Monday, October 24, 2005
Splogs + Scraping + AdSense = Fraud
By Jim Hedger, StepForth Placement Inc. (c) 2005
The other day, an article appeared in Search Engine Journal suggesting webmasters monetize their sites using Google AdSense. While the article neglected to mention an alternative webmaster advertising program offered by Yahoo Search Marketing, the idea of using one's website as a commercial medium (if possible or practical) makes good sense and can provide a minor side-income. Such minor side-incomes are often the first ingredients in making the gravy craved by all small business owners.
Since the advent of Google's AdWords grassroots distribution program, AdSense, several webmasters have built businesses out of taking content off of other people's websites and using that content to build pages designed specifically to attract ad-clicks.
As the average commission earned by sites running AdSense generated advertising is approximately $20/month, webmasters working this type of scheme need to create hundreds, if not thousands of pages to make a living.
In order to create those pages and attract ad-clicking visitors, content must be created, begged, borrowed, or most commonly, simply stolen. Known as Splogs, these sites only exist to game Google in one way or another, mostly for money but also for increased search rankings or as a means of manipulating search spiders.
Splogs most often get their content by scraping, the process of sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees, recreating it on an unlimited number of instant documents. By running advertising generated through the AdSense program, the owners of the splogs make money when visitors click on the ads. In other words, literally millions of instant sites have sprung up over the past twelve months, most of which are free-hosted Blogs, containing content scraped out from the original sites.
Before continuing, I would like to make it clear that there are several publications that request permission to reprint content. That's ok. Chances are, this article is being read in one of those publications. Online business runs on such agreements.
Splogs are bad business and the practice is finally getting the notice it deserves. Several search heavyweights have weighed in on Splogs over the past two weeks and a flame-war (the virtual equivalent of fisticuffs) broke out between members of two well-known SEO/SEM forums. As a result, the practice of producing AdSense revenues from stolen content on spammy sites got a little bit harder, starting today.
Matt Cutts, Google's spam fighter and quality assurance czar, has taken an obvious and positive interest in Splogs. In the SEO/SEM community, Cutts' name is as widely known as Page, Brin, and even Gates' names are. Cutts is "the man" when it comes to explaining the state of Google's various indexes and how they work. He is referred to as the Chief Spam Fighter at Google. In a posting to his Gagets, Google, and SEO blog earlier today, Cutts invites Google users to report Splogs displaying AdSense driven advertising.
"You see a low-quality site that is running AdSense If you run across a site that you consider spammy and it has AdSense on it, click on the "Ads by Goooooogle" link and click "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw". Enter the words spamreport and jagger1 in the comments field."
The name, "Jagger1" is the reference name given the Google algorithm update that is currently causing the present shuffling of Google's search results.
Splog fraud is a big problem for Google and a growing concern for the other major search advertising providers such as Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN. It is also a problem for others working on the Internet. The way content is taken from one site and replicated to dozens of others can cause no end to technical and financial issues for honest webmasters.
Content, incidentally, is not always limited to what the viewer sees on the screen. Stolen content often includes source-code and as anyone familiar with code can tell you, there's a lot of domain and document specific information embedded in source-code.
Over at Search Engine Journal, a funny posting shows how one poorly executed scrape made an honest webmaster afraid of being branded a click-fraud artist by Google. After scraping the site, the splog-artist apparently forgot to remove the AdSense code from the stolen content.
That's how the honest webmaster found out he had been stolen from. He was moved to contact Google before his AdSense account status was affected. If the webmaster hadn't been paying attention, he might have been badly branded by Google, burned by someone else's scam.
That's not the only way that scrappers could adversely affect honest webmasters however. The content webmasters create, or have created for them, is the attraction that prompts visitors to their sites. Attracting lots of site visitors is a pretty important step to making money from AdSense or the Yahoo Publishing Network. If someone is stealing that content, they are also stealing potential visitors. For the webmaster, that content represents investment. For the content creator, it represents product. Either way, the scraping of content is theft.
The stolen product is then used to create what is essentially duplicate content on another site. Duplication of content can have an adverse effect on the search engine placement of all documents containing the similar items.
Imagine losing your placements because someone else took the material you laboured over. Fortunately, Google's historic record of documents is fairly good at weeding through which source first displayed specific content.
Search engines have several other reasons to be concerned about splogs. As many of them are created using the free-blog software offered and hosted by most of the major search engines, the proliferation of so many splogs consumes a lot of resources.
They also gum up search results with sites not actually relevant to search engine users. Lastly, they devalue the legitimate uses of blogs as communications and marketing tools, which might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing blogosphere.
Citizen's publishing is seen as a major revenue source for both Google and Yahoo. Having invested so much time, energy and money into the establishment of blogs, the major search engines would be loath to let their investments go the way of the dodos without a fight.
Now that the web development community is talking about the issue in earnest, some forms of protections might evolve. As it stands currently, there is little a webmaster can do to protect his or her content from being stolen for profit. You can use Copyscape (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/update-jagger-contacting-google/) to see if your material has been nabbed but after doing that, there is little one can do except write angry letters to the thief and a lawyer.
Google is inviting users and webmasters to report splogs running AdSense whenever they are seen. In a just universe, not only would the AdSense accounts of those scrappers be closed, their bank accounts would be emptied after Google sues them for fraud.
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at "jimhedger@stepforth.com"
Friday, October 21, 2005
Chasing the Search Engines' Algorithms: Should you or Shouldn't you?
It's a common occurrence. SEOs often spend countless hours trying to "break" a search engine's algorithm.
"If I could just crack Google's algo, my pages would soar to the top of the rankings!"
Let's look at some flaws in this way of thinking.
1. Picture the Google engineers and tech folks turning the algo dial as soon as you "think" you have "cracked" the algo. Your rankings may fall, and you would have to figure out what's working with the engine right now. In other words, your rankings may never be long term.
2. Instead of spending all of this time trying to impress a search engine with a perfect page, why not impress your true target audience . . . your customers. Has Google, MSN, or Yahoo! Search ever bought anything from you? They're not your target audience. Your customers are your target audience. Write your pages and content for them.
3. When you expend so much of your energy chasing algorithms, you often focus on only a few elements that influence ranking those elements that are working right now and that you hope will give your pages the best chance for success. It is said that Google has over 100 ranking elements that influence ranking and relevancy. Some are more important than others. But focusing on just one or two "main" elements and discounting the rest can prove disastrous to a Web site.
A different approach . . .
Wouldn't you rather achieve top rankings and keep them there, and have those rankings equate to sales and money in your back pocket?
After all, isn't it ultimately the sales you're after, as opposed to just the rankings? If those rankings don't equate to traffic that equates to sales, you lose, any way you look at it.
Five Basic Steps for Achieving Top Rankings without Chasing Algorithms
1. Forget about the search engines. Yes, you heard me correctly. The search engines aren't and never will be your "ideal target audience." They don't buy your goods and services. They're not who you should be trying to please with your Web pages and site. Instead, write your Web page content for your target audience.
2. Don't ever forget the basics. No matter what's happening in the algorithms, continue using your main keyword phrase prominently in your title tag, META description and keyword tags, link text, body, heading tags, and so forth. That way, when the algo dial is turned, you won't have to make changes to all of your pages. You'll always be ready.
3. Focus your keyword-containing tags and body text on one keyword phrase only. Each page should be focused on one keyword phrase, and each page should have its own unique tags.
4. Write well-crafted content for your Web pages, and add new content on a regular basis. If content is king, context is queen. Focus on your keyword phrase, synonyms and related words, and surrounding text. Use a program like ThemeMaster if you need help determining those supporting words.
5. Remember that both on-page and off-page factors are important. Don't sacrifice one for the other. On-page factors are your tags, body text, prominence, relevance, etc. Off-page factors are link popularity (quality and number of your inbound links) and link reputation (what those inbound links "say" about your Web page when they link to you).
What about search engine research? Isn't it important?
It's crucial.
Let me give you an example. At the beginning of this year, pages began falling out of Google's index. The forums were alive with speculation and what to do about it.
Through research, we determined this was a compliancy issue. By having compliant code, the search engine spiders are more easily able to spider the content.
The solution? Make sure you use a DOCTYPE tag and an ISO Character Set Statement at the top of every Web page.
For example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.1 Transitional//EN">
<META HTTP-EQUIV=content-type CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO- 8859-1">
If you didn't know about the compliancy issues, you could have made changes to your Web pages that didn't need to be made, wasted countless hours trying this or that, all to come up dry.
Research helps to make sure you remain on top of what's happening in the search engine industry. It's what sets you apart from other SEOs. You make your decisions based on research and facts, versus speculation and theory.
