Specialist in SEO and SEM

10 web trends to watch in 2011

2011-05-17T21:56:00.001-07:00

Think your website is ready for 2011? Think again. Just as you’ve mastered the latest web trends, suddenly major changes in SEO, web design and eCommerce appear from nowhere - and your business had better be prepared.

Expanding your use of video, adapting to the growing use of smartphones and using your website to become an expert in your field are just some of the tasks you’ll need to tackle this year if you want to keep on top of the competition online.

And as Martin Hosking from RedBubble says, integrating social media throughout your online strategy is a challenge every website operator must address.

“People aren’t just shopping through search now. What we’re seeing is a combination of interaction with friends, along with looking on a website. So if you’re operating a website you really need to start thinking about your whole social experience.”

Here are the big web trends you need to address in 2011.
Web sales
Add something new

Physical retailers practically fall over each other trying to stand out among the crowd, offering extras like discounts, gift-wrapping and other promotions. Hal Pritchard from kitchenware site Everton Online says eCommerce sites need to be doing this as well.

“You really have to do more than just the basics now, and add-on features such as gift-wrapping and other types of benefits. People are getting more discerning, and it’s not just enough to just have a product now, and then offer it for a good price.”

Pritchard says the high Australian dollar means retailers need to start acting now. If businesses want to keep dollars onshore, he argues, they need to offer some extras.

“The more creative you can be, the better. I know of a clothing company that puts in handwritten notes into all of their products, thanking the customers. That’s a great example of what you can do when you’re a small retailer.”

“This is the type of stuff you can do when you’re a small company, and you have the chance to do it. Make yourself stand out and keep those customers coming back.”

Make it pretty

One of the biggest problems a new online shopper may have with the digital process is that they can’t touch and feel the product they’re buying. In order to eliminate that fear, you need to make the experience as visual as possible for them.

Craig Reardon from development firm the E-Team says photography has been one of the most misunderstood media available online.

“Because of its proliferation, many business operators are unwilling to pay for professional photography, opting instead for poorly lit and composed snapshots - sometimes by themselves or a family member.

“But this practice is a false economy. Cheap looking photos cheapen your website and in turn your business image. Large companies invest heavily in ensuring their photos look as professional as possible because it is such a critical indicator of quality.”

Reardon says small businesses don’t need to hire top-of-the-line photographers – they simply need to find one that is good enough to provide solid and professional results.

Failing that, most manufacturers will provide press images of their products, and you can use those instead – just don’t use cheap images that ruin the look of your site.

Content
Become an expert

Your website shouldn’t just be a place for customers to grab a phone number or send you an email. These experts say in order to distinguish yourself from the crowd, you need to be setting up yourself as an expert in the field – and the perfect way to do this is through a blog.

Lisa Taliana from Taliana Designs argues creating a blog is now becoming expected of certain businesses.

“Plenty of businesses and simply people in general are either adding a blog to their site, or using a blog to communicate with their audience. And while blogs are not new, they are on the increase.”

Taliana points out these blogs are great avenues for your business to post tips and resources for customers to come and have a look at – but they require dedication. Post too infrequently, and you risk looking lazy.

“I run my own blog mainly aimed at designers and customers looking to improve their brand. So the type of topics I include are things like tutorials, how-tos and inspiring design products and reviews. In doing so, users comment and have actually contracted me.”

“The best thing about blogs is that you can manage the content yourself. You can add pages, posts and images to your heart’s content. I recommend WordPress blogs. You can "pimp" them up, inject your personality or business branding into your templates and there are lots of free add-ons.”

But blogs aren’t the only answer. Todd Sullivan, who runs GlobeTrooper, says you should be highlighting your expertise across the internet.

“As always, becoming a subject matter expert can give a business credibility and targeted exposure. In terms of social media, a relatively new channel for building reputation as a subject matter expert is Quora.com.”

“The fundamental concept isn't new, but the execution is quite unique in that they've managed (so far) to keep topics and conversations quite serious. It's becoming known as the place for subject matter experts to share thoughts and ideas.”

RedBubble director Martin Hosking says there are always ways to publish content online, no matter what type of business you are.

“If you’re selling kitchenware online, you can spend a lot of time thinking about the SEO aspects of that. You can print recipes, create a community around sharing cooking ideas, and so on. There are always good ways to do things.”
Online video

Watching video online has been popular for years, but until very recently many businesses hadn’t even thought about producing their own. But Amblique chief executive Justus Wilde says you should be doing exactly that.

“Video is starting to get more and more momentum online, and we’ve seen that when we’ve implemented video with clients in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge impact on engagement and conversion.”

Plenty of businesses are now creating their own channels on YouTube to promote products, portray themselves as experts and connect with customers. Good examples include blender manufacturer BlendTec, which has become infamous for its “will it blend” videos and Wilde says other businesses should take their lead.

“So if you’re selling furniture, you could have a video describing the product, showing off the features that might now be able to be seen on a picture, describing the material, and so on.”

“In the fashion industry, it’s very useful. You might have a piece of clothing, like a skirt, and people want to know how it looks on someone rather than just seeing a picture. We’ve seen a conversion rate of between 50-250% with online video, and people are spending more time on sites where videos are uploaded – the difference has really surprised me.”

Social media
Connect your customers

Social media is nothing new and we all recognize that businesses without Facebook and Twitter pages risk being left behind. But now comes the next step – connecting all your social media links together and plugging them whenever possible.

Hal Pritchard says all of your pages need to link to social mediate sites, and vice versa.

“Interconnection with social media is the big thing now, you really need to be looking at having your Facebook page, Twitter and other sites all linked together. You need to make these sites are not just the place users go to buy something, but be sure they can get to other places as well.”

“We’re moving into a second generation now. In the early days you could have a product online and that would be good enough, but now you have people being a lit bit more discerning.”

But connecting all of your social networks together is just one method. Lisa Taliana says you should also be making use of the Facebook plugins to make all of the content on your site appear more social.

“You’ve probably seen lots of little “like” buttons on various web pages around and about. These buttons are generated through Facebook and you should place the buttons all around your web pages.

“When someone ‘likes’ your page, it will appear in their friend’s feed, alerting them to their activity. Remember – word of mouth is powerful.”

5 Tools to Googlize Your Business

2010-03-11T21:58:00.001-08:00

Whether you love or hate Google, it’s hard to go a day without touching one of their services. From Internet inquiries to mapping your way to your next destination, the search engine giant has come a long way from its days operating out of a Menlo Park garage.

Today, Google is changing the way that we communicate on a personal and professional level. Although many organizations aren’t ready to leave the comfort of out-of-the-box software, there are many advantages to computing “in the cloud.” Web-based tools from companies such as Google offer cost-effective solutions (often free), better scalability, easier collaboration, and enhanced security. While these services aren’t for everyone, many small businesses are starting to make the switch to Internet applications without suffering any major technical setbacks.

To join the Google love affair, there are a few products that are worth trying out. They won’t take too much time to set up or install, and if you hate them there will be no nagging tech salesperson showing up on your door trying to convince you to give ‘em another shot.

1.Google Buzz.

This is one of the newest additions to the Google family. To access this product, you’ll need a Gmail account (see below). Buzz is aiming to compete with the Twitter and Facebook communities, among other social networks. In other words, it’s trying to improve online conversations. Last year Google launched Wave, which was trying to capture the social audience. While Wave did have some cool features, Buzz definitely looks more promising since it’s integrated within your Gmail account. What also makes it interesting in a business environment is the ability to have private or public real-time conversations, helping to increase your organization’s productivity with easier collaboration using comment threads with status updates.

2.Google Chrome.

This Google download is like the ugly stepsister in the browser world: it just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. While Mozilla’s Firefox is an excellent web browser, what makes Chrome even better is one simple thing: this Google product allows you to search directly from the address bar. Sure, this seems simply enough, but when you start to use Chrome on a regular basis you realize how much time you can save by entering your queries in the same place you normally type a full URL. You might call this lazy searching, but whatever you say about it, there’s no doubt it’s a winning feature.

3.Gmail.

Many corporate Internet email services make sending, searching, and sharing messages frustrating. With Gmail, aside from ease-of-use, there are many business advantages. For starters, Google offers you more email storage than you will ever need (and if you do need more, you can buy it at a reasonable price). Although managing emails is a fine art, with Gmail you don’t have to spend a lot of time organizing your messages because they are easily searchable in seconds. However, if you love organizing your email account, there are stars, filters, and labels to make Gmail sorting a breeze. Another obvious benefit to this Google service is the ability to check your email anywhere, anytime, on any computer with Internet access.

4.Google Calendar.

There is no more important tool in a business than a company’s calendar. With Google Calendar, you can easily manage all your meetings. The app’s built-in reminders make it easy for you to send a text message or email to yourself at scheduled times before an appointment. If you’re worried about your clients or customers calendar programs getting confused with your Google ways, Google Calendar plays nice with Microsoft Outlook, among other programs. Finally, even if you’re offline, you can still see your meetings.

5.Google Docs.

Word processing is a breeze in Google Docs. From creating documents to designing a presentation to crafting a spreadsheet, all of these items can be created and exported to popular file formats, such as DOC, PPT, and CSV. There is no new technology to learn within Docs since the terminology is the same as what you’d find in much of the business world’s popular software. Oh, and it’s free, just like everything on this list, which decreases your software license fees and increases your company’s productivity.

