Archive for the ‘Keywords’ Category

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Google Revenue Jeopardized by Keyword Case

Apr
04
2006

Searching for Edina Realty on Google returns a top-of-the-page sponsored link run by TheMLSonline.com, and Edina Realty has sued the advertiser over use of its trademark.

Even though the lawsuit involved Google and keywords, for once no one has shown up at the Googleplex bearing warm greetings and a stone-cold subpoena. In Edina Realty, Inc. v. TheMLSonline.com, Marquette law professor Eric Goldman has blogged that the case equates keyword purchases to trademark infringement.

“That’s what makes this case significant. I think this is the first case substantively analyzing a purchaser’s liability for buying a competitor’s keyword,” he wrote in his post.

TheMLSonline.com purchased keywords like “Edina Realty” and several variations, including misspellings, on both Google and Yahoo. Yahoo recently changed its policy for trademark purchases, restricting them to being eligible for purchase only by the trademark holder. Google does not do this.

Along with the keyword purchases, TheMLSonline.com also indulged in placing hidden text on its site, Goldman noted. Phrases like “Edina Realty information presented at TheMLSonline.com” were hidden as white text on a white background.

The impact of the court’s initial ruling that the purchase of keywords, though not conventional, is a use in commerce, could have implications down the road. Goldman believes a couple of key points arose from the ruling.

Read the Full Article

About the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Posted in Google, Keywords | 1 Comment »

Domain Name Insanity – Does Your Name Really Matter?

Mar
29
2006

By Matt DeAngelis

Your domain name is the .com, .net, .org or some other dot something that people use to get to your web site. Affiliateblog.com is mine.
A group of investors headed by Jake Weinbaum (the guy behind Disney’s go.com) paid $7.5 million for the name Business.com back in 1999, aiming to make it a showcase B2B site. According to their own press they have succeeded. Yes, it’s a terrific name – short, sort of descriptive and easy to remember. There’s some cachet there, but is it $7.5 million worth? That cäsh could have bought a lot of promotion or branding for whatever name they could have had for ten bucks, or a hundred, or two hundred grand.

Each year for 15 years The first $500K in profït goes toward amortizing the cost of that domain name. That could also pay for a terrific affïliate program, a truckload of banner and PPC advertising, and a nice BMW lease for Mr. Weinbaum (who probably doesn’t need a BMW).

But the Business.com thing has set off a wave of domain name speculation that staggers the mind. People are snapping up domain names and ransoming them off to wide-eyed entrepreneurs with business plans and dreams of riches. Being a hardc̦re capitalist I am torn about domain name speculation РI am tempted to applaud the person making a buck by getting there first and grabbing up the good names, but I am annoyed at the restraint of commerce that takes place while someone negotiates with one of these guys to get the right name.

So if I look at the top 50 websites on Alexa, most of them should be easy to remember names, right? Wrong. I would argue that only one, match.com, is an easy-to-remember name that describes what the site is about.

I keep hearing that the reason these so-called generic or descriptive domain names are so valuable is that some people just type domain names into the address bar of their browser rather than using a search engine. This fact seems to be intuitively false. I find it hard to believe that someone looking for information on a particular business would type in www.business.com. Furthermore, if I look at the top 50 websites on Alexa only one, match.com, is an easy-to-remember name that describes what the site is about.

I wondered how many people actually type in their address bar (address bar?) instead of using a search engine anyway. I didn’t find the answer, but Jupiter Media tells me that 64% of people looking for something use a search engine

That means that 36% of people use something other than a search engine. What makes me believe that people typing stuff into their address bar doesn’t happen much is this simple fact…of the people using search engines last November, 43% searched for common websites like Ebay. In other words, instead of typing in http://www.ebay.com, people Googled Ebay and clicked on one of the results. That is absolutely hysterical. And totally believable.

What do all these facts mean? They mean that as far as getting the person there the first time, everyone starts off on the same square. If your domain name can get the minority of people who just type into their address bar to your website without a search engine, it’s worth more than someone who can’t.

