: that which cannot be bought is trustworthy.

When SEOs can't achieve rankings on schedule, they are forced to refund perhaps thousands of dollars. Since many are barely able to pay their bills, they can't afford to return that money. This sets the stage for SEO spamming.

There are spammers who don't care one way or another -- they don't mind cheating as they have no sense of ethics. There are also large SEO companies that are tasked to create rankings for clients that just shouldn't be attempted. They want to automate the SEO process in order to increase revenues. Search engines, in contrast, want to rid their indexes of automated material of any kind.

The Website owner's greed, combined with search engine spammer's opportunism, sets the stage for an unholy union. Here's just one example of a spamming site I've seen.

Spammingsite1.com used several types of spam to achieve strong results:

* mouse-activated redirects
* hidden table cells stuffed with keywords within < h1 > tags
* links from contrived Websites

The end users saw a different page than the search engine indexed. The search engine was tricked by these tactics, and, as is the case with all instances of spamming, lost control of the product it served to search users.

Spammingsite1 was a leader in the search results -- but only because of spam. A check of the sites that linked to Spammingsite1 revealed a list of dubious quality sites with which no legitimate site owner would have wanted to be associated. One of the sites was a growing list of open directory copies -- sites that draw all their content from the open directory project. Copies of Open Directory listings represent a huge problem for Google.The Perils of New Content Types

As Google and Yahoo! venture into spidering new types of Web content, they run the risk of being tricked by the complexity of the code itself. Spammers succeed by staying ahead of the technical filtering capabilities of search engines.

Search engines apply content filters as they spider sites, and afterward, in what¡¦s called post-processing. This sophisticated filtering is wonderful, however it's also limited by the imagination, foresight and programming of the engineers. Spammers can trick the system by exploiting cracks in the filters.

Sometimes innocent sites are penalized because they appear to have some characteristics of spamming. Is your site one of them? Why might a legitimate link to your site not be recognized? It probably looks like a paid link to the search engine. This is another huge problem for search engines: their filters are so complex that they become almost uncontrollable, and innocent sites are incorrectly penalized.

Search engines can only see and know so much about any given Website and its owners. One SEOs content and links are another's spam, so it¡¦s difficult to make statements about who the spammers are. The problem is further complicated by the fact that search engines have different listing and content assessment guidelines.

There are, of course, numerous tactics that are considered spam. Below are some of the most common spamming techniques being used right now -- tactics that should be avoided.

* Publishing Empires
* Wikis
* Networked Blogs
* Forums
* Domain Spam
* Duplicate Domains
* Links inside No Script Tags
* Javascript Redirects
* Dynamic Real Time Page Generation
* HTML invisible table cells
* DHTML laying and Hidden text under layers
* Humungous machine-generated Web sites
* Link stuffing
* Invisible text
* Link Farms

Let's discuss each of these in more detail.

Publishing Empires

When a publisher builds a vast array of interlinked Websites, it can generate high PageRank and subsequent rankings. This form of spam is difficult for a search engine to penalize, since the links are legitimate. Any single business entity has the right to interlink its own Websites. The company can create further overlap between the sites' content themes so that the links are truly valued by search engines.

This kind of activity is exemplified by one of the Internet's largest publishers. The business has 120+ Web properties, all of which are carefully linked to the others. Perform a search on one of these sites, and you're virtually guaranteed to see one of the company's other Web properties in the search results.

Many among the most successfully ranked sites use this system -- this form of spamming is extremely widespread. Perpetrators basically collect PageRank and link reputation within their network, then use it creatively to dominate the best keyword phrases. Search engines haven't found a way to stop this technique, but they'll have to. This form of spamming is a major threat to the quality of search results.

Wikis

Wikis are Web repositories to which anyone can post content. They can be a great way to present and edit ideas without close censorship, and have proven extremely successful for the creation, management, and maintenance of projects that require input from users around the globe.