In Conclusion . . .
"Take it from someone who has been in this business for nine years and studies the algorithms closely - don't chase the algorithms. You say that you have a #2 ranking for a certain keyword phrase that alone is bringing your site 550 visitors per day? Great. In the time that you have spent gaining that ranking, I have written 285 pages of unique content, obtained 821 links, etc., and collectively I am getting over 1,300 visitors per day," says Jerry West of WebMarketingNow.
In other words, by focusing on more than just chasing algorithms, you have the potential of having a much more successful Web site.
Robin Nobles conducts live SEO workshops in locations across North America. She also teaches online SEO training. Localized SEO training is now being offered through the Search Engine Academy.
Copyright 2005 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved
Friday, October 14, 2005
Blogs And SEO: Theme Relevance
Blogs provide search engine optimization (SEO) power by their very design. The blog strength lies in keyword rich content and in the abundance of inbound links.
Blogs can even become more SEO oriented by thinking in terms of relevance.
The most recent Google results, whether involving incoming links, Google PageRank levels, or positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs), there is one common denominator. That overarching similarity lies in the value that Google is placing on theme and topic related content. The watchword of the day in the land of Google, as already noted, is relevance.
The Google algorithm, which is the mathematical calculation that determines a site's position in the search results for any given keyword or phrase, has been revised to stress the importance of relevance. That importance not only affects the search results that are found in the SERPs, but in Google's PageRank and link valuation formulas as well.
With the need for more relevant content and linking partners, website owners are looking for a possible solution. The requirements for help include theme and topic relevant content and linking partners who are also theme and topic related. While there are several ways to achieve relevance, one such method is adding a blog component to your website.
Blogs are regularly updated postings of information, usually related to the theme of a website, and includes incoming and outgoing links on the same topics. Once thought to be merely online journals and diaries, blogs have moved far beyond the personal realm and into the world of business and information.
Blogs are becoming an important component in many business owners' toolboxes for marketing, public relations, and search engine optimization. The benefits of blogs for increasing visitor traffic numbers are countless...or at least a very high number.
Businesses in almost every industry can benefit from the blog boost in the search engines. There is little doubt that all websites will receive a healthy injection of relevance, simply by posting regularly to a business blog.
Since the posts will be on topics, related to the overall website theme, and incoming links will arrive from similarly themed blogs, relevance is an obvious and natural result.
In the early days of the internet, it was thought that related sites would link naturally to one another. Little thought was given to placements in the various search engines at first. In fact, the early internet wasn't really SEO oriented at all, and users cared about good content and natural links. Fortunately for everyone, those are still the keys to effective blogs and websites today.
It was generally agreed that good content would attract natural related incoming links, from similarly themed websites. In fact, what was being described was what is currently happening with blogs. People simply link to interesting and informative content. Bloggers are very free and generous linkers, especially to blog posts that are related to their own areas of interest. There's that relevance factor in play again.
Blog posts are generally written on one, but just as often on two, three, or even more related topics. If the topics are not related, they become so by virtue of there being a large number of posts on those formerly unrelated topics.
On occasion, the unrelated topics will even appear in the same post. The important aspect of the blog is the overall development of powerful theme relevance. A blogger who writes on several topics can even make the blog theme relevant in more than one subject area. By adding several posts on alternate topics, expanded theme relevance is possible.
Bloggers are also free and generous linkers, and understand the value of relevant content instinctively. By regularly linking to interesting blog posts, bloggers provide value to their own readers, by offering them the best of other bloggers. These added incoming links provide additional Google PageRank, as well as boosts in the search engine rankings from the link.
The clickable links are often rich, in the receiving blog's most important keywords, and are contextually surrounded by theme related content as well. This combination of strong link anchor text and theme relevant content gives the blog exactly what the search engines are seeking.
The Google algorithm could have easily been written with blogging in mind. The algorithm is even more blog powered with the additional emphasis on theme relevance. After all, bloggers sought and created relevant content from the very beginning, giving them a head start in the relevance arena.
Theme relevance in Google is just one more great reason to start a blog for your online or offline business.
Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
How Blogs And RSS Boost Your Search Engine Visibility
Copyright © 2005 Priya Shah
Marketers have found that blogs are excellent tools for communicating with their audience. Anyone who has something to sell or an idea to promote can benefit from using blogs.
Search engine marketers especially favour blogs because they have a number of features that make them the darling of search engines.
1. Fresh, Updated, Relevant Content
When you write a good blog about a theme that you’re passionate about and post to it frequently, you’re creating fresh, keyword-rich, content that search engines love.
2. Natural, One-Way Links
Search engines view links to your site as a recommendation of your site content. More links pointing to your site or blog boosts your visibility and search engine rankings.
Google gives more weight to natural, one-way incoming links, and blogs make it easy to get two types of one-way links to your site.
� Similarly Themed Blogs
A well-written, authoritative blog, with unique content, is likely to get linked to from a number of other bloggers writing on similar topics. These are natural links that are viewed highly and given more weight by search engines like Google.
� RSS Feed Syndication
Blogs and the RSS feeds built into them, help you build valuable, one-way links to your site by syndicating your content online.
3. Get Indexed Within Hours
When you post to a blog it “pings” a number of services that list blogs. This notifies the service that your blog has been updated.
Search engines like Google give more weight to blogs that are updated regularly. It is possible to get your pages indexed in Google and other search engines within hours of writing your first blog post.
Compared to the time it takes to index a website (days, even weeks), you can see why blogs are better search engine optimisation tools than static websites.
Indirect SEO Benefits of Blogs
Besides the SEO benefits, a well-written, authoritative blog can also create publicity and branding for you, which promotes even more people to read and link to your blog.
Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine optimization firm, SEO & More. Request the detailed version of this whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.
This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Black Hat Search Engine Optimization the White Hat Way
Black Hat
A fairly common black hat search engine optimization tactic is to build multiple websites on a general theme. The sites are then cross-linked to other sites in the same network, and would also include one-way links to the primary site with varying anchor text.
The whole aim is to give one or more sites a huge boost in search engine results pages (SERPs), and for it to also benefit from additional traffic flowing from the various network sites.
People undertaking such methods generally create the websites with automated tools, use scraped content from other peoples websites, and most of the sites have no purpose other than to drive traffic to the primary site.
White Hat
First it is important to understand a little about linking structure. I am not going to go into excessive details.
It is widely understood that internal linking on any website can represent as much as 50% of the page rank attributed to any single page within a site. How your pages are linked together, for which terms, and whether links are reciprocated all play an import role in the calculation.
If I told you that there are hundreds of websites on the internet, with very high page rank on multiple terms themselves, who would be willing to create a niche portal within their pages, highly optimized for your website, niche and keywords, it is something you would probably be willing to pay for.
We are not talking about a simple directory site. We are talking about high quality content pages, that will pass on pagerank to your site, plus a central hub, similar to a home page, that benfits from all the content pages linking to it, and that in turn also points directly to your website.
Of course:-
- You will have complete control over the content of each of these sites
- You will be provided with an interface for managing the site's contents
- You will be able to add content whenever you like, on almost any subject
- They will even act as brokers to encourage other people to create hubs which will also point directly to your website
- Most of these sites have powerful linking structures, that magnify the value of your content, and the links both to your website, and to the central hub.
This is all "white hat". You will never be penalised for using this tactic by the search engines, and it is permanent! Your traffic hubs will be a permanent fixture. Some of these hubs will disappear, but many more will appear to replace them.
Is this something you would pay for? You can get this highly powerful promotion of your website for free!
Simply write and submit articles to article directories.
Every day I see questions on multiple marketing forums along the lines of:-
"Does article marketing really work?"
"I submitted an article 2 weeks ago and my search engine results have stayed the same, why?"
"When I submit an article, how long until I will see traffic to my website?"
Describing exactly how this all works in words is very difficult, but lets look at a very simple math formula.
1x1x1x1x1=1
It is not very impressive is it?
You have to remember however that an individual article you publish gains incoming links in a number of ways.
- Snippets from your article will appear on the pages of other articles in the same niche
- You will have a link in the main topic
- you will most likely have a link for some time in the RSS feed
- if a website uses that RSS feed for content, the article on the directory site would gain at least a temporary link, but quite often a permanent one.
So we may be looking at more like
1.3x1.3x1.3x1.3x1.3=3.71
Some of the numbers however are going to be bigger or smaller, depending on the authority of the page linking to the article, the number of links from that page etc.
You might well have to use addition rather than multiplication when regarding many aspects of a real formula.