Hëre are some of the legendary domain name salës in the past several years, according to Zetetic:

Amount Year Domain
12,000,000 – 2006 – sex.com
7,500,000 – 1999 – business.com
5,500,000 – 2003 – casino.com
5,000,000 – 2002 – asseenontv.com
5,000,000 – 1999 – korea.com
3,500,000 – 1996 – worldwideweb.com
3,350,000 – 1999 – altavista.com
3,300,000 – 1999 – wine.com
3,000,000 – 1999 – eshow.com
3,000,000 – 1999 – loans.com
2,750,000 – 2004 – creditcards.com

All of these with the exception of eshow.com (computer networking) should get address bar traffïc, because people who type will type in the descriptive names – if I’m looking for sex-related stuff, I’ll type in sex.com. Where my mind gets boggled is in ROI. If you’re selling something on asseenontv.com that nets you $25, you’ll need to sell 200,000 of those George Foreman grills just to pay for your domain name.

It also dawned on me that if you pay $12,000,000 for sex.com, the frëe publicity generated is probably also worth millïons.

So nöw everyone gets dollar signs in their eyes and thinks they can make a million with their domain name. Hëre are some examples of asking prices from Ebay:

Domain Amount
6usiness.com – 7,000,000
(yes, that’s a 6)
ajobformom.com – 3,500,000
Exbay.com – 1,000,000

What does this mean for you? Well, there’s some good news and some bad news. Remember back a few paragraphs when I said that everyone starts on the same square? That’s really the good news. You can choose a pretty good domain name, put together some terrific content, employ some simple Search Engine Optimization and buy some keywords or exchange some links and you have a pretty good chance of getting people to your site the first time. Since most of them are coming via a search engine they’re not going to notice your domain name until they get there anyway, so your domain name means the same thing (nothing) to the majority of people using the search engine.

One last thing: if you’re hoping to be close to the top in the search results (the so-called organic SEO), having your keywords in the name of your website gives you a huge boost. For example, if you’re looking for affïliate blog, we will be in the top five search results. In this case, Google ignores TLD unless you tell it otherwise. Affiliateblog.info will come up before us because their pagerank is higher (that’s a discussion for another day). So if you think getting near the top of the organic search results is more important than having someone type your name directly into the address bar (and you very well could be right), then grab yourkeyword.cc or yourkeyword.to. I’ve done it, and I’ve suggested it to others.

Once the user comes to your site the name just needs to be memorable enough so they type it in to get there the next time. Or they may forget and Google you again. I do it every day. No matter how great your name is, if the content is lousy they won’t come back anyway.

So should you buy a domain name? I don’t know – I bought this one. And I made honorable mention in the Domain Name News for the price I paid ($2500). I bought the name because I liked it, I liked the number of incoming links to it, and I felt comfortable paying for it. I’ve nevër paid more than a couple hundred dollars for a domain otherwise, and I have more than 200 of them. My favorite by far is Blozzo.com, which I just bought for $25. I have a pretty terrific idea in mind for Blozzo too.

I would try to come up with my own name before I bought someone else’s. Hëre are some tips:

1. Try to go with a .com. It’s the name everyone associates with the Internet. Any other Top Level Domain (TLD) like .org or .net is just going to confuse people, unless it sounds better than the .com. For example, if you are about networking or a network, a .net is more natural. If your site is informational, you should use .info if it sounds okay. One of my favorite $10 domains is seosecrets.info. I think it sounds good. Hands down the most ingenious use of a TLD is del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site. The use of the .us TLD is absolutely brilliant.

2. Leave out the dashes and meaningless numbers. If it’s a choice between this-domain.com, thisdomain123.com and thisdomain.net, take the .net. No one remembers to put the dashes or the numbers in, unless they are an integral part of the name like studio54.com or e-books.com.

3. Use the fewest letters possible to describe what you do. I own Purple Monkey Media Group. Purplemonkey.com would have been perfect. It’s taken, of course. Purplemonkeymedia.com was not. I grabbed it. I could have taken purplemonkeymediagroup.com, but it would have been too long. Remember, every additional letter is a potential typing errör.

4. If you have a domain name that needs to be reinforced, get a good logo and sprinkle it liberally on your web site, along with some slogan that will reinforce the name in people’s minds. You would be surprised at how inexpensive this can be.

5. If you can save a few bucks with your own domain name or by buying a cheaper domain name, do it, and use the monëy to get yourself placed higher in the search results or Adsense placement.