However, despite their considerable advantages, the often un-scrutinized nature of wikis makes them ripe for abuse. Like a link farm, a wiki's links are free for all. Ironically, the value of wikis is consistent with popularity-based search engines. Some of these wikis boast a very high pagerank, which can make the wiki an attractive place from which to gain a link to your site. But without close human control, users may simply add their links as a means to take advantage of the wiki's PR. Until another user of the wiki removes the link, the linked site enjoys the benefits of this unscrupulous activity. The search engine spammers have control.

Networked Blogs

Blogs can be a source of precise, up-to-date and technically detailed information, presented by specialists and experts. Blogs are thus very valuable to info-hungry searchers, and are extremely popular.

However, some spammers start a blog, plug it full of garbage content such as comments on what they thought at 5:15, along with a link or two and some keyword rich text. Keyword rich musings don¡¦t present real value to deceived searchers. Worse still, blogs often operate in a free-for-all link structure that further validates the linked sites in search engine indexes.

Forums

Like blogs, forums can be a rich source of relevant information.

Unfortunately, some forum participants make comments in forums only in an effort to publish links back to their own sites. This may be acceptable if the user provides help or assistance to another forum member. Indeed, they should gain credit for that information, which they may have worked hard to discover.

However, when the posts become excessive and are comprised solely of glib or irrelevant comments, then value of the link, or indeed, the whole forum, can be put into question. Some forum owners only start forums in the hope that they will raise search engine rankings.

Domain Spam

Probably the most popular spam technique today involves creating and hosting a number of Websites. These sites rarely have any intrinsic value other than providing ranking support for the owner's main Website.

I've had several former clients who had used this technique -- and had been penalized for it. After I got them to get rid of the duplicates completely, their rankings were repaired.

Duplicate Domains

Why can't Google detect two exact duplicate Websites that only differ on domain names? Why would Google give these same sites first and second rank for the very same phrase? This happens all too frequently and is due to Google's preoccupation with linking between topically related sites.

Domain spam is usually the result of a corporation's attempt to have Web sites for each of its company departments or subsidiaries. Those with many subsidiaries get a big boost from these domains. Realizing this, spammers are increasingly encouraging clients to have sites hosted on different IP addresses and even in different geographical locations.

The link pattern detection used by Google has difficulty dealing with this practice, and is currently failing to cope with it. Google's new emphasis on authority sites actually makes this matter worse, as the authority can gain trust it really doesn't deserve.

Forums and Blogs Can Really Help SEO?

2006-06-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

Forums and blogs have become a very important part of the Internet landscape. I personally have learned almost as much about Internet marketing by diligently reading as I have from actual hands-on experience. With every positive experience, however, I have seen people trying to abuse the system. Forum and blog spammers, as Barry pointed out a couple weeks ago, can make the whole community experience a little less satisfying.

A couple of threads recently started at Search Engine Watch Forums has the same member asking about "Using Forums for SEO" and "Can I use someone else's blog to link to my site? " A few weeks ago, another poster detailed what he seemed to think was a new idea, saying "I was wondering if forums spam is something illegal with regarding to SEs?" he went on to describe his plan, but was a little worried about the Search Engines.

In my opinion, what they should really worry about is their status/reputation within their industry. In order to effectively do such a task and hope to get any SEO value from the links, they would have to be spamming a forum or blog somewhat relevant to their own industry. Imagine being known as "the guy/gal that's a spammer." Trust me, as a moderator at SEW, I have seen the reputation of seemingly very nice people go down the drain because of obvious link drops.

Not to mention many links that are placed within forums signatures and blog comments are blocked from being spidered by the site owner, and there ends up being no return on the time invested in spamming. Please give your thoughts or share your spamming success stories at any of the threads linked-to above.

I also dug up an older thread at Cre8asite Forums that has some good thoughts on this subject. -chrisboggs

10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes by Tyler Huston

2006-06-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

On today's highly competitive Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) search engine, it is now more important than ever to ensure that your PPC campaigns are optimized to their utmost potential. You should be achieving maximum return on ínvestment (ROI) for the keywords or phrases that are most relevant to your business and are most likely to provide you with targeted traffïc to your website. With ever growing cost-per-click (CPC) prices throughout the various PPC search engines it is essential that you avoid certain mistakes that will undoubtedly result in poorly performing PPC campaigns.

