The secret of seo!!

Why Am I Gone Blank??

2009-11-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

Where was I for the past few months am I am really interested in Online Marketing? If so why I am working on the job which I am not compteley interested. Why did this happen? How did this happen with knowing to me. How can this happen with the interference of my conscience. These are the questions that are running into my brains for the past few months. What should I do In order to revert back myself to the Online Marketing.

Let me think on it for few more days and decide what should I really do...................................???????

The Best SEO Is The Output of Original Thinking

2009-05-08T04:57:00.000-07:00

There are literally thousands of SEO blog posts made every day. Sometimes it is hard to sound original or write something remarkable, particularly if you spend too much time reading too narrowly. It sets in a sort of tunnel vision that makes you think it has all been done. As the web grows richer and deeper more successful ideas will be driven through recycling.

Direct recycling typically does not work too well as most smart people will be able to locate the original source if the idea was successful. What does work well is to take up a related idea and add it to your site. There are recurring themes and stories that will work in any market. Just look at the magazines in the checkout line and notice how little the headlines change from month to month and year to year.

Being remarkable often means grabbing a new spin on a well worn story. Forrest Gump ran across America numerous times. Are you opening a thin classified site for low priced cars? Why not buy a car from your site and drive your beater cross country, while contacting relevant media outlets along the way.

There are a lot of human beat boxes that make weird sounds (to me anyhow). It is not my cup of tea, and yet today a friend sent me a link to a video posted on Facebook where there was a video (from Google) of a human beat box who also played the fluteThe same guy probably would not have been remarkable enough to get millions of viewers if he didn’t add the flute to his repertoire.

There are dozens of formats you can use to publish content and thousands (maybe millions?) of effective marketing strategies. Nothing is going to guarantee success, but each day the web provides more free market research & examples of what has worked in other markets.

If you ever run into the limits of your industry and feel everything has already been done then all you need to do is pick up a book on another topic, read the news (outside your industry), or tie your other hobbies to your industry to find an interesting angle that has not yet been done. Some people might think your analogy or strategy is ridiculous, but you don’t need the approval of everyone to be citation-worthy to some.

Not everyone is able to ride a bicycle across a fence or off a bridge, but it is remarkably viral and when someone does.Push the boundaries of your market, but try to stay out of the hospital! :)

Do You Want To Become A Great Search Engine Optimizer?

2009-05-04T03:31:00.000-07:00

Most of us see the same tweets, read the same blogs and know the same case studies. We know to optimize titles and anchor text, fix canonical issues, write compelling meta descriptions and so on. In the age of social media, trade secrets are now few and far between.

If that’s the case, and we all know basically the same things, what differentiates a great SEO?

The answer is, simply, the ability to get things done.

Here are 10 things you can do to be a great SEO.

10. Be humble: Value goals beyond rankings

A great SEO knows that the ultimate success involves checking their ego. Ranking for an ultra cool term is great chest-pounding material, but the contribution to the bottom line is the currency that spends. Whether the goals are sales, or traffic, ranking for the ugly terms may not be as cool to the world, but it will be to your company.

9. Be a realist: Focus on sustainability

What can your company really expect to rank for? Think like a search engine. Are you really the right answer for a particular search term? If not, don’t spend your resources working hard for a ranking that you really don’t belong in. If you’re building a business model based on a changing algorithm, have a fundamentally sound reason for choosing your terms. If you don’t, create one. No one agrees on how bounce rate affects rankings, but long term I think everyone agrees nothing good will come of a poor performing, irrelevant page.

8. Know your product: Keyword research wins

As more and more keyword research tools become available, making sense of them becomes increasingly mundane. Successful keywords come from real world terms that often don’t jump out in tools like WordTracker or Keyword Discovery. You must know what you’re looking for and not just wait for it to be delivered to you. Know how the customers speak, and you’ll know what you’re looking for. Your own internal site search is a great tool for this.

7. Understand your resources: Plan your projects accordingly

Keep in mind, the Paid Search team has a huge advantage here. Their results are relatively predictable. Yours are not. Be certain your project is funded, planned, benchmarked and understood by others. If link building is involved, as it should be, be certain that time is budgeted for a diligent effort. Creating, sharing and following a roadmap will buy you the space to work.

6. Learn your surroundings: Identify potential roadblocks and address them

The worst thing you can do as a SEO is surprise, or ambush, people. You need to assume other departments will already be skeptical of your sorcerer ways. It’s only natural. Identify the people that will block your path. Address them with facts, privately. Do not humiliate someone who doesn’t understand SEO. What seems obvious to you may not be obvious to them. Only if you give respect do you earn the right to command it.

5. Embrace your limitations: Plug the holes

One of the hardest things to do sometimes is admit what you don’t do well. Doing so, however, will earn the respect of others and insure that those holes are plugged by other team members. Work on them as you go, but never hide them. Being great doesn’t mean you need to be great at everything. Asking for help is ok, and very much a sign of greatness.

4. Be a team player: Share the glory

Now we’re getting more into the psychology of a great SEO. It’s easy to want to take credit for a change that reaps huge rewards. Remember the IT guy that implemented it for you? Let him know how rewarding it was for the company and make sure his boss knows it. Not everyone understands how they impact the bottom line. Teach them, and recruit them, and your goals will be that much easier to meet. When people are praised or rewarded, they’ll get on your team.

3. Argue with facts: No mudslinging

Take the high road. Something simple like adding related links to a page may be a no-brainer to you, but may look like spam someone that just doesn’t understand the reason. Stay patient. You probably can’t do their job, either. Explain why your idea is necessary, and use case studies. Show them how the sites they use probably do the same thing, and they just don’t realize it. Show how rankings influence revenue, and how your project influences rankings. People can’t argue with fact-based numbers. At that point, your nemesis will need to justify their reasons with facts, and not opinions. Do this respectfully, and firmly. When it’s done, you’ll win. Or, you’ll realize SEO may be hopeless where you’re at.

2. Choose your battles: There’s more than SEO

Sometimes the decision makers understand SEO, and fly directly against a known best practice. If your company values a project component above SEO, don’t pout or write them off as morons. There’s a bigger picture and sometimes a small SEO sacrifice can reap large gains in other areas. A great SEO lives to fight another day and comes knocking at another door. You see, there’s always more than one answer. It’s your job to figure it out.

1. Understand business models: Contribute effectively

SEO is not just implementation, it’s largely strategy. Sometimes it’s a strategy that may not even be known to your company. Bring a revenue strategy, along with the SEO ability to implement it, and you’ll have gotten out of the box. You see, the key to greatness is being more than just a SEO. Bring ways to contribute to the bottom line, and make them happen, and you will have achieved greatness.

So there you have it. The difference between a great SEO, or almost any other professional, lies in their ability to get things done. Navigating pitfalls, effectively communicating and maintaining superior knowledge all lead to greatness. For future reference, I suggest you bookmark this page. It can serve as a great source for dealing with common SEO issues.

This is what Matt Leonard has said.

Do Microsites Harm Ranking Of Sites?

2009-04-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

Publishing many web sites can be a very challenging process. There are times when organizations have a larger main site and decide to operate one or more smaller sites (aka microsites) as well. Other organizations publish a number of microsites without having a larger site at all.

Whether publishing microsites are in violation of the search engine webmaster guidelines depends on the details of the implementation and the reasons for doing it. Let’s look at a few of the reasons why people do it, and map out the likely search engine viewpoint on them:

SERP domination.. As most of our readers know, the search engines do not like to show more than 2 pages in the SERPs for a given web site. The main reason for this is that the search engines want to show their users a diverse set of results. After all, if a particular web site is not what a user is looking for, showing it to them multiple times in search results is not likely to result in a satisfied user.

Some organizations want to obtain more than 2 results and use microsites as a way to dominate the SERPs. This is done by publishing sites that chase the same sets of keywords, and therefore have similar content. As you might guess, this is against the search engine guidelines. If you choose to pursue this path, you need to do so with great care, and be prepared for the consequences if your group of sites are discovered and linked to you.

Reputation management. Related to our first scenario is when an organization is looking to dominate the SERPs for their brand name. Organizations often start to think about reputation management after seeing a website that publishes disparaging comments about them show up in the SERPs for the organization name or brand. This causes management to become very focused on protecting their reputation and seeking out strategies for dominating the SERPs for their brand name.

One strategy for pursuing reputation management is to build up a series of social media profiles and rely on the trust and authority imbued in those sites to start occupying the SERPs (linking to these profiles from the main site to help drive their rankings up), hopefully above the offending site. This type of strategy is OK with the search engines, but some organizations choose to create microsites for this purpose. This is where the game gets dicier, particularly if the content on the microsites are substantially similar to the content on another site owned by the organization.

Bypass internal management restrictions. Some organizations maintain very tight controls over what can and cannot be done on their main site. These types of controls are often put in place for branding reasons. Novel new marketing programs can get squashed in such an environment. One way around these restrictions is to develop a microsite.

An example would be a large brand that decides to create and promote a new video game on the web, even though they are not in the video game business (i.e. the game is being used as a PR tactic). They may not want to promote such a product directly on the main site, but are perfectly OK with promoting it on a new site thematically focused just on the game. Since the content is different, this is a strategy that the search engines will not have any quibble with.

Microsites as “link friendly” representatives. Sometimes moving differentiated content onto its own domain can make it easier for that content to gain links. For example, a publisher of a highly commercial site may want to create a series of articles that they promote on social media sites such as Digg, Reddit and others.

Why? The users of these types of social media sites are not particularly fond of linking to highly commercial sites. Publishing such articles on a different, “less commercial” domain may raise the probability of the success of the campaign. Once again, this is a scenario that the search engines would not be concerned about because the content is likely to be substantially different.

Beware of diluting your link power

The other factor that publishers should consider when deciding whether or not to publish a microsite is the issue of dividing up their link power. Each site you launch represents a new marketing problem. Each site needs links to prosper, and if a set of sites all share the same links that’s a sure clue to the search engines that something is amiss. As a result, the best linking strategy for a group of microsites is to make sure that the number of links they have in common are limited.

On today’s web where trust and authority play a large role in the ranking of a web site, dividing up your content on multiple sites is often not a good idea. For example, if you get 1000 different web sites to link to a set of 4 web sites, each site probably gets links from 250 to 400 domains (allowing for a modest degree of overlap).

This means that the domains have only the trust and authority of the 250 to 400 domains that link to them. Contrast this with a single site with all 1000 domains linking to it (particularly if they are all largely relevant). This site has a much higher level of trust and authority. The result is that this site can rank higher for the related keywords, and this can be critical in highly competitive areas.

As we have outlined above, there are scenarios where one or more microsites does make sense for an organization. Be careful to make sure that the microsites have unique and differentiated content and you will be OK from the search engine point of view. The other factor you should consider is the dividing of your link juice. In scenarios 3 and 4 outlined above, you may be willing to accept this splitting of links because the other reasons for developing a microsite are compelling enough. Weigh these factors when considering a microsite so you can make a fully informed decision.

SEO Changes To Improve The Rankings

2009-04-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

You may notice that some of your blog posts are drawing search engine traffic for particular search phrases and keywords (especially if your blog has had some time to establish itself with search engines). Even if you are doing keyword research prior to writing posts, you’ll almost definitely see that some of these phrases that are producing traffic are not something that you had intentionally targeted. While this is a nice surprise, it also means that there is likely more potential if you’re willing to make some small, but significant, tweaks.

If you’re drawing search traffic from a phrase that you’re not targeting, it probably means that you could be ranked even higher, and draw even more traffic as a result, if you make some changes to optimize your post accordingly. Just because a post was published at some point in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t be modified and made to be more effective.

In this post we’ll look at a few simple changes that can be made to improve upon these unintentional rankings. By taking a relatively small amount of time to recognize these opportunities and act on them, you could be setting yourself up for significantly more search engine traffic on an on-going basis.

First of all, you’ll need to find the keywords and phrases that are already driving traffic to your site. These are the search terms that you know are already producing results, so making a small effort to move up in the rankings is well worth your time. If your post is ranked 5th in Google for a particular phrase without even attempting to optimize the page, you may be able to quickly improve to the 1st or 2nd spot and see a noticeable increase in traffic. Repeat this process for a few different posts and the results will add up.

As an example, I have a post on my primary blog that has steadily attracted search traffic for the past six months or so. It’s not a ridiculous amount of traffic each day, but it does come from some fairly competitive search phrases and it is consistent every day, which adds up over the span of a month. I recently spent a few minutes to look into which search phrases were sending traffic to this post and I was surprised to see that I was ranked 4th in Google for a phrase that didn’t seem to be optimized. I made a simple change in just a couple of minutes and within a few days the post had moved to the #1 spot for that same phrase. Since then search traffic has been up consistently for that phrase.

To find these opportunities for your own blog, look at your stats from Google Analytics (or a similar program) and see what search phrases are sending traffic to your site. Most likely these phrases will be leading traffic to a particular post rather than to your homepage, which means you can simply optimize that post to more effectively target the phrases that are already sending traffic. Just look through the phrases that are sending traffic and you’re sure to find some that could be more productive. Personally, I start with the ones that are sending the most traffic since they have potential for the best results.

In addition to looking at Google Analytics, you can also use Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools will show you some valuable data under “Statistics” and “Top Search Queries.” This will show you 20 phrases where your site is ranking well, and 20 phrases that are sending the most traffic to you. You may find some items on this list that surprise you a little bit. If they surprise you, it probably means that you weren’t intending to draw traffic from these phrases and there should be some room for improvement.