6. If you can’t come up with a descriptive domain name, go the other way. Depending on your site’s focus, pick a memorable short name that will stick in people’s minds, get a great logo and include the name prominently in your advertising and marketing. It’s called branding, and it’s tried and true.

7. Ask your wïfe, friend, boyfriend, husband, dog, lawyer, associate, Mom, Dad, cousin, uncle, Police Chief, blog writer. They’re smarter than you anyway, and they are going to be the one looking for the site, not you. Some of my best ideas have come going to or from somewhere with my wïfe and just brainstorming.

Here’s the bad news: it may take you a while to come up with the right name. There’s more good news though – in the real world most domain names sell for $1,000 or less.

Can’t get started? – Go to a site that sells domain names, and put in a word that describes your business. See if the name is taken (it probably will be). Open your word processor or go to thesaurus.com and put the word in. Get a few more words. Chëck those. If there’s a .com available and it looks good, grab it. If not, add the word site or blog or online to your word, and see if that works. Don’t wait. If you think it might be useable, spend the $9.00. I came up with blogduck.com. I liked it. I decided to think about it some more. Someone grabbed it that afternoon. Just chisel loose the nine bucks (or less) and buy the domain.

If you want something a little more sophisticated there are several sites that are good for helping you come up with a name, like DomainsBot and Nameboy.

If you draw a blank, go over to Sedo or Afternic and see what’s for sale. Search for a word that describes what you think people will associate the name of your site with, and see what pops up. That may give you some ideas.

These sites and more can be found in Tools section of http://affiliateblog.com.

Domain Name Journal tracks domain name salës. Going there is always fun.

About The Author
Matt DeAngelis runs AffiliateBlog.com. Matt is the former Chief Technology Officer of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind ad campaigns and online presence for a good portion of the Fortune 100.

Posted in Keywords, Organic Optimisation, SEO | Comments Off

Adwords Addresses Click Fraud Suggestions

Mar
10
2006

Google’s Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, provided answers for some common questions about click fraud after Google disclosed it was nearing a settlement in a lawsuit filed against it over the problem.

For one thing, Google isn’t going to tell how they detect invalid clicks. Ghosemajumder noted in the Q&A posted at the AdWords blog that a lot of smart people developed the methods and technology used in tracking those down. “Doing so would make it easier for fraudsters to try to defeat our systems,” he said.

Google also sees a problem with all invalid clicks being called fraudulent. Many clicks happen due to other causes, like someone double-clicking on an ad. While Google can identify a click as invalid, it is “practically impossible to “prove” that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception,” Ghosemajumder said.

There is a wide discrepancy between how much activity is believed to be invalid versus how muchreally is not valid. Ghosemajumder dismissed a report used in some places as a source for a click fraud figure of 30 percent.

“When invalid clicks are detected after an advertiser is charged, we reimburse for them. Because of our detection efforts, losses to advertisers from invalid clicks are very small,” Ghosemajumder said. He also claimed that while some invalid clicks make it past Google’s defenses, they believe that amount is very small.

Two issues come to mind when considering these questions and answers. First, Google does not provide numbers to back up their contentions. The lack of transparency frustrates not only its advertisers, but also its investors. Google has plenty of motivation to continually improve their system for defeating invalid clicks, and will continue to do so.

The other issue is the marketplace. The lack of transparency has begun to open a market for products that claim to be able to detect fraudulent clicks and clicks resulting from ad campaigns that need to be fixed. I spoke with a marketing executive from a well-known firm offering such a solution, and he flatly refused to answers questions regarding how much click fraud versus problematic clicks may be taking place based on his firm’s research.

That was unfortunate because it could have shed some more light on the issue. But it could also indicate Google’s claims are correct, and click fraud is a small portion of invalid click traffic. Definitely not small enough to avoid a $90 million settlement for its click fraud case, though.

About the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Posted in Google, Keywords, Pay Per Click | Comments Off

SEO for Traffïc with Content vs. Ranking with Links

Mar
08
2006

By Joel Walsh

How do you grow your search engine traffïc without adding a single new link or making any changes to your existing webpages?
It’s simple. Just add content.

Simply having keyword-optimized pages of content on your site won’t rank you high for competitive search engine keywords – that’s a fact of life. But keyword-optimized content can really bring in the traffïc for low-competition and unique keywords. The low-competition and unique keywords are typically longer multi-word variants of the keyword. For instance, instead of “search engine ranking,” “ranking for search engine traffïc niche keywords.”