The Mistakes to Avoid

Long list of less than targeted keywords
Not identifying unique aspects of your product or service
Lack of keywords in your ad text
Directing users solely to your home page
Creation of single Ad Groups
Utilizing single campaigns
Using broad match only
Failure to optimize Ad Serving for your ads
Not tracking results
Entering the content network without modifying bids

Long List of Less Than Targeted Keywords

When you first set out to create your AdWords campaign it is of utmost importance that you do not go "keyword crazy". What this means is that you must not create long lists of irrelevant and generic keywords. For example, if you were an automotive dealership then it would not be in your best interest to target the keyword "truck". The reason being is that the cost-per-click (CPC) for such a generic keyword would be incredibly high when compared to a more descriptive relevant keyword such as "T-Z783 Extended Cab". An example of an irrelevant keyword which would not produce conversions if you strictly conducted automotive salës would be "tail light covers". The phrase may bring visitors to your website but, if they do not find what they are looking for when they get there, they will be gone just as quickly as they arrived.

Not Identifying Unique Aspects of Your Product or Service

Before implementing your AdWords campaign you must first understand exactly what it is that makes you stand out from your competition. By identifying your unique products or services you will have a lot more clarity on how to rise above your competitors and zone in on the keywords or phrases that are unique to your business. I would recommend that you perform an analysis of your competition, have a look and see what they are doing and which phrases they are using. After conducting a competition analysis and after understanding what makes your products or services unique you will be able to come up with a strategy that will topple your competitors.

Lack of Keywords in Your Ad Text

When creating your descriptive ad copy it is imperative that you find a means to inject your keywords into your title and description while maintaining the delicate balance of clarity and relevance. Your ad copy should be tailored in such a way that when read by a visitor they know exactly what they are getting into when they clíck on your ad, which brings me to my next point.

Creation of Single Ad Groups

Categorizing ads that are targeting related keywords into a common ad-group will allow you to have a much higher level of control over your entire campaign. Let's say that you run a sporting goods store, start by grouping all ads targeted towards hockey skates into a single Ad Group. You would then create another ad-group which would be targeting hockey sticks and another containing hockey gloves and so on. Organizing your ad-group structure in this manner gives you the ability to create in-depth reports on the perförmance of each ad-group.

Utilizing Single Campaigns

Once you have your Ad Groups sorted out into easy to identify categories you may then move on to the next step of creating relevant campaigns. From the example above you have created Ad Groups containing separate products of hockey skates, sticks, gloves etc. Now it is time to create a container for all of the Ad Groups into one campaign entitled "hockey equipment". You would then repeat the process creating Ad Groups for tennis, one group for shoes, one for racquets etc. and then once again you drop them all into a single campaign entitled "tennis equipment". Having highly organized campaigns is the key to determining which ads are creating optimal conversions.

Failure To Optimize Ad Serving For Your Ads

When you take advantage of the AdWords Ad Serving service basically what you will be doing is showing your most popular ads more often. The AdWords platform will give weïght to ads with the highest click-through rates (CTRs) and display them more often then keywords with lower (CTRs) within the same ad-group.

Not Tracking Results

In order to have any idea on your AdWords campaign perförmance you must be able to see the keywords that work as well as those that do not. Google AdWords supplies a vast array of very useful tracking tools. Google has also built into the user interface Google Analytics which is a marvellous web analytics tool that provides you with in-depth reporting on all aspects of your campaign perförmance. I cannot stress enough the importance of creating goals for your AdWords campaign to measure your success by.