So now that you have identified a few phrases to work with, what should you do? Here are a few simple suggestions.

1. Page Titles

Page titles are the most significant on-page factor for search engine rankings. If your post is ranking very well for a particular phrase that is not exactly used in your page title, you should be able to see some improvement in the ranking if you change your page title to include this phrase. If you’re using WordPress and the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin this is very easy. From the example that I used earlier, I didn’t remove anything from the existing title, I simply added a two-word phrase that was already producing the search traffic. As a result, with no other effort, that was enough to jump a few spots in the rankings.

2. Add New Internal Links

By adding more internal links to a particular post you will be indicating to search engines that the post is important. This is a pretty simple process, but one that most of us don’t take the time to do. If you’re blog has been around for a while you have plenty of places where you can add internal links. Go back and find posts on related topics and add a link in the content of the page or at the beginning or end of the post. Also, look for opportunities to link from any significant pages on your blog.

3. Change Anchor Text

Another factor that will influence search engine rankings is the anchor text that is used on links that point to that post. You can obviously control the anchor text used on your internal links, so take a few minutes and see what anchor text you are currently using on these links and see if it could be optimized to match the phrase that you are now targeting.

The anchor text of links from other sites to this page will also be significant, but you may or may not be able to change that. In most cases the best you could do is to contact the other blogger or website owner and ask them if they mind changing the anchor text on a particular link. I know some people do this, but I can’t say that I have ever asked someone to change the anchor text on their site for me.

4. Meta Description

While meta descriptions are not going to make a big difference in terms of rankings, an effective description is capable of improving the click-through-rate from the SERPs. For example, if your page is ranking 3rd in Google for a particular phrase, you could enter a description that will do a better job of attracting clicks from those searchers and you may find a 10% in traffic without moving up in the rankings. Again, this is something that you can easily do with the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin.

5. Add to the Content of the Post

One of the best ways to help a post draw more traffic on an on-going basis is to make the post more useful. Most of us don’t take the time to improve our old posts, but the time can be a good investment in some cases. By making adding new or updated content you will be making the post more useful and hopefully it will attract more links in the future because it continues to be valuable. And more links mean possible improvement in rankings.

6. Write a Follow Up Post

I rarely write posts to target a specific word or phrase, but I did so about a year ago with a post on my primary blog. After a while the post attracted some links and moved up to the number one spot for the targeted phrase. After that I thought it would be nice if I could get a second post to rank well for that phrase, so I published a follow up. Since my site was already recognized by Google as a good source of information for this phrase it was pretty easy to get a second post to rank for the same phrase. Before long I had the first two spots in Google for the phrase pointing towards my two posts.

If you have a page that is ranked very high, this is a very achievable way to grab an even higher share of the traffic for this phrase. However, most of us (including me) rarely think to do this. Take a look at your posts that are ranking well, most likely you’ll find some opportunities where you could write a follow up post to target the same phrase.

Comment On Blogs For SEO Advantage

2009-04-20T05:01:00.000-07:00

Let’s start by acknowledging that this is a controversial topic. If you are a social media purist or a blogger who genuinely believes your material is so spectacular that nobody should ever drop a blog comment except to react to the profundity of your writing, then please close your eyes while you read the rest of this post.

There is a legitimate role for blog commenting in SEO, and this should not be confused with blog comment spam. We all hate spam. But we each person defines spam differently. Hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll know how to use blog commenting for SEO benefits without being a spammer.

SEO Benefits Of Blog Comments

There are a number of SEO benefits from blog commenting.

The most obvious is that the search engines read the links in your comment (normally your anme is hyperlinked to your website) and you build your link popularity directly from the comments. However, most blogs are NoFollow, which at least in theory means that they carry no link value. But there are also a fair number of DoFollow blogs, and some give you a hyperlink both in your name and at the end of the comment to your most recent blog post.

All other things being equal, you might as well search for DoFollow blogs with the CommentLuv plugin; if you spend your time making intelligent comments, you might as well get link value for it. That being said, I never hesitate to leave comments at a blog whether it is DoFollow or not. Link value is something, but it’s not everything….and I’m not so sure the search engines totally ignore NoFollow links, either.

Another SEO benefit from blog comments is that every time you leave a comment, the blog owner takes notice of you. This is especially true for repeat visitors, so it is worth returning to the same blogs over and over. The other bloggers will undoubtedly visit your website. If there is anything of value on your website (remember that content is king) they will link to you in a post or they will invite you as a guest blogger (usually with a link back) or you can offer to be a guest blogger (with a link back). Yes, linking is in fact about building relationships.

It’s not just the blogger who will read your comments and follow the links to your website; other commenters will, as will other readers (another reason it is crucial to leave comments of value). For this reason there are two types of blogs you want to seek out:

Blogs on the topic of your own website.
Blogs that your target market read (even if the topic is not totally related to your website).
Blogs on topics of interest to you.

What’s that? Those are three types of blogs? Well, so they are. I never was good with numbers.

Yes, you should also frequent blogs that interest you, even if they are totally off-topic. I suspect I might be the only SEO consultant making this recommendation, but I think it is worth noting that if you are a hiker, you will have more intelligent comments to offer on a hiking blog – and you will enjoy doing it, so it will be less like work and more like fun. And whether the links are all keyword relevant, they still count and you’ll enjoy it a lot more than trolling for blogs only on your professional topic. So there!

Intelligent SEO

Have you noticed a common thread to all the advice above. Comment intelligently. As long as you are adding to the discussion, the blogger will appreciate your contribution. If you just write “Nice post”, expect to be deleted from any worthwhile blog. If somebody leaves a comment that could just as easily be left on any other of my posts, I mark it spam (see image below for the types of comments I wipe off with a little pesticide every morning).

But that’s just me.

Remember how I said that spam has different meanings to different people? Some bloggers will consider it spam if you drop a keyword into your name. While I do accept comments that come from “SEO Ottawa”, for example, I prefer ones that come from “David Leonhardt SEO” or just “David Leonhardt”. The contribution has to be better for me to approve a comment that doesn’t have a real name in it.

But that’s just me.

Never mind me. Before commenting, take a look at what other comments have been approved and make sure you conform to the convention of the blog (just as you would look around how other people act at a wine and cheese or a church basement gathering). Then make sure you exceed what you see, as a new contributor, both in quality of your comment and in avoiding a spammy signature link that might get your comment deleted if the blogger is having a grumpy day.

It is also worth returning to posts you have commented on. If someone has responded to your comment, it might be worth your while to respond back. The blog owner will love you for it, because you are creating interaction on her blog. Plus, any comment worth debating or discussing attracts more attention.

It’s worthwhile dropping a really relevant and useful link in your comment, if it provides truly useful information to better appreciate the blog post. Otherwise, I recommend against it. Gratuitous link-dropping is considered spamming pretty much anywhere.

If your site is adult-oriented or fits into one of the other red-flag categories, don’t even bother commenting (with a link) on most blogs. The blogger will not appreciate it and your comment will be deleted. You’ll need to find really related blogs that will accept your links.

But David, why shouldn’t I spam? What about a robot that auto-posts comments to save time (and having to use my brain cells)? Well, there is no denying that you can build some links that way. There are some lazy blog owners who don’t moderate their comments and let them publish automatically. There are four reasons why this really is not worth your while:

Pretty much any non-moderated blog offers only NoFollow links
Pretty much any non-moderated blog is considered low-quality and low-trust by the search engines
Some non-moderated blogs do get cleaned out every now and then, and the spammers get reported
The search engines might even be able to detect a pattern, and if most of your links come from sites known to link to spam websites, your website could be flagged as untrustworthy – guilt by association.

If I was to sum up everything here, it come down to this; when you are on somebody else’s blog, you have a wonderful opportunity to build relationships. In the online world, relationships means links, and SEO is all about building the right kind of links (well, not quite “all” about).

But just like in the real world, when you are on someone else’s space, pay very careful attention to what is accepted and what is not. The real definition of a spammer is somebody who does something that is not accepted. Period.

Commenting on blog posts in a manner accepted by the blog owner can be an effective means of attracting good quality links to your website and help with your overall SEO efforts

Are You Blogging or Doing Social Media for SERPs & Links?

2009-04-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

A lot of companies hear a lot about the social media space. Most of what they hear revolves around Blogs, Digg and Facebook and immediately they think “I have to be there!” Whether its because its the newest fad, their competition is doing it or that they’ve been shown that it can get the SERPs or better yet links, a lot of times companies never stop to look beyond the shiny pretty wrapper of social media to look at what’s really involved when heading down the social media path. At the end of their path, generally it ends in thinking social media has failed them. Why? The major reason is entering into the space for the wrong reason, like acquiring links or getting more footholds in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Social Media Requires Resources

Just because a service is free to utilize, as in it costs nothing to sign up for services like WordPress, Blogger, Facebook or Digg, thinking that it is free is a misnomer. Companies need to stop and think about the resources it will cost them in time & effort of their employees to manage a social media strategy. It takes time to grow a powerful account on Digg, if that’s the way you want to go. It takes not only time, but planning, to create a blog that will last. When working on forums, employees need to take time out to respond to messages, threads and pose new questions.

Companies looking to outsource this effort will still have to pay someone to do it, but they could also pay in bigger ways. Having someone, or some company, answer your responses for you, make friends for you, manage your social media profiles for you - can literally turn into a nightmare if it’s found you are not being transparent about it. Anytime you try to automate your social media efforts to be more efficient and less time consuming can also turn you in the direction of facing a Public Relations nightmare with your audience. If an audience feels you aren’t being transparent - upfront about your actions, willing to listen and have a conversation - you’ve lost their trust and its very tough to get it back again.

Social Media Requires Listening

There’s no way around this. In order to understand what your target market wants and how you can provide them value, companies have to take the time, stop and listen to what their audiences are saying and talking about in the social media circles. Coming in and trying to slam marketing or advertising down their throats or just starting to blog about their industry will not get you very much - just a whole lot of crickets chirping. Audiences what to know and feel like they are being heard. That their experiences matter, that what they share with others can some how help even if in a small way. True rewards in the social media spaces aren’t coupons, special discounts or freebies. People feel rewarded when they can help better a product, share a new way to use a service or help create something - feeling like they are part of something is one of the true rewards of social media and in order to give your audience that opportunity, you have to listen to understand what they want to be part of.

Social Media Requires Conversing

Just like with the listening, there’s no way around this either, not if you want to have a successful venture into Social Media. You can’t just lurk in social media. Hiding out in forums, seeing what people are saying about you, then issuing press releases to “correct the wrongs” or launching some other program to “fix what’s misunderstood about our company/product/brand” doesn’t work. A lot of times by just lurking and not getting involved in the conversation, companies can totally misinterpret what the audience is really saying.

By taking the time to speak to the audience and become part of the group, you build a trust that no press release will ever garner you. You build relationships no article in the news media will every let you create. You touch people on a more personal level and they in turn can relate that personal story to all of their friends, and so on. Conversing in the social media realm also puts a more human touch to your message or your marketing efforts. People want to connect to people, not buildings, not marketing pieces of paper or websites, not systems or gadgets (although iPhone users can argue differently) and you connect through holding conversations.

Social Media Requires Providing Value

Just putting up a blog that regurgitates your press releases, articles on your site or some boring piece about another product launch doesn’t provide value to your audience. That’s all about you, and what you perceive value to be. Audience perceive value totally differently. Give them a new or interesting way to use your product or service that they might not have thought about - or better yet, ask one of them to help out with creating the piece about the new way to use the product - now that’s value an audience can relate too. Don’t just write about it either, shoot photos or even a video and create even more value.

If you stop and first think about, “what will my audience find valuable in this content”, rather than “how many Diggs will I get”, your success with your content will turn out a lot better. By focusing on the value you can provide, it puts the focus squarely on your audience and off of you. In social media it’s not at all about you, it’s about the value the customer/audience gets from you that’s the most important factor.

Social Media Requires Passion

Considering building a blog because it will get you some “link juice”? Want to get posts out there because they’ll rank for certain long tail key word terms? It may seem like a great idea at first, but unless you’ve got someone who’s passionate about the subject that your blog is about and willing to be social in the community beyond the blog posts, your blog will go no where. Blogging is about sharing your passion with a community for something whether its your life, your hobby, what your company does or the industry your company is in, you have to have someone writing who loves to write about it and wants to talk to others about it. It also extends into other forms of social media. Participating in forums? Having a person passionate about helping people understand your company or product or industry goes a long way in building relationships and trust. If you have someone out there that is just doing it because “its their job” or they were “mandated” to do it, will do you more harm than good.

Outsourcing your blogging can also shine right through, too. If the company you choose to “ghost write” your blog isn’t deeply involved in your industry, a lot of your posts will come off flat, probably overly SEO’d and read like a true marketing piece. Look at successful company blogs like Nuts About Southwest, GM’s FastLane or even Bill Marriott’s mix of podcasting and blogging, all of these are wonderful examples of companies not just blogging about the company but their industry, their employees and customers. Asking you to buy their products, announcing a sale or a new pricing structure from their blog is the furthest thing from their minds, unless its something the audience has asked for.

The Reality of Social Media With Links & SERPs

It takes a lot of time and resources to be successful in social media if your only end goal is getting links or SERPs from it. These are natural byproducts of a truly good social media effort. What you never hear about some of these “overnight successes” is that it takes a lot of man hours creating content that is of value for an audience, as well as being truly social (listening and conversing with your audience). Just because you’ve gone out and bookmarked your blog post, or posted a picture in Flickr or a video in YouTube doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. There’s another entire realm of involvement here that companies need to take into account when planning their social media strategies. None of this really works unless you are being social on some level.

Profiles don’t gain “power” unless they are out socializing with the community - making friends, commenting, rating, adding media, etc. Just because you made a profile in MySpace or a page in Facebook, doesn’t necessarily mean it will take a spot up in the SERPs anymore, 2 years ago, yes, now only if you’ve got an obscure name. The search engines are looking to different signals within the profiles to understand if people are finding these profiles relevant. Sure they still look at links, but now also weighted into the mix are ratings, comments and interaction factors. If you create the “optimized” profile and just let it sit there its not going to do you a whole lot of good.

In the end, you need to plan your social media strategies around other success factors, not how many links you gain or SERP spots your take up. If you plan your strategy around other success factors, the links and SERPs will only naturally come because you efforts were successful in other ways. The links, the SERPs - in social media, they are just icing on the cake to a successful venture in social media.

Did Google's latest algorithm changes affect your website?

2009-04-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

Google improves its ranking algorithm on an ongoing basis. During the last weeks, Google changed three things on the result pages that are visible to all Google users.
The changes are an improvement for searchers but they might be bad for your website.

1. Google has increased the snippet length. Less visitors for you?

Google now shows an extended snippet for queries that consist of three or more keywords. The idea behind this change is that these multi-word queries are very targeted and complex. The usual short snippet might not contain enough information.

What does this change mean for your website?

The longer snippet contains much more information. As Google tries to provide the user with the most relevant information in the snippet, the snippet might already contain the answer to the user's query. The longer snippets might result in the following:

Fewer users might click through to your website because they get the answer to their question in the search results.

Users might begin to use more multiple-word queries to get more detailed search result snippets.

As the longer snippets need more space, the longer snippets move another result page below the fold and web surfers will see fewer results at first glance. That increases the importance of very high rankings.

It seems that Google ignores the meta description tag for the snippets. That means that you must include a call to action in your web page titles.

2. Google now shows more related searches at the bottom of the results

When you search for a keyword, Google will display related searches at the bottom (and sometimes at the top) of the search results.

For example, if you search for the keyword "principles of physics", Google will suggest "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" as related terms that could help you find what you need.

What does this change mean for your website?

It's important that you optimize the different pages of your website for different keywords. Do not concentrate on a single keyword but cover a wide range of keywords so that Googly will classify your website as relevant to the complete topic.

The more related keywords and pages can be found on your website, the better.

3. Google now shows local results based on IP addresses

Search Google for the keyword "pizza" and you'll see local results in the middle of the search results. These local results are delivered based on the IP address of the searcher. That means that you will get different results than people in another city.

What does this change mean for your website?

It's now easier to rank for competitive keywords for some local searches. While it's very difficult to get a high ranking for a very competitive keyword such as "lawyer" in the regular results, it's much easier to be listed for that keyword in the local results if you're living in a small town.

You should submit your website to Google Maps so that web surfers can find you in these local searches. You can submit your website to Google Maps with IBP's semi-automatic directory submitter.

If you run a local business, you should include your business name, your category and the name of your city in the title tag of your homepage.

If you want to get on top of Google's search results then your website must have optimized content and good inbound links. If you give Google what it wants then your website will get the best possible rankings.

How to rank first on Google. Do you like to be first?

2009-04-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

Funny question right ? I mean who wouldn’t want to rank first on Google.

But the question is – Aren’t we focusing too much on the first rank and leaving everything else in the water ?

In fact aren’t we all fancying a first rank on Google for those “dream keywords” while not giving any attention whatsoever to other areas of benefit ?

A first page is good. A first rank, awesome. But is it all just about the first rank ? Honestly, I don’t think so, but that might be the webmaster in me. If you ask the marketer in me, I’d prefer a first rank.

Building a healthy site is important than a first rank

Being a webmaster I’m concerned about the overall development of my site, for a long term that is. I want to rank for a series of terms on Google, preferably first page. I don’t want to rank number one just for a few keywords and then expect life to become easier. No.

I’m not trying to say that first rank is bad or anything. First rank is awesome ! But I know that for a website, ranking number one for every keyword they want to is close to impossible. Even if I did, I don’t want to take the risk of losing out the long tail keywords (which is huge).

However, to rank first on Google, you need to put in everything you got. You have to be an authority and you have to have a real good website. Thanks to Google’s algorithm, with those guys, I’m almost sure all the time, that the first site for a search is always an authority site. They have built their algos that way that the first rank is always the best site. So there is no reason that I want a bad site and get away with the ranks.

I want to build a great site. A user friendly site. A cool site that people will remember for its design. But I also want to let people know that there is this awesome site of mine that is very relevant for their search. Once this gap is bridged, I guess one is safe.

Changing User Behaviors

Also, I don’t believe that information seekers on Google, click only the first result. Some die-hard Googlers might only visit the first result, but I think a major chunk of others are more human-like and knows that Google might be hiding a better site in its other pages/ranks. So I strongly believe that more than being on the first, its equally important to rank for a variety of related search terms on other ranks on the first page.

I wouldn’t be even surprised to see a rank 3 website amass more traffic than a number one website. Quite possible if you have an awesome site.

So the point is, there is life beyond the first rank on Google. There are awesome sites, of lesser known brands doing twice or more your business (on first rank). They are doing it good not because they are better but because they are clever and they aren’t foolish enough to concentrate only on the first rank.

How To Optimize Your Page Titles For Singular & Plural Terms?

2009-04-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Most SEOs will agree that the title element is your strongest on-page element, and optimizing the title is critical for rankings and traffic. However when the keyword or phrase you are targeting has both a singular and plural version, many people have a difficult time optimizing for both. Novices decide to create a page for both the singular and plural version or just target the one term usually with the higher search volume. However with some careful planning it is possible to get both versions in your title tag.

For example lets assume you are an SEO consultant. Chances are you want to rank for both phrases [SEO Consultant] and [SEO Consultants]. However creating a separate page for each one would be awkward from a user point of view, as there isn’t really a need for two pages with content that will ultimately be very similar. In this case what you would want to do is find a way to get both versions in your title tag without it looking keyword stuffed. You could do something like this:

Manikiruban SEO Executive, SEO Executive
While that does have both terms it’s awkward and spammy looking. Here’s an alternative that is better:

SEO Executive: Manikiruban SEO Executive

The words are identical; however by changing the order it becomes much more readable and useful. Let’s try a commercial example:

Discount Disney Vacation, Disney Vacations

Again the wording is awkward, looks keyword stuffed and appears spammy. However by changing the order and adding a word we can come up with something much more useful:

Disney Vacations - Planning a Discount Disney Vacation

Experimenting a bit more you could even come up with something more useful and purchase driven:

Disney Vacations - Find A Discount Disney Vacation Online

The next time you are trying to target singular and plural phrases or phrases that are very close, look for ways to add an extra word or two, experiment with word order, and incorporate some natural language into your title. With a little effort chances are you’ll find a way to get both singular and plural forms of your keywords into your title, and be more click enticing.

Is There Any Use In Using Keywords In The URL?

2009-03-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Is there any value in using keywords in the URLs of web pages? Would a search engine look at keywords that you might include in the addresses of your pages, and associate those keywords with the content of your pages in the search engine’s index?

If so, how would a search engine go about looking at the web addresses indicated in the URLs to your pages, and break them down into meaningful parts to identify keywords?

Breaking URLs down into parts may also play a role in how the pages of a web site might be crawled by a search engine.

A newly published Yahoo patent application gives us some ideas on how it might extract keywords from the URLs of pages, and rank them, as well as using information uncovered in the process to determine which pages to crawl first from a web site.

Techniques for Tokenizing URLs
Invented by Krishna Leela Poola and Arun Ramanujapuram
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20090083266
Published March 26, 2009
Filed November 6, 2007

A search engine will look at many different signals to determine what a page on the Web is about, and attempt to rank pages based upon keywords that might be an indication of the subject matter or content of those pages.

Many of those keywords are extracted from the content of pages themselves, but a search engine can look at other information associated with pages, such as the addresses of the pages.

Keywords may also be extracted from the URLs of pages, by using an algorithm that can break the URL into components, understanding the structure of those URLs, and removing candidate keywords from the different parts found within the URL.

Parts of URLs

The patent application provides a definition for different parts of URLs:

Scheme - This section of a URL identifies the internet protocol used to access a resource, such as HTTP or FTP

Authority - The part of a URL that identifies the host server where the documents or resources are located, or the domain name.

Path - This is the information following the slash character after the authority, or domain name, and it identifies the specific page or resource

Query arguments - A string that may appear in a path that can be broken down into name and value pairs, such as “category=shirts”

Fragments - A fragment identifies a subsection within a page that might be pointed to in a URL, ususally started with the “#” symbol

An example of these five different components from the patent filing:

http://www.yahoo.com:80/shopping/search?kw=blaupunkt#desc

In this URL, the scheme is “http”

The authority is “www.yahoo.com:80″ which shows the domain, and also includes a port number of “80″ in this instance.

The path is technically everything after that first single slash: “shopping/search?kw=blaupunkt#desc”

A query argument shown in this example is “kw=blaupunkt”

A fragment from this URL is #desc

Tokenizing URLs for Keywords and Web Crawling

The patent application describes a way that it might break down URLs into parts, or components, to extract keywords from URLs. Those keywords could be used to categorize pages for web search, and to understand what pages are about when providing advertisements for those pages.

This breaking down of URLs into components, and even smaller parts is referred to as “tokenizing URLs.” In addition to helping a search engine find keywords in URLs, it can have an impact on the indexing of the pages of a web site:

The tokens generated by URL tokenization may also be assigned with features of the web document to improve the efficiency of a web search. Tokenizing URLs is also the first step when clustering URLs of a website. Clustering URLs allows the identification of portions of a web document that hold more relevance. Thus, when a website is crawled by a search engine, some portions of web documents may be white-listed and should be crawled, while other portions may be black-listed and should not be crawled. This leads to more efficient web crawling.

Conclusion

Yahoo provides a fair amount of detail in the patent filing on how URLs can be broken down into components, and how keywords can be extracted from those components, as well as provided different rankings. If you’re interested in how the URLs of your site might be treated under this process, it’s worth spending some time with the patent filing itself to get a grasp of the technical details. Keep in mind that the processes from this patent application may not be the ones that Yahoo may presently be using at this time,

A cautionary note - changing the URLs to your pages, especially if those URLs have been around for a while and are indexed by search engines, is an undertaking that shouldn’t be started without careful consideration, and without using a cautious approach that keeps the risk behind such a change to a minimum. Such an approach can include using proper redirects (permanent 301 redirects) to any new URLs for external links pointed to pages of the site, actually changing URLs in internal links to the new addresses upon the site itself, and other technical methods that might help a site retain its rankings in search engines. How a search engine might react to changes to the URLs of the pages of a site can vary from one search engine to another, and traffic to the pages of a site may be negatively impacted by such a change for a period of time regardless of how carefully such a change is implemented.

12 Content Strategies To Make SEO Great

2009-03-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

Its been said time and again, to search engines, “content is king”, but when it really comes down to it, many companies say they don’t have the time, patience, or budget for content creation. It begs the question; why then should they be ranked high in the search results? Maybe, just maybe, they’re not thinking about it logically and aren’t considering all the options at their disposal.

Here are 12 different types of content (not necessarily mutually exclusive) that when implemented properly, can drive tremendous volumes of visitors, links, and even business:

1. widgets/badges - for those unfamiliar with widgets, a widget is typically an interactive tool, that can be embedded in a web page. Since they’re interactive, often they can help potential clients find solutions quicker than they otherwise might have, making them a very powerful online marketing tool. Sometimes widgets are also made available for download to other websites, making them a powerful link acquisition tool too. Below is an example of one such widget.

2. videos - a good video is difficult to beat. People like to hear and see things for themselves, as opposed to reading about them, or being told about them. Video makes this possible, and accordingly is very popular. At the same time, video can be instructional, entertaining, and/or informational. When well done, videos will drive tremendous volumes of traffic, links, and/or potential clients to a site … and offers additional opportunities to appear in the search results

3. images - if a picture can say a 1000 words, then its also possible for images to generate 1000 visitors or links. We’ve seen many client sites, who’s images drive 20%+ of their overall website traffic volumes. In many cases, images are the reason people visit websites … they need to see what they’re buying! All that to say, do not underestimate the power of good quality images!

4. research - people often buy from websites they’ve heard about before, because familiarity breeds loyalty and trust. One means of breeding familiarity and trust is to perform and publish unique research that others in your industry or potential clients will find useful. When well thought out, timely, and topical, such research can generate thousands of links, visitors, and potential clients. Good research also helps to establish you as an authority in your space.

5. awards - everyone likes to receive cudos, or acknowledgement of a job well done! Now image that you as a site owner offer the ability for others to take those cudos, and post them on their site for all to see. Its a powerful tool, often generating thousands of visitors and/or links.

6. contests - while not for every business, contests can generate alot of relevant links, and accordingly help a site rank much better. The key is to ensure that the contest somehow relates to your business.

7. news - sites that are routinely first to publish industry news, are often visited more frequently, generate more links, and are viewed more as industry authorities. Alternatively, those running news stories after the fact, typically don’t experience all these benefits, unless they add some value or unique intepretation angle. Of course, one way to ensure the news is new and fresh is to make the news (aka a publicity stunt) … so get creative!

8. blog posts - perhaps one of the most popular techniques to create content, and one of the most poorly done! Most don’t understand the subtle nuances of creating blog content. I’ve posted about it previously (12 Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid) as have many others, but the majority still continue to write blog content as if it were for another form of offline media.