If you have lots of pages of optimized content–and you optimize well – all the search engine traffïc from these low-competition keywords will really add up. Plus, you’ll usually get more repeat visitors and type-in traffïc, too.

Just picture this realistic example of traffic-building with content vs. ranking-building with links. Company A invests $5,000 for link-building in order to rank for a competitive keyword. Company B invests the same amount, only in content. Company A and Company B: each start out on equal SEO footing: equally old websites with the same amount and quality of content, same content management systems, the same PageRank and quantity, quality, and relevance of inbound links.

Company A’s research reveals that $5000 is just the amount needed to get on the first page of Google for a target keyword that should deliver 100 unique visitors per day if the site ends up in the first position. They dutifully get inbound links optimized for that keyword, following all SEO best practices. Three months and $5,000 later, the site is stuck somewhere toward the bottom of the second page of Google search results for the target keyword. Six months later, they’ve actually sunk a bit lower in the SERPs. The good news is that the site is getting some traffïc from the links built and from the lowly search engine position, but nowhere near the 100 visitors/day they were hoping for from search results.

Company B, meanwhile, had content written around a long list of keywords with little or no competition in the search engines, using up-to-date search engine copywriting techniques. They’ve been enjoying a growing stream of visitors to their site almost since the first page of content was added. Three months later, the site’s search engine traffïc has grown by a hundred unique visitors per day, or 3,000 per month. Moreover, Company B’s repeat visitor traffïc has also jumped. Type-in traffïc has increased, presumably as visitors forward the URLs of useful pages to their friends. Page views are up, too, not only from more repeat visitors and type-in visitors, but also from first-time search visitors staying longer and browsing more pages. Six months later, the website’s content has built a loyal following on the net, generating even more repeat visitors. The search engine traffïc is as good as it ever was.

What happened?

Pitfalls of Link-Building for Search Engine Ranking

Company A thought it had a fairly sure thing: build enough optimized links for the keyword, taking care not to trigger search engine penalties. Yet as they’ve discovered, there is no sure thing when it comes to search engine rankings:

Over-optimization penalty minefield. The search engines, particularly Google and Yahoo!, are very risk-averse when it comes to ranking sites well for competitive keywords. On the whole, they are perfectly willing to risk dropping several good sites from top rankings in order to try to keep one bad site out. They are constantly tweaking their algorithms to identify sites whose link structures are not indicative of a quality site. In the process, plenty of good sites with good SEO also get swept up. This risk of failure is the inherent risk of SEO. True, most of the time, a good site with good SEO does move to the top. But in a large minority of cases, quality goes unrewarded.

Competition and the moving target. As Site A was moving up the search engine results for its competitive target keyword, so were the other sites. There is no rest for the victorious when it comes for SEO. The top sites for highly competitive keywords are constantly building new optimized links. That’s why any SEO effort has to aim to do at least ten percent better than the site currently in the position it’s targeting.

Lack of keyword diversity. Too often, websites with modest SEO budgets (and $5,000 is modest when it comes to a competitive keyword) aim for just a few keywords. Given all the potential pitfalls of an SEO campaign, you need to be going after ten or more target competitive keywords, and at least another ten related but less competitive keywords. That way, failure for a few keywords won’t scuttle the whole project. Meanwhile, search engines look for diversity in targeted keywords, so you get much more out of targeting a largër group of keywords. If you can’t afford to do this, you’re really better off not going after competitive keywords. Sure, you might get those rankings. But what happens if you’ve spent your budget and still have little to show for it?
Meanwhile, the fundamental advantage of pursuing low-competition keywords is that, by definition, it’s much closer to being a sure thing.

Advantages of Web Content SEO

Greater certainty. Not only is a page of content extremely likely to bring in search engine traffïc — unlike the similar investmënt in links — it won’t suddenly disappear. The sites linking to you might stop anytime, or do something to stop links’ passing search engine value (such as adding the “nofollow” tag or switching to a search-engine-unfriendly content management system).