Entering The Content Network Without Modifying Bids

Within the AdWords platform you have recently been given the ability to set different bids for the content network compared to that of the search network. If you do not set different bids on the content network for certain keywords, you will be paying more per clíck than you should be. After lowering the prices on certain keywords you will notice that the amount of click-throughs that you will be attaining will remain the same as they were at the higher bid.

Failure To Optimize Ad Serving For Your Ads

When you take advantage of the AdWords Ad Serving service basically what you will be doing is showing your most popular ads more often. The AdWords platform will give weïght to ads with the highest click-through rates (CTRs) and display them more often then keywords with lower (CTRs) within the same ad-group.

Not Tracking Results

In order to have any idea on your AdWords campaign perförmance you must be able to see the keywords that work as well as those that do not. Google AdWords supplies a vast array of very useful tracking tools. Google has also built into the user interface Google Analytics which is a marvellous web analytics tool that provides you with in-depth reporting on all aspects of your campaign perförmance. I cannot stress enough the importance of creating goals for your AdWords campaign to measure your success by.

Entering The Content Network Without Modifying Bids

Within the AdWords platform you have recently been given the ability to set different bids for the content network compared to that of the search network. If you do not set different bids on the content network for certain keywords, you will be paying more per clíck than you should be. After lowering the prices on certain keywords you will notice that the amount of click-throughs that you will be attaining will remain the same as they were at the higher bid.

Conclusion

The purpose for this article was to create awareness for common mistakes and to eliminate frustrations that may emerge when managing Google AdWords campaigns. The points mentioned above are compiled from management mistakes that I have stumbled upon time and time again in hopes to assist you in creating a marketing campaign that will generate dramatic increases to the profïts of your business.

Amazing Advance Website Page Rank Explosion In Less than 45 Days

2006-05-31T16:37:00.000-07:00

Could this new website automation software be the key to the holy grail of high Google Page Ranks? Recently updated and optimized, Ultimate Blog Machine could be the key to your site being flooded with qualified search engine traffic.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia (PRWEB) May 31, 2006 -- Finally a simple to implement web optimisation system has been released to the eager SEO community. With less then 20 minutes work your site can be flooded with rank pushing, keyword rich incoming links. All totally automated, all able to be turned on or off, but why would you, at the click of a button.

Imagine the amazement of one user of the Ultimate Blog Machine software when he started with a brand new domain and 45 days later discovering he had a top ranking on this new domain with an amazing page rank of six (6). To gain such a rapid increase in page rank is something that the average webmaster would only dreams of. Could this be a powerful solution that you could use?

Constantly updating to the ever changing search engine environment http://ultimateblogmachine.com has proven to be robust and effective. Backed up with top class customer support, and accommodation to the customers wished you too can be standing on the cutting edge of search engine optimisation technology.

Now available with unlimited domain usage and exclusive patent pending acceleration technology Ultimate Blog Machine is ahead of the game in creation of high quality back links and spider activity.

In this day competition is highly competitive with page rank being the deciding factor in winning in the search engines vs. loss to the bottom pages of the search engine stack.

If you are a webmaster be it beginner or professional I would urge you to seek out and explore the technology that is now available with The Ultimate Blog Machine.

To see a full report of the amazing first 72 hours of a brand new domain on the “steroids” of this amazing product but sure to study the report available to you at http://www.gefsmith.com/TheBlogBombshell.html

PRESS RELEASE - TopRank Online Marketing SEO Designer Named to 2006 WebAwards Judging Panel

2006-05-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

Leading web site awards program adds SEO Designer, Thomas McMahon from TopRank Online Marketing, to its roster of judges.

Minneapolis, MN, May 30, 2006 –(PR.COM)– The Web Marketing Association is pleased to announce that TopRank Online Marketing’s Thomas McMahon has been selected as a judge of the 10th annual international WebAward competition for Web site development. The WebAwards is the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful Web site. It recognizes the individual and team achievements of Web professionals who create and maintain outstanding Web sites.