Blog content generally consists of one of the four types listed below:

The type you choose should be based on your objectives.

9. do something “remarkable” - if a company truly does something remarkable and unique, and publishes it on their site, the content will take on a life of its own. What does this mean? Well, if you’re a sausage manufacturer, manufacture the largest sausage on the planet. If you own a burger joint, offer a $2700 burger on the menu. Even if no one ever orders it, its something to mention on your website, and something interesting that others will notice and talk about (which results in links, visitors, and often clients). Consider this term alone “most expensive martini” … there are 1200 mentions on it in Google, and presumably a good number of those mentions link to it!

10. create an ebook - much easier said than done, but creating a ebook can result in perceived authority, visitors, links, and …. business!

11. make and distribute applications - if you can find a way to make potential clients lives easier (online or offline), it can have a profound impact. Creating an online application such as a WordPress plugin, a calculator, or industry software, and hosting it for download via your site, can increase awareness of your site, your perceived authority in the industry, attract large volumes of visitors, links, and yes, even business.

12. user generated content - content added by others, is content that you didn’t have to add yourself. With most business owner’s arguing they don’t have the time or budget for content, user generated content (UGC) would appear to be a logical solution. Although, most business owners then become concerned with their inability to control the content. Precautions can be taken however in most situations, making UGC a solution worth investigating.

Google Releases Major Blog Search Blogroll Algorithm Update

2009-03-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

The much awaited update to the Google Blog Search blogroll detector algorithm has finally been pushed through.

An updated Google Groups thread has Googler, Jeremy Hylton saying:

We have launched a ranking change that reduces the number of results that are returned because of blogroll matches. There are still problems to work out, but this change appears to be a big improvement over our earlier fix. We had originally planned to launch an experiment for link: queries, but decide more recently to release this change first. We are still working on the link: change and expect to have that ready in a few more weeks.

We did expect to see an update for how Google Blog Search responds to the link query, but as Jeremy said, that won't be released yet for the next few weeks. But the blogroll matching detector, which matches for keywords in the blogroll sections of sites, should no longer return results for those keywords.

Why does this matter? Well, lets say you are like me and you track who links or mentions you via Google Blog Search. If someone has the Search Engine Roundtable in the blogroll, and the do a daily blog post, even if that blog post doesn't mention the Search Engine Roundtable, blog search would show that new blog post as a match. Why? Because it is in the blogroll and Google thinks it is part of the content of the blog post. Google said they fixed this issue but they do want feedback at the Google Groups thread.

Is Flash Being Indexed By Search Engines?

2009-03-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

It seems that once a year for the past five years or so, a search engine representative will stand up at a conference and announce that they are now indexing Flash. Website designers jump with glee, and SEOs lament that all the work they did educating their clients on why they need to curb their use of Flash will be for naught.

Think of it this way, if Flash were a food, it would be an herb or a spice. Let’s say it’s basil. While basil is great in pesto, it’s not something that you’d typically make an entire meal out of. You use it to add flavor to your tortellini. And yet designers across the world—as well as CEOs who want to appear cool—want huge chunks of their websites in Flash. Sigh.

Of course if the search engines truly are indexing Flash this time around, then what’s the problem?

Flash sites certainly can do some neat tricks. People can interact with them in ways they can’t with a typical plain-Jane HTML website. Interaction is certainly good, as it can make a site “sticky.” And people pass around fun websites to their friends so they can make the little balls spin, or play with the cool virtual cubes. This is great for some websites which are looking to entertain people.

If, on the other hand, your company wants people to actually understand what you do when they come to your website, how does playing with the spinning balls further this goal? I don’t personally find it endearing to have to guess what’s behind each ball or cube when I mouse over it and it makes a funny sound or explodes and perhaps shows a single word or cute saying. If I’m looking to kill time, I might visit your site. But if I’m wondering if you’re a good fit for my needs at the moment, I don’t want to do a puzzle to figure this out. Instead, I am likely to seek out your competitor that provides me with information, rather than games.

As you can tell, I’m not a fan of cool Flash sites for a typical business. But what about those that have a more basic Flash site that does indeed provide information? For them, I would ask, why Flash? If you don’t need to allow your visitors to interact with your website, then why not just use HTML with Flash accents? Because even if the search engines are indexing the information contained in Flash (more on this in a bit), there are other reasons not to use it. First and foremost, not every browser has Flash installed. In fact, currently on an iPhone, Flash shows up as a little blue cube. Second, many Flash-based sites use only one URL for the entire site. Besides the search engine implications of that, it is also a nightmare for bookmarking, as well as for most web analytics programs.

So, even if search engines are indeed indexing the information in Flash, my recommendation is still to not design your entire website with it.

With that out of the way, I just rolled up my sleeves and started looking at how Google is currently treating Flash and whether websites can do just as well in the search results even if important information is contained within Flash.

Guess what? Most Flash is still highly invisible in Google.

To test this, I went directly to some Flash sites, and pasted exact words contained within their Flash into Google (using quotes) and most of the sites did not show up in the search results. Upon review of the source code of two sites that did show up I found that one was using the phrase I looked for within their Meta description (see… meta descriptions actually DO count for something with Google, despite what some will tell you). The other site had lots of text within the code beneath the Flash so that search engines and browsers without Flash would have some meaningful info. While that’s a good alternative, the info they had was very different from the info contained in their Flash. That’s a bit of a dangerous game to play with the search engines if you ask me. If that info is good enough for search engines and iPhones, why isn’t it good enough for your most important users?

The other thing I noticed was that even on pages that used Flash sparingly, if they had words in the Flash files, a search for those exact words would not typically pull up the HTML page that the Flash was embedded on. However, when performing a search for the exact phrase plus only .swf filetypes (which is what most Flash files use as an extension), the Flash files themselves do show up in the results. This tells me that the Google reps were kind of telling the truth about Flash being indexed, but that it doesn’t do website owners much good in a real world setting.

Google searches for the brand names of Flash sites do bring up the sites in the search results (note that their brand is typically in the Title tag). So if that’s all you care about, then using all Flash shouldn’t be a problem for you. However, if you’re interested in showing up in the search results for people who may not have already heard of you, i.e., those seeking out exactly what you offer rather than your brand name, then you may want to rethink the cool factor and go for the smart one instead!

Way Of Google Analyzing The Top Keywords On The Site

2009-03-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

Google recently filed a patent application that deals with the keywords that Google finds on your web pages.

Google's new patent filing describes a way for website owners to view the top phrases that Google assigned to their website. The patent shows that Google finds the most important keywords on a website with a phrase-based indexing system and it describes a method that could allow website owners to add additional related keywords.

How does Google find the top keywords of your website?

All major search engines index web pages based on the individual words that they find on the page. If certain words and phrases appear together on the same page, search engines assign a topic that is related to these words to the page.
For example, the words "Paris" and "Hilton" are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, the words "Tiger" and "Woods" are associated with golf.

Google's patent application indicates that Google might plan to tell you what they believe are the top keywords for your website and let you suggest changes to these phrases.
How can Google find the relation between words?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word "Paris" and the word "Hilton" then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.

Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of algorithms that allow them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for your website?

Google does not allow you to suggest your keywords through a form yet. That means that you must use other methods to tell Google for which keywords you want to be listed on Google's result pages. That's why search engine optimization is so important.
Here are some things that you can do to show search engines that your site is relevant to a special topic:

Use a meaningful site architecture

Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.

Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

Create web pages that use different relevant search terms

If you want to get high rankings for the keyword "shoes" then it's not enough to mention the keyword "shoes" on your website.

You must also use related keywords such as "sneakers", "boots", "sandals", "footwear", etc. to show Google that your website is relevant to the general topic.

Find out why other pages rank higher than yours

If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. Modern search engine algorithms require you to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.

How To Use PPC For SEO Benefits?

2009-03-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

Pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) are widely used for search engine marketing, but are mostly performed in isolation to one another. The cross utilization of data is seldom seen, which if done, could potentially produce far better results.The idea behind this post is to ascertain how best PPC can be used to gain useful insights, which when implemented in search engine optimization can help us derive improved results. Mentioned below are few tasks that can be performed better by using PPC to ‘test the waters’.

1. Keyword selection: There is no shortage of free and paid keyword research tools but the data presented by them is not always accurate. Many of us would have learnt this fact the ‘hard way’ – by optimizing for keywords that don’t deliver targeted traffic, or for that matter any traffic at all. It is a costly mistake both in terms of time and money.

PPC can be used to determine the ‘traffic generation capacity’ of keywords by mining raw data such as number of impressions for that particular keyword. This data can be extrapolated to predict the traffic yielding capacity of keywords. Optimizing the website for such keywords would therefore drive more traffic to the website.

2. Building a wider keyword portfolio: Every website has a set of core terms it wants to rank for, in addition to other semantically similar key phrases. High rankings for core terms will deliver maximum targeted traffic, but at the same time the importance of ranking for secondary terms cannot discounted.

By running a PPC campaign for core terms on broad match, we can identify keywords other than the core terms that trigger the ad. This will not only help in building a database of relevant keywords that are searched for, but also assist in ascertaining keywords that Google considers relevant to the core terms. Tapping these keywords along with the primary keywords would therefore channel more visitors to the website.

3. Judging keyword efficacy: As everything else in search engine marketing, not all keywords are made equal. It is a well established fact that some keywords convert better than others, but the only certain way of knowing keywords that convert better is to test.

PPC is a quick and efficient way to check the ‘conversion potential’ of both the primary and secondary key phrases. Optimizing your website for keywords that drive conversion is a sure shot way of generating more revenue.

4. Writing compelling descriptions: Meta description may have lost its importance as a ranking factor but plays a crucial role in enhancing ‘click through rate’ for organic listing. In short, it is the ‘ad copy’ for organic listing.

PPC can be used to test different versions of ad copies and their corresponding click through rate. The best performing ad copies, based on their click through rate, can then be improvised to develop Meta descriptions that are likely to attract more clicks.

5. Testing landing pages: A website that does not have the potential to convert visitors into customers is no good.

In order to create a landing page that facilitates conversions it will need to be tested, modified, and tested in an iterative manner. Since PPC has the propensity to deliver quality traffic quickly, testing can be performed without waiting for organic rankings and the consequent traffic.

The whole exercise of leveraging PPC to build a high performing SEO campaign has an additional bonus attached to it – you get the ‘best of both worlds’ and here’s how.

It is a well established fact that an online marketing campaign produces best results when search engine optimization and PPC are implemented in tandem, and compliment each other.

After initial spillage and fine tuning, the PPC campaign that is being used to churn data will start to deliver positive return on investment. Synergizing the PPC campaign with your search engine optimization campaign will result in a holistic search engine marketing campaign. This is bound to deliver best results. And our philosophy is - why settle for less when you can get the best.

Is Link Building Necessary For A Website?

2009-03-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

Everyone in the field of internet marketing knows that without link building, your site will not be valued by search engines. Also, we agree that links are a path through which our prospects can reach to us. Most importantly, we need to develop high quality links to outrank our competitors.

Link building is not easy, however. It requires hard work, creativity, patience, and a lot of timel. This job becomes more challenging when you hear remarks like "This technique is not good; it will not work for your website ranking," "This is unethical," and much more. In a real sense, these are inevitable comments.

We are constantly being questioned by our clients about what works and what doesn’t work, so I thought I would compile a quick list of misleading link building statements to help our clients.

#1 Outbound links can kill rankings

“Linking out to other sites isn’t worth doing because you drive people away from your website.”
“All outbound links leak Page Rank.”

My verdict: If you send your visitors to useful content often enough, they’ll keep coming back for more.

A site cannot "drop" or "lose" PageRank by linking out. Also, there are few ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. The best option is to set “rel” attribute i.e., rel="nofollow". The fact is search engines not only look how the site links in, but also check how it links out. Sites with a lot of incoming and reciprocal links can only be viewed negatively by search engines.

Tip: Link to websites that will benefit you. Linking to authoritative sources can help establish visibility and build credibility. Outbound links hold a lot more weight than is generally perceived.

#2 Reciprocal links won't work

A common myth concerning reciprocal links is that if you exchange links with sites, you will not get any value of those links in rankings.

My verdict: It’s not true that reciprocal linking is bad. If you link to a site you liked and this site also link to you (depends on site requirement), there is nothing bad about it. And it will pay you in terms of ranking for sure. Besides, the wrong way of reciprocal linking is creating a link page on a website and then trading links with other websites' link pages with the intention of “Give link and get link.”

Always remember, Google will never penalize the site that has backlinks coming from relevant and quality sites.

Tip: Stay within your domain and it should not be your only linking strategy.

#3 Link with a Page That has a High Page Rank

Get 25% links from PR-5

15 % links from PR- 4

10% links from PR- 3 and so on….

PR…PR ….PR. One of the major concerns of clients. Even service providers differentiate their services by offering the highest percentage of links from high PR sites.

My verdict: We think it’s totally misleading your prospects. We (SEO professionals) know quality and relevancy is paramount, so why do we always try to fool our customers by using statement like this?

Who says backlinks from PR 5 is better than PR 1? Look at this PR calculation formula:

PR (A) = 1 – d + d ( PR(B) / L(B) + PR(C) / L(C) + PR(D) / L(D) + ….. )

d = 0.85 (damping factor derived statistically)

The final Page Rank of your web page equals to 1-0.85 + 0.85 x (PR/ number of outbound link).

Now, for instance, you have web page A. You are getting links from two pages: one is B and other is C.

Page B (page rank- 5, number of outbound links – 100)

Page C (page rank- 1, number of outbound links – 10)

According to the formula above, if web page A gets link from page B, the final PR will be 0.15 + 0.85 x 5/100= 0.193.

And if A gets a link from C, the final PR will be approximately 0.24.

So you see, the final PR value of Page A will be better if linking with C has PR 1 than linking with a page B that has PageRank 5.

Tip: It is advisable to check the total number of outbound links on a page and the quality of a webpage rather than PR only.

#4 Linking With High PR websites!

“Always Link with High PR page.”

Another misleading concept. There are a lot of differences between websites and web pages.

My verdict: A high PR website indicates the PR of the home page and web page can be any of the inner pages. Google assigns PR only to a particular web page and not to the whole site. Therefore, home page PR cannot pass value to the inner pages of website.

Tip: It is imperative to check the PR of a web page and, most importantly, the relevance of that particular page from where the link is sourced.

#5 Permanent link building

“Links can be permanent.”

This is the biggest myth that makes service providers' pitch sound compelling to most of their prospects.

My verdict: Links cannot be permanent. Getting links on other sites depends on the webmaster of that site. He can either keep it for long or remove it, all up to his or her requirement. We cannot take direct control on others' sites. However, we can take assurance from them to keep the links for a particular time period (6 months, 3 months, etc.) and not forever.

Tip: Develop links that can pay you longer, not even stay longer.

#6 Paid links are unethical

There is much conversation around paid links, like:

“Paid links are unethical; Google can penalize you for paid links.”

My verdict: What is the differentiating factor between natural links and paid links? Or how could you detect paid links? No way at all, but there could be guesses about paid links, like developing a large number of links within limited time period, with most of the backlinks from High PR sites, links from irrelevant sites, or many other quality issues. If you know these things can pull Google to suspect your sites, it’s better to avoid these types of links while buying.

Paid links are none other than paid advertisements. If you can post banner and text ads, then why not links?

Tip: For quality links, it would be better to go for experienced and authorized link builders (who know the real purpose of link development and could give your website maximum business) rather than linking networks. Don't even buy links in bulk and pay for only those links that can return you more.

How To Find That A Blog Link Is Useful Or Waste?

2009-03-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you’re on the prowl looking to acquire links via link trades, buying links or contributing optimized content to a blog in return for a link or two, you can run into some sites which may seem like you’ve struck link gold .. but these opportunities may prove too good to be true.

Case in point, you may find some site owners who are more or less giving away good links on sites with high PageRank or lots of incoming links, but what may look like incredible places to get links from, but I highly suggest taking a deeper look before striking a deal. Here are some red flags to look for when judging the quality of a site.

Topic Irrelevance : Is the site’s content relevant to its theme or URL? Site relevance is one of the first things I look at when judging the quality of a site or linking partner. If it’s a blog, are all of the posts about the genre or theme of the site? Or are they just blatant reviews designed to make money. If the answer is the latter, then that site has no real value and will probably lose anything it currently has going for it right now. If so, the value of your link will be nothing, or some negative value could be associated with your link.

Dropped Domains : Look through the history of the site via Archive.org and its Whois information to see if the site has been dropped. Google looks at two aspects with dropped or transferred domains : has the site changed hands and has the site changed content.

If you find an obvious site like CatholicsforLieberman.org with lots of juicy association or church links pointing to it, and the site is a Wordpress blog running off a default template and blogging about office furniture, stay away from it; it’s been dropped, picked up and all of its old good content was replaced with crap.

Buy a Sponsored Post Buttons : I’m not going to name any companies, but there are a lot of paid blogging review companies out there. Some use good blogs, are responsible and a bit under the radar, others are pure garbage and will result in negative association with a bad linking neighborhood. If you see buttons to buy a post on a blog, WITH A PRICE, and the posts say “Sponsored Post”, and you see that the links in the posts don’t use a no-follow .. hit your back button NOW!

Penises, Viagra and Poker : OK, this should be a given but if the site or blog which you are thinking about obtaining a link from links out to or writes about online gambling sites, penis enlargement or sex pills like Viagra, there’s a 99% chance that you’re about to obtain a link from a spam blog (or splog). Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it … unless you sell penis pumps or have an online poker spam site (and if you do, I hope you’re thinking of better ways of getting links … like comment spamming Search Engine Journal or Daily SEO Tip!)

Generic Wordpress Defaults : Not all blogs with generic Wordpress templates are spam, but a lot of the spam blogs I run into do not venture too far away from the freebie Wordpress templates available from Fantastico or basic Wordpress template sites. You’ve probably seen these when you first develop a Wordpress blog.

Also, check their “About Us” page, if it says the following, the blog could be spam, new, or just lacking some basic TLC :

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.

I really do use this as a quality indicator and if I find a good blog for becoming a link partner with and I see that they have not changed their About Us page, I usually make sure they do so before embarking on a blogging or link campaign with them.

Tips To Track Email Marketing Campaigns

2009-03-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

Email campaigns are a cost-effective way of attracting quality return visitors to your site. It's important that you tag your email campaigns with campaign tags so that you can track how well each email performs. This lets you optimize your efforts and track your return on investment.

What are campaign tags?

Campaign tags are additional information that you apply to links. Once a link is clicked, the tag information is passed to Google Analytics. Tagged links allow you to evaluate the performance of individual links within your emails.

Why tag email links?

Let's say that you send out an email newsletter in January and February that does not use campaign tags. Visitors coming from emails reported within the Referring Sites Report will only include visitors coming from web-based email clients like Gmail:

But, did they visit your website as a result of the January email or the February email? Unless you've used campaign tags, you'll have no way of knowing.

Visitors who click a link in your email using an email client on their computer will be reported as Direct Traffic -- and will therefore be grouped in with visitors who used bookmarks or who typed your website's URL into their browser.

A quick reference for tagging emails

The Google Analytics URL Builder is a great tool for generating tagged links to use within your email campaigns.
For more information vist Google Analytics Blog

Do Setting Up A Blog Gives Out Quick SEO Solution?

2009-03-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I feel that the emphasis on blogs and blogging have taken dangerous heights. Especially with someone who has to sell his products online. There’s enough and more information flowing around that says setting up a blog on your site is the “band aid” to your falling SERP ranks.

I should disagree with this statement. Not only because it sounds too easy and vague but also because it is wrong.

Most of my clients do have an old website, which has a falling SERPs record and are looking for a healing process. Some are still doing good while some have serious issues such as page not being indexed and “penalty like” issues.

Its a bit surprising when most of them suggest blogs as a solution. Probably from what they’ve heard over on the internet, but the expectations from a blog is just too much and hyped I must say !

Blogs do help in oiling back the machine but I’m seriously concerned over the “setting up a blog” part of it.

I strongly disagree that just by setting up a blog, some miracle is going to happen. No.

Blogs and social media should be embraced in the right way with lot of commitment and involvement. You should be able to “utilize” blogs and the social media channels to your benefit. You should still be able to deliver content frequently, should be able to connect with the audience and on top of all able to deliver quality without actually promoting your products directly. Its easy to piss off people with your content and in blogging its a bit too easy to. So you have to be really careful with it.

There’s a lot more to using blogging and social media as a platform to sell your products. It doesn’t end with setting up a blog, adding some meta keywords and waiting for the traffic to rush in.

Having said that blogs are good tools to bring in that much needed traffic rush and google juices to your failing site, if you use them effectively that is.

So essentially, setting up a blog is a good thing, but not definitely a quick solution. Its only a starting point and there’s quite a lot more to go. The time, effort and commitment required to bring in the traffic is almost as equal as in a normal site.

Five SEO Tips to ensure a first page rank for your blog posts

2009-03-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

Search Engines love blogs. And we all know it well, which is the reason why we have blogs either on blogger.com or on self hosted WordPress. But when everyone had a new blog, then wouldn’t the advantages be cancelled out equally ? Probably yes. Only blogs that have managed to gather up some moss..err..the authority would have a clear advantage over others. Stories these blogs publish would most definitely be on the first page, even if they have a not-so-good onsite optimization. This is most likely due to the enviable amount of backlinks they have gathered.So for comparatively new blogs , what are the chances of ranking high for freshly published stories ? Do they stand a chance to compete against the big boys ?

I’m happy to say that the answer is yes.

With the search engine love and the technical excellence of blogs, its quite possible to get a first page rank on fresh stories no matter what your competition is.

1. Write stories with lot of text and optimize it well

I’ve found that stories that have lot of text with optimized content do well on the SERPS, even when the stories are published minutes earlier. The possible reason is that such articles give search engines a lot to chew on and make out as to what “topic” the article is about. An adequate amount of text would be around 300-500 words in my opinion. However when the competition is tougher, writing even more lengthy stories with headings, titles, images and all possible on site optimization weapons do help.

2. Leverage on the title space

You have around 50 characters. Use that space to write the best titles that are relevant as well as attractive. Most of the times, the title relevancy to the keyword search is a huge factor in getting a top rank. so use it well.

3. If possible get some link backs from the social media

Its probably unfair to say that you need backlinks on a fresh story. Its not a necessary, however if you can manage to get a few, that would be great. And I’m not talking about the regular link back from a normal site, but some high-traffic social media sites. A dofollow is awesome, but even if its a nofollow but on a highly accessed page – great. Don’t ever spam for backlinks please, your story has to be equally interesting, worthy enough for good traffic.

4. Check what’s already there on the SERPS

A good strategy would be to find out if the story you are going to publish has competition already on the SERPS. Try searching for possible related searches on Google. Find out the age of the post, and if the top ten results are saturated with relevant stories. If the stories around the 5-10 results are not directly targeted to the search term (possibly a content match) then you have a higher chance to win.

5. Be clever, use the headers wisely

When writing quick posts, bloggers don’t really make use of the header tags, or that’s what I see. We have a whole range of them starting with H1. A simple H1 is good, but if you use the others, its still a lot of added weight. So use them properly and include your possible keywords in them. Again, no keyword stemming please, but use it a natural looking way.

Having said that, there is no guarantee to a first page rank and a lot depends on your blogs history and general SEO health. But a good research and proper content design will do half the job in getting there. There are lot of young blogs that enjoy a steady and healthy traffic from search engines, due to their consistency in posting well optimized articles. They have very few backlinks, page ranks not exceeding PR 2 and domain ages of around 1 year or so. But almost all their stories are on the front page if not Rank No.1 – which is a good achievement I’d say.

How Google Hadles Redirected Links And Nofollowed Links?

2009-03-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Matt Cutts of Google has posted two short videos on the topic of links. One video answers how Google handles links that are 301 redirected and the other video answers how Google handles nofollowed links from authority sources.

Here is Matt’s video on 301 redirects where the question asked is does anchor text carry through all 301 redirects:

His answer, if you don’t want to watch it is. Typically yes, but Google deserves the right to pick which they pass. If all your links are through 301 redirects, then that looks suspicious.

Matt’s second video on nofollowed links answers two questions. The first, does Nofollow tag devalue the Google algorithms? The second, does Google take into account nofollowed links from authority sites, such as Wikipedia? Even thought it is nofollowed?

His answers, if you don’t want to watch the video are:

(Q) Does Nofollow tag devalue the Google algorithms? (A) Matt said the nofollow is used very rarely on the web, relative to all the links on the web. He said it is “miniscule” compared to all the links.

(Q) Does Google take into account nofollowed links from authority sites, such as Wikipedia? Even thought it is nofollowed? (A) Google doesn’t take into account the nofollowed Wikipedia links. But people may find your resource via Wikipedia and link to you without a nofollow from their site, so that might help you.

Matt did add that if a site has a lot of trust, like Wikipedia, does deserve the right to take the nofollow off. But it is up to the site to decide if they want to take off that nofollow tag. Matt goes as far to say that Google would support Wikipedia if they want to put into their policy a way of removing nofollow links from trusted editors and their content.

How To Make Ads More Effective?

2009-03-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

At Google, they believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and their users, Google can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks.

That's why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of their AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.

We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.

We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don't want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store's upcoming sale.

Our advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising. Advertisers need an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products and services. And publishers can generate more revenue when they connect advertisers to interested audiences.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.

Transparency - Google clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year Google will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
Choice - Google have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.

Keyword advertising has been so successful because it's useful to users, advertisers and publishers — everyone's interests are aligned. We believe that interest-based ads will create the same virtuous cycle, by giving users more relevant ads, while generating higher returns for advertisers and publishers.

Nine Factors That Affect Web Usability And SEO

2009-03-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

I have already given out 30 tips that a webmaster has to consider while constructing a website. Here I would drop some nine factors which is really important for the web usability and SEO.

Optimizing web pages for search engines does not mean creating special pages for search engines. Optimizing web pages for search engines is often the same as optimizing web pages for web surfers.If you do it correctly, your website will be attractive to both web surfers and search engine spiders. The following list shows nine factors that can improve the usability of your website as well as your search engine rankings.

1. You should have fast loading web pages

Usability: Web surfers don't want to wait for web pages.

Search engine optimization: Search engines can index your web pages more easily.

2. Your web pages should be easy to read

Usability: It's easier for web surfers to read your web pages.

Search engine optimization: Near-white text on a white background and tiny text is considered spam by most search engines.

3. The contents of your web pages should be clearly arranged

Usability: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make your web pages easier to read.

Search engine optimization: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make it easier for search engines to find the topic of your web pages.

4. Your web page images should use the IMG ALT attribute

Usability: Web surfers with images turned off and visually impaired visitors will be able to see the content of your images.

Search engine optimization: Search engines cannot index the content of your images but they can index the content of the IMG ALT attribute.

5. You should use custom 404 not found error pages

Usability: If your 404 not found page contains links to other pages of your website or a search form then people might remain on your website.

Search engine optimization: Proper 404 error pages make sure that search engines index the right pages of your website.

6. Your website should be easy to navigate

Usability: Clear and concise navigation links that are easy to find help your website visitors to find content on your site.

Search engine optimization: Clear and concise navigation links that contain your keywords make it easy for search engines to index all of your web pages.

7. Important content is above the fold

Usability: Web surfers with small computer screens can quickly see what your web page is about.

Search engine optimization: The sooner your important content appears in the HTML code of your web pages, the more likely it is that it will be indexed by search engines.

8. Your web page titles are explanatory

Usability: If web surfers bookmark your web pages, a clear web page title will help them to find it again.

Search engine optimization: The web page title is one of the most important SEO elements. It should contain your keywords and it should look attractive so that web surfers click on it when they see your web page title in the search results.

9. The URLs of your web pages are meaningful and self-explanatory

Usability: It's much easier to remember a web page like www.example.com/support than a web page like www.example.com/123123-werwc.php?2342234.

Search engine optimization: If your URLs contain your keywords, this can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. Dynamic URLs with many variables can lead to problems with search engine spiders.

Can A Web Page Have More Than 100 Links?

2009-03-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Most of them have a doubt whether a web page can have more than 100 links in it. It depends on certain conditions:

The original reason is that Google used to index only about 100 kilobytes of a page. When we thought about how many links a page might reasonably have and still be under 100K, it seemed about right to recommend 100 links or so. If a page started to have more than that many links, there was a chance that the page would be so long that Google would truncate the page and wouldn’t index the entire page.

These days, Google will index more than 100K of a page, but there’s still a good reason to recommend keeping to under a hundred links or so: the user experience. If you’re showing well over 100 links per page, you could be overwhelming your users and giving them a bad experience. A page might look good to you until you put on your “user hat” and see what it looks like to a new visitor.

But in some cases, it might make sense to have more than a hundred links. Does Google automatically consider a page spam if your page has over 100 links? No, not at all. The “100 links” recommendation is in the “Design and content” guidelines section, and it’s the Quality guidelines that contain the things that we consider webspam (stuff like hidden text, doorway pages, installing malware, etc.). Can pages with over 100 links be spammy? Sure, especially if those links are hidden or keyword-stuffed. But pages with lots of links are not automatically considered spammy by Google.

So how might Google treat pages with well over a hundred links? If you end up with hundreds of links on a page, Google might choose not to follow or to index all those links. At any rate, you’re dividing the PageRank of that page between hundreds of links, so each link is only going to pass along a minuscule amount of PageRank anyway. Users often dislike link-heavy pages too, so before you go overboard putting a ton of links on a page, ask yourself what the purpose of the page is and whether it works well for the user experience.

Google Analytics Getting Started Guide

2009-03-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics is absolutely free to use and there are many benefits that come with installing it on your site. We've listed the top five things you can do as soon as you start tracking your site with Analytics:

AdWords advertisers can make Analytics available right in their AdWords account as a separate tab through a simple linking process. Advertisers can review extra data for their online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals), and pick out their highest performing ads.
You can also use Analytics to track other Google products including AdSense, Blogger, and Google Sites.
See which pages drive the most pageviews on your site from the Top Content report. This report can answer questions you have about your most or least effective pages - for example, a high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it.

Which groups of visitors became customers or did something else important to the success of your business? You can get key insights for these questions by setting up goals.
Grant other people in your company or organization access so that they are restricted to viewing reports in a profile or given full access to help manage your entire account as an administrator.

There are over 80 reports with customizable, drag-and-drop interfaces. You can also create your own reports with Custom Reporting, create the segments you want to see with Advanced Segmentation, or view multi-dimensional views of your data with Motion Charts.

Best SEO Tips For WebMasters!

2009-03-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Optimization for the sites has to be done from the time of designing. I would drop here 30 steps which would help the webmasters to design the website with the Optimization process.

The steps goes as follows:
Tip No. 1

- Study and read everything possible about advanced SEO techniques right from the start of your project.

Tip No. 2

- Always keep in mind that designs are cool, but what is equally important is the code that goes behind it.

Tip No. 3

- Always keep the code optimized, check for W3C compliance right from the start.

Tip No. 4

- Follow the basics, titles, meta tags are still important if not ignored, so keep space for them.

Tip No. 5

- Keep a horizontal directory structure, don’t go too deep with them, the search engines likes easy access to any file in the quickest time.

Tip No. 6

- When you name the files and directories, keep it descriptive and simple. Keep away numbers and weird characters.

Tip No. 7

- Images better be optimized for size, and quick loading. If you can’t keep away from loading that fancy graphic, mix it with the page elements. Don’t make them look blunt.

Tip No. 8

- Make room for a lot of text. As you already know, search engines love text, lot of them.

Tip No. 9

- Flash files are cool. And Search engines have found better ways to crawl and index them unlike old times, but that doesn’t mean you can use them extensively blocking access to relevant text info. So if you are keen on using flash, keep alternate text versions ready.

Tip No. 10

- If you have dynamic content, make sure you keep it simple and split to parts. Also, make sure you have optimized static pages for your primary keywords.

Tip No. 11

- Always do a bit of competition analysis. See what your competition is, if they have a minimalistic design you don’t want to have a flash design, and leaving no room for improvement. Stalk your competition.

Tip No. 12

- Many web designers make the mistake of using a template through out the site and many a times this includes repeating the same title or similar page titles all over the site. Get over this, use descriptive page titles everywhere possible.

Tip No. 13

- Keep the page titles to 65 characters or less in count. Nothing wrong is going over it, but you could avoid a spill over.

Tip No. 14

- The meta descriptions are supposed to be mini ad-copies that should be descriptive of what the page is about. Don’t keep them the same for all pages.

Tip No. 15

- Keep the JavaScript away from navigation menu. Navigation menu is a good resource for gathering information about what your site is about, and using javascript can make it less crawlable by the engines.

Tip No. 16

- Use CSS based navigation if you want fancy effects. Pretty much all of the javasript stuff can be done on CSS, in a more search engines friendly way.

Tip No. 17

- Use the header tags effectively. Don’t limit yourself with H1 and H2. Use H3, H4 and beyond and use it wisely on the page.

Tip No. 18

- Use strong tags wisely. Don’t let them stand out like bolded text, within the content, style it down to show up as normal text within the content.

Tip No. 19

- Use the footer effectively. Of course, you can use it for all your TOS/Legal stuff, but also use it to link to the important pages on your site. It helps.

Tip No. 20

- Identify the most important pages on your site as seen by the search engines, and leverage them to promote other resource pages.

Tip No. 21

- Link well internally, and use descriptive anchor text instead of “click here” and “check this out” like phrases.

Tip No. 22

- Use al tags, Title tags on images and use descriptive filenames. They help search engines find more information about them.

Tip No. 23

- Use a SEO friendly layout, at least one that does not block or hinder the crawling of crucial areas on your site.

Tip No. 24

- Find out the important areas on your website, like the content rich area in the center and keep them above the fold. Not only helps the engines but the user as well.

Tip No. 25

- When designing dynamic pages, try to stick to pages with descriptive URLs and not the one with session ids and other parameters. Google can still get it’s head around them, but its good if you can stick to SE friendly, descriptive ones.

Tip No. 26

- When dealing with CMS’s there might be instances where you have to keep the page URL the default way with the extra parameters. Use URL rewrite mod to re write the most important pages URL’s to SE friendly form.

Tip No. 27

- When using AJAX, load the modules in parts split across pages and not in one single page. Although this defeats the purpose of using AJAX in the first place, you might be able to provide more information to the search engines using other on site SEO parameters.

Tip No. 28

- If you want to block any particular area on your site from the reach of Google spiders, use either Robots.txt commands, or else set up a login access. This is the safest way to block crawlers from spidering vital information.

Tip No. 29

- Keep the meta descriptions descriptive and precise to about 150 characters.

Tip No.30
- Use an SEO simulator to test your design through out the process. And make sure no part of the design blocks/hinders any part of information being accessible to the search engines.

So essentially, web designers got to ensure that while their designs are unique and eye-catchy, making sure that there is enough information available in the form of text is always recommended, and leveraging this information by using all the possible SEO metrics in a healthy and balanced way to cater to the search engines is the right way of designing a search engine friendly web design.

Control Your Search Result URL

2009-03-06T20:16:00.000-08:00

Tracking parameters allow analytics programs to differentiate between paid ads and other sources of traffic, such as direct visits, organic searches, or referrals. They are invaluable for understanding the effectiveness of online advertising.

From an SEO perspective, URL parameters can be somewhat problematic. People who click on your ads may like the content so much that they decide to share your webpage with friends or post it on their own websites. Although this type of viral marketing is a good thing, imagine what happens if the link that they copy looks something like this:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/landingpage/?utm_campaign=FreeOffer&
utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc

If this link is popular enough, then search engines will begin to index this URL. It may supplant the same version of this page without tracking parameters in the search results. Clicks on this new organic result will increment the visits number for Google(cpc) when it should really be attributed to Google(organic).

One popular SEO method of dealing with this challenge is instituting a 301 redirect and storing campaign variables in a cookie. Although this prevents search engines from indexing the same content multiple times, it has the undesired effect of stripping campaign parameters and generally messing up analytics tracking (boo!).

Google now supports a new format that provides webmasters with more control over the URL that is returned in the search results. You can specify your preferred version of the URL so that properties like link popularity are consolidated to this version. Unlike the 301 redirect, this will not affect your analytics tracking.

Link Your Ads To A Particular Time On You Tube

2009-03-05T19:43:00.000-08:00

I have already made a posting that videos are being concentrated more for SEO purposes. Since links gets more concentration when added with videos. Now the video ads are becoming popular with the people of Internet Marketing. Google now gives out other options in video ads. One can link the Ad at which part of the time he needs.

If you want to link to a specific part of a video on YouTube, you can. For example,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s

Notice the “#t=31m08s” on the end of the url? That link will take you 31 minutes and 8 seconds into that video. Linking to a particular minute and second can be really helpful — for example, that link takes you straight to where someone asks Eric Schmidt a question about Twitter. From there, you can listen to his answer, where he says (among other things):

“We’re in favor of all of these new communications mechanisms. …. I think the innovation is great …. Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to communicate, especially if you’re willing to do so publicly.”

Deep-linking to a specific part of a YouTube video is really easy, so I wanted give a short example to tell how to link to a certain minute and second of a video.

Do You Want To Remove A Page From Google Indexing?

2009-03-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

Many People wants to remove a page from Google Index. Is there any way to remove it from Google’s index? People don’t usually say it like that. More likely, they say “There’s this person making crazy claims about me on the web, and the stuff they say is just off-the-wall. Can Google remove this crazy person’s page?” Or “Everybody knows that this crazy person is posting lies and twisting people’s words. Is there anything you can do about it?” Will that happen? Yes and No is the answer from Matt Cutt.

This is what Matt Cutt says " Unfortunately there’s not much I can do. The page you pointed out is not spam, and pretty much the only removals (at least in the U.S., which is what I know about) that we do for legal reasons are if a court orders us. We typically say that if person A doesn’t like a webpage B, only removing page B out of Google’s search results doesn’t do any good because webpage B is still there (e.g. it can be found by going to it directly or through other search engines). In that sense, the presence of that page in Google’s index is just reflecting the fact that the page exists on the wider web.

The best actions for you from our perspective can be one of a couple options. Either contact whoever put up webpage B and convince them to modify or to take the page down. Or if the page is doing something against the law, get a court to agree with you and force webpage B to be removed or changed. We really don’t want to be taking sides in a he-said/she-said dispute, so that’s why we typically say “Get the page fixed, changed, or removed on the web and then Google will update our index with those changes the next time that we crawl that page.” Our policies outside the U.S. might be different; I’m not as familiar with how legal stuff works outside the U.S."

Through Matt Cutt we can understand that Google will not stop indexing a page until they are forced by the law to do.

Five Tips To Optimize The Existing Links To Maximize SEO Benefits

2009-03-03T04:08:00.000-08:00

As an SEO or Internet marketer, you’re constantly testing strategies to build new links to your sites for improved traffic and search engine rankings. But what about your existing links and link partners? Are you maximizing their potential and squeezing every little bit of benefit out of them? New links are great of course, but optimizing your existing links can have a significant impact on your SEO as well with minimal effort. Improving an existing link is usually a lot easier than obtaining a new one.

In this article, I’ll describe 5 strategies you can use today to optimize existing links to your site and increase their SEO value. This will help you to obtain more direct traffic and creep up in the search engine rankings for your targeted keywords.

1. Ask for more links

If someone links to your site, it usually means that they find value in what you have to offer or have some sort of relationship with you. Because of this, your existing link partners are more likely to change your links for you and add more in the future. Just don’t get too greedy with this strategy and push your luck. For example, if someone links to your homepage, you might email him with a relevant page and ask for a deep link as well. Furthermore, if someone links to one of your articles and you write a similar one on the same topic a few months later, you might let him know and ask for another link.

Again, don’t go overboard with this tactic. You want to get as many links as possible from your partners without seeming overly pushy and ruining the relationship. It definitely helps if you can repay the favor in some way.

2. Optimize link anchor text

A lot of times webmasters will link to your site with less-than-optimal anchor text. Anchor text is extremely important for links because it not only tells users what the resulting page is about, but it is also used by the search engines to determine the relevancy of a page to a particular keyword. For example, links to Winning the Web with the anchor text “internet marketing” will help the site to rank for that keyword. Links like “click here”, “learn more”, and “www.site.com” are unfavorable because they don’t incorporate high potential keywords.

Contact webmasters that link to you and ask them to change the anchor text for your link to include your targeted SEO keywords - especially links from high authority sites. Be sure to keep the anchor text relevant and mix it up (ideally a different variation for each link). Also, leave some anchor text unoptimized in order to appear natural to the search engines. Google will penalize your site if your link profile looks like it’s obviously been manipulated for a keyword. Learn how to appear natural and make every link count for your SEO rankings.

3. Correct errors

Occasionally you’ll find that webmasters link to pages that no longer exist on your site or completely misspell one of your URLs. Monitor your 404 error (file not found) logs and ask your link partners to correct the erroneous links if possible. If they’re non-responsive, an alternative solution is to transfer the link value yourself by implementing a 301 redirect from the old page or misspelled URL to the correct version.

4. Change link locations

Find out which sites link to pages on your site that are blocked from indexing by the search engines (in robots.txt or robots meta tags). Ask those webmasters to link to another more valuable page on your site. You can also go a step further with this strategy by asking for links on specific highly relevant pages with a lot of link equity (use PageRank as a general guide).

5. Turn your site name references into valuable links

Webmasters will often mention your name, business name, or URL but fail to use an actual link back to your site. Search for websites that already mention you. If they haven’t linked to your website, kindly let them know and request that they do so. Use Google Alerts to find these opportunities as they pop up.

Are you in the habit of optimizing your existing links? If not, take a look at the link profile for your site using your Google Webmaster account or tools like SEO Spyglass and Link Diagnosis.

Is It Too Easy To Pass Google Adwords Professional Exam?

2009-02-25T22:24:00.000-08:00

I took my first Google Adwords Professional exam yesterday. I haven't run a campaign earlier since one of our client wants me to pass the GAP exam before running the campaign for his test. Most of you knew that I am really new to online advertising. I too knew that the exam would not be so easy for the newbies in online industry. I took it with the spirit and I managed to pass the exam with 80% of score.

Everyone might think that GAP exam is very easy to pass. I would surely say Big No! to this. It is not easy for the one who hasn't run the campaign ever. Most of them believe that the theoretical knowledge from the Google Adwords Learning Center would be sufficient to pass the exam. But it is not, since most of the questions need completely practical knowledge.

Now you may think that the questions are difficult, absolutely not if you have a better practical knowledge. Because some questions were so tricky and which were related to original market advertising. Most of the questions were easy, few were repeated and few from the quiz part of Google Adwords Learning Center.

The major part of the questions were from the keyword matches. I would strongly recommend to have the best knowledge on keyword matches to score better. And the more to be concentrated on the negative matches.

I would strongly suggest everyone to run a campaign atleast for a month before taking the Google Adwords Professional exam.

I would like to drop some questions which I came over:

Which keyword list is best targeted for a gourmet chocolate store that specializes in upscale chocolates for the holidays?
a)Gourmet, chocolate, recipe
b)-gift, chocolate making, chocolate
c)chocolate gift, wedding, gourmet
d)-recipe, chocolate gift, "gourmet chocolate"

What are some best practices for building a keyword list in a contextually targeted campaign? Select all that apply.
a)Include more than 50 keywords per ad group.
b)Use keyword matching options.
c)Use negative keywords.
d)Create a keyword list focused around a theme.

Which of the following ad performance issues are you UNLIKELY to see after you implement changes suggested by an AdWords Optimization Specialist?
a)A change in your conversion rate.
b)Significantly fewer impressions and clicks.
c)Significantly more impressions and clicks in a shorter period of time.
d)A sudden increase in the number of impressions on your ad on a particular keyword

These kind of questions are really easy so please make the exam great with practical knowledge.

Does The Bounce Rate Affect The Site's Google Ranking?

2009-02-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

What is the bounce rate?

There are two definitions: the bounce rate of your website is the percentage of visitors who see just one page of your website or the percentage of visitors who stay on your site for a small amount of time (only a few seconds).

The bounce rate helps you to measure the quality of traffic that your website gets and it also helps you to find out where your web pages could be improved.

Google's definition of the bounce rate

The Google Analytics documentation defines the bounce rate as follows:

"Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors."

This Google definition already indicates that Google thinks that web pages with a high bounce rate aren't relevant to website visitors. If your web pages have a high bounce rate for a search term, Google might lower the rankings of your website for that search term.

Does Google use the bounce rate as a ranking factor?

Google has the ability to collect the bounce rate with the Google toolbar and Google Analytics. In addition, Google can measure the time between visits to their search engine by the same user and they can use the Google Chrome browser to measure the complete surfing behavior of users.

Last month, a webmaster performed a test that showed a significant ranking change as a result of a significant bounce rate change. The test is not very conclusive but chances are that Google really uses the bounce rate as a ranking factor.

The bounce rate alone might not be used by Google but combined with other factors, it could have an effect on the rankings. For example, Google could measure how many people start a new search for the same topic after visiting your web page. That would be an indicator that your website is not suitable for the chosen keyword.

What can you do to lower the bounce rate of your web pages?

A high bounce rate is usually a sign of a low quality web page. This means that your web page either doesn't offer what the visitor is searching for or the usability of your web page isn't good.

If you improved the contents and the usability of your web pages, you might lower your bounce rate from 75% to 65%. This would lead to a remarkable 40% increase in conversions (35 out of 100 visitors now stay on your website instead of 25 out of 100 visitors).

In addition to improving the usability of your web pages, you can lower your bounce rate by tailoring your landing pages to the keywords and ads that you run. If your landing pages offer the information that the searchers are looking for then you will get a lower bounce rate.

Lowering the bounce rate of your web pages has two major benefits: it's likely that you will get more visitors from search engines and you will get a higher conversion rate. The only exceptions to the scenario above are one page websites and web pages that offer very compelling content on a single web page (for example Wikipedia pages).

Search engines use many more ranking factors than just the bounce rate.

Golden Rules To Make The Keyword Research Great

2009-02-24T00:55:00.000-08:00

Here I have listed important eight set of rules:

Be relevant
Make sure the keywords you bid on are relevant to your product and not hugely general. If your company sells ergonomic keyboards, then buying advertising on the keyword “computer” is not going to do you much good.

In fact, it will be costly and any traffic it does push to your page will most likely quickly leave.

Be specific
It may be worth bidding on some relevant and competitive keywords but you should also spend some of your budget on highly specific terms.

These are likely to be cheaper and, while fewer people will be searching for them, those that do are more likely to be interested in your offering and result in a sale.

For example, if you sell ethical jewellery then bidding on the competitive term “engagement ring” will drive relevant traffic to your site.

However, while those visitors may buy a ring, they have not expressed an interest in your specific offering. Searchers looking for “ethical engagement ring” have already expressed a particular interest in your product angle.

Be local
It can be a great idea to bid on localised searches – often people like to look for a nearby service provider, meaning that could be one more edge you possess over your competitors.

So while it may still make commercial sense to bid on the all-encompassing competitive term – for example, SEO – it is likely to be a good idea to also bid on a more localised alternative – for example, Emedia Search Engine Optimisation.

Be smart
The great thing about the web is that it is measurable. There is no need for guess work because many analytical tools exist to show you which keyword terms are the most successful.

Such programs will also reveal the bounce rate of a given keyword, allowing marketers to make timely decisions and to quickly move their budget to maximise potential returns.

For example, if you sell fancy dress outfits and bid on “Peter Pan”, then that could drive thousands of visitors to your pages.

However, if your analytics tools show 87% of those visitors leave straight away, then you can clearly see that this is not an appropriate term. Try adjusting it, maybe “Peter Pan costume” would result in fewer hits but more conversions.

Be sneaky
What terms are your competitors bidding on? Positioning yourself above your peers is an important goal, both for raising your returns and simply gaining a strong and authoritative market presence.

It can be tricky to assess competitors’ search marketing efforts but it is not wasted time. As well as flagging up keywords it may be profitable to bid on, their pay-per-click advertising may also give you an insight into the focus of their organic efforts.

That can help you reassess the focus of your own, to ensure you remain in the strongest possible position.

Be flexible
The importance of each individual rule depends on your product. It is essential you keep track of your campaign’s returns and be prepared to change tack at short notice to keep ahead of the curve.

Is Search Engine Optimization A Process Or Project

2009-02-23T00:36:00.000-08:00

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is not a one time project, it’s a process. Similar to a garden, you must tend to it. Sometimes you have an existing garden where the weeds have grown over or nothing is growing. Sometimes you just have a section of yard you are going to rope off, till, then plant stuff in. Like a garden, organic SEO takes time and attention. It may be as simple as setting a timer to water or as complex as starting from scratch. Organic SEO is like a garden – if you don’t water it, it dies.

Soil Considerations

What is the history of the things that have been done to your website for SEO purposes?

Do you have pages chock full of links to websites unrelated to your company, where some of the website no longer exist or even some link to an “adult” website? Did someone hide a bunch of keywords the same color as your background at the bottom of the page? Maybe the site you are going to work on has commented out a bunch of keywords in the HTML code? (I know this is 2009, but some company, somewhere, has this on its Web site, right now.)

Sunlight, Rainfall and Other Factors

Traffic Analysis – Are there metrics on the company’s website? What kind of information can you gather from the statistics on what is going on with keywords, referrers, exit pages, entry pages, bounce rate, etc.? What metrics program does your company use?

We always ask our clients to install the website analytics program we use -

Hitslink - simply because it provides the measurements we need for our clients and also allows for consistent report formats for all clients.

What Plants shall we put in our garden?

Keyword Research - Gather the keywords out of the client’s current website metrics and obtain client input on what they think someone might type to search for them.

We usually use a method that I have used for many, many years. We ask the CEO, (get’s them involved at the top), the receptionist, the sales managers, the marketing director, the CFO and the COO (these two help get things done and also make sure you get paid) to provide five to 10 keywords each and not to share them with each other. This becomes statistically significant when you have different people come up with a keyword phrase more than once. Take these and put them into spreadsheets so we know what department wants what traffic and also to refer to later.

This is the primary keyword stage. You can also correlate what keyword terms got the most traffic and the lowest bounce rate to their Web site compared to what the client expects. Now obviously, you must factor in the fact that if the content doesn’t exist on their Web site right now, they won’t be found for it.

What kind of pesticides would be best to use to combat bugs?

Competitive Analysis – Look at the competitor’s HTML code, what can you observe about the competitor’s SEO strategy? Do they have one? What keywords are the competitor’s using? How do these differ from what the client gave you? Do they all apply directly to the client? Are the competitors using CMS systems, does the HTML code reflect the presence of another SEO firm?

These are the people your client thinks are their competitors in the business sector, not neccessarily on the web. Sometimes this works in your favor because the people your client thinks are your competitor may not be you, the SEO’s competitor, and as such you may rise above them to obtain market share over the competitor’s rather quickly.

What plants grow best in your locality?

Competitive Keyword Research - What keywords are crowded? What keywords are open? Does your client provide a niche service where very few people in the channel are doing SEO? Is your client a start-up, where the market is bare or are you going for terms in real estate or insurance that are very crowded already?

Audience Metrics - What do clients think of when they search? In addition to Web site metrics, what does your client’s customer think of them in terms of search? Can you obtain some of your client’s customers’ contact info? (say that 3 times fast)

Purchasing your plants

Keyword finalization - With the market up and down so much these days, if you tied your key performance indicators (KPI) to your client’s Web site traffic, you are indeed in trouble. While some people say keyword-specific search engine ranking is a poor measurement of SEO success, I would disagree and state that qualified converting keyword rankings ARE important.

If three out of 10 times a certain keyword phrase motivates Web site visitors to fill out your client’s contact form, then this is a qualified converting keyword phrase. The fact that you are number one or number 31 for that term is somewhat important to your client and their potential customers.

This is just the beginning of SEO. We haven’t even started modifying the Web site yet. Send the final round of keywords to the client for them to sign off on before you do your baseline measurements. Also at this point it’s a good idea to make sure to find out what the company’s “bread and butter” is and what areas it is growing in its organization.

Knowing this will help you pick your first keyword focus point for quick ROI and know what areas you are going to help the company grow in. The client’s expense for SEO should give them at least a triple return on its investment after a year.

Baseline - Where does client rank now in the search results of Google, Yahoo! and MSN for the agreed upon keyword terms and phrases? You can shoot yourself in the foot if you try and measure vague terms. Your best bet is to use what will make the cash register ring and track qualified keywords on a monthly basis to show progress. You might also want to measure the market share against the client’s specified keywords and show them a competitive market share baseline.

Landscaping

Planning - What needs to be done and who are the people to be involved client side and agency side? You don’t want everyone watering the plants at the same time.

Prioritization - What needs to be done first? What needs to be done last? This is critical so that there is no wasted effort or wasted expense to client. Is there a new Web site in the future for the company? Make plans so you are not wasting the client’s money.

Garden Upkeep

The biggest misconception in SEO is that you can “do” SEO once on a Web site then you can just walk away. Just like a garden, if there is no water the plants die.

The nature of SEO is simply this: Today’s rules or procedures may or may not work tomorrow. Google is usually the target we aim at for SEO, but that target moves quite frequently. Google, in fighting off the “bad people” who spam the listings, will change the way they rank Web sites often. By monitoring results on a weekly and monthly basis you can see which plants need more water or which ones are getting eaten by bugs.

Apply that to keywords that may be on page three of the results but need to move up because they are highly converting keywords. Just like you would get rid of weeds, get rid of bugs or change the angle of the hose for irrigation, there are steps you must take full time to keep your SEO growing.

Linkage and Niche Marketing for a Web Site or Company Channel – submit the Web site to Yahoo! directory, DMOZ and other places on the web where applicable.

Monitoring and Maintanance – observe statistics weekly, water the Web site where it needs it the most.

Baseline reports – Refer to your baseline reports. Did that plant have three leaves last week or two? It was one inch tall two weeks ago, but now it’s four inches. Report this progress to the client.

Bounce Rate and On-site Modifications - If you notice one of your plants is doing really well, give it some more space, more room to grow or more soil to spread out into. In other words, you can be number one out of 380,000,000 results on Google, but if being number one doesn’t bring the company business, you want to adjust your strategy. Change your focus to the keywords that convert, remove the weeds that are growing in your garden and prune the keywords on a page to come to a bounce rate of zero percent. Organic SEO, like a garden, needs to be tended. It’s a process not a project.

Making Money Online Is It Too Easy?

2009-02-20T01:18:00.000-08:00

Is making money online is so easy? My answer would be may be or may not be easy. What does this mean? Ya, It is easy for those has who has learned the tricks of online and may not be for those whose is struggling in the online marketing without having the exact idea. People outside the online marketing believe that things are easy here. But it is not so until few tricks and bit experiences are obtained.

Here are the five tricks to make it out better:

1) Lets get this straight. Million dollar bank balances are numerical in nature. By that I mean a million bucks is not made up of 1 large million dollar bill. Its made up of exactly one million single's. Or to go to the lowest common denominator, its actually numerically made up of One thousand, million (or 1 billion) cents.

Make money fast and easy by thinking of money as numerical and therefore exponential. A dollar that you hold in your hand is the same as $1 million dollars. No difference at all. Its a seed that grows into a tree, then that tree spurrs more seeds. (I apologize for the metaphor, but how else can we put this so you understand the nature of the reality as it is)

2) When you approach your 1 million dollar goal, you are biting off much much more then you can chew thinking about that million.

To make money fast and easy always think small. Refine, refine, refine. Then duplicate, duplicate, duplicate. Are you with me? Is this making sense? Make a simple little mouse trap, then make lots of mouse traps exactly the same way.

3) Find demand and supply into that demand.

To make money fast and easy, even before you think about "what" you will do, you are going to research demand. You will become an expert at sniffing out needs. This skill is a millionaires bow and arrow. Let me tell you, most millionaires couldn't hit the side of a barn much less the bulls eye. But they DO know this. So their aim is not important. What is important is that the target is nice and gigantic. How can they miss?

Trust me, its what millionaires do, its how millionaires think. Always supply into Fat juicy demand where the picking is easy. Do you want medals of bravery or a million bucks asap?

4) Have a structure you never deviate from.

They always failed to plan when they planned to fail. Once your research is done never deviate from it. Give it a good run but if it doesn't work out for you then move on without shedding a single tear. Chance and "chaos theory" are fascinating things. Probability is what millionaires deal with. They never delude themselves into believing in absolutes.

To make money fast and easy, you will not work backwards or second guess yourself. Plant yourself firmly in the middle of the road on the high side and go forward. Don't make it up as you go. Stick to what your demand planning told you to do. Many give up after 1 failure, but probability is a funny thing. We think we can control it, but even when all your ducks are lined up in a row, it may not work. But give it a chance and let it prove itself and you may find over a number of attempts you will get the results you expected.

5) Diversify AND Go deep.

They call out diversify when it comes to investing. Fair enough. Things change and relying on just one source for your income stream is dangerous. And it is. But there are two sides to every coin.

Is Link Building Is Just For SEO

2009-02-19T03:54:00.000-08:00

In this post I’ve taken a step back from practical tips, to discuss something more strategic that’s been on my mind for a little while, regarding the occasionally skewed view of Search Marketers to think only in terms on rankings, and not broader website success - but this doesn’t by any means apply to everyone in the industry.

In many ways, the post is a précis to some research that I’ll publish here in due course.

It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it

The work that Search Engine Marketers do for clients can be fairly well defined, and has a clear value to them. By improving their ranking for certain keywords, we attract more visitors to a site - visitors who have expressed an interested in a subject relevant to the site.

However, there are occasions where building the search engine visibility of a site is not a suitable marketing strategy; if you want people to enter a competition or watch a video that won’t be around for long, then the site may be able to receive more visitors or a higher quality by referrals from other websites. Thus, linking to the site from relevant, well trafficked sites can be very valuable.

For the Internet Marketer (it should already be clear that I believe a a title beyond ‘SEM’ is required) building links for traffic can be rewarding, as well as a fun break from traditional thinking. Analytics logs will show you exactly how many visitors (and conversions) each link resulted in - this means you quickly refine your link building strategy to focus on the techniques that give most worthwhile returns.

Additionally, the close relationship between creating a link and receiving visitors means that the middleman (Google, with her impenetrable algorithm) is out of the equation. This means that you are suddenly free from concerns about:

* links behind logins on forums
* nofollow links
* image links without anchor text
* penalised sites
* links from bad neighbourhoods
* exactly on-target anchor text.

In addition, you can now buy links with impunity. They are just an advert (just make sure you nofollow them, to avoid impacting on the traditional SEO work being done on the site.) Again - given that you can assign an exact value to the visitors from each link, you’ll soon know what’s worth spending resource to create and what’s not.

2 Birds, 1 Stone?

So, the links we build are broadly either for traffic, or for search engine strength. In fact, in the ‘random walk’ model of link graph analysis, all links should do both. A link from a page with visitors will deliver some of those visitors to the linked site.

However, the web has failed to continue to work like this, in both directions. I will often place a link knowing that it will provide significant search engine benefit, but will barely ever refer visitors (e.g.: from a strong, but low traffic directory) and some links, such as ad banners, tweets and Wikipedia references bring traffic (and lots of it) but no search engine benefit.

A savvy Internet Marketer should be building links for referred traffic as well as rankings, because it will ultimately benefit the target website, making it more successful and profitable.

A savvy website owner hiring an IM/SEM should not get hung up on their search rankings or (god forbid) how many links have been built. They should care about - and judge their Internet Marketer on - the amount of high quality traffic that arrives at the site.

Does Commenting On Blogs Really Increase The Traffic

2009-02-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Affiliate marketers are often wondering about alternative ways they increase traffic to their own blogs and websites.

Blogging is very popular and it continues to increase in popularity day after day. One of the reasons blogging has such an explosive growth is because a blog caters to the people who visit it. A blog allows for the blog author to easily interact with their readers and also allows for readers to easily interact with the blog author. The most common way these interactions take place is within the comment section of each blog post.

Commenting on blog posts is an excellent way to increase traffic to your own blog, website, or even affiliate product landing page. The reason is simple. Please click the links in the comments to see who you are. By commenting on blog posts, at a minimum, two things happen. The first that happens is the blog author will click your link and view your page. The next thing that happens is other people who read the blog will do the same.

My advice to you would be to search the Net and find about 10 to 15 of the most popular blogs related to the product or services you are trying to sell and become very active commenting on these blogs, contributing, and becoming a regular within that little blog niche. You should invest time and get to know the other commenters and even visit their blog and comment on theirs too.

Doing this builds trust within the community niche you are socializing in. Also it helps spread your links within a related community, this is great for search engine rankings. All in all the more activity and more you contribute within these little related niche areas, the more effective your comment campaign will be. Ideally, it would be very helpful if you had a blog yourself, rather than just a landing page that promotes an affiliate based product or service.Since most of them say and I too believe that the links on forums has got less value nowadays. The search engines still consider the links from good blogs as backlinks.

What Is Google Saying By Reducing The PR Of Google.co.jp

2009-02-16T03:40:00.000-08:00

IS Google trying to show that they are very sincere by reducing the page rank of Google.co.jp. Didn't Google knew this earlier? Or Why did they give this punishment only after it was said by someone else on their blog?

So many Questions pop-up into everyone's mind. First of all I would like to share that Google doesn't worry about anyone whether they buy a link by Paying per post or by Pay Per Click. Since the Crawl is automated in Google, it checks whether the link is having proper value is it related to the content. When these features are satisfied it considers the link as backlink or else it continues.

Google takes the problem in its hand only when it gets complaints from a third party. It just doesn't bring down the page rank as soon as they get a complaint. They register the complaint and there is a team which analyzes on the complaint. When it is proved they go on for the punishment.

So Google doesn't really worry on they type or the measure through which the link is obtained until they are forced to have a look on it.

Now another question may arise, whenever a site goes low by PageRank is it a punishment?Absolutely No! sometimes it happens naturally when some of the old links which gives the PR juice are no longer there or removed the link or some of the PR backlinks are devalued and so on.

Videos Are Being Concentrated More For SEO Purposes

2009-02-13T01:23:00.000-08:00

While efforts to get Web sites onto the top page of Google's search results have spawned an entire industry, people are only starting to seriously consider the value of video optimization for search.

Google's "Universal Search" feature—which incorporates results from news sites, videos and maps right into the body of a search results page—was introduced in May 2007, but already one-fourth of U.S. Google searches (and more in other parts of the world) return videos in the results, according to a study by Nate Elliott, now with Forrester Research .

Video's Better Odds

Videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages, Elliott found. Under the catchy headline "The Easiest Way to a First-Page Ranking on Google," he blogged about some of the math behind that number. The study looked at 40 of the most popular keywords, and found:

"On the keywords for which Google offers video results, we found an average of 16,000 videos vying to appear on results pages containing an average of 1.5 video results—giving each video about an 11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results. By comparison, there were an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results—giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results."

The simplest reason for this finding is that there are far fewer videos than Web pages. But it's worth considering that U.S. video views have ( surpassed searches—there were 12.7 billion video views in November 2008 and 12.3 billion searches.

For more info:Go here.

Does Social Media Marketing Really Help To Improve The Search Engine Rankings

2009-02-11T00:46:00.000-08:00

Social Media sites like Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious are highly authoritative sites which can dramatically improve search engine rankings if used properly. Any SEO specialist knows link building is essential to improving search engine visibility, but some clients have trouble accepting social media as a link building tactic.
Social media is only place where one can make people to drop in sometime on the information provided. It is the easiest method to get the enormous traffic to the site. One of my article on few social networks has got 200 to 300 traffics per day.
But one must make sure that you just doesn't spam the Social media sites to get the traffic and backlinks. Give the visitor exactly what you want to give them.

Manual submissions vs Automatic submissions

2009-02-10T02:33:00.000-08:00

The aim of directory submission is to create an enhance exposure for a web site, business or a service. Usually the more directories which have been submitted to ends up attracting more visitors due to the enhance exposure to potential visitors. If a person does not want to go through the time consuming process of submitting their web site into directories themselves, they have two options, one is SEO manual directory submission and the other is automatic directory submission. There are many distinct differences between the two, each with advantages and disadvantages; we will talk more about each one in this article. The person must decide which is best suited to them and/or their service.

Automatic Submission:- “Automatic submission” involves downloading a piece of software which will automatically post your web site or service to multiple directories quickly. Alternatively you can pay someone to do this for you; there are many web sites and companies on the internet offering to do this for you at a nominal price.

Advantages:- Automatic directory submission are that it will save the submitter a lot of time compared to manual submission processes and services. Also automatic submission services are much cheaper in comparison to people offering a manual directory submission, especially if you want the added extra of SEO aspects to the submission.

Disadvantages:- Automatic submission services are that they are usually much poorer quality than manual submission; automatically submitted web sites into directories are much less likely to be ranked and indexed. Automatic submission software’s are also very unreliable which can have the end result of many important directories being bypassed. I would especially not pay for an automatic submission software or service.

Manual Submission:- “Manual submission” involves visiting every directory one by one and submitting your web site or services manually over and over again. There are many people and companies who will take the hassle of this process away from you and do it on your behalf for a fee.

Advantages:- Manual submission ensures higher quality and a higher rate of approval. As websites get indexed faster through manual submission, they receive more targeted traffic. With manual submission, you have greater control over deciding the directories for indexing which helps in targeting any potential niche.

Disadvantages:- Manual directory submission has a small drawback which is insignificant compared to the rewarding results. Since it's a labour intensive way of doing submission, it consumes more time. It is slightly expensive compared to the automatic directory submission.

Who am I?? why should I speak on seo??

2008-11-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

Am I crazy to ask this question to someone else who doesn't know about me? Then "who am I??”.

Yes, I am ManiKiruban, I wasn't interested in my studies when I was young. I used to spend time on nothing, neither playing nor on entertainment, now am I right that I am crazy. Later there appeared changes in me. I started concentrating on my studies. I was too interested in engineering profession but I wasn't able to do that, though I got good scores in higher secondary. I was pushed into teacher profession which I really hate a lot, i wasn't willing to eat the head of my students so I decided to leave it.

Later I joined my degree in Bangalore, Yes now I am really in 'MARS', since I don't know the language or any place in Bangalore it was really very tough to get to it. But it was the place where I got the most of my knowledge and enormous opportunities where I could excel myself.

Why should I speak on SEO??

Recently, I was moved into "Search Engine Optimization" process though in the starting I felt it like Roman and Greece, now I am bit ok with it. I thought 'seo' would be something like where I can go on as I wish. Later when I learnt a drop in this big ocean I go too interest in it. Hoping to make a best career with it and give out things what I get on it!!