What is important however is that not only is each individual article you publish gaining in pagerank, but also your author profile.
Lets take some examples
These are the current top 5 article authors listed at Ezine Articles
Lance Winslow 2029 Articles
Jeff Herring 340 Articles
Tim Gorman 306 Articles
John Mussi 303 Articles
Dennis Siluk 286 Articles
Now do a search for any of those author names in Google.
Every single result has a reference to their Ezine Articles profile within the top 3 positions.
This isn't true in every case. Well known (and popular for good reason) internet marketer Willie Crawford's profile only appears at the bottom of the first page, but he has hundreds of links pointing to his popular websites, and has a baseball player competing for ranking.
Profile pages concentrate and magnify the linking benefit of every article you publish, thus the links from a profile page carry a lot of weight.
Some author bio pages allow a lot of customization. Most allow you to have some text (which can be keyword targeted), along with website links. A few even allow you to set anchor text for every link in your profile.
Thus to answer all the questions I see every day on various marketing forums.
- Yes, article marketing does work.
- the more articles you submit, the more effect you will have from using articles as one form of marketing. A hub with a single page has very little weighting. A hub with 10, 20 or even 100 articles will carry an immense amount of weight, and having lots of hubs pointing to your websites will have a massive effect on search engine results.
- you might see an immediate burst of traffic within a few days of when you submit an article, however article marketing is a short, medium and long-term solution.
Short term it can be a fast route to having a website spidered by search engines.
Medium term, you will gain some exposure within your niche as other sites and ezines publish your content. Many of them don't write about your topic every day.
Long-term is really up to you. The more quality articles you write, the larger your hubs will become. Large article hubs pick up traffic from a larger variety of search engine traffic, but also make your author bio more prominent, thus magnifying the value of external links placed there.
Andy Beard has worked in Sales, Marketing and Localization for the last 15 years, primarily in the computer games industry. He publishes his articles with the services of Article Marketer.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
The Blog and the Nature of Natural Linking
A lot of people are talking, and few of them know, the soul of a search engine was created in the blog. ;-)
There has been a lot of talk about Natural Linking. From Oakland (Ask Jeeves), Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) and Mountain View (Google), California, all of the search engine companies are talking more publicly about "Natural Linking"
WHY IS LINKING IMPORTANT?
The whole concept of linking in the eyes of the search engine companies is that when Site A links to Site B, then Site A is making a personal recommendation of Site B. Because Site A is willing to put their reputations on the line to share the story of Site B, the search engines have determined that Site B MUST be of higher value than Site C.
Google established their PageRank system a few years back based on this conceptual idea. Over the past few years, the other search engine companies have began to adopt the linking model in their attempt to catch up with Google's lead in the marketplace.
Because the search engine companies want to provide the best possible results to their users for a particular search, they have all climbed on the concept of link counting to determine the value of the sites that they are recommending to their users.
WHAT IS NATURAL LINKING?
The idea behind "Natural Linking" is that you can have for example five people linking to the same site giving the site a recommendation via the hyperlinked text.
The hyperlinked text is any text that appears between the <a href=> and the </a> tags. When used in a HTML document, the hyperlinked text in the viewable webpage becomes a live clickable link like this: http://BloggerSupport.Com.
When viewing this link from within the HTML coding, it will look like this:
<a href=http://BloggerSupport.Com>http://BloggerSupport.Com</a>
Each webmaster who decides to link to an individual website has a different idea and reasoning as to why his or her visitors should look at the site they are recommending. As a result, each webmaster will outline their reasoning within their links to your website.
In our example, we have five Site A's pointing to Site B:
Example Site One will put the following on their site:
<a href="http://BloggerSupport.com">Technical Support for Your Blog</a>
Example Site Two will put the following on their site:
<a href="another/'>http://BloggerSupport.com">Another Blogging Site</a>
Example Site Three will put the following on their site:
<a href="blogging/'>http://BloggerSupport.com">Blogging Articles, Tips and Tricks</a>
Example Site Four will put the following on their site:
<a href="technical/'>http://BloggerSupport.com">Technical Services for Bloggers</a>
Example Site Five will put the following on their site:
<a href="support/'>http://BloggerSupport.com">Support Services for Bloggers</a>
Each webmaster in this example has shown their users why they should visit BloggerSupport.com. In doing so, each of them has shown their link using their own descriptive text. It is this "descriptive text" that the search engines view as "natural links".
So, "Natural Links" are links that are created by individual webmasters and not by Site B's owner. In the eyes of the search engine programmers, these links will likely have a more accurate representation of the content that appears on a website. And the search engine masters understand that a stranger is always more honest in his representations than the webmaster trying to promote his own website.
WHAT DOES NATURAL LINKING HAVE TO DO WITH BLOGS?
Over the last few years, you have read many an article from people pitching the importance of the blog in the search engine optimization game. But, do you know why blogs have become so important to the search engine companies?
Natural Linking.
When all is said and done, the text within a link has been given more weight in the search engines than the real content on a webpage.
I heard the guffaws in the audience. I can see the look of utter disbelief on your faces as you site in front of your computer staring incredulously at my comments. ;-)
But, wait. I can actually prove this to you.
Come back when you are done, but do click this link to view the search results for the Worst President
Did you notice the results in search result #1? Did you go to the webpage to see if you could find the word "worst" in the text? I did too. And guess what. I could not see the word "worst" in the text either.
The same search with a slight variation, searching for the Worst President in History puts the same page in search result #4.
THIS IS THE TRUE POWER OF BLOGS
The search engine companies put far more value in the natural link text than they put in the terms that show up within a webpage! The bloggers are the ones who have said that George W. Bush is the worst president in history. And, I will bet that they get a great chuckle every time someone like me points out their accomplishments.
The reason why the blogs are the best new resource of the search engines is because blogs use natural linking far more often than regular website pages.
THE CHALLENGES FACING US NOW
As we move forward to promote our website in the here and now and tomorrow, we must keep in mind the need for natural linking. The challenge for us is how to communicate our sales messages in such a way that links to our websites are perceived by the search engines as natural links.
As we face this challenge, we should consider giving other people more leeway in how they post a link to our websites. If you are using reciprocal links or paid advertising, you should by all means give the person showing your ad several choices for your advertisement.
If you are using reprint articles to promote your online business, you should find a way to offer publishers and webmasters multiple article resource boxes, or you should just give them more free reign in developing another natural link to your website.
Good luck in your linking endeavor.
Copyright © 2005 Bill Platt
The Phantom Writers
Bill Platt owns http://thePhantomWriters.com . He specializes in getting your reprint articles distributed to at least 17,000 publishers and webmasters seeking good content. Pre-Written ghosted articles are now available for purchase. If you need help setting up your blog, please review his blogging services.
Search Engine Wars - Quality Searches Vs Quantity
It is no secret that Google and Yahoo are on a continuous battle to win our hearts and get everyone to convert, but is converting someone really a matter of the quantity or the quality?
Let's take a look at some top key searches and compare them with some search engines online. I will outline a few things for each search result:
1) Search Engine
2) Number of results found
3) Quality & content of the top 10 sites
4) What you find going beyond the first 10 pages
Each section will get ranked out of 10 points for quality (information taken on August 26,2005).
=
Starting with my all-time favorite search term: "INTERNET MARKETING"
=
Google.com
- 99,000,000 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers top quality results
Yahoo.com
- 281,000,000 results
- 7/10 on quality. There's no reason to list a "Hotel Marketing Firm" & "Building websites". The #1 spot was reserved for Yahoo marketing.
- 9/10 Past 10 pages, it is very generic for business, not specific.
MSN.com
- 93,661,176 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers high quality results. I am surprised and give MSN two thumbs up for their attention to detail.
=
Moving onto the search term for "BUSINESS NEWS"
=
Google.com
- 627,000,000 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Beyond 10 pages delivers high quality & local news centers.
Yahoo.com
- 1,260,000,000 results (wow)
- 10/10 on quality
- 9/10 Beyond 10 pages. There are still some sites that should never be there.
MSN.com
- 381,631,054 results
- 8/10 on quality - Some aren't related at all and brand new sites as well.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Their results seem to tighten up and get better.
Let's now take some more "local" search results to see deeper and more targeted results...
=
Moving on to the search term for "WASHINGTON UNIVERSITIES".
I hope to find the "University of Washington" come up #1 or thereabouts.
=
Google.com
- 22,700,000
- 10/10 on quality (www.washington.edu is #1)
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. The results still deliver "university" topics.
Yahoo.com
- 143,000,000 results
- 9/10 on quality - The top spot is reserved for Yahoo on Washington University in St. Louis. There seems to be a strong battle going on here on which university to list.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Content is specific and relevant.
MSN.com
- 34,442,536 results
- 9/10 on quality - Again another battle going on and washington.edu is #10 tilting on the verge of page 2.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. All related to Washington & University living
Let's now get even more specific than that... For this search term I will be using something very local that I can relate to and give a better analysis.
=
Moving on to the search term for "HAMILTON ONTARIO CANADA".
=
Google.com
- 3,700,000 results
- 10/10 on quality - Great job
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages - Anything goes but is directly related to Hamilton.
Yahoo.com
- 14,900,000 results
- 10/10 on quality - Almost the same as Google but a couple of different choices.
- 9/10 on quality - Some results are found by keyword stuffing their pages.
MSN Local *New (http://search.msn.com/local/)
- 1,280,405 results
- 9/10 on quality - Getting some random placements & keyword stuffing
- 10/10+ beyond 10 pages - Many local companies well listed in the results.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Let's now take a look at these results as a total. Out of a possible score of 80 points, here are the total scores for each:
Google - 80 points
MSN - 76 points
Yahoo - 73 points
Total search results delivered:
Google - 752,400,000
Yahoo - 1,698,900,000
MSN - 511,015,171
And people wonder why Google is the king of searching?! But wait, without even noticing the results, as I totaled the final point standings, MSN came up in second place! In my study, I tried to be as neutral as possible.
How is it that Msn & Google have 50% the amount of results shown in Yahoo, but outrank Yahoo in quality?
In conclusion:
Even though Yahoo delivered a report stating that it has over 19 billion search items, what does it matter when you're still trying to figure out how to deliver all that content?
MSN & Google seem to know exactly what to do with their results. They don't seem "off the wall" at all. If Yahoo is to step up and be crowned the search king, I really think that they need to refine the amount of search terms they have, to match the quality of search results as well.
Yahoo has major potential to outreach Google but they still have a lot of work ahead of them and by the time they figure things out, Google may even step up their game even further and wow us all on some other search plateau.
About The Author:
Martin Lemieux is the president of the Smartads Advertising Network. Smartads is dedicated to helping you expose your business online and offline.
International: http://www.smartads.info
Article Submission Website (Beta): http://www.article99.com
Post Comments Here: http://forum.article99.com/viewtopic.php?t=24
Copyright © 2005 Smartads Advertising Network
Torpedo and Sink the Ship SS Search Engine Rankings
I was recently contacted by one of my best clients who asked me what I thought of his decision to make a major change to one of his highly ranked pages. His initial concern was that visitor sales conversion ratio was low. At almost one percent, it was just below normal, but I'm always happy when a client wants to improve. Conversion and rankings though, are very different beasts and his concern was overly focused on the former to the total exclusion of the latter.
As his SEO I should have realized that the top rankings of this already optimized page were in danger when his first sentence referred to the existing "Dusty, tired old page, that just isn't getting enough sales." That page had just been optimized for search engines about 6 months previously, and went from page 10 (invisible) or so of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP's) to the top three on the first pages of all three major search engines virtually overnight after a few tweaks to gain traction from a popular movie reference to his product.
The page had been up for several years before the movie release without gaining substantial web sales of that same product, but our optimization six months ago lead to a leap in sales and consistently improving page visits after that theatrical release. But sales plateaued over time and slowly decreased after the movie which had mentioned his product transitioned to DVD sales. Somehow he hadn't forseen that decrease and wanted to continue the level of sales he had enjoyed while the movie mention was fresh.
To achieve the continued sales though, he wanted to completely replace the page text with new material he'd been given by the manufacturer of the product. As is the case with marketing material provided by many companies, keyword density was non-existent with emphasis was on slick new photos, covered with stylized, graphical text. Text with keywords that couldn't be repeated in any page text since they had already been embedded in the image graphics several times.
What to do? I suggested creating an entirely NEW page with the manufacturer provided information linked within his site menu links on each page and from the sitemap. While maintaining the old page for it's top rankings in the search engines we could simply use internal linking to keep the search engines crawling that (old dusty) fully optimized page. That way we would still rank in the top 5 for that page and it's coveted keywords and provide the new conversion focused page to site visitors from the menu links.
For some reason though, the client insisted on using the existing filename for the new content and moving the old content to a NEW filename! Why? Because he wouldn't have to have his programmer change a script which loaded a rotating banner to a select few highly trafficked pages. The programmer costs too much to change a few lines of code for a profitable product page?
This tactic meant that we would completely lose the existing rank on the next visit of the search engine crawlers after the new page was posted. I was convinced that we could gain the rank back, but only over time and with substantial extra work. The cost to the client to get a new page into the top five on SERP's was going to exceed the cost of programming updates of banner rotation scripts. But he insisted we use the new manufacturer provided (image only) content on the old filename. OK, I relent.
The web designer wanted to use the new manufacturer provided page in an iframe and embed the old page text in noframes tags - making it visible to search engines, but not visitors. Silly idea and borderline spam technique that may drop our top five rankings off the charts. I dug my heals in and refused that idea.
The client suggested simply keeping previous metatags and title tag to maintain ranking. Sorry, that simply won't work. If it did, we'd return to the bad old days of simplistic keyword stuffing in those (no longer) magical metatags. I started to wonder ... "Am I here as an SEO only to stop designers from using SE spamming techniques, programmers from having to write new code and clients from doing absurd keyword stuffing in metatags?"
No you actually have to use carefully crafted keyword rich text on the visible page - and NOT embedded in graphics files as text painted across photos with photoshop and illustrator software. Search engines can't read text on images and that image "Alt" text in the HTML is no longer useful in SEO since it has been so badly abused by simplistic optimizers for ranking gains before the search engines began to ignore it in their ranking algorithm.
The new page may initially see sales increases due to the pretty new photos (there is zero text on that new page) but after a long series of email exchanges with this client and a final phone discussion over ranking issues, he proceeded with this change anyway. I normally don't hope for poor rankings on client pages, but since this one runs counter to every fiber of my SEO being, I'm actually looking forward to that torpedo striking and the ranking to sink off the charts and the client to pay attention to his SEO's advice.
The old page is still showing up in cached pages at the search engines, so they haven't yet crawled the new version. I will dutifully point out the sinking of the venerable "SS Search Engine Ranking" ship next week when Googlebot revisits this client site and finds all that text has disappeared from his previously #1 ranked page and suggest to him that he review his WebTrends traffic reports to see that it has settled to the bottom of the ocean.
I guess I better get busy finding a way to rank the previous (old optimized) page on the brand new shiny filename. Won't he be surprised to learn that most of his sales come from that (newly named) "old dusty page" within a few weeks?
Copyright September 3, 2005 Mike Banks Valentine
Have you done anything to torpedo and sink your ship "SS Search Engine Rankings" lately? Call me at 562-572-9702 if you need a salvage operation to raise that venerable ship from the bottom of the vast search engine rankings ocean. http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm Mike Banks Valentine operates the article distribution site http://Publish101.com and a Small Business Ecommerce Tutorial for Web Entreprenuers at http://WebSite101.com
Monday, August 29, 2005
Do Not Ever Link To A Site Without Doing This First!
Links are a crucial part of attaining high search rankings, but you must be very careful about to whom you link. I'm going to help you develop a simple link strategy for your website that will help you decide which sites to link to so you're making your way up the search engine rankings and not accidentally hurling yourself backwards.
So the natural questions are:
Should I link to everyone I can find?
Should I allow everyone to link to me?
Should I get one of those "link to 2,000 site for $10" things?
The answer to all of the above is NO!
Develop A Link Strategy
We're going to do an easy-to-digest version of what a search engine optimizer would do if you were to hire one. There are many reasons for having your site professionally optimized which would take up articles in themselves. This is one of the attack strategies for determining optimum, quality links for your site.
Step 1 Where are your competitors linked?
Don't arbitrarily find random sites that you like and link to them. A little bit of research goes a long way. Start with your competitors. Type the keywords for your site into a search engine. You have them, right? This is the list of key word phrases that you want to score the number one position when someone types them in a search. Who appears in the top 10 positions? They're your direct competition that is doing something right or they wouldn't be coming up first. So let's look underneath and see how they got it to work and save you a year of work!
Go back to your search engine and type "link:http://www.competitorsite.com". Up will pop a long list of sites that have a direct link to your competitor. Do this for your top 10 competitors. Do you see any trends in those results? Do you see any similar sites, or perhaps directory listings? Take some notes. A spreadsheet or a few sheets of loose-leaf paper is helpful and analyze what you've uncovered. You should have a good solid list of links that are helping your competitors rank high!
Step 2 Search for similar themed sites.
Look at your keyword list again. Do these words appear more so on any of the pages you have listed so far? Narrow down your list to sites that have at least the same theme or related content to yours. Even your competition will have quite a few odd links.
If there are 300 links to a site that sells pumpkins, it's natural to have a car dealer or an airline in there too. Chances are they were so pleased with their pumpkin purchase that they added the site to their own web page. You can disregard these right away.
Take your list and look at the potential link site for similarities to your topic. If in the pumpkin market your competition links to a site that tells all about how to cook pumpkin seeds, see if you can find other sites that tell how to make pumpkin pie, make jack-o-lanterns AND cook pumpkin seeds. Make a list of these sites as potentially better ones.
Step 3 Look at the Google Page Rank
You can find a page's page rank by looking at your Google tool bar if you have it installed or by going to a site like http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php. The actual importance of Google Page Rank to Google searches in particular seems to depend on whom you talk with. It shouldn't be the make or break, but it can help to choose between several similar sites if your unsure of which one to go with.
Page Rank is more of a relative scale of the number and quality of links to a site. The higher the rank, the higher the number. The lower, the worse. It's not unheard of for a link from a site with a Page Rank of 6 or 7 to boost up a low score by a couple numbers. This seems to, at least in Google's case, get a site indexed much faster. And the faster you're indexed, the faster you can start climbing.
Step 4 How many sites link to your selections so far and how good are they?
The more links a site has pointing to it, the more important it appears to be to the search engines. Say your looking at company ABC to put a link on their site to you. Let's first see how many sites link to company ABC. (Just as you looked at your competition). We know search engines place more weight on sites linked to you that have similar content. Now the big search databases seem to know what kind of content is on those linking pages.
Using the pumpkin model, if your potential target is teaming with 100 inbound links from gambling, girls, horses, moons, leprechauns and horoscopes then throw it in the trash pile fast, even if it has a Page Rank of 8 (very rare).
Find that site that has 10 links good, quality links to it. From a pumpkin farmer, a vegetable recipe blog, Halloween and Thanksgiving festivities, how the first settlers used the pumpkin to build houses, etc and has a Page Rank of 5. This is the better choice. Quality, related themes and content to your site and keywords outweighs quantity of random, useless links.
Step 5 Your final list
Don't think you can do this in an hour, or a day! It's quite a bit of work just to find good, potential targets. Here's a bonus… when you have your finished your first wave a link possibilities, here's great way to give it a solid foundation.
Find some relevant directories to list with. Directories of a given theme will have many, many similar links pointing to it. Directories are usually considered to have Authority. (It's not uncommon to have to pay a fee for the good ones anyway.) Try to find a directory of pumpkin farms and pumpkin recipes to build your other links upon.
Another bonus. Avoid this mistake at all costs! Do NOT link to Link Farms or Free for all sites or any sites that will give you 1000 links for $10. These are not directories, but collections of completely unrelated links that exist solely to try to boost search engines rankings. Search engines ban many of these sites. The consequences of being listed with a banned site could ban you, and then you're doomed. The only way to succeed is to build your links honestly and strategically with a plan and method.
Note: Search engines give more weight to one-way links rather than reciprocal links. i.e. links that link to your site without asking for one in return. The easiest way to get these is to buy them. This plan will work on all the different kinds of links you can get.
So now you have some potential sites to link to. In the next article learn how to phrase your link for maximum effectiveness. The sites to link with is only the first half… the quality of the words you use that make up the link's content called anchor text are just as crucial! Hint: using the same link in every web site is a very bad idea. See you soon!
About the Author: John Krycek is the owner and creative director of http://www.themouseworks.ca. Read additional articles on identity, web and graphic design and logo creation in easy, non-technical, up front English!
How to Submit Your Site to Directories
Unlike submitting to search engines, submitting your site to directories and niche portals usually involves a lot more than simply typing in your URL. You often have to start by researching the various topic categories to find the most appropriate area to submit to. Then you generally have to provide some detailed information about your site, its’ content, your company and your contact details.
When selecting the most appropriate Directory category to submit your site to, conduct a search for your main keyword phrase and view the various related categories. Study the sites listed within these categories and choose the category that is the most relevant to or closely related to your site content. Some directories like ODP have specific Category Descriptions you should read before submitting, to ensure you have chosen the most relevant topic for your site.
Another way to choose your category is to search for sites belonging to your direct competitors. It is likely that the category they are listed in will be the most relevant to your site.
If your site targets or discusses a specific regional market, you will need to submit to a regional category. For example, if my site was about rental cars for hire in Sydney, Australia, I would need to submit it to the regional Yahoo category and not the general Yahoo rental car category
I find it useful to submit a slightly different description of my client’s sites for each directory submission. That way, I can gauge which descriptions are more effective in terms of encouraging people to click and also which directories are providing my clients with the most traffic. Many directories feed their database results to other engines and directories, so if I have a description unique to each directory and I see that description pop up on other search sites, I know it is the result of that original directory submission and immediately recognize the value of that original submission.
Remember that directory editors don’t care about your site’s ranking in their search results. If they are reviewing a site submission that contains an obviously keyword stuffed title and description, they are unlikely to find it appealing or beneficial for inclusion in their database! Always make sure your submission details are relevant, interesting and accurate. Try to highlight your site’s benefits for the visitor and unique content that makes it stand out from others in the same category. If your site sounds just like a cookie-cutter version of others of the same topic, there is no incentive for the editor to include it.
Submitting to the Yahoo! Directory
There are a couple of sites where you want to take extreme care and do advance research when submitting your site. One of these is the Yahoo! Directory. The way you submit your site to Yahoo! can make or break your site’s ultimate ranking in the Directory and if you’re not careful, could also cost you USD 299 for nothing.
With Yahoo!’s huge market share and popularity worldwide, I believe it’s vital that your site is listed in Yahoo!’s Directory. The best way to get listed quickly is by paying the fee for Express Submission. Yahoo! Express is an expedited fee-based site suggestion service for web sites submitted to the Yahoo! directory. A member of Yahoo!'s editorial staff will look at your site, consider your suggestion and respond to you within 7 business days.
Important: Payment does not guarantee inclusion in the directory, site placement, or site commentary. It only guarantees that Yahoo! will respond to your suggestion within seven business days, by either adding or denying the site.
The secret to obtaining excellent results via your Yahoo! submission is to choose the most appropriate category and include a carefully-crafted description that contains your main keyword phrase/s without being too verbose. For those of you offering a Yahoo! submission service to clients, be sure to charge a generous admin fee for your expertise in researching the category and writing the description for your client – a successful Yahoo submission can pay dividends for your client for years.
Example of a successful site description for Yahoo!:
ABC VIP Adventures - offers tailored adventure travel and vacation packages to New Zealand including day tours, exotic corporate trips, luxury travel packages, kite surfing, and extreme sports.
Example of an unsuccessful site description for Yahoo!:
ABC Travel – we are the best! We are the only company to contact for your vacation. Call now!
The latter does not use the actual company name, plus it contains lots of hype but no keywords and few clues as to what the site is about. In this case, the Yahoo! editor would have to visit the site submitted and come up with their own description and it’s doubtful the edited description will be something the submitter would be happy with.
Submitting to Open Directory
Another Directory where submission is critical is the Open Directory. DMOZ is run entirely by volunteers and your site submission must be hand-reviewed by one of these volunteers before it can be considered for inclusion. DMOZ is extremely under-staffed (I know this because I’m a DMOZ editor!) and it can take 6 or more months before your submission is reviewed – you must be patient. When submitting to DMOZ, make sure you follow the directory submission guidelines above and prepare to wait, wait and wait some more.
Procedure to follow for a successful DMOZ Submission:
1) Submit site 2) wait for 3 months 3) follow up email to category editor 4) wait for 3 months 5) escalation email to category editor above your category 6) wait for 3 months 7) ask for assistance in the Open Directory Public Forum (http://resource-zone.com/) 8) wait for 1 month 9) escalation email to DMOZ senior staff & post to various forums seeking help
Rules of Submission
1) Do it once: Despite the hype, there is NEVER a need to resubmit to a search engine or directory unless your site is dropped entirely (which is a very rare occurrence).
2) Do it properly: Be very thorough when submitting, especially to directories. Take the time to research and locate the most appropriate category for your site.
3) Be brief: Don’t waffle on about your site in the description field. Get to the point and describe your site in a short sentence or two.
4) Be accurate: Don’t try to trick potential visitors by using vague or misleading descriptions about your products or services.