"Unlike other awards, the WebAwards is not a beauty pageant where only the design and name recognition is important," said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association. "For the past decade, the WebAwards has used a quantitative judging formula based on seven criteria to evaluate benchmark and set industry standards for Web site development. Thomas McMahon will play a critical role in setting the standard for Internet excellence by applying his expertise to each site he adjudicates."

Says McMahon, “We want to recognize web sites for outstanding design, usability and quality. Most sites don’t put enough thought into the end-users’ experience or into search engine friendliness. Some sites have good usability, bad design. Some have good design, bad usability. It’s those that offer both that should be recognized.”

Thomas McMahon has worked for TopRank Online Marketing for the past year and a half as a SEO Designer, optimizing existing web sites and blogs, creating search engine friendly designs for new web sites as well as creating a number of blog marketing tools, WordPress plug-ins and FireFox add-ons. Prior to TopRank, McMahon worked with a web design agency for 5 years providing expertise in web design and Flash.

TopRank Online Marketing President, Lee Odden adds, "I’m very proud to see Thomas participate in such a highly regarded program. The standards he’s set for our clients’ will certainly benefit the web sites he will be tasked to evaluate for the WebAwards competition."

The 2006 WebAward judges consist of a select group of Internet professionals who have direct experience designing and managing Web sites – including members of the media, interactive creative directors, corporate marketing managers, site designers, content providers and webmasters – with an in-depth understanding of the current state-of-the-art in Web site development and technology. Judging for this year’s awards will take place in July and August, with winners announced in September.

About TopRank Online Marketing
TopRank Online Marketing is an industry leading search marketing agency offering integrated search engine optimization, online public relations and blog marketing services. TopRank has been listed as a top ten world-wide SEO firm by topseos.com and Promotion World and is the only Minnesota search marketing firm included in Marketing Sherpa’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms. TopRank is a member of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO.org), the Search Engine Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Association (the-DMA.org), and holds a Board of Directors position for the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA.org).

About the WebAwards
The 10th annual international WebAwards competition sets the standard of excellence in 96 industry categories by evaluating Web sites and defining benchmarks based on the seven essential criteria of successful Web site development. The goal of the Web Marketing Association, sponsor of the WebAwards, is to provide a forum to recognize the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective Web sites on the Internet today. Entrants benefit from a Web site assessment by a professional judging panel and the marketing opportunities presented to an award-winning Web site.

see related topic:
http://www.pr.com/press-release/11448

SEO & Search Engine SPAM Identifier

2006-05-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

It’s tempting to put together a keyword seeded site, URL, and folder system to try to speed up you rank on major top search engines, or have a history of ranking such sites in their top results in a short period of time. But in a run term your site is identify as a search engine spam in the future.
Some identifications:

* URL name - does it have 12 dashes in it? Is it a subdomain off something totally unrelate SPAM!
* folder names - are the exceedingly long and/or redundant? SPAM!
* file names - are they redundant with the file paths and long? SPAM!
* page titles, headers and content - are they so keyword rich that it is illegible? SPAM!
* design - does it look like a 4 year old put it together? does the design not match the site? are the colors just ugly? SPAM!
* graphics - do you use the a similar graphic to what most spammers in your industry use? SPAM!
* ad placement - is the ad block floated left inline with the content area? SPAM!
* outbound links - does it only link to crap off topic sites that link back? Is there a huge irrelevant link exchange area? SPAM!

Why is it important to consider the above spammy signals? Search is self reinforcing. If just a few people who would have linked at your site do not because one of the above spam signals then you may never rise to the top to reap the fruits of a self reinforcing top ranked position.

The way Aaron writes is straight-forward and to the point. He covers ground from beginner level to advanced level, imparting knowledge in such a way that really offends those of us who took years learning what he is giving away for less than $100." - John Scott, V7N

Quick Indications of Low Quality Search Spam.

Your SEO Service, Ethical SEO, and Competitor Monitoring

2006-05-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

According to Scott Buresh as posted on his article
-"When a company undertakes a search engine optimization program, whether it is performed in-house or outsourced to an SEO service, most of the attention (and rightly so) is focused on the company website. This is the one aspect where there is a feeling of control—once a website is released into the wild, the company will have to see how its site fares against all the other websites out there, whether the other sites are using ethical SEO tactics or not.