Cost. Traditionally, copywriting has been more expensive than link-building. But that’s changed. As “nofollow” link-Scrooge-ry becomes more and more common, and as paid and reciprocal links get downgraded, the real cost of obtaining quality links increases. Meanwhile, the copywriting market has increasingly adapted to the needs of search engine marketing. To get a search engine visitor, you don’t need a Pulitzer-prize winning essay or a killer salës letter. You simply need highly focused, readable, keyword-optimized, information-packed pages of around 250 words each — and more and more copywriting and SEO firms are delivering this service cost-effectively. Blogs, meanwhile, let you and your employees add content easily. Bulletin boards (modified to be search-engine-friendly) let site visitors add content, too. In fact, “natural content” from blogs and bulletin boards is now much more viable than natural link building.
In conclusion, when you look at SEO, don’t forget that your number-one goal is not to rank high for a certain keyword, but to get more search engine traffïc. In some less competitive sectors, high rankings may still be a realistic and effective proposition. But increasingly, ranking high for competitive keywords is no longer the best way to get traffïc.

About The Author
Joel Walsh is a professional in the fields of copywriting and SEO who has recently launched http://www.UpMarketSEO.com, an SEO firm.

Posted in Google, Keywords, Organic Optimisation, SEO | Comments Off

Choosing Keyphrases – “Alloy Wheels” vs “Brand Model Size Alloy Wheels”?

Feb
01
2006

Or – Generic vs Specific. Or – Quantity vs Quality.

There is often a misconception with people new to the world of search engine optimisation that you should be aiming to feature for the most generic phrase that garners the largest number of searches for your particular industry.

Although there is some logic to this thinking, nine times out of 10, it is simply not the right approach.

At WNW Design we try to educate our clients as to why it is better to get small numbers of visitors that have searched for more specific phrases, rather than to get a large number of visitors for the most generic phrase.

Let us take an example of one of our existing clients, www.topgear.co.uk. They sell a wide range of alloy wheels. Obviously they would like to feature highly for the phrase “alloy wheels” as this phrase gets a large number of searches per month across all the major search engines. In fact, at time of writing, they are in positions 17 & 18 on a Google search for alloy wheels, position 9 on a Yahoo search and positions 1 & 2 on an MSN search.

These results are good, but when we look at their statistics, we can see that this is not where they get most of their alloy wheel related search engine traffic.

Alloy wheels search phrases graph

In the month of December 2005 they received a total of 1003 visitors that had searched for the generic phrase “alloy wheels”, however, this is only 10% of the number of visitors they got from more specific phrases based around alloy wheels (10,062 visitors).

So we can clearly see that featuring for the most generic phrase is not the be-all and end-all of getting large amounts of traffic.

There is also another advantage in getting visitors that searched for more specific phrases. Let’s consider which stage of the buying process a visitor might be at when they visit your site. Obviously they are interested in your products or services, otherwise they wouldn’t have been searching for them.

But if the visitor has searched for the generic phrase (alloy wheels) then there is a strong likelihood that they are in the very early stages of the purchasing process. They don’t know what brand or model they are interested in, they may not know what size they are after or they may even just be looking for information.

If the visitor has combined the generic phrase with one or more other, qualifying words (“bk racing alloy wheels”, or “alloy wheel packages”) then we can immediately tell that they are a more targeted visitor. They know which brand they want, or what size they are after. These visitors are therefore going to be much more likely to turn into customers.

It is a fair assumption that the more specific the phrase, the more targeted the visitor is going to be and the more likely that they are going to make a purchase or an enquiry.

So when concidering the key phrases you want to optimise for, try looking for a larger number of more targeted phrases. Not only will this result in larger numbers of visitors, but in all likelyhood, will result in a larger percentage of your visitors turning into customers.

Posted in General SEO, Internet Marketing, Keywords, Organic Optimisation, SEO, WNW Clients | 1 Comment »

Website Submission – A SEO Specialist Shares His Secrets

Jan
17
2006

By Robert Fuess (c) 2006 Spiderweb Logic

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

What Pages To Submit:At the minimum, you should submit your home page. Many search engines will promise to find and crawl the rest of your website automatically (in their own good time). But if they don’t discourage you from doing so, I would submit several of the important pages in your site. For example, a site map is definitely something I would want to submit, since it should have direct links to the rest of your website.Also, if I get another webmaster to link to my website, I like to submit that page as well. I want the search engines to recognize that this resource has changed – it has a link to my website and I want the credït for it.

What To Prepare:

For the search engines, I would make sure that the website is properly optimized. At a minimum, I would do double chëck the meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords properly describe the web pages and have some of my desired keywords in it. I would also run a website validator on the pages I intend on submitting – to keep the search engine spiders from choking on my website. For more information on optimizing a website for the search engines, go to http://website-optimization-2.blogspot.com/.

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

This should have:

  • Your email
  • Your website url
  • A good title for your website
  • A description for the website

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

(If you don’t know what RSS is, hëre is a great article on it: http://feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html.)

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

Where To Submit:

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

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

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

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

After DMOZ, hëre are the most important list of directories to be listed in.

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

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

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

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

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

To Wrap It Up:

Get backlinks – but avoid FFA sites. There are some important directories, but being listed in “Thousands Of Websites And Directories” is likely a promotional trick to get you listed in FFA sites. The most important backlinks are from web pages with content related to your website and those that your customers visit. If it isn’t likely to draw your customers, it may not be very important for your website traffïc.
About The Author
Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites. SpiderwebLogic.com | SchoolAndTeacher.com

Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites.

Posted in Directories, General SEO, Google, Keywords, Linking, Organic Optimisation, SEO | 1 Comment »

How to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

Nov
30
2005

Written by Trent Brownrigg and taken from SiteProNews

When talking about search engine rankings many people ask themselves questïons like; how many keywords should I put in my anchor text? What is the keyword density that I should have on the page? Should I use short copy or should I use long copy? Can I use flash or not? How many keywords should I put in my “alt” text? Etc…
A general statement to answer the above questïons is that “magic numbers do not exist.” The most important thing you can understand as a search engine optimization expert is that algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is going to make you number one for a keyphrase in a search engine, something could easily change, and you might have to spend months or even years trying to figure the new algorithm.

It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm, do something much easier instead… observe your top competitors. All you need to do is to understand what elements your competitors are using to make them rank in the top positions.

The main elements to getting top search engines rankings are:

-Number, quality, and relevance of inbound links pointing to your site
-Fresh, relevant, quality content (needs to be added frequently)
-Keyword density of your home page or any page you want to rank highly

Links, Links, Links

The first thing to observe from your competitors’ sites is their inbound links. This means the number of sites that have a link pointing to their website. You can easily measure it by going to Google and typing: “link://www.yourcompetitorssite.com”. However do not only do this on Google because they don’t show all actual links pointing to a site. Yahoo and MSN tend to show a lot more of the back links to any given website.

Part of the observation should be not only what the links say, but where the links come from. Think about what the category is that those links come from. If you start to see a recurring pattern, you should start actively searching for links coming from that category.

Some marketers use special software for robotic content creation. They generate thousands of pages with links pointing to their sites. This practice can be very dangerous, as Google will penalize unnatural linking or violations of their terms of service. And what happens is that those links do not look natural. One day one site may have 50 links and the following day have 2000 links, which all say the same thing and come from the same IP address.

If you understand how to observe, this will nevër happen to you. You will learn how to look at your competitors, and observe how they are getting linked to. Then, just do what they do.

Fresh Quality Content

The second thing to observe is how much fresh content the top sites have. Search engines love quality relevant content that is added and updated frequently. You will probably notice that the top sites in your niche have many articles and other quality content, and are continuously adding new content to their sites.

People that surf the web are usually searching for information, so content is the “fuel” of internet traffïc. If you want to attract many potential customers to your site, then you need to make sure that you provide enough content which is relevant to their interests. Updating it frequently with more quality content will keep visitors coming back to your website over and over again.

Keyword Density

The third thing you need to observe is the keyword density of your competitors. How many times should you repeat your main keywords? In which part of the web page should your main keywords be mentioned? Again, there is no magic number, it’s all about observing and measuring against the top websites in your market. But what should you measure?

- Meta tags
- Alt tags
- Titles
- Names of the images on the page
- Heading tags: h1, h2, h3…
- Frequency and position of the keywords in the body text

Each one of these items should be measured independently. There are tools to run keyword density against your competitors. If you run them against the top 3 or 5 sites, you may start to understand the secrets of top rankings.

Again, your keyword density needs to look natural; otherwise you may fail in overall optimization. This is when you use keywords too often or too little. If you look unnatural, your rankings will suffer as a result.

So, what did we learn hëre? Basically that the key to ranking highly in the search engines is to understand what the top 5 websites in your niche are doing and to apply this to your own website optimization.

What do you do nöw? Get out there and start getting inbound links for your site. Add quality content to your site daily. And be sure that your on-site optimization, such as keyword density, is similar to that of your top competitors. Continue to do this every day and you will be ranking at the top of the search engines before you know it.

About The Author
Trent Brownrigg is a successful internet marketer. Learn more about all aspects of online business by reading his frëe business tips at http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com/home-business-blog.html.

Posted in Google, Keywords, Organic Optimisation, SEO | 2 Comments »

Google Analytics :: Branding and Packaging Results

Nov
18
2005

By Jim Hedger (c) 2005, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.

Google has scored a major coup with the release of Google Analytics. In the spirit of helping webmasters and search marketers move site visitors into converted site users, Google is offering its enormously useful site analytics tool, Urchin, frëe of charge under the re-branded name Google Analytics. The software is designed to help webmasters and marketers understand site visitors and their behaviours. Last year, it cost almost $500/mth to subscribe to.
For Google, search is about business and business is about results. Results are measured in many different ways, depending on the goals of those gauging the yardstick. For Google, the yardstick continues to appear infinite, defying common sense, which logically tells us otherwise. The introduction of Google Analytics solidifies Google’s place as the pinnacle of search advertising providers and is likely to convert a lot of webmasters into Google account holders.

“Conversions” is a term used by marketers and webmasters as a way to measure results. The word itself is rather ambiguous and can have slightly different meanings for different people but ultimately means the same thing. Conversion means getting site visitors to do an intended task while visiting your site. For an ecommerce site, site-visits that lead to salës are considered conversions. Sites that primarily provide information might see an increase in repeat visitors as an indication of successful conversions. Similarly, sites running ads powered by Google AdWords might consider ad-clicks as successful conversions as Google certainly does.

According to the basic information provided on the features page, Google Analytics can help you, “Learn how visitors interact with your website and identify the navigational bottlenecks that keep them from completing your conversion goals. Find out how profitable your keywords are across search engines and campaigns. Pinpoint where your best customers come from and which markets are most profitable to you. Google Analytics gives you this and more through easy-to-understand visually enhanced reports.”

Once a user gets into the system, they are rewarded with access to a remarkable tool. If they are an AdWords advertiser or AdSense partner, a wide array of tools and assistants are provided to help convert visitors into billable (or payable) clicks. Google obviously believes that it can make more monëy by helping AdWords advertisers and the owners of the website that display AdWords. For Google however, the rewards go deeper than a basic bottom line.

Yesterday, the system ground to a near halt as millïons of webmasters rushed to sign up. Google will be receiving a wealth of consumer and marketing information from sites using the software, information that will be incorporated into Google’s understanding of how users travel through sites found in its index. That kind of information is worth its weïght in Google shares.

Google Analytics is a members-only service. Unless they already have one, webmasters and advertisers will need to establish an account through Gmail or AdWords before being granted frëe access. Once an account is established, the information provided is pretty intense.

Separated into three general user types, Executive, Webmaster, and Marketer, Google Analytics shows up to the minute information on over seventy essential elements, giving decision makers a lot of data to work with. The internal system is set up around a left-hand side dashboard of expanding drop-down menus for each of the general user overlays, each of which displays a series of reports. Users can also select a drop down display that expands to show the full range of elements to analyze.

Having said all that, it isn’t really possible to give a full review of the data generated by Google Analytics as we have just inserted the tracking-script into documents on our site this morning. It will take about twelve hours for information to accumulate.

On the surface, it appears as if Google has taken some of the best elements of other analytic programs and integrated AdWords/AdSense conversion support features. The layout is easy to use and there is a good mix of information and supporting graphical elements to ease the headaches commonly associated with statistical analysis. The first overlay provides an at-a-glance dashboard with gauges indicating site visitors, unique visitors, top documents, top keywords, and other user-specific information sets.

Account access can be shared with other Google Account holders, a feature that will allow SEOs and SEMs to share information directly with their clients. While it is a violation of the Terms of Service agreement to charge clients for access to data generated by Google Analytics, a service helping them interpret and understand the stats and information seems a natural evolution for search marketing professionals.

As reported by David Utter in WebProNews, Google Analytics doesn’t seem to worry newly minted rivals WebTrends and ClickTracks though its introduction did send shivers down the spines of shareholders in analytics firm Web Side Story.

Michael Stebbins, VP Marketing for analytics firm ClickTracks, said: “Google is the rising tide that raises all the web analytics ships. The announcement to offer frëe analytics is a great validation of our market. We’re thrilled they are opening the market’s eyes to what web analytics can do today. At the same time, we need to put it in perspective: when Google offered Blogger it did not put other blogger platforms out of business. When the tide levels out, the web analytics tools that provide the most value for marketers will be the ones that thrive.” (Source, WebProNews)

Google has made a masterful move in the introduction of Google Analytics. They have produced a superior analytic package, branded it under their name, and tied it into the most popular paid-advertising program on the web. Under other circumstances it wouldn’t take long for one of its competitors to catch up with their own analytics package however, Google’s purchase of Urchin last year put them far ahead of any rivals.

About The Author
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunïty to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at jimhedger@stepforth.com.

Posted in Google, Keywords, Organic Optimisation, Pay Per Click | Comments Off

Are Reciprocal Links Dead?

Nov
02
2005

Written by Will Moore for EntireWeb

If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.

The latest ‘Google Dance’, nicknamed ‘Jagger’, has caused major concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine’s listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening and see what we could learn.

We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google’s Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time of this writing.

By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of Google’s actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser’s ‘link:’ command. G only reports some of the links to your site, not all.

Here is what we have seen:

Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking site.

As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G’s actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure.

But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in G’s archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of ‘aging’ process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no longer appeared ‘relevant’.

The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.

If your web sites have suffered from the latest ‘dance’, you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.

During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.

This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.

We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness.

In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent.

We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool’s game we are sure to lose.

Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings.

It’s something to think about.

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About the Author: Will Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware, software and web development experience. He has sat on the ANSII and ISO standards committees, been a speaker at major technical conferences in the US, Europe, China and Singapore and has written numerous articles on various technical subjects. Visit Web Stats Gold at http://www.webstatsgold.com for more articles and information.

Posted in Google, Keywords | Comments Off

New and Improved 10 Tips to the Top

Oct
27
2005

Written by Jill Whalen (c) 2005 for SeoNews

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started:

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. Due to Google’s aging delay for all new domains (see this forum thread), your best bet is to use an existing domain/website if at all possible. If you’re redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect to wait a good 9-12 months before your site will show up in Google for any keyword phrases that are important to you.

2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines. This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those “someones” are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.

3. Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Search Marketing data. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page.

Nevër shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation,” as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.

4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let’s say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they’re looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child’s stage of development?

(Look for keyword phrases such as “preschool toys.”) Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site’s navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.

5. Program your site to be “crawler-friendly.” The search engines can’t fill out forms, can’t search your site, can’t read JavaScrïpt links and menus, and can’t interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will nevër find those resulting pages. You’ll need to make sure that you always have some kind of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you’ll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There’s nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)

6. Label your internal text links and clickable image alt attributes (aka alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click-through. Don’t make them guess what’s at the other end with links that say “clïck here” or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.

7. Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases and your target market’s needs, and make sure it’s copy that the search engines can “see.” This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn’t be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn’t going to cut it, and it just looks silly. (Purchase and read our Copywriting Combo for exact tips on how to implement this correctly.)

8. Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page’s unique Title tag. Title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weïght with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you’ve written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it’s on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.

9. Make sure your site is “link-worthy.” Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site’s overall link popularity. You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without you even asking. It’s fine to trade links; just make sure you are providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.

10. Don’t be married to any one keyword phrase or worried too much about rankings. If you’ve done the above 9 things correctly, you will start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffïc, salës, and conversions. (You can sign up for a frëe trial of ClickTracks, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won’t hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don’t simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!

About The Author
Jill Whalen of High Rankings® is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and host of the frëe weekly High Rankings® Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Jill’s handbook, “The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines” teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines.

Jill specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations, site analysis reports, SEM seminars and is the co-founder of the new search marketing and website design company, Search Creative, LLC.

Posted in General SEO, Google, Keywords, Linking, Organic Optimisation, SEO, Tools | Comments Off

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