5) Be relevant: There is a fine line to tread between relevance and keyword optimization when creating your site descriptions for submissions. Try not to cross it by using descriptions over-stuffed with keywords.
6) Be humble: “Best Web Site in the World!!!!” is not going to convince anyone and may earn you the wrath of search engine editors.
7) Be patient: Search engines and directories can take up to 6 months to index and list your site. Re-submitting won’t help things and could result in your site being shoved to the bottom of the review pile.
So that wraps up the directory submission process. It can be time consuming, but taking a little bit of time and care with your submissions can pay dividends for your site for years to come.
About the Author:
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business Web Rank, Kalena manages Search Engine College, an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing
How To Build Link Popularity With Your Own Affiliate Scheme
If you have your own product then one of the most effective ways of generating sales is to encourage other people to promote your product for a share of the profit. For the right level of reward, lots of affiliates will work hard to promote your product to their subscribers and from their own web sites.
As well as being a great way of making sales, one of the other key benefits that this strategy offers you is in building incoming links to your web site.
Just as a matter of interest check the link popularity of Clickbank.com and you will see that there are literally thousands and thousands of incoming links from other web sites.
That's why its important that you set up your own affiliate management system to ensure that your affiliates use links that point directly to your web site rather than through a third party affiliate site such as Clickbank.com. Why give your link popularity away?
Not only does having your own affiliate management system help you to build your link popularity, it also means that you are able to build a list of affiliates. As I'm sure you know, anyone can register with Clickbank as an affiliate and they can promote your product completely without your knowledge.
It's much better for you to have complete control over who promotes your products, how they promote them and where they link to.
There are several products that will allow you to manage and control your own affiliate scheme, when making the choice ensure that you check out that the features include linking to your domain.
Copyright John Taylor PhD August 2005 - All rights reserved.
About The Author: To learn more information about Affiliate Management scripts I strongly recommend that you visit http://www.Link-Advantage.com
Anatomy Of A Reciprocal Linking Campaign
Reciprocal linking means forming partnerships with other sites who place a link from their Web pages to yours. You then give them a similar link in return.
When you look for people to swap links with, make sure that you don't reduce the quality or content of your own site. You don't want users to click straight through without reading your content; you want them to take action on your own site rather than have them leave empty handed.
One way to stop them from running away too quickly is to create a "Webmasters Resource Page" and link to that page from your homepage. This doesn't take away from the content on your homepage and the links are just one click away rather than being buried deep within the site, giving value to your partners.
In any case, you want to be sure that your site is more than just a page full of links. If your site contains more links than content, it will look like a link farm and it will certainly not be attractive to webmasters, search engines or users.
Picking your partner
Your link partners should be sites your target market will visit. Think about your product and its subject area and brainstorm to determine where people interested in your product might be looking online.
For example, if you're trying to shift your book about blackjack strategy, it makes sense that the people visiting online casinos would make great customers. Online casinos then could be good partners.
Identify top-ranked, high quality casino sites and find the email address, telephone number and snail mail address of their webmasters. You can also identify your competitors and see where they trade links. After all why reinvent the wheel when you can use your competitors hard work!
Seven Top Tips For Requesting reciprocal Links...
1. Before you contact webmasters, place a link to their site on your resource page to assure them that you will actually provide a quality link.
2. Create a subject line that will encourage them to read your message rather than deleting it - you don't want them to think you're spamming them. (Something about their site or product is sure to capture their attention; they will open it, thinking you're a potential customer.) Hint - subscribe to their ezine and then reply using the ezine subject line as the subject of your reply.
3. Begin your message by talking about your visit to their site and what you found interesting about it. Detail your product or service in one line and ask them to exchange links with you.
4. Tell them in detail where you have placed their link, include the precise URL, tell them where to find their link on the page and emphasize that it is only one click away from your homepage.
5. Tell them that if you don't hear back from them in a specific number of days, you will consider that to a negative response and that you will remove their link from your site. Give them enough time to respond but don't leave it open ended.
6. Sending a reciprocal link request by email is becoming less and less effective due to Spam filters and the high volume of email traffic received by webmasters of busy sites. Try sending your request on a postcard or better still make a phone call.
7. Tell the webmaster how they will benefit from the reciprocal linking arrangement - explain what's in it for them and use your selling and persuasion skills!
Copyright John Taylor PhD August 2005 - All rights reserved.
About The Author: To learn more information about Reciprocal linking I strongly recommend that you visit http://www.Link-Advantage.com
Friday, August 26, 2005
Banned By Google And Back Again
The date: 29th July 2005. The time: early morning.
I got out of bed and fired up my PC. Opened my browser to check my site. Had a look at the third-party Google toolbar plugin on said browser (FireFox). It showed grey. Ice formed in my stomach. I opened my bugged version of Internet Explorer: my PageRank was 0.
By now I was frantic. I went to http://www.google.com and typed in 'site:www.tigertom.com': no pages listed. I did this for two other satellite sites of mine: ditto. What had happened? TigerTom.Com had been banned by Google.
I went to the WebmasterWorld forum, and found out the awful truth. Google was doing one of its periodic updates of its algorithm, and had filtered out my sites completely. Further research there, and a bit of soul-searching, revealed why. I had too many pseudo-directory pages with auto-generated external links.
Snippets from search engine results were used as descriptions of said links. Said links were run though a redirect script. These are hallmarks of pseudo-directories and 'AdSense scraper'* sites. Google is reportedly trying to filter these from its 'SERPs'**.
I say reportedly, because Google doesn't announce these purges. They are inferred. To compound my sins, these pages were also effectively doorway pages?. The theory was that legitimate sites had been hit as 'collateral damage'.
I say theory, in that Google rarely comments on individual cases. It won't tell you exactly why your site was banned. I guess this is for reasons of time, and to give no clues to spammers.
In my case the ban was justified for my two satellite sites; while not looking like spam, they were effectively doorway sites. My main site was different. It had offending pages, but was mostly a diverse labour of seven years; a personal site on steroids.
Google bans sites algorithmically: a site that fits their 'spammer' profile gets dropped via software from their index automatically. Real spammers shrug their shoulders and move on; honest webmasters write emails begging for mercy. Like me.
I did some searching via Google, to find out how to do a re-inclusion request. Here's how:
1. First, you check your site is truly gone, by going to http://www.google.com, typing 'site:www.yourdomain.com' without the apostrophes. If it returns no pages at all ...
2. You check Google's webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. These are not really guidelines; you should treat them as iron-clad rules.
3. You stop the offending content from being web-accessible, permanently. If you're familiar with Apache web-server mod_rewrite you can:
- Send a 410 'Gone' response to requests for the offending pages, or
- CHMOD them to 600, which will return a 403 'Forbidden' response, or
- Move them to a different directory if you need to keep them, or
- Just delete them.
Don't try to be clever. Just get rid of them.
4. You go to http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py, tick the relevant boxes, and type 'Re-inclusion request' in the subject box of the form.
4a. You add the complete URL of your site i.e. http://www.naughtydomain.com,
4b. You state that you have read the webmaster guidelines above,
4c. You admit what you did wrong; simply, succinctly, with no carping or special pleading.
Don't try to be clever. Don't argue. Don't lie. Don't waffle.
Google has cached copies of your site. When an engineer checks your site, he'll look for the offending content, and compare it against their cache. He'll spend about two minutes on it; don't give him a reason to continue to exclude you.
5. You ask for re-inclusion.
6. You wait. In my case, it took about a week; a long, unpleasant, fretful week. I sent follow up emails saying what I was doing, and a fax, and I was going to write letters if that didn't work. That was probably excessive.
Once you have a ticket number, that's all that should be necessary. They emailed a standard reply saying "the problem had been passed to their engineers". That's good. I understand they send no reply to spammers.
A week later my site was back in. Lesson learnt. To make sure I'm not so vulnerable again, I'm splitting my content to different sites, on the principle of 'best not to have all your eggs in one basket'.
Have I learnt anything from this? Yes. Have more than one site as your 'money-maker'. Spend less time on search engine optimisation and more on traditional marketing.
Come up with a unique selling proposition that compels people to link to your site. Easy(!)
About The Author: T. O' Donnell (http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk/) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on getting a loan in the UK. His blog can be read at http://www.ttblog.co.uk/
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Rock Your Rank With a Dynamite Text Link at Yahoo Directory
Yahoo Directory Explodes Rankings
Last week a client called me excitedly exclaiming that their Google PageRank had jumped a notch and their targeted keyword term now ranked #23 (up from #45) for their competitive search phrase. I asked the client if he'd been notified by Yahoo that his site was now included in the index after we had submitted it three weeks ago. "Yes," he said, "but why are you changing the subject?"
"I'm not changing the subject. Inclusion in Yahoo Directory is the most likely reason for the jump in both your search position and your PageRank. Remember when you doubted the value of inclusion in the Yahoo Directory and I pushed for submission anyway? Now you know why I insisted."
That seemingly expensive Yahoo Directory listing has one little known benefit to your website. It is the most important and valuable text link you could ever purchase. That one link from one source will do your ranking more good than any other single link (except possibly the Open Directory).
Many webmasters look at potential traffic referred from the Yahoo Directory as the determining factor for submissions, when that is not the best reason for inclusion - It's the link value that matters above all else in this case.
I've had several SEO clients see a leap in ranking for targeted search terms a week or so after that Yahoo Directory link goes live for them. Many clients have argued with me about the value of that Yahoo Directory text link. But at $299, the yearly fee is cheaper than many of those commercial text link ads sites and does far more for your ranking in search engines OTHER than Yahoo.
Why? It's purely the value of that link. Search engines know that only sites of a certain quality level will submit and get accepted into Yahoo Directory. They know that serious businesses will pay that yearly fee, while marginal or hobby sites will not pay that $299 every year. Surely there is some level of value assigned in search algorithms to inclusion in the Yahoo Directory.
It's a little known technique for gains in ranking which is based purely on empirical observation over time. But the result of inclusion in the Yahoo Directory is the same for every client, every time - their PageRank ratchets up and targeted search terms suddenly take a big jump just a week or two after inclusion. The same is true of inclusion in the free Open Directory Project at http://DMOZ.org .
I've seen client sites jump from positions on page three at MSN search to top 5 positions on page one of the MSN SERP's following inclusion in the Yahoo Directory. Now we are submitting this same client to the Open Directory for the 5th time in as many months hoping for elusive editors to add the site, leading to another jump in search position and PageRank if and when they get around to adding the site to the DMOZ database.
You do know that Google uses that Open Directory listing in their own directory, don't you? It's worth submitting and resubmitting until they finally include your site. It really is worth the trouble to keep trying, no matter how long they ignore your submissions.
One caveat always applies to Directory submissions! They must be done with great care applied to keyword phrases used in the site description. That single line of text you submit in the "Site Description" text box on the submission page will strongly affect your keyword phrase ranking in OTHER search engines for a very long time.
Take care in crafting a keyword rich and effective description for your site. I always request that clients either have me submit for them or use text I've written for them in that description. If you do it badly, it will be re-written by an editor who cares more for categorization than keyword rankings. Be Careful!
Before you run off begging for reciprocal links from slick webmasters or purchasing text links of dubious value from text link outfits, submit to Yahoo Directory and pay the $299 (or $24.92 monthly) for the most undervalued text link available. Then swallow your pride and re-submit to the Open Directory until they finally include your site.
Rock your rank with dynamite text links! Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project.
Copyright © August 23, 2005 by Mike Banks Valentine
Mike Banks Valentine operates http://Publish101.com Free Web Content Distribution for Article Marketers and Provides content aggregation, press release optimization and custom web content for Search Engine Positioning http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm RSS: http://RealitySEO.com/atom.xml
Thursday, August 04, 2005
How Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence And Proximity Affects Search Engine Rankings
By Michael Wong © 2005
In this article, I explain the difference between keyword density, frequency, prominence and proximity, and how they affect search engine rankings.
Keyword Density
Keyword density refers to the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page.
The preferred keyword density ratio varies from search engine to search engine. In general, I recommend using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%.
You may like to use this real-time keyword analysis tool to help you optimize a web page's keyword density ratio.
Keyword Frequency
Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page.
The theory is that the more times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page, the more relevance a search engine is likely to give the page for a search with those keywords.
In general, I recommend that you ensure that the most important keyword or keyword phrase is the most frequently use keywords in a web page.
But be careful not to abuse the system by repeating the same keyword or keyword phrases over and over again.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page.
The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag.
Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better.
For example:
How Keyword Density Affects Search Engine Rankings
How Keyword Density Affects Rankings In Search Engine
Using the example above, if someone searched for "search engine rankings," a web page containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second.
The reason is because the keywords are placed closer together. This is assuming that everything else is equal, of course.
You may like to read my article, "How To Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are Searching With." In this article I show you how to capture your most targeted visitors with the search engines by discovering what keywords they search with.
About the Author:
Michael Wong is an internationally recognized internet marketing expert, and the author of a leading SEO book, numerous marketing tips, and reviews of marketing tools and ecommerce software. Visit his web site at http://www.Mikes-Marketing-Tools.com
How To Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are Searching With
In this article I show you how to capture your most targeted visitors with the search engines by discovering what keywords they search with.
To get high search engine rankings, you must include the keywords that your potential customers are search with, in your web pages.
To find out what your most targeted keywords are, you need a keyword analysis service, such as Wordtracker.
Wordtracker will help you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service. It does this by providing analysis of actual searches conducted in metacrawler search engines.
You may wonder why it's important that you need to know what keywords your potential customers are searching with. Let me show you why with some examples.
Here are the most popular searches for the different variations of the search term, "keywords," according to Wordtracker:
| Search Term | Searches |
|---|---|
| keywords | 273 |
| Keywords | 103 |
| key words | 68 |
Notice the different variations? The second keyword is capitalized. The third keyword is split into two words.
Here are the most popular searches for the different variations of the search term, "marketing strategies," according to Wordtracker:
| Search Term | Searches |
|---|---|
| marketing strategies | 319 |
| marketing strategy | 280 |
| Marketing Strategy | 172 |
| Marketing Strategies | 22 |
Why Is It Important?
Well, if you wanted to target search engine users, you would want to include all the different variations of the keyword you want to target. This will help to persuade the search engines that your web page is relevant for the different keyword searches.
Another reason is that some search engines, such as Inktomi, still take case sensitivity into consideration when ranking web pages.
Here's a table of Inktomi powered search sites that provide case-sensitive search results.
| Search | Case-Sensitivity |
|---|---|
| ICQ | Full |
| LookSmart | Partial |
| MSN | Partial |
| Overture | Full |
Knowing exactly what your customers are searching for is very powerful.
I have used this strategy over the years to help me obtain thousands of top 30 rankings for my web sites, and those of my clients.
If you need to improve your search engine rankings, I highly recommend that you reconsider your keyword targeting strategies.
Read my review of Wordtracker to find out just exactly how it can help you growth your search engine traffic.
About the Author:
Michael Wong is an internationally recognized internet marketing expert, and the author of a leading SEO book, numerous marketing articles, and reviews of marketing software and ecommerce software.
Pseudo Directories: Do They Really Increase Page Ranking And Keep You Organized
In This Article you will learn about Pseudo Directories, a simple tool that will not only keep you organized but when used properly can actually increase your ranking points because you will have file names that are extremely optimized for the Page Ranking Bots.
Conventional Wisdom states you should use Sub-Directories to organize your web Pages. Unfortunately the Page Indexing Tools Penalize your Page Rankings when you Do this, Many of the Page Ranking Algorithms in use today deem that pages close to your Root are of a Higher Value then pages that are further away from your root. If you have 2 Web Pages with the Exact same content (web1.html and web2.html) http://yourdomain.com/web1.html and http://yourdomain.com/articles/training/web2.html
All things being equal Web1.html will have a higher ranking then Web2.html because Web1.html is in the Root Directory and Web2 is in a Sub Directory.
As a Web Designer or a Home Based Business owner wearing a Web Designer Hat it seems you have 2 Choices, do what seems right and in many ways best and use a Pretty Directory Structure and Loose Ranking points or Throw out the Directory Structure and Gain Ranking Points. Many People Choose the Directory structure either because they don't know about the page Ranking Algorithms or they feel a strong need to be organized and are willing to sacrifice ranking points.
Pseudo Directories are the Best of Both Worlds. They allow you to keep your Directory organized and not loose ranking points. In fact by using meaningful names for your Pseudo Directories you can actually gain Ranking Points.
A quick lesson on File Naming if you have 3 Web Pages with identical content and they are named page1.html,bathroom.html and Home-Repair-Bathroom.html which file do you think will have the Lowest ranking and The Highest Ranking for the phrase "Bathroom repair". Page1.html will be lowest ranked and Home-Repair-Bathroom.html will be the highest rank.
The Pseudo Directory takes advantage of this page naming structure to allow you to organize your Web Pages and still maximize your page ranking.
As an Example you have a Web Page that is Promoting products nd Services to Homeowners and Would be Homeowners. You want to uild some content rich web pages using articles that you find nd Reprint. Using Conventional Methods you would have a irectory Structure that looks like
root/articles/Home-Loan/file.html,
root/articles/Home-Repair/file.html and
root/articles/Home-Selling/file.html etc.
With the Pseudo Directory method you keep all your files in the oot Directory you just name them using the Optimal naming ules. Now you would simply have Pseudo Directories named
Home-Loan
Home-Repair
Home-Selling
So An Article on Roof Repair would be named home-repair-roof.html Similarly and article on Kitchen Repair wuld be named Home-Repair-Kitchens.html and on Bathroom repair wuld be named Home-Repair-Bathrooms.html. An Article on FHA oan Loans would be named Home-Loan-FHA.html and an Article on how to sell your home by owner (FSBO) would be called Home-Selling-FSBO.html
This next step is optional but it does have a few advantages and will help increase your page rank even more. Create a Table of Contents or Site Map for each Pseudo Directory. So continuing with the above example create a Files called
Home-Loan-Contents.html - Links to all Home-Loan Files
Home-Repair-Contents.html - Links to all Home-Repair Files
Home-Selling-Contents.html - Links to all Home-Selling Files
Next (If you have more then 3 or 4 sub topics) Create a Page called Home-Contents.html where you have links to Home-Repair-contents.html and Home-Loan-contents.html and Home-Selling-contents.html ...
Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler
About The Author: Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 and has Built an Online Organization of over 100,000 members. You can see My Web Page Here and be sure and Subscribe to my Newsletter http://www.ewguru.com/hbiz/home.html
Crash Course in Getting a #1 Google Ranking
By Jason DeVelvis (c) 2005
First, here's the rundown of some of the terminology I'm going to use in this article –
Inbound Links – Links coming into your site
Outbound Links – Links leaving your site
Cross Links – Links that you have "traded" with another site (i.e., they've got a link from their site to your and you've got a link from your site to theirs)
PR (Page Ranking) – Google's measure of how "important" your site is
SEO Is Not Dead
Ok, now lets talk about what you really want to hear – how to get those coveted 1-10 ranks for your keywords. Remember this - SEO is not dead. In fact, it is very much alive and important. The first thing to do in order to raise your site rank is target specific keywords. I say specific, because you need to target "keyphrases," meaning more than one word keywords.
Some people use the words interchangeably (me included) so just ignore one-word keywords altogether. You will waste your money if you shoot for these, because chances are, there are other, MUCH larger companies who already have you beat, and will continue to have you beat unless you've got a bottomless wallet.
Check Out Your Competition
Take this example, for instance, if you sell computers, you should not try to optimize your site for the keyword "computer" or "computers." First, think about all of the businesses that do ANYTHING with computers. Yeah, that's a lot. They'll all show up if you search for "computer."
Now try to think of who would show up at the top of that list. I'll make it easy, it's Apple, Dell, Computer World, Computer Associates, IEEE, Computer History Museum, Webopedia, ASUSTeK, WhatIs.com, and HP.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I 99.9% guarantee you that you'll never get into that top 10 list. The HP link has almost 5,000 backlinks (discussed later) and a PR of 7/10. Good luck.
Then What Should I Do?
So what should you try to target? Lets re-visit your computer store. What types do you sell? PCs, ok, what types of PCs? Custom. Ok, that's a little better, "Custom Computers" is still a vague keyword, though. (How many people build custom computers?)
What kind of components do you use? Intel? AMD? SoundBlaster? GeForce? There you go, that's a little better – "Custom GeForce Computers." That returned 476k results instead of our previous 633 million with "Computer." Just a little bit less competition.
I Want More
Want to go further? Forget what types you sell, go for what do your customers want. What do they use your computers for? Gaming? Try "Custom Gaming Computers" - There are 672,000 results here, but the #1 spot has a PR of 5/10 and only 41 backlinks. That shouldn't be too hard to beat, we've just got to know who is linking to them, and beat them at the backlink game.
Oh yeah, before we move on to beating the pulp out of your competition, don't forget to SEO optimize your site for your chosen keywords before spending any time on backlinks. Otherwise, this next section won't mean much.
But I Digress...
Ok, now that your site is thoroughly optimized, how do we find out who their backlinks are? Well, you can do it by hand, or you can purchase a VERY helpful tool called SEO Elite that will analyze all of the backlinks to a site (and more). But, since you don't have SEO Elite yet, we'll do it the long way.
First, go to toolbar.google.com and download the Google toolbar, this will save you some time. Ok, now type in your keywords – "Custom Gaming Computers." The first link should be overdrivepc.com (if it's not, then someone may have already read this column and risen above them!) click to go there. When the page loads, go to your Google Toolbar, click on Options > "More" Tab > Make sure the "Page Info" box is checked.
Then, click on the blue circle with the i in it. (This is the aptly named: "Page Info") It should drop down and allow you to select "Backward Links," choose it. Now you should be looking at a Google search page again, but this one is different, it only shows pages that link to overdrivepc.com. (Wow, that's handy!) At the time of this article, there are 41 pages that link to the site, and you can view them all. Some are other pages in the site, others are third parties.
Get Your Site Some Friends!
Follow each third party link and check out the page. Does it have to do with your business? Would their visitors benefit from coming to your site? (The answer is probably yes) If so, email the webmaster - there should be an email address somewhere on the site. Ask him or her if they would link to your site. Be willing to trade links with them, or to pay for a good link with a high PR.
That reminds me – look just to the left of the Page Info icon on your Google toolbar, and you should see a green bar. That is the Page Rank of the page you're currently on. You want to target pages with higher page ranks than your own, because for each of those sites that link to yours, they effectively "give" you a little bit of their PR. Kinda like in high school when the head of the cheerleading squad flirted with the nerd in the hallway, she "gave" him more popularity.
By the way, if you can manage to get a link from the #1 site itself, do it!
Do this for all of these links you can, then move on to the #2 listing for your keywords. Then #3, and so on. Don't get discouraged if some webmasters don't reply to you, it may take an email or two. If they say no, thank them for their time and move on. I try my best not to burn any bridges – you never know when you'll need to contact that webmaster again, and if he remembers you were polite, that will make you look good.
Whew, Finally Done.
This is a very easy way to move up the Google SERPS, no "expertise" required, just good old-fashioned hard work. It will take some time for Google to re-index those pages and realize that they have a link to you now. And it will take even longer for your PR to go up (from what I hear, it's been around 3-4 months since the last PR change [Today is 7/14/2005]) But be patient, get links upon links, and keep adding great content to your site, and you will jump up in the SERPS by leaps and bounds.
To Your Success, and Your #1 Website!
Jason a long time web developer and the owner of Premier MicroSolutions, LLC. If you're looking for more articles about getting higher Search Engine rankings, go to http://www.Content-Articles.com and check out their great directory of articles.
Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa
By: Martin Lemieux
In a recent study looking at the "descriptions" of website search engine listings, we have noticed that your main SERP listing is being manipulated by Alexa.com.
If you take your top key word search engine placement within Google and look at your website's description, you will notice something similar with other websites, the descriptions match those taken from Alexa.com!!!
Take a peek for yourself.
1 - Search for your top key word in Google (usually the first key phrase within your title tag).
2 - Now copy & paste this description in a note pad or word doc.
3 - Once you have this, go to: www.alexa.com
4 - Type in your "url" in the address bar
5 - Look at the description from Google and the description from Alexa, they should be an exact match.
NOTE: If you do not have a description in Alexa, Google will come up with its own version but in reality, wouldn't you want to be in control of your website's description within the SERP's?
Not having a description in Alexa - Could it directly affect your Google search engine results?
ABSOLUTELY ! ! !
I would suggest looking at your description in Alexa to make sure that it directly targets your top key phrase that you want performing well within Google.
Your Alexa description could very well determine better SERPS within Google! Google feeds results into Alexa which in turn updates information on website ranking. They are partnered up, why wouldn't they use each others results?!
Alexa's Description is the "text book" definition:
I don't blame Google for wanting to use these descriptions. Most descriptions in Alexa are the "text book version" of your company's description and are usually well written, and well thought out. This would give Google an advantage so that they can spend less time on delivering quality descriptions and more time delivering better results within their searches.
I really like this idea because if this were true across the board, Google would be giving the individual website owner more freedom to write a proper description for their SERPS without using it to spam or create false information. Again, it would have to be approved by Alexa's team anyways, they probably wouldn't allow key word stuffing for their site as it is.
About The Author:
Martin Lemieux is the owner of the Smartads Advertising Network who helps to increase your business online and offline.
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Copyright © 2005 Smartads Advertising Network - Reprints accepted as long as the resource box & entire article remains the same.