Apart from changes made to the company website, the assumption is often that the company and, if it is using one, its SEO service, has zero control over what appears in search engine results. However, this is not usually the case. Often, you or your SEO service can have a direct effect on search engine results by monitoring your competitors and reporting them to the major search engines when the SEO techniques used on their site fall outside what is popularly referred to as ethical SEO. (Please note that while I believe that the word “ethical” is tossed around too often, “ethical SEO” has become the standard phrase to describe white hat techniques, and so it is the phrase I use throughout the article.)

Primary Competitors

To start with, let’s define competitors. Almost every company has at least a handful of other companies that it considers to be primary competitors—the ones that sell the same products and services, that are of similar size, and so on. It is important that the SEO efforts (or lack thereof) of these competitors, whether they are using ethical SEO techniques or not, be monitored on a routine basis. If they have not hired an SEO service of their own, or if they have not started doing SEO in-house at all, you will have peace of mind knowing that the use of this channel, for the moment, is yours. If your competitors begin an SEO campaign, with or without an outside SEO service, you can learn much about their sales and marketing tactics by evaluating the keyphrases that they target. And you can also investigate whether they are using ethical SEO practices in their campaign.

Your Online Competitors

It’s important to keep in mind that it is unlikely that searchers are going to decide only between you and the primary competitors you have listed. They are going to consider any company that matches their particular needs and that shows up for their search term. This is why your criteria for a competitor online should broaden to encompass any company that offers products or services like yours that outranks you for any of your targeted keyphrases. If your in-house staff or your SEO service not only continually monitors your search engine positions but also analyzes the companies that appear above you in search results, you can often identify forward-looking competitors of which you were previously unaware—your primary competitors of tomorrow.

Violations

This brings us to the key issue of ethical SEO. Search engine optimization is still a very new concept to most companies. Even the most respected companies can make mistakes in this arena, either by choosing the wrong SEO service, or by trying to avoid hiring an SEO service altogether by bringing it in house with well-intentioned but unqualified people. For example, BMW’s German site was recently removed temporarily from the Google index for using doorway pages—something that is not considered an ethical SEO practice. It stands to reason that your competitors are also not immune to violations.

Monitoring

A thorough SEO service will monitor not only the handful of competitors that you deem crucial but also the sites that appear higher than you for any of your chosen search phrases. This may be somewhat controversial, especially to any SEO service or webmaster that uses tactics forbidden by the search engines’ terms of service. However, many white hat SEO service firms consider it an obligation to their clients to routinely monitor the sites of any competitor found on the engines to be sure it is using ethical SEO techniques.

There is a reason that every major search engine has a form to report sites who do not use ethical SEO tactics and who violate the terms of service so that these sites can be subsequently penalized or removed. Spam filters cannot catch all violations without also removing a large number of good sites. Search engines rely on their users to help them to keep their indexes clean and free of sites not using ethical SEO tactics. There are many techniques to spam an engine—far too many to list. However, a good SEO service not only knows what all of these techniques are but knows how to identify them when it sees them so they can be reported to the engine accurately.

The engine also benefits from users reporting violations. Engines do not like people trying to trick their indexes, since there might then be pages showing up for particular search terms that are not actually relevant to those terms. Clearly, search engines understand this benefit—if the engines thought they could weed out all the spam themselves, they would not provide a reporting system. Supporting such a system, after all, is not free. Real people employed by the engine have to visit the offending pages to confirm that they are not using ethical SEO tactics.

In the notable example cited earlier of the firm that got most of its clients penalized, the owner of the SEO service in question was quoted as saying, “Google can kiss my ass. This is the Wild Wild West.” He may be right—maybe it is the Wild Wild West. But there are a whole bunch of new sheriffs in town—and they are wearing white hats."

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