Six Sri Lankan cricket players wounded in bus attack in Pakistan

2009-03-02T23:14:00.001-08:00

Six members of the Sri Lankan cricket squad were wounded when around a dozen gunmen attacked their bus as it drove under police escort on Tuesday to a stadium in the Pakistani city of Lahore, witnesses and officials said.

Lahore Police chief Habib-ur-Rehman said five people were killed in the attack by the unidentified gunmen, who fired AK 47s and rockets and hurled grenades as the team bus drove to the 60,000-seater Gaddafi stadium in the eastern city.

Sri Lanka's sports minister said five players and an assistant coach were wounded, two of whom were being treated in hospital.

"Police are chasing the terrorists," police chief Habib-ur-Rehman said. "They appeared to be trained men."

The attack had echoes with one on the Indian city of Mumbai in November which led to the Indian cricket team cancelling its planned tour of Pakistan.

India blamed that attack on Pakistan-trained militants and the incident sharply raised tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Sri Lanka, which had been invited to Pakistan after India pulled out, immediately cancelled the rest of the tour.

"We are trying to bring the team back as quickly as possible," a Sri Lankan cricket official said.

Pakistan TV showed footage of gunmen with rifles and backpacks running through the streets and firing on unidentified vehicles.

The driver of the Sri Lankan team coach said one of the attackers had thrown a grenade under the bus, but it did not detonate.

A witness told Reuters he believed two police commandos were killed along with a regular policeman and a traffic warden.

Shopkeeper Ahmed Ali said the two police commandos had been driving behind the team bus when they were hit.

"It was a very heavy firing and I heard at least two explosions at the time," said a Reuters witness who had been on his way to cover the test match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Cricketer Thilan Samaraweera seemed to be the worst hit, suffering a thigh injury, a player on the team bus who did not wish to be identified told Reuters by phone.

It was unclear whether injuries were caused by bullets, shrapnel or flying shards of glass.

Google Launched Knol --- Unit Of Knowladge

2009-01-31T02:59:00.000-08:00

Knol Is Open To Every One

A few months ago we announced that we were testing a new product called Knol. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making Knol available to everyone.

The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

Everyone knows something. See what people are writing about, then tell the world what you know: knol.google.com

Satyam Chairman Ramalinga Raju Arrested, Board scrapped

2009-01-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

The chairman of Satyam Computer Services was arrested on Friday on charges of cheating and forgery, and the government dissolved the outsourcer's board as authorities moved to limit fallout from India's biggest corporate scandal.

Chairman Ramalinga Raju, who resigned on Wednesday after revealing years of accounting fraud, was expected to appear before the market regulator on Saturday. The events have called into question the future of the outsourcing company,

In a late night development, Raju and his brother B. Rama Raju, Satyam co-founder and managing director, were arrested on charges of criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, cheating, falsification of record and forgery, Reuters was told by S.S.P. Yadav, police chief of Andhra Pradesh, whose capital Hyderabad is home to Satyam.

Earlier in the day, Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta said the government would appoint 10 new members to the Satyam board, which would meet within seven days. There was no move to take over Satyam's management at this time, he said.

"The government is considering appointment of suitable persons as directors of Satyam," Gupta told a news conference in New Delhi. "We are determined to reach the truth but are equally concerned with the fate of employees and other stakeholders."

A Satyam spokeswoman said the company welcomed the government's decision, which would restore the confidence of all employees, customers and shareholders. However, she said Satyam had no comment on the arrests.

In a bid to ease the worries of rattled investors, the Securities and Exchange Board of India said auditors' certification of corporate results from the December quarter would be peer reviewed.

The government barred Satyam's board from holding its scheduled meeting on Saturday, which was called to consider options such as inviting a takeover or strategic investor and appointing an investment banker.

Analysts said Satyam's very existence was threatened by the scandal, which stand-in Chief Executive Ram Mynampati said has pushed the company into a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

Satyam shares slumped to 11.50 rupees (24 U.S. cents), their lowest since March 1998 and a far cry from a 2008 high of 544 rupees, before ending down 40 percent at 23.85 rupees ahead of the board's dissolution.

The company's market value has shriveled to $330 million, from more than $7 billion six months ago.

NONEXISTENT CASH

The chief financial officer offered to resign after Raju's admission that profit had been overstated for years and that about $1 billion, or 94 percent of the cash and bank balances on Satyam's books at end-September, did not exist.

"There's a big question mark over everything. We don't know what kind of business model they have now," said Amar Ambani, vice-president of research at broker India Infoline.

"Raju's declaration says that at the operating level the margin was 3 percent, so at the net level it must have been a loss, which makes it extremely unviable. They have been borrowing to pay salaries, which means they have no cash at all," Ambani said.

The stock has fallen 87 percent in two trading days, pulling the broader market down. Shares in Satyam's main rivals, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro rose on expectations they would benefit from Satyam's circumstances.

Satyam will be cut from India's benchmark stock index, the Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-share Sensex from Monday.

Analysts said recent hopes that Satyam could survive by being taken over had been dashed, given the scope of the scandal and potential for big legal losses.

"The largest scandal in India's corporate history calls into question the viability of the company as an independent entity," consultancy Forrester said in a Jan. 8 research note.

"As a result, sourcing and IT executives need to actively review their exposure to the company and their options as a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the company.

"Both clients and employees will desert Satyam as a result of competitive wooing," it said.

Satyam specialises in business software and back-office services for clients including General Electric and Nestle.

National Australia Bank Ltd, Australia's top lender, said it was reviewing a contract with Satyam for system development and support to 2011.

L&T SITTING PAT

The chairman of Larsen & Toubro, India's top engineering and construction firm, said the uncertainty around Satyam meant L&T had no plans to alter its near 4 percent stake in the outsourcer, which it built up in early January.

"When we invested, our idea was to strike some sort of go-to-market strategy, some sort of strategic alliance, if it was possible," A.M. Naik told CNBC TV18. He noted that Satyam's share price was about 188 rupees before Raju's resignation bombshell, far higher than the price at which L&T had bought it.

Naik did not rule out an alliance with Satyam once there was clarity on its losses and liabilities, including any from law suits. L&T runs a mid-sized outsourcing unit called L&T Infotech.

Several securities fraud class action lawsuits have already been filed in the U.S. on behalf of investors who bought Satyam American Depository Receipts (ADRs) in the last five years.

Satyam Computers founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju has resigned from the Satyam Board.

2009-01-06T23:19:00.000-08:00

Raju has written a letter to the board giving details of the balance sheet. Balance Sheet has inflated cash balances of Rs 5040 crore and accrued interest of Rs 376 crore is non-existent. Rs 1230 crore was arranged to Satyam and is not reflected in the books

While Ram Mynampati will act as Interim CEO, Merrill Lynch can be entrusted to explore.

As per the revelations, second Quarter numbers were inflated to Rs 2700 crore vs Rs 2112 crore actual numbers. No board member had any knowledge of the real situation of the books.

Shares in Satyam Computer shed all gains to turn negative after the embattled Indian outsourcer said its chairman has resigned from the Board. Shares were down 16.81% at 149 rupees. (11.22 am)

According to analysts, Raju's resignation wouldn't make much of a difference to investors.

"He is not to be blamed alone...the responsibility lies with the entire board. It was a unanimous decision and this board is in no place to decide on the issue," said Prabhudas Leeladhar analyst Apurva Shah.

PR 8 Links from Google.com Only $1,995

2008-12-31T20:01:00.000-08:00

92%

Are you an SEO Expert?

As the debate over paid links continues in reaction to Google’s recent line in the sand it may shock many that Google is currently offering paid links on Google.com for the very reasonable price of just $1,995 - and as an added bonus you’ll also receive a free Google Mini.

Yesterday while digging through a competitor’s backlinks for a client I noticed a domain that seemed remarkably out of place: google.com. In addition to adding themselves to a large number of low quality directories, the competitor had discovered that if you purchase the Google Mini you have the privilege of contributing to their exceedingly large list of “customer success stories“. While many of these success stories are for established and recognizable businesses who sincerely appreciate the advanced search capabilities the Mini provides, others are undoubtedly as pleased with their new link as their new Google Mini.

Google Maps for Mobile gets Street View, walking directions

2008-12-26T19:23:00.000-08:00

The Google Maps for Mobile team pushed a new version of their application today, with two hugely awesome features packed inside.

They’ve added support for Street View, which allows you to get a pedestrian’s-eye view of any street Google has cruised down with their panoramic-shootin’ super car. It’s a feature that has been around for quite some time on the desktop version, but is mounds more useful on-the-go.

The new release also adds walking directions for those of us that count on our kickers to get around. If there’s a sidewalk to walk on, your feet don’t care if a street is one way.

As long as you’ve got a compatible handset (BlackBerry, and most Java-enabled phones), you can nab the new release by pointing it at http://m.google.com/maps?dc=gorganic

Google Launches Audio Indexing

2008-12-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we’re looking for in all that content. To address that, Google announced Wednesday that it has launched audio indexing in Google Labs.

Dubbed GAudi, the new service is designed to work with YouTube, and will catalog all the words uttered during an audio or video clip. Once collected, the transcript will be added to a searchable database that can be accessed in much the same way you search for text-based websites.

But before you start wondering if Google has indexed your latest vlog, don’t get too excited. According to the company, GAudi is only in beta at this point and during that time, it will only index audio and video from political sources.

Aside from being able to search for terms mentioned in the video, you can click on a group of play buttons to bring you to the exact point in the video where the keyword is mentioned. In other words, if you’re searching for discussions the candidates have had about health, simply input that into the search field, and the best video result will be shown in the right pane. You can either choose to watch the entire video or click on the links below to be brought to the exact moment during the video that health was said by the political figure.

Google didn’t give any word about what would happen to GAudi after it’s done indexing political speeches, but the service has some promise and is definitely worth checking out.

This Information provided by CrunchBase

Google To Launch Customizable Search Tonight

2008-11-21T22:04:00.000-08:00

VISIT MY NEW WEBSITE http://www.geocities.com/jeminseo/

A couple of months ago, Google vice president Marissa Mayer wrote about Google’s views on the future of web search. One of the things she talked about was the ability to personalize the search experience. “Search engines of the future will be better in part because they will understand more about you, the individual user,” she wrote.

One way they could do that, is by allowing users to rate, reorder, and comment on search results, teaching the search engine over time what types of sites you like. Google tonight will be opening up to the public an experimental feature they’ve been testing for a few months called SearchWiki, reports CNET.

SearchWiki lets users reorder and remove results, and leave comments on specific links. Google will remember changes that people make to search results pages, and subsequent searches will display results with the user’s customizations and notes. Users will also have the option of seeing how other searchers have rated and reordered search results and view other people’s notes, making search results a collaborative effort.

In some ways, the process is reminiscent of Wikia Search, the collaborative search engine launched by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, which allows searchers to edit, annotate, and comment on search results. We also reported on a project in October from Microsoft Research Japan called “U Rank,” that allowed users to rank and reorder search results in a collaborative environment.

According to CNET, Google seemed open using human input gathered via SearchWiki to improve their general search algorithm, though stopped short of saying that was something they were planning to do. “We don’t close any doors,” said Cedric Dupont, product manager for Google’s SearchWiki, who said they look at all sorts of signals regarding how to better tweak their search algorithm. “Search is adapting to the Internet as it becomes a more participatory medium. Now you have people telling us specific things about how they’d like to see their search results.”

Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" Button Costs Them $110 Million/Year

2008-11-18T03:03:00.000-08:00

Because the button takes users directly to the top search result, Google doesn't get to show search ads on one percent of all its searches. That costs the company around $110 million in annual revenue, according to Rapt's Tom Chavez. So why does Google keep such a costly button around?

Google's Number One UI Mistake

Google's user interface minimalism is admirable. But there's one part of their homepage UI, downloaded millions of times per day, that leaves me scratching my head:

Google: I'm not feeling so lucky.

Does anyone actually use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button? I've been an avid Google user since 2000; I use it somewhere between dozens and hundreds of times per day. But I can count on one hand the number of times I've clicked on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

I understand this was a clever little joke in the early days of Google-- hey, look at us, we're a search engine that actually works! -- but is it really necessary to carry this clever little joke forward ten years and display it on the monitors of millions of web users every day? We get it already. Google is awesomely effective. That's why I use it so much. That's why Google is the start page for the internet, loading the Google homepage is virtually synonymous with internet access, and the verb "to Google" is at risk of becoming a genericized trademark. Google has won so decisively, so utterly, and so completely that the power they now wield over the internet actually scares me a little. Okay, it scares me a lot.

So can we get rid of the superfluous button now?

You might say it's only one more button, so where's the harm. I say giving a feature that's used less than one percent of the time parity with the "Search" button is a needless distraction for users. Furthermore, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is only available on the homepage-- it's not a part of any browser toolbar searches, and Google's intermediate search page results don't offer it, either. Why not standardize and stick with the simple, single "Search" button that everyone understands and expects, on every page? Why muddy the waters with a button that's so rarely useful, and on the homepage of all places? The thought necessary to mentally omit this needless button from the page may be miniscule-- but multiply that by the millions upon millions of users who are affected, and all of a sudden it starts to add up to real time. Don't make us think!

If you're an advanced computer user, you may be wondering why we bother with Search buttons at all when we have a perfectly good ENTER key on our keyboards. As shocking as this may be to us homo logicus, not everyone understands how that works. Sure, we think it's crazy to take our hand off the keyboard, where we were just typing our search query, move it all the way over to the mouse, then carefully move the mouse pointer to a button and left-click it... when we could just take that very same hand, already poised over the keyboard, and lazily tap the ENTER key.

But typical users don't really understand basic keyboard shortcuts. They love their mice, and their big, fat, honking "Search" buttons. That's why the current versions of Firefox and IE both have an integrated "go" button directly next to the address bar-- so users have something obvious to click once they've typed the URL into the address bar. Otherwise, I guess, they'd sit there wondering if their computer had frozen.

Internet Explorer 7 address bar

Personally, I always use the keyboard ENTER key to complete my searches, but I'd be open to a keyboard shortcut such as SHIFT+ENTER that invoked the Lucky function. I still can't imagine using it more than once a week at most-- and that's probably an optimistic estimate.

Strunk and White urged us to Omit Needless Words:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

I urge us to Omit Needless Buttons. I hope the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button isn't considered a sacred cow at Google. Removing it would be one small step for Google, but a giant collective improvement in the default search user interface for users around the world.

Black Hole SEO, Don’t Get Sucked In

2008-09-16T20:03:00.000-07:00

Free Viral Advertising!

Recently a number of well known SEO blogs have been talking about Black Hole SEO. In this post I want to take a look at the points raised and explain why I don’t think it’s a viable strategy for most websites.

A black hole site is created when an tier 1 authority site ceases to link out to other sites. If a reference is needed, the information is rewritten and a reference page is created within the black hole. All (or virtually all) external links on the site are made nofollow.

Sites such as TechCrunch use the technique very intelligently - they link both internally and externally. This means they keep bloggers and startups happy by giving a live link and they get good rankings for sites in the network such as CrunchBase.

If you are an authority site then linking to sites in your network rather than external sites is sometimes a good strategy but the problem arises when less experienced webmasters read about Black Hole SEO and think it is a viable strategy.

Unless your site is already a massive authority site then stopping linking is a bad idea. As a webmaster nothing annoys me more than people who reference me or my clients without linking. It’s just bad manners. I remember people who don’t link and make a point of not linking to them in the future. I’m sure some people go even further and bury their stories on social sites.

Most astronomical black holes form when a star collapses. If the star is more than 3 times the mass of the Sun it forms a black hole, otherwise it becomes a neutron star or white dwarf.

The point is that people don’t like Black Hole sites and they won’t want to link to them. So cutting off your outgoing links before you reach critical mass will inhibit your chances of actually achieving Black Hole status.

Google Yahoo Deal Suspended

2008-09-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

Google has suspended their advertising partnership with Yahoo after European regulators started investigating the deal.

Google and Yahoo! today said they would temporarily suspend the partnership until regulators from both the US and EU have time to scrutinize the deal.

The planned partnership will see the two search engine giants combine their search advertising systems, which would allow Google to sell advertising on Yahoo! in return for a share of the profits.

Google Join Hands With NBC To Expand On TV Ad Sales

2008-09-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

New York -- Google Inc. and NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co, on Monday said they are grouping up to form a strategic multi-year advertising, research and technology partnership, under which the search-advertising giant will get access to sell through its Google TV Ads service, the companies announced in a joint statement.

The move that could be seen as a major victory in Google’s quest to sell ad time in more targeted fashion that will expand Internet powerhouse efforts to become a force in television advertising, and in a way that would have a TV network give up some of its control over the ad-sales process.

“With the addition of NBC Universal inventory, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can reach NBCU Cable’s national audience and gain access to viewer-ship data at an unprecedented scale,” NBC Universal and Google said in a statement.

“This latest move would likely give the Mountain View, Calif.-based company a strong foothold in the business of television advertising.”

In a joint statement late on Monday, the two companies announced the multi-year deal between the GE media unit and Google. The deal calls for Internet search giant to employ its TV Ads platform to sell advertisements on some of NBCU’s cable networks, including Sci Fi Channel, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller channels, in the coming months.

Mike Pilot, president of NBC Universal sales and marketing, and Tim Armstrong, Google’s president of advertising and commerce for North America, said that the partnership would make TV ads more accountable.

Through an existing deal with DISH Network, the Google TV Ads service can report second-by-second TV usage data allowing advertisers to measure viewer-ship of their ads more precisely. The NBC-Google partnership computes on the data supplied by Dish set-top boxes in millions of U.S. homes.

“We are extremely pleased to join forces with Google on this effort, which will help us develop better accountability and [return-on-investment] metrics for our advertisers and attract an entirely new group of clients to television advertising,” Pilot said in a statement. “This is another step in our commitment to trying innovative advertising approaches and testing new technologies that can help benefit our clients.”

“The Google TV Ads platform is making television advertising more accountable and measurable and we are pleased with our progress to date,” Armstrong said in a statement. “Our partnership with NBCU will help us bring the power of television to a broader set of advertisers as well as give our current advertisers increased reach through our system.”

NBC Universal and Google have also plan to work together to adapt the Google TV Ad service for use in local TV markets. They are also collaborating on custom marketing and research projects using Google TV Ads to survey audience trends.

NBCU said the deal could expand to other NBC Universal properties, including top-rated cable network USA Network and NBC, the fourth largest broadcaster, in the future.

“NBC Universal is a big win for us in terms of distribution growth,” said Michael Steib, director of Google TV Ads.

Google will have access to a small slice of the advertising inventory that brings in almost $6 billion a year for NBC Universal. Advertisers will be able to buy time on Sci Fi, which reaches 1.4 million viewers in prime time, as well as lower-rated cable channels.

The amount of inventory to be made available to Google is “fairly small by NBC Universal standards,” said Ed Swindler, executive vice president and chief operating officer for advertising sales at NBC Universal.

Getting “better metrics that are clearer, richer, deeper” is an “imperative” for NBC Universal, said Swindler. “And it does not stop with set-top-box data.”

Swindler said the amount of inventory may be adjusted “to make sure this test is successful.” He said the deal was significant regardless of scope.

“Any deal that allows us to change the model in favor of the advertiser to drive return on investment is a great deal,” he said.

US Advertiser Groups Fight Google-Yahoo Alliance

2008-09-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles -- The Association of National Advertisers, a trade group representing some of the country’s biggest marketers is rallying to oppose an advertising deal between Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., as the Justice Department considers whether to go to court to block the agreement.

The association last week sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, stating that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory,” the ANA, which represents major U.S. advertisers, said in a statement.

The letter further stated that the partnership “will probably diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising,” the statement said.

The group announced the letter on its Web site on Sunday. The agreement, announced in June, gives Web-search giant Google the right to sell search and other text ads on Yahoo sites, sharing the revenue with Yahoo.

Barnett could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

Staying independent and trying to boost its search revenues by outsourcing part of the advertising to Google would yield more for shareholders than an outright acquisition at the price Microsoft was suggesting, Yahoo’s board decided.

Although the alliance does not need official antitrust clearance, the two companies said they would delay implementing it for 100 days to allow the Department of Justice to study it. The voluntary delay was designed to reduce the risk that regulators would decide later on to challenge the relationship, which links the two biggest search advertising companies, as anti-competitive.

“Whether the letter will influence federal antitrust regulators remains unclear, but it is considered a blow to Yahoo and Google because of the trade group’s high profile. Until now, big marketers have been reluctant to come out against the deal publicly because of Google’s growing power in the ad business.”

Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said “numerous advertisers have recognized that this agreement will help them better match their ads to users’ interests, and that ad prices will continue to be set by competitive auction.”

“While some have raised questions about the agreements’ potential impact on ad prices, advertisers care far more about getting a good return on their advertising dollar than they do about buying cheap ads that don't bring in customers, and this agreement will clearly help advertisers reach Yahoo users more efficiently,” Kovacevich said.

Yahoo said last night it was “disappointed with the ANA board’s position.” It said prices would be determined by advertiser demand-driven auctions, and the deal would help drive a “more robust” marketplace for Yahoo’s advertisers.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Justice Department has been reviewing the deal for months, questioning some ad executives and advertisers about what it would mean for the advertising business.

As they weigh comments from outsiders, regulators often discount the views of competitors who complain about a deal, as Microsoft has done. They are likely, however, to listen closely to customers, in this case major advertisers, so the association’s letter could be a significant hurdle.

Microsoft and Michael Kassan, a longtime advertising and media executive who is now consulting for the company, have been lobbying Madison Avenue’s advertising and media-buying executives, as well as marketers, to oppose the Yahoo-Google alliance, according to ad executives. In testimony during House and Senate hearings about the deal, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith argued that it would lead to fewer choices and higher prices for advertisers.

A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment.

While some individual advertisers have hinted publicly at their own concerns, the trade association’s letter represents the first attack on the deal from a highly influential group of consumer companies.

The ANA’s board includes representatives from large advertisers like General Motors, Wal-Mart and Anheuser-Busch. Bob Liodice, ANA’s president, said the submission to antitrust regulators had been made after an analysis that included “input from the board’s members,” as well as discussion with Google and Yahoo.

Google and Yahoo combined sell more than 80% of U.S. search ads, which account for the largest part of the online-advertising business. Google alone has more than 70% of that business.

The factual and legal merits and the anti-competitive effects of any practice will determine what the states will do.

The idea for the partnership first arose during Microsoft’s unsolicited buyout bid for Yahoo, which brought pressure on the Internet search pioneer to show it could be just as valuable as a stand alone company. And although Microsoft has long since withdrawn its $33 a share buyout bid for Yahoo, the two Internet search companies are continuing with its efforts to move the partnership forward.

Beginners Guide to Linkbait

2008-09-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

Linkbait is the act of adding content to a website with the aim of attracting links from other sites. The content can take a variety of different forms from a unique tool or a breaking news story to a well written article or controversial image.

Sometimes linkbait is intentional but quite often the best linkbait is conceived quite by accident.

My favourite piece of link bait is the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. The download page has over 15 million links and is probably the most linked internal page on the web today.

Creating your linkbait

The first step to thinking of a really cool tool, unique news story or article is to find out what people want to read about. It sounds simple but following the breaking stories on the various social networking sites as well as Technorati and the BlogStorm Tracker will give you a unique insight into the weeks hot topics.

Another good tip is to search the social bookmarking sites for things related to your site that have been popular in the past. You might find a nice tool that was on Digg 2 years ago and be able to use it to inspire something more modern for your site.

A quick look at some popular tools in different areas is often a good source of inspiration. For example you might see a tool on a car/auto website for valuing used cars and be able to apply it to your real estate site.

Top 10 lists

Although top 10 lists are very popular on sites like Digg they are actually the least successful kind of link bait. Most of the reputable sites won’t bother linking to a top 10 list unless it is really amazing or offers new information. You could try using a top 10 list to build a short burst of traffic but don’t expect a link from Engadget in return.

Articles

Well written articles or tutorials are an art form and are one of the hardest link bait methods to pull off unless you are well known or an exceptional writer. The article would need to be very well written and perfectly targeted towards your audience to succeed. If you want to try link baiting some quality articles you should concentrate on writing content that will help people, content that will offer such great benefits that other bloggers will want to link to your post to help their readers.

News

Most new linkbaiters should really start off with trying to break the latest news in their niche before anybody else. Done right this is an easy way to build links from authority sites and social bookmarking sites. You should also benefit from lots of new RSS subscribers who want to get more breaking news from you in the future. Gain a reputation for being the first to break the news and you will dominate your niche. If you break a big enough story you will find all the bloggers in your niche desperate to post about it and links will flow into the hundreds or thousands.

Apart from being the first to write about it the key aspect of writing a breaking news article is to make sure the article is of exceptional quality and includes the sort of images that other bloggers will want to use on their sites. You need to make sure that your article is the authority that others will want to link to. If somebody else explains the story better or has more details then they will attract the links.

Finding news to write about can be very hard. Building relationships with larger companies is impossible for most bloggers so you will be reliant on subscribing to press releases and news feeds in most cases.

If you can be the second site to write about something and promote it in the right way you can often overtake the first site and become the “source” yourself. The best way to find breaking stories that have not yet become mainstream is to subscribe to a load of RSS aggregator feeds. Below are some of my favourites:

Tools

For anybody with a bit of imagination and a talented programmer, creating a tool for your site is the easiest way to link bait. Make the tool useful and well presented and its very easy to link to. Unique and useful tools can often turn a commercial site that struggles to attract any natural links into a useful resource that even competitors will link to and use on a regular basis.

Common ideas include methods to help people find information about products, test their websites, improve their skills, generate images or content for blogs and social networking profiles. Some of the best tools build millions of links without the users even knowing they are part of some clever link bait scheme.

As with any type of link bait the presentation of the tool is very important. Although it sounds like a cliché making good use of AJAX is a great way to improve the linkability of your tool.

Get sued or sue somebody

This technique is only recommended for those with deep pockets or a postal address in an obscure country where you are unlikely to ever face court.

If you decide to take on an industry giant like Google then the links will flow nice and fast. Make sure you have a good case to maximise your links.

Presenting your link bait

Although successful link bait will attract thousands of visitors you should not expect the visitors to click on any Adsense adverts or buy any products from your site. The best way to make your site stand out and attract links is to remove all the adverts. Yes, you read that part right. Remove your adverts. You can put them back on in a months time if you like but make sure the page is clean, well laid out, easy to read and ad free.

The next part is very important, you need to have a selection of bookmark buttons at the bottom of your page. Use the icons from each site to form the buttons so they are familiar to your visitors. The goal is for readers arriving from sites like Digg and Stumble Upon to like your site and bookmark it at Del.icio.us and Reddit while they are visiting.

Design is another essential skill in a link baiters arsenal. The page needs to look great and not look like just another Wordpress blog. Invest the time and money required to make your site look great. People who go the extra mile and design custom graphic for a particular article or blog post will get more links because of it. If you are really creative then adding an image that’s cool enough for other bloggers to use it on their blogs while they link to you will make you more memorable and maximise the potential of your link bait.

Three Good Reasons To Target Long-Tail Keywords!

2008-09-04T03:05:00.000-07:00

In professional terms, what we are talking about here is the concept of targeting so-called long tail keywords.

Long Tail keywords are those 3 and 4-keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling. You see, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. In virtually every case, such very specific searches are far more likely to convert to sales than general generic searches that tend to be geared more toward the type of research that consumers typically do prior to making a buying decision.

To help illustrate this phenomenon, let's take a look at the typical step-by-step buying path that a customer travels on the way to a making a purchase.

1. Consumer becomes aware of a product.
2. Consumer seeks information about that product in preparation for possible purchase.
3. Consumer evaluates alternatives to product (features, pricing, etc...).
4. Consumer makes their purchase decision.
5. Consumer pulls out their credit card and completes the transaction.
6. Consumer then evaluates the product after buying it and decides if they want to keep or return it.

Using the above six step path to a purchase as our model, you can probably already see that you want to target the consumer who is somewhere around step 4...

Consumer makes their purchase decision.

...because once they have made their decision to buy something, that's when they start using very specific search phrases to seek out their target purchase.

Now for the GOOD news...

Highly specific multi-word phrases tend to be far easier to rank well for than the more generic single keyword or double keyword phrases.

Here's a specific example. Let's say your site sells guided mountain climbing tours in California. At first, you might consider targeting a generic phrase like travel. After all, an adventure tour is generally the type of excursion people like to participate in while traveling on vacation.

However, if you tried to go after that phrase, you'd be facing direct competition from big sites like Yahoo.com, CNN.com and Travelocity.com. It's unlikely you'd be able to knock any of those sites out of the top 10 unless you're willing to invest a pile of money and a mountain of time.

But, even more important, travel isn't the best phrase for you to target anyway. That's because many people who search using that phrase are looking for items such as plane tickets, ocean cruises or just doing very general research on where they might like to go. They're probably not saying to themselves...

"I'm looking for someone who sells guided tours for beginners to climb Mount Shasta so I can take my family on a fun trip this summer."

If they were, they'd be entering something different than travel.

Even if you were to target a more specific phrase like mountain climbing you'd still be up against heavy hitters like About.com, Wikipedia.org, and the USDA forest service. And, unless you sell everything related to mountain climbing for every mountain around the world, the traffic you'd get for that keyword isn't likely to convert to many sales.

So let's look at some of the keywords that are specific to what you're selling—keywords that you can start ranking for and generating traffic and sales right away.

Here are a few highly specific keyphrases that relate to customers who are much later in the buying cycle—at least at step 3, probably at step 4 and possibly step 5:

* california mountain climbing tours
* beginner mountain climbing in california
* guided mountain climbing tours
* mount shasta family climbing tours

Of course, these are just a few examples. I'm sure you could think of many more. However, the point is twofold;

1. The long tail keywords are much easier to rank for.
2. People who search by using long tail keywords are far more likely to become buyers!

More Good News...

Of course this suggests that you should be creating pages that zero-in on snagging searchers who use long tail keywords. And, since there are potentially so many different long tail combinations that searchers may use to buy what you offer, that means you'll likely be creating more pages.

Well the goods news is that Google likes sites that have more pages. It makes the site look more substantial, more natural, and even more real in the eyes of the world's most popular search engine. Bear in mind that your "unique" pages need only be variants of your main offering(s) but focused on a specific long tail niche.

Therefore, each and every page will have a unique title, description meta tag, h1 header tag, and body content that emphasizes your offering by using the long tail keyword that you choose for each specific page. It isn't rocket science, but it sure does work well to snag consumers at the optimum stage of the buying process!

So, instead of focusing on just two or three highly competitive general keywords, target the dozens or even hundreds of easy-to-rank-for long tail keywords.

Also bear in mind, however, that the downside of focusing too much effort on the long tail is, if you target phrases which are too specific, you might not get enough traffic to sustain your business. That's why it's best to have:

* a few pages sending you large amounts of less-targeted traffic, and
* a large number of pages with each sending you small amounts of highly targeted traffic.

But overall, it's best to think of it this way; would you rather rank for one keyword which sent you 1000 visitors a day or 200 keyphrases, half of which sent you 1 buyer a day?

After you do the math you'll see that 100 buyers are much better than 1000 site visitors who are only doing research. And there is no question that the use of ultra-specific keywords demonstrate a greater intent to buy on the part of the customer. This simply leads to more sales which is, of course, what you are really after.
There's just no substitute for Research

In the end there is no substitute for doing your keyword research and determining which keywords have enough traffic to make them worth going after. And this effort must be dovetailed with doing your competitive intelligence research to determine which keywords you'll be able to rank for based on the sites you'd have to compete against.

Of course, Wordtracker is the hands-down best place to find a huge list of related keywords as well as learn how much traffic each is likely to provide your site. For many of the sites we manage, at least half of our customer traffic comes from these longer, more specific phrases—and such traffic tends to convert at a much higher level than generic 1 or 2-word keyword phrases.

So, now you have the tools it takes to get...

1. easier rankings
2. higher sales conversions
3. and many more pages indexed in Google

...all of which will certainly lead to a much more profitable bottom line!

How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes

2008-09-02T03:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a bad blogger. I’m swamped at work and have been distracted outside of work, and I’ve been trying to get by here on SBS with list links and even some of my best Flickr photos. I can’t remember the last time I posted something helpful / educational. My bad….

Let me take a stab at making things better.

I often get asked to review a web site and give quick feedback on the site’s SEO. The issue: Is the site doing well, or in desperate need of SEO help? To answer those questions, I’ve developed a speedy system to go through a site and take a quick SEO snapshot. I’m going to give that system away here. On a smaller site, this should take about 20 minutes. Even on the biggest sites, it’s never taken me more than an hour.
SEO Your Site in Less Than an Hour

A. Visit the home page, www.domain.com.

1. Does it redirect to some other URL? If so, that’s bad.
2. Review the Page Title. Does it use relevant, primary keywords? Is it formatted correctly?
3. Review site navigation:
* Format — text or image? image map? javascript? drop-downs? Text is best.
* Page URLs — look at URL structure, path names, file names. How long are URLs? How far away from the root are they? Are they separated by dashes or underscores?
* Are keywords used appropriately in text links or image alt tags?
4. Review home page content:
* Adequate and appropriate amount of text?
* Appropriate keyword usage?
* Is there a sitemap?
* Do a “command-A” to find any hidden text.
* Check PageRank via SearchStatus plugin for Firefox
5. View source code:
* Check meta description (length, keyword usage, relevance).
* Check meta keywords (relevance, stuffing).
* Look for anything unusual/spammy (keywords in noscript, H1s in javascript, etc.).
* If javascript or drop-down navigation, make sure it’s crawlable.
* Sometimes cut-and-paste code into Dreamweaver to get better look at code-to-page relationship.

B. Analyze robots.txt file. See what’s being blocked and what’s not. Make sure it’s written correctly.

C. Check for www and non-www domains — i.e., canonicalization issues. Only one should resolve; the other should redirect.

D. Look at the sitemap (if one exists).

1. Check keyword usage in anchor text.
2. How many links?
3. Are all important (category, sub-category, etc.) pages listed?

E. Visit two category/1st-level pages.

Repeat A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5 - this will be quicker since many objects (header, footer, menus) will be the same. In particular, look for unique page text, unique meta tags, correct use of H1s, H2s to structure content.

Check for appropriate PageRank flow. Also look at how they link back to home page. Is index.html or default.php appended on link? Shouldn’t be.

F. Visit two product/2nd-level pages.

Same steps as E.

Also, if the site sells common products, find 2-3 other sites selling same exact items and compare product pages. Are all sites using the same product descriptions? Unique content is best.

G. Do a site:domain.com search in all 3 main engines.

Compare pages indexed between the three. Is pages indexed unusually high or low based on what you saw in the site map and site navigation? This may help identify crawlability issues. Is one engine showing substantially more or less pages than the others? Double-check robots.txt file if needed.

I. Use Aaron’s SEO for Firefox extension to look at link counts in Yahoo and MSN. If not in a rush, do the actual link count searches manually on Yahoo Site Explorer and MSN to confirm.

…..END…..

That’s what I do when making a quick SEO site analysis. Important: This is for identifying problems, not fixing them. And it doesn’t replace a real and complete SEO analysis. (There are several shortcomings, for example. Here’s one: Steps E and F assume that all category pages across the site will be the same, and that all product pages will be the same. This is not always the case, so you may miss problems/issues that a real, deeper analysis would reveal.)

Questions for you:

- What other flaws do you find with this?
- What other steps do you take when doing a quick SEO analysis?

6 Unique Ways to Get Instant Links to Your Site

2008-08-29T01:10:00.000-07:00

It seems as though everyone wants something done quickly, or nearly instantly. We want success quickly. We want to be successful online and we want to get links to our web sites quickly. We want traffic to our web sites quickly.
There are many reasons why you would want to get an "influx" of links to one particular article on your web site. Perhaps it's a blog post. Perhaps it's just a new web site and a brand new domain name and you "want to do something" to jumpstart it somehow. I've put together a list of six things you can do right now to get nearly "instant links" to your web site. In many cases these six "techniques" of getting links are nearly automated, so your link will show up almost as fast as you can go check to see if it's really there. Some other techniques I've listed below are faster; and some require that you actually create some content (like writing a few blog entries).

I am not making any sort of "guarantees" at all whether or not these work or whether or not they're completely "white hat", meaning that if Matt Cutts from Google picks up on it he won't have problem with it. And I haven't tested each and every one of these to see if the "links count" at all the search engines. In any case, though, there are legitimate reasons as to why you would want to get a link quickly. One reason I can think of right now is that you need to get a URL crawled quickly; especially when you're going to syndicate the content on other web sites. Duplicate content can be a real issue nowadays, and it's important to make sure that the content on our site gets crawled first.

Here are fix ways to get nearly instant links to your web site:

1. Submit site to get-listed-quickly directories.

OneMission.com
Sign up as an editor, then add links in appropriate categories. Top level categories are better, not many links from home page http://onemission.com/

Easy Link Directory
A bid for placement web directory, submit a link to your site and bid to for placement; lowest bid is only $1. http://www.easylinktrade.com/

2. Add your own blog at a few sites:

Start a blog. Unique content, link out to trusted sites, add tags, to posts with appropriate keywords

http://wordpress.com/

Start a Squidoo Lens on your topic.

http://www.squidoo.com

Start a weather blog at Wunderground.com

Start a blog (choose free option) at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/

Other places to add your own content:

hubpages.com
zimbio.com

3. Add the link to your social media accounts.

Add a link to your social media accounts that you've already set up.

StumbleUpon
Del.icio.us/delicious.com
google.com/bookmarks
wirefan.com
simpy.com
folkd.com
blogmarks.net
corank.com
megite.com/discover
dropjack.com
a1-webmarks.com
jumpup.intuit.com
spicypages.com

If you have the option available to you, consider adding "link bait" type articles, content to the web site and use the social media sites to help promote that content.

4. Add your site to new social media profiles.

If you plan on using the new social media profile in the future, then it might make sense to set up social media profiles for the site. There's a good list of social media sites at www.socialposter.com.

5. Check for broken links at Web Directories

Check for broken links. Use a dead link checker to check for sites that are listed in the category where you want to be listed. Sometimes you can find a domain name that is listed (or one that you can buy) and redirect to your site with a 301 Permanent Redirect.

dir.yahoo.com
business.com
dmoz.org

Besides the Yahoo! Directory, Business.com, and DMOZ.org, there are most likely other authoritative sites or in your niche that list sites in your niche. Run a dead link checker script on those pages to find domain names, sites of formely competitive sites on your topic. Watch out for domain names that have trademarks, don't register those. Whether or not you actually get credit for those directory links is questionable, though. Once a domain name drops (goes pending delete) and is available, I tend to see them removed from the Google index. If you're after a directory listing, though, this may be an option if you don't want to wait or pay for the directory listing fee (some are as much as $299).

Here are a few broken link checker scripts:

Xenu
404 Checker
Dead Links

6. Make useful comments on some dofollow blogs.

Here's a list of some dofollow blogs (blogs that have removed the "nofollow" tag on their blog comments. Keep in mind that you really DO need to make a useful comment (especially on my blog) because most of these (if not all of them) are moderated. If you want a link from my blog, make a useful comment on a *recent* post, not one from 6 months or a year ago.

Comment Hunt
Do Follow Blogs
Courtney Tuttle DoFollow blogs
Link Building Bible

Like I mentioned before, there are many reasons why you would want to links to a site quickly; and you easily force a search engine crawl of your site by doing any of these things. I tend to prefer to do as many as I can, especially when it comes to a brand new domain name or when I need a link to an article or press release on a site that I know is going to get "syndicated" somewhere. Hopefully this list is helpful. If you know of any other ways to get a link that I haven't mentioned, feel free to comment about it.

Google Changes Algorithm - Anchor Text Less Important

2008-08-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

This week I’ve noticed a number of interesting changes in the way Google ranks web pages. The following article is based on my observations and theory rather than fact. Please comment if you have noticed similar issues.

Quite a number of the queries we track have altered recently and websites that previously ranked have dropped down by a number of places. This doesn’t appear to be a penalty - just an alteration in the algorithm.

The common characteristic all the sites have is that their rankings were based very heavily on anchor text rather than on-site optimisation. The changes don’t seem to have affected major commercial queries yet but they are visible when you search for particular peoples names.

For example a search for “patrick” used to bring blogstorm.co.uk in 5th place, this week it dropped down to 35th place. The sites above all have better on-site optimisation for that keyword but previously a few good anchor text links was enough for Blogstorm to rank.

Last December I did a study to see how a few SEO bloggers ranked for their own name which gives a good barometer to see how the algorithm has changed since then. Some blogs have moved up and some have moved down but in general the trend is downwards depending on whether you use google.co.uk or .com (there are geographical fluctuations going on as well which affects the results).

Why would Google do this?

Anchor text is the biggest flaw in the Google algorithm. Google wants to show the most relevant and trusted websites at the top of the search results but anchor text has no relation to trust for most queries.

Just because a site has 5 million links with the anchor text “loans” doesn’t mean its a good search result for the query “loans”. Currently there are two types of sites ranking for commercial queries - ones that rank due to the TrustRank of their incoming links (links from newspaper websites and quality blogs) and ones that rank because they have thousands of paid links with keywords in the anchor text.

If I worked at Google then I would discount any links with really competitive keywords in the anchor text - nobody naturally links to a commercial site with “loans” or “car insurance” in the anchor text - they use the sites name instead.

If your site name is mega-cheap-car-insurance.com and all your anchor text is “Mega Cheap Car Insurance” does that mean you should rank higher than somebody like confused.com when a searcher is looking for “cheap car insurance”? I think trust (something which can’t be gamed) should play a much bigger factor than anchor text which until now was by far the biggest loophole in the algorithm.

Google believes $1B investment in AOL is crumbling

2008-08-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

In an assessment that could lead to a substantial charge against its future profits, Google Inc. believes its $1 billion investment in advertising partner AOL is souring.

The Mountain View-based company disclosed in a quarterly report filed late Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the 5 percent AOL stake that it bought in 2005 "may be impaired." Impairment is an accounting term used to describe an acquisition or investment that has eroded.

Unless there is an about-face, the acquiring company eventually must absorb a charge on its books to account for the diminished value of its holdings.

Google acknowledged for the first time that it might have to recognize a loss on its 5 percent stake in AOL, whose struggles have made it a financial albatross for its owner, Time Warner Inc.

"There can be no assurance that impairment charges will not be required in the future, and any such amounts may be material," Google said of its AOL investment.

A Google spokesman declined further comment Thursday.

As the Internet's most profitable company, Google could absorb a fairly large charge without too much pain. In the first half of this year, Google earned $2.55 billion.

Google bought its stake in AOL largely to prevent one of its largest advertising partners — AOL — from defecting to Microsoft Corp. The bidding war helped drive up AOL's implied market value to $20 billion, based on Google's investment.

Some analysts have suggested AOL may be worth less than $10 billion now. Google didn't estimate in its SEC filing what it believes its stake to be currently worth.

Gearing up for a possible sale, Time Warner is splitting up AOL's Internet access business from its online operations. EarthLink Inc. is seen as a leading candidate to buy AOL's dial-up access division while Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. could vie for online operations that include an array of advertising tools and services that still attract millions of Web surfers.

Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo, but when the two sides couldn't agree on a price they separately began exploring a possible combination with AOL.

As part of its investment, Google has the right to demand that Time Warner spin off AOL in an initial public offering of stock or buy back its stake. But Google so far hasn't indicated any interest in going down that path.

Indians Better Than British In English Usage

2008-08-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

Indians must be proud as academics say that the students from India who are studying in British universities possess high potential in using English language perfectly. While many British students usually come up with wrong usage of spelling, punctuation and grammar, Indian students are often showing high standards in the basic English grammar and other usages.

An Indian-origin university lecturer said that British students even in their second year of degree course, use atrocious English in their assignments. He said that he often found it challenging to figure out what students wanted to express in English. "International students, in contrast, had better English language skill," he added.

According to the academics, most common mistakes are in spelling, student often use 'their' when they mean 'there', 'who's' for 'whose', 'truely' for 'truly', 'occured' for 'occurred' and 'speach' for 'speech'.
Ken Smith, a senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, said that many students failed to apply basic rules, such as 'i' before 'e', except after 'c'. The words 'weird', 'seize', 'leisure' and 'neighbor' are regularly misspelt by students. "Mistakes are now so common that academics should simply accept them as 'variants,"' he told.

Bernard Lamb, a Reader in genetics at Imperial College London told that many British students appear to have been through school without mastering basic rules of grammar and punctuation, or having their errors corrected.

As students find it difficult to use English properly, some universities have extended the course by a year to give extra tuition to weaker students.

"All the data suggests that there are more and more students at university level whose spelling is not up to scratch. Universities are even finding they have masters-level students who cannot spell," told Jack Bovill, Chairman of The Spelling Society.

7 Tactical Reasons To Use Mini Campaign Websites

2008-08-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

7 Tactical Reasons To
Use Mini Campaign Websites

How many websites should your company have?

That's a question that comes up often in discussions with clients, but perhaps the idea hasn't crossed your mind. Why would any company need more than one website? Not to be glib but the answer is as many as you need, but how many is that?

If you're a large corporation, it is fairly obvious that you need a separate site for each brand you offer, and a separate site for corporate background material and perhaps investor information.

But what if you're a small or medium-sized company with a limited number of products or services? Then the question becomes, do your products relate to one another? Does one item flow into the next? Is your audience for each product or service the same? And what about totally different audiences for the same product: audiences that need to be approached with totally different tactics? And then there are special circumstances like new product launches, time sensitive marketing campaigns, and limited availability offers?

Mini Campaign Websites and Alternative Marketing Websites are an effective method of enhancing your marketing efforts and targeting optional audiences you wouldn't have otherwise reached using your traditional sales marketing approach.

7 Tactical Reasons To Use Campaign Websites

1. Focus Your Presentation: eliminate distraction and non relevant clutter.

It is human nature to want to get your money's worth, but when it comes to website marketing this can be counter-productive. Wanting to cram everything you provide into one website aimed, or more to the point not aimed, at every interested audience only creates clutter and confusion. Forcing visitors to sift through reams of material only creates frustration and irritation, and with a click of a mouse they're off to the next competitor listed on their favorite search engine before they even get to your relevant information.

A campaign or brand specific website allows you to get right to the point. Greet your targeted audience with a signature video Web-host supported by appropriate images and text. If a lot of text material is required, then have it turned it into an audio presentation so the material is made more accessible, understandable, and easy to absorb.

A focused brand or campaign site shortens the sales cycle by making what you provide clear and distinct; it provides visitors with the sense that you are both competent and innovative in what you do and how you do it.

2. Use Alternative Tactics: experiment with non traditional campaign and sales' approaches.

Most companies follow a consistent sales approach that they have found successful. This is both a good thing and a bad thing: following a plan that has worked in the past aimed at your traditional customer base makes sense, except that it also limits you in reaching new audiences for your products and services.

There may be markets for what you provide that you haven't ever thought of, or that you are afraid to approach because they conflict with your current methods, promotions, or initiatives.
If You Have a Website, You Need Web CEO!

Why give up on these potential customers when you can create an audience specific Web-presentation on a separate campaign website aimed specifically at that market. With a series of highly targeted websites you speak to the needs of specific audiences and at the same time insulate your regular clients from the alternative approaches.

In a highly competitive marketplace, your competition will be looking for every opportuníty to take advantage of markets you ignore. Don't let them. You can get to them first and establish your company as the niche leader. All it takes is a little imagination, effort, and a budget to implement. This way you can have your cake and eat it too.

3. Create Urgency & Impact: campaign sites urge quick response, while creating a memorable impression.

Website visitors are always complaining how much time it takes them to search for and find the products and services they need. This often translates into complaints about download times, but the fact is, with the extensive availability of broadband, it's not download times that frustrate people, it's having to search through multiple pages and levels, in a hide-and-seek game to find what they want.

A campaign or brand-specific alternative marketing site gets right to the point and delivers the information or the promotíon referenced in your email, banner, and print ads, or television and radio commercials.

And if you use a signature video Web-host to deliver the information, you are making sure the presentation has impact; so even if a visitor doesn't view everything, they at least get the core message in a way they won't forget.

Your targeted marketing sales pitch won't get watered-down by extraneous information that just gets in the way. Depending on how the site is constructed and what the marketing objectives are, a campaign specific website can create a sense of urgency by building in a time sensitive expiry date.

4. Target New & Alternative Audiences: create new markets for old products and services.

Not every audience for a product can be approached with the same tactics. Specific brand or campaign sites allow you to customize your approach for new or alternative audiences appealing to their specific lifestyles or behavior patterns.
Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!

If you've had experience running a sales staff or rep network, you know that salespeople who call on one specific market are rarely successful when asked to simultaneously call on another. Different markets require different approaches. Like a one-size-fits-all hat, it rarely fits anybody. Customize and isolate your approach to different markets, so you can speak directly to that market's needs and attitudes.

The marketplace is often more innovative than the marketer in finding new ways to use old products; ways the manufacturer hadn't realized existed. Ask your customers how they use your products and then go after that market with a direct campaign that takes advantage of that specific niche.

5. Isolate & Differentiate Brands: target specific audiences with specific tactics.

Companies that provide a large number of products or services often confuse potential customers by presenting far too many options and alternatives. The result is the Web-visitor doesn't buy anything because they don't want to purchase the wrong thing, or not get the best deal. Even if you get the sale, you may lose the customer because they made the wrong decision.

You want to provide prospects a limited number of distinct alternatives, just enough so they feel they have been given a choice, and don't have to look elsewhere. But too much choice within the same product category creates buyer indecision. If a product or service is aimed at a particular market because it has specific features, create a separate website to sell it. Isolating a product line on a separate website allows you to create a distinct image and brand story for that offering.

6. Accelerate Comprehension & Shorten Sales Cycle: be clear, be understood, be direct, and sales will follow.

Campaign websites get right to the point. They present the marketing message quickly, and promptly direct people to take action without making them wade through mission statements and corporate histories that for campaign purposes just get in the way.

The longer it takes for someone to understand what the campaign is all about, the less likely they are to stick around long enough to make sense out of it. This is why we strongly recommend adding video and audio to the presentation. Video and audio allows you to say what needs to be said in the most understandable, persuasive, and memorable manner.

When it comes to website visitors you probably only have one shot at making a lasting impression, so don't blow it by delivering a boring or confusing presentation.

7. Support Other Advertising Efforts: supplement other marketing material with engaging, viral presentations.

Campaign websites can function as landing sites and contact venues for print, television, radio, online video, banner, and display ads, as well as for articles, newsletters, and news releases.

By segregating your campaign site you can more easily track responses better than if the campaign material was integrated into your corporate site. Separating your campaign website from your main site allows you to experiment with marketing tactics aimed at new or alternative audiences, with approaches that may not be suitable for your regular site visitors. You may not even want your regular customers to know that it is your company that's running the campaign, so people will regard it as something completely new.

A Final Word or Two

You've heard about the "Long Tail" and 'niche markets' but what have you done about it? So many companies sell the same product, the same way, to the same audience, that people no longer pay much attention. Look no further than the search engine optimization market, when was the last time you actually read something truly different, truly innovative about SEO? What makes one company's promise of top ten ranking any different from the next? And if everyone who paid for optimization was in the top ten in their category, you'd have to redefine what the number ten means.

Today companies, especially small and medium sized companies, have to be different to be heard. They have to be bold and innovative and constantly try new approaches to reach their audiences.

By trying different tactics using different websites delivering alternative presentations, to alternative audiences you expand and build your business without the concern that these bold new approaches will negatively affect your more conservative existing clientele.

10 Killer Ways To Make People Click

1. Use reverse psychology on your banner ads. You
could tell people not to click on your banner ad. For
example "Don't Click Here If You Are Comfortable
With Your Looks"

2. Make your banner ad words as attractive as
possible. Use words like ultimate, powerful, sizzling,
hot, etc. Your words should relate and highlight
your total offer.

3. Offer a discount offer on your banner ad. People
are always looking for good deals. You could offer
a percentage discount, dollar discount, buy one get
one free discount, etc

4. Use a testimonial on your banner ad. This'll give
people proof they aren't wasting their time clicking
on your banner ad. The testimonial should include
enough information so they understand the offer.

5. You could have a famous and respectable person
on your banner ad representing your product, web
site or service. People will click because they'll trust
them over you.

6. Use a strong guarantee on your banner ad. You
could include the guarantee as a headline for your
offer. It could read double or triple your money back
guarantee, lifetime your money back guarantee, etc.

7. Tell people to click on your banner ad. Newbies
to the internet may net even know they can click on
banners. Just having the phrase "click here" on your
banner will increase your clickthroughs.

8. You could advertise a trial or sample offer. This
will tell people there is no risk or obligation if they
click on your banner ad and try out your product or
service.

9. Tell people the major benefit of your product, web
site or service on your banner ad. It could be benefits
like make money, lose weight, increase energy, save
money, save time, etc.

10. You could advertise a free offer on your banner
ad. People love free stuff. The freebie should relate
to your target audience. If the freebie is attractive
to them they will click.

SEO is Smoke and Mirrors

2008-07-24T02:41:00.000-07:00

SEO is Smoke and Mirrors

Like the client in the Ranked Hard cartoon, you might encounter a prospective customer who tried to work with another SEO company that was secretive about its practices. Maybe they were told “our tactics are proprietary” or “what we do is far too complicated to explain.” Your prospect might even have been burned by this other company, so they may be leery about dealing with you.

Real SEO is not smoke and mirrors; it’s not a scam, and it’s not merely “a collection of tricks to fool search engines,” as Lee Odden points out in another article which debunked several SEO myths. But it’s easy to see why some people would believe that. There really are a lot of scammers out there who make incredible promises but use devious methods and care only about getting their victims’ money.

Speaking of incredible promises, let’s talk about another classic SEO myth inspired by scammers: an SEO can guarantee your placement at the top of the SERPs, thus eliminating the risk to your business. That’s hogwash; I’d use stronger language, but my boss would disapprove (especially if we start ranking for the term!). A firm that offers that kind of guarantee on your SEO is probably approaching it in a way that will harm your company.

Some companies that offer guarantees to get to the top of the SERPs will use keywords that no one else is using. So your site ends up ranking for less competitive keywords. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing, but if searchers aren’t using those keywords to find the kinds of products and services you offer, it’s pointless. If you sell raincoats in the US market, what good is it to hold a top-ranked position for “mackintosh” – unless you’re specifically selling to British expatriates living in the US?

Such firms may also use a limited selection of keywords for your website. That might work for a time, but using a greater diversity of keywords will put you in a better position the next time the search engines tweak their algorithm. Think of it as evolution in action.

Finally, another common trick for SEO companies that offer top placement guarantees shows up in the fine print of their contracts. Does it specifically say that they will use SEO to get there, or will they use pay-per-click? Just about anyone can get a top ad placement in Google if they’re willing to pay enough. But that’s probably not what you hired that SEO company for.

WordPress Comes To iPhone

2008-07-23T21:17:00.001-07:00

Do you have an iPhone? Are you a blogger? Then you're going to love this news - there's now a WordPress app for iPhone available for download from the iTunes App Store. The software lets you update your WordPress blog from anywhere. We're not forgiving Apple for that MobileMe nonsense just yet, but we have to admit, this is pretty good stuff.

WordPress on iPhone:

The new WordPress App for iPhone supports both WordPress.com installations as well as self-hosted Wordpress.org blogs that are version 2.5.1 and above.

The app includes the following features:

- Embedded Safari previews of posts
- Full support for tags & categories
- Photo support for both camera phone pics and library photos
- Support for multiple blogs
- Ability to password protect a post, save as draft, or mark for later review
- Auto-recovery feature recovers posts interrupted by phone calls.

Look Beyond Google: Meta-Search Engines Can Help Online Marketers

2008-07-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

Look Beyond Google: Meta-Search Engines Can Help

For businesses that market wholly or partially online, it may seem that three words are the only way to get more customers: search engine optimization (SEO). Typically, the search engines being referred to are: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These three engines have almost become interchangeable with the phrase "do a search", so much so that the word "Google" has entered the English lexicon as "find information".

There are actually hundreds of search engines, not just the Big Three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) that many Internet users think of. By focusing only on the most well known search engines for your marketing online strategy, you may be missing out on as much as 30% of the billions of searches being done online every single day.

While not the oldest search engine on the internet, Google does have the reputation of being the granddaddy. However, it is worth investigating alternative search engines - niche engines, meta-search engines, and human-powered engines.

Niche search engines focus their searches on a particular subject matter, such as blogs or articles. Meta-search engines (DogPile, Widow) compile results from multiple search engines . Finally, human-powered search engines (Mahalo, DMOZ) are composed of directory pages with link and general information, put together by humans who search for the most relevant content. These alternative search engines tend to have pretty high page ranks, which give more credence to the fact that online marketers shouldn't overlook them.

There is also the fact that some Internet searchers do not want to use Google because of personal or political views. Because of Google's popularity, it can (incorrectly) be perceived as having a monopoly on the search engine market. That perception, combined with opposition to a seemingly growing "corporate world", turns off some potential customers and eliminates your potential to reach them, if you focus only on Google or other big search engines.

As part of SEO, using keywords to bring in consumers is all the rage. Businesses spend a great deal of time and money researching keywords, keyword density, and effects on page rankings in results lists. Guess what? It's not only a pain for the businesses to constantly be looking for which words may get them more hits and higher rankings; it's quickly becoming over done.

Consumers are fatigued with seeing keyword-loaded articles and websites tagged with anything that could possibly be related to their search terms. This online marketíng strategy may make sense in the short-term, but chances are good that by the time the strategy is perfected by your marketers, there will be a different trend altogether that needs to be learned. Marketing with the intent to only improve your page rankings, by any means necessary, is only a quick fix and could be quite expensive.

Editor's Note: SiteProNews Newsletter - Monday, July 21st

On Monday, July 21st the SiteProNews newsletter reached less than 65% of our regular readers due to mail server problems. Monday's issue featured an excellent article by Dave Davies entitled "The Search Landscape Reflected In Paid Results". If you missed this featured article, we recommend you give it a quick read.
SEO tactics are starting to turn customers off. If SEO is the main priority of a marketing campaign and keyword-dense content was the impetus for the customer finding the website, this hurts the site's credibility with the consumer. Perhaps they'll buy from you once because you showed up at the top of the results page, but will they remember you next time or just do another search?

Another concern with search engines is the program spiders that crawl the Internet, looking for relevant pages for search results. Even the largest of the search engines can only cover a portion of the internet. According to Wikipedia, no search engine can search more than 16% of the net!

In addition, the spiders have a massive amount of searching to do, which can be a slow and taxing process on the sites they are crawling. By the time a spider finishes crawling the Internet, the information collected can be outdated - pages and links have either been deleted or new information added. Spiders are certainly not a perfect means of finding good results with one search engine.

Searching just one engine at a time is time-consuming and not very cost-efficient for searchers looking for the most appropriate information or businesses to suit their needs. Enter, meta-search engines. As mentioned earlier, meta-search engines compile results from multiple engines.

Among these, dogpile.com is probably the most well-known. The problem with dogpile, as I see it, is that it spits back the top 10 results from each of the Big Three engines. This results in a lot of sponsored results at the top of the result líst, followed by a mix of "normal" results and more sponsored results. The truth be known, I simply consider dogpile to be really annoying, so I avoid it.

Hire Seo | Hire Seo Consultant | Hire Seo Team | Seo Techniques

2008-07-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

Top 10 search engine optimization techniques

There are a lot of techniques that can be used in search engine optimization that can help or hurt you when it comes to SEO. Some of the big ones that can hurt is keyword
stuffing and page cloaking. You want to always make sure that you are building a site for your visitors first and foremost. The robots aren’t quite as interested in your content as you think, sorry.

You can easily make your site search engine optimized by follow 10 easy steps that will make sure everything is ready for Google to go through and understand what your pages and site are about. This can help you to get more traffic from search engines by ranking well. Once you rank well, of course, you need to make sure that you are persuading the visitors to actually click on your search listing. The relevant and quality traffic is why we all have web sites and want to rank well in search engines, right?

The 10 Great SEO tips for your site

#1 Content

As cliché as it sounds this is the number one for any search marketing strategy, it is impossibly important to ensure that you have content worth viewing. Without this one simply step to ensure that there is a reason for someone to be on your site, everything else is useless. There are a lot of great sites to find inspiration for writing great content that works.

#2 Incoming Links

A link is a link is a link, but without the simplest form you aren’t going to do well in search engines. The more links you have the more often you are going to be crawled. It is also important to make sure that you have the proper anchor text for your incoming links. The easiest way to gain quality links from other sites is to link to sites to let them know your site is there and hope for a reciprocal link. It is also important to make sure that you have content that is worth linking to on your site.

#3 Web site title

Making sure that you have the right web site titles for your pages is extremely important. The keywords you place in your title are important in order to ensure that your topic is understood by Google. One of the primary factors for ranking is if the title is on-topic with the search results. Not only is it important for robots to index and understand the topic of the page either. It is important for click-through rates in the search results. Pay attention to what you click on when you are searching in Google, I know that I don’t always click the first results. Using great titles and topics on your site will bring you more traffic than a number one listing. Most of the time it is within the first page, but I skim through the titles to see which looks to be more on-topic for my search query.

#4 Heading tags

When you are laying out your site’s content you have to be sure that you are creating the content flow in such a way that the heading tags are based on prominence. The most prominent of course being the h1 tag, which says “this is what this block of copy is about.” Making sure you understand heading tag structure is very important. You only want to have one (or two) h1 tags per a page. It is important to not just throw anything into an h1 tag and hope you rank for it.

#5 Internal Linking

Making sure that your internal linking helps robots (and visitors!) to find the content on your site is huge. Using relevant copy throughout your site will tell the robots (and visitors!) more effectively what to expect on the corresponding page. You do want to make sure that on pages you don’t want to rank in Google that you add a nofollow tag to ensure that the ranking flow of your site corresponds with your site’s topic and interests. No one is going to be searching Google to find out what your terms of service or privacy policy are.

#6 Keyword Density

Ensuring that you have the right keyword density for your page and sites topic is paramount. You don’t want to go overboard and use the keyword every 5th word but making sure it “comes up” often is going to help you rank better in search engines. The unspoken rule is no more then 5% of the total copy per a page. Anymore then this and it can start to look a little spammy. Granted, you aren’t shooting for 5% every time. It is really all about context and relevance— just make sure it is good, quality copy.

#7 Sitemaps

It is always a good idea to give search engines a helping hand to find the content that is on your site. Making sure that you create and maintain a sitemap for all of the pages on your site will help the search robots to find all of the pages in your site and index them. Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask all support sitemaps and most of them offer a great way to ensure that it is finding your sitemap. Most of the time you can simply name it sitemap.xml and the search robot will find the file effectively.

#8 Meta Tags

Everyone will tell you that meta tags don’t matter, they do. The biggest thing they matter for is click-through though. There will be a lot of times when Google will use your meta description as the copy that gets pulled with your search listing. This can help to attract the visitor to visit your web site if it is related to their search query. Definitely a much overlooked (as of late) ranking factor. Getting indexed by search engines and ranking well is just the first step. The next, and biggest, step is getting that visitor that searched for your keywords to want to click on your search listing.

#9 URL Structure

Ensuring that your URL structure compliments the content that is on the corresponding page is pretty important. There are various methods to make this work, such as modrewrite on apache.

#10 Domain

It can help to have keywords you are interested in ranking for within your domain, but only as much as the title, heading and content matters. One very important factor that is coming to light is that domain age is important. The older the site or domain, the better it is not spam and can do well in search results. The domain age definitely isn’t a make or break factor but it does help quite a bit.

Bookmarkz

Specialist in SEO and SEM

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WordPress Comes To iPhone

WordPress on iPhone:

The app includes the following features:

Look Beyond Google: Meta-Search Engines Can Help Online Marketers

Hire Seo | Hire Seo Consultant | Hire Seo Team | Seo Techniques