02 Nov 09 Where Did My Website Go? An Explanation To Search Engine Results
There are many reasons why your website’s position in the search engine results will vary. One day your website could be in the top 10 for a particular key phrase, and the next day you’re not on the first page. Changes to a website’s rankings are constantly occurring because changes on the Internet are constantly occurring. But, we can narrow the cause of the change down to four different sources: your website has changed, your competitor’s websites have changes, Google has made an update in the algorithm it uses to determine search results, or you or a competitor got busted using black hat SEO techniques.
Your Website Changes
In order to stay current, many website are updated on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. The small changes that are made to the page can have an effect on your page’s keyword density, and this could in turn have an effect on your rankings for any particular keyword. Minor website updates should not influence your positioning very much. But, if the changes are drastic, or your website had previously been fine tuned by a search engine optimization specialist, any sort of change will certainly affect your rankings.
Aside from on-page optimization, another factor that affects your website’s ranking is the number of other websites that link to you (backlinks). If a large and reputable website (.org, .edu, and .gov especially) add or remove a link to your website, this could have a significant effect on your ranking – especially if you don’t have very many backlinks to begin with. Another explanation for ranking changes could occur due to server downtime. If a robot tries to crawl your website and your server is down, your website will probably be temporarily dropped from the search results.
Changes to your own website should affect your search engine rankings the least of these four explanations, unless of course you unleash a search engine specialist to re-vamp your website, then you should notice a significant increase within a short period of time.
Changes in Google’s Algorithms
Yes, I am referring to Google to generalize the whole search engine market, but lets face it, not only do most website get most of their traffic from Google, but the term “Googling” has become synonymous with web search. In simpler terms, the algorithm is a mathematical points system which determines your website’s placement in the search engine results. Nobody knows exactly how Google determines search results, but us search engine optimization specialists have identified approximately 600 factors that affect rankings. A change in the algorithm will certainly affect your website’s ranking, but the change probably won’t be too drastic. Google would not make a significant change to the algorithm because it would probably knock the world out of orbit. Well, probably not, but a big change would have significant repercussions for both Internet websites and users. Therefore, Google prefers to merely fine tune this algorithm to ensure against drastic changes.
Your Competitor’s Websites Change
Depending on your industry or geographic reach, your website could be competing against several dozen to several thousand other websites – all fighting for position with certain keywords or phrases. This fact alone makes it far more likely that changes in your competitor’s websites will effect the search engine results than changes to your website alone. Every website owner out there wants to be listed on the first page or make the top 10 results for particular keywords or phrases. The problem is that there is only room for ten websites, and you may be positioning for a popular key phrase. Not all, but some of your competitors are updating their website and adding new pages on a regular basis. These additions add more competition to the search engine race and make it more difficult for you to achieve your top 10 position.
Not only are new and existing competitors making changes to their website, but they also could be pursuing link building campaigns or employing the skills of a search engine optimization specialist. By optimizing a website for certain keywords and phrases, or acquiring new backlinks to the website, a significant improvement in the website’s ranking in the search results can occur. Changes in your competitor’s websites will probably explain most of the fluctuation of your position in the search results.
Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques
Website owners should not have the ability to manipulate the search engines results. The fact that SEO specialists have the ability to do so violates the integrity of the search results. But, the fact of the matter is, we have rough (but not exact) ideas of how Google’s algorithm works. Most SEO specialists use techniques that are referred to as “White Hat”. These techniques are more natural, and while Google doesn’t like the search results to be manipulated, white hat techniques are not frowned upon.
There is another breed of SEO specialists who use “Black Hat” techniques – these are little tricks that at one time were considered acceptable forms of SEO, but are now frowned upon by the search engines, and by employing them, the website is very obviously trying to game the search results. Generally, SEO specialists who guarantee quick results employ black hat techniques to the detriment of your long-term positioning. These techniques can work great at first, but if you get caught your website will be significantly penalized – forever. Black Hat SEO is like breaking the law, and once you have a criminal record it affects you for the rest of your life.
Conclusion
I’ve outlined the major reasons for changes in search engine results, but sometimes the changes really can’t be explained. These changes are referred to as hiccups. After a ranking change, it’s best to sometimes just wait it out – within a week or two your website may return to its original position. So, the best thing to do when you notice a change is not to over-react. As long as your website has been professionally optimized for the proper keywords and phrases, and possesses a large and ever growing list of backlinks, you should stay on top.
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02 Nov 09 The Rise Of Google
First, a look at how it works. Search engines use automated software programs that scrutinize the Web and develop their informational databases. Statistics composed from each web page are then added to the search engine index. After you enter a question into a search engine site, your input is compared to the search engine’s index of all the web pages it has analyzed. The best links are then returned to you as hits, ranked in order with the best results listed first. This is based upon how relevant they are to your query, and which sites rank highest by visits and keyword saturation. Most search engines will look for words and simple phrases. The more common a word is on a page, compared with its rate of recurrence in the general language, the more likely that page will be to appear among the search results, and at what position.
Search engines are also making significant strides in an effort to “comprehend” what is intended by the query words. For instance, a good number of search engines now offer elective spelling adjustment. If you type in a word, and it is possibly misspelled, the engine will actually ask you if you meant to spell it that way and offer alternatives. Some are even able to search not simply for the words or phrases actually entered, but they also search for different forms of the words (home, house, residence, domicile, etc.)
This brings us to Google, the most often/easily used search engine available today. There are many very significant reasons for it’s popularity, and it has definitely earned its place as leader of the pack. It utilizes a simple interface, excellent search options, and incredible visual tools to provide us with everything we need for working, learning, or simply playing games on the Internet.
Google also provides quite a few products that help individuals and businesses, such as AdSense, YouTube, GoogleEarth, and many more desktop and web search utilities.
One important key to why they do so well is because Google assesses the importance of every web page using a variety of techniques, together with its patented “PageRank” algorithm which analyzes those sites that have been “voted” the best sources of information by other pages across the Web. This method actually improves itself, as the Web expands, as each new site is another aspect of information and another vote to be counted. It depends on the millions of people posting and visiting links on websites to help establish which sites offer the most valuable content.
The Google phenomenon originated when two young men, who had nothing in common, except a desire to make finding information on the Internet simpler, started the Google Empire. The idea was born in 1995, and its earliest name was Backrub, because this brand new search engine utilized the back links available for finding web sites. After being turned away by a few of the major players in the industry, the guys decided to make a go of it on their own. With a little help from a friend, “Google” opened its first door, a garage door, in 1998. By 1999, Google.com was providing answers to over 10,000 search questions daily. The company diversified and expanded greatly as the new millennium started. The hiring of quite a few talented staff members, (who had left stable jobs with well-established internet companies like Yahoo) to join the Google team created a need for actual office space and so the Googleplex became the company’s headquarters in 2003. Today, the corporation has offices around the world.
There are a vast number of alternative search engines, and many of them have been around a lot longer. In fact, there are quite a few that are better suited for particular businesses due to the fact that they are geared more toward specific needs that they focus all of their efforts upon. Any type of profession or hobby that you can name, each has a niche on the Internet. Harnessing the resources available through Search Engine Optimization helps to encourage the growth and expansion of businesses that use the web.
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02 Nov 09 Three Divine Secrets To Perfect Backlinks
As you have surely already read many times – getting links to your site is the solely most critical factor to determine your success for ranking well in the search engines. The big G (Google) has changed the way the rank sites from factors on the specific site to external factors giving you site credibility by wanting to link to it.
Ranking high in Google should be your number one priority if you are planning on getting your targeted traffic from the search engines. But as much as you want to rank well in Google so does everyone else and that makes it so much harder to accomplish. But if can possibly achieve it the rewards will follow.
Tips #1: Track your traffic and results.
Before you start your linking campaign you should consider how you are going to track your effort. Working hard on building different types of links and not having a clue what works and what doesn’t is just plain stupid. When you know what works and what doesn’t it is much easier to focus your time and thereby achieve a better result faster.
You will need to find a way to a) see what sites that sends your traffic and what sites that send you buyers (traffic that converts into sales or opt-ins). This information is SO VALUABLE that it must not be ignored.
If you go to Google and search for “free traffic analyzer” you will surely find a couple of site that can provide you with simple tools that will get the job done. On the other hand you might want to consider finding a more professional tool for the job so that you (over time) are able to track some of the more specific things that you will need in order to not only make sure you rank well but that your page will also convert the people actually visiting it.
A tool that I have had good experience using is the tool that Google provides named Google Analytics. It is free and has a lot of features. You are also able to combine it with your Adwords account if you are using PPC to drive traffic to your site.
Tips #2: Be consistent over a period of time.
Things don’t happen over night. Most search engines will take months before giving your site the full credit for the links you have attained. Surely you can see some benefit for links in days or weeks but often it is temporary and your should expect your rankings to jump up an down in the SEs for a few months to come (and this is if we don’t factor in the changes that your competition will surely make on their sites in the same period of time).
So be sure to place links on sites where you can expect them to stay for months (and preferably years).
But that is not all. Even though you have build up a great number of quality links you will need to do a minimum effort in building more and more links to your site over time. This can be done in many ways that won’t take up much of your time but make sure that you don’t ever stop the effort completely. The strength you have build will erode over time so make sure that you keep adding “votes” to your site.
Tips #3: Be aware of outbound links.
Most sites and pages have links pointing to other sites or other internal pages. The fewer links the page which you will have your link placed on the better. The effect the page has on your link (and therefore page) will decrease with the number of outbound links places on the site. You can say that the links share the pagerank of the page.
The best possible link you can get will be from a relevant page with a high PR and great rankings in the search engines and where the link to your site is the only one present. This is not something that you will often experience!!
A way to achieve a situation close to this is when you write great articles and have them posted on high quality websites. Here you will often see some internal links but for the most part the link to your site (in the reference section of the article you wrote) will be the only outbound link.
Writing great content articles and having them exposed on the right sites can do wonders for your ranking. So if you’re not Shakespeare you might want to consider finding a ghost writer to do the job for you. Sure you can end up paying $30-$50 for a good article (800-1000 words) but if it will end up sending you more customers because of the improved ranking it might be a great investment.
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02 Nov 09 The Most Affordable SEO Marketing Is Free
I recently had a self proclaimed SEO expert/consultant email to tell me that the HTML on my website was, in his words, ‘Crap’. That is very constructive, especially coming from somebody who professes to be qualified to charge for his SEO services.
He had apparently checked out my source code and come to that conclusion. I got to thinking: the site couldn’t have been crap or an expert would not have got so worried as to check out what I was doing. I was obviously a threat, and if that is the case, then the title of this article must be very close to the mark.
I responded by offering him my eBook on SEO in return for his expert services if he could inform me exactly where I was going wrong. Needless to say, I am still awaiting a reply. I am wondering how much he charges for teaching SEO when he fails to realise something as fundamental as that search engines are not too bothered about the formatting of the HTML as long it is understood. It is the text that crawlers are more interested in these days.
As I pointed out, my HTML must have been understood since the home page my website at that time (a week ago as I write) was at #3 on Google and #1 on Yahoo for its main keyword against 850 million other results, and also at #4 on Google for another page for the same keyword and also at #2 for another keyword. Quite frankly, if that is what ‘crap’ HTML does for you then bring it on – I will to do worse HTML next time!
That got me to thinking that if people pay guys like that for their advice, then perhaps they might be better doing their own search engine optimization. After all, it is not rocket science. Now, don’t get me wrong here, because there are many SEO experts out there that provide a great service and are also honest. Loads of people do not have the time to optimize their own sites, and these people are good at what they do – better then me. However, I know my websites, and I know what I am looking for from them. I therefore know more about the SEO needed with them that any expert would.
That is why I get such good results. Not with all my websites, I should admit, and certainly not with the minisite that this article is intended to promote. Like any article, this is intended to promote a website that offers a product that teaches what I know about SEO by means of screenshots of my websites and the HTML used to get #1 positions against very stiff and professional opposition such as Wikipedia, Harvard University and ‘About’. However, that’s another story and not for this article.
This article is about the cheapest or most affordable SEO. In my opinion that is DIY! That’s right, Do It Yourself! If you have the time. If not, then most of these other people advertising online can probably do a good job for you (apart from my email friend). The most affordable SEO is free – if you know what to do. Quite frankly, there is little to do these days. Google no longer pay attention to Meta tags, and Google are the biggest in my opinion.
Google spiders crawl the text in your HTML, look for H1 tags and Title tags and check out your keywords to make sure there are not too many. Apart from that there’s not all that much to it, apart perhaps for alt image tags. Even keywords are not all that important – Google spiders are very literary these days. They have been to Spider College learning English, and can now tell what you are writing about without you having to tell them.
Your keywords are now largely irrelevant. The spiders know – they ain’t stupid any more. They don’t need you to write these keywords over and over again to tell them – in fact, if you do then they get very annoyed at you treating them as though they were ignorant, and will in fact punish you for it.
Get used to it you SEO guys: search engine optimization is still relevant, but not as important as it once was. These educated BA spiders know what you are talking about (or writing about) and the most affordable SEO marketing is free, assuming you can write and don’t try to teach these crawling guys with the long legs what they already know. And don’t try to fool me that your HTML has to be perfect – I know different.
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02 Nov 09 The Huge Impact On Pay Per Click Cost With Good Seo!
One of the most popular and successful marketing methods available on the Internet today is Pay Per Click Advertising. Pay Per Click Advertising or Pay Per Click search engine marketing as it’s sometimes called, is one of the best ways for anyone to get immediate results (visitors to their web site, sales, whatever).
The catch is that since it’s so effective and popular, the costs have increased dramatically. What was once a very economical method to advertise your product and service had become more competitive and expensive. Pay Per Click management involves not only the effectiveness of your campaigns, but trying to keep the costs down to acceptable levels.
Google Adwords is by far the most used Pay Per Click advertising method. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it has the most opportunity to display ads along side the natural search results. The advertiser only pays for the advertisement if a searcher clicks on their displayed advertisement. So it provides a great opportunity for companies of any size to advertise and only pay if the advertisement is click on by a searcher.
The recent explosive growth had created tremendous competition for this ad space. What once cost .05 to .10 per click, now may cost over $1.00 per click since so many people are now advertising and competing for the same space. Depending on your profit margin, this expense may even keep some companies from using this method of marketing.
So due to the ever increasing cost, companies are looking for ways to get the best bang for their buck on Pay Per Click Advertising. A good formula to use to determine your budget on any advertising is to take the net profit on any sale and divide it by the cost of each click (example – you sell a product that nets you $20, and your number of sales to visitors (conversion ratio) is 2 sales to 100 visitors, so you divide the number of visitors by the net ($40 by 100) and you get .40 per click max cost). You bid over that cost, and you lose money (using the example .40 would be the max you could pay and even then you’d be pushing it).
Using that information, you can determine your budget for any Adword campaign. The catch 22 here is that many times the competition can drive the cost above your budget for many popular and effective keywords or phrases.
And so the game begins. Advertisers are constantly looking for new keywords or phrases that either don’t have the competition (and therefore high cost). Keyword research becomes critical to success. But there are other ways to play the game, and one is to reduce your cost via Google’s assigned Quality Score.
One of the often overlooked areas to reduce Google Adwords campaigns cost is doing SEO (search engine optimization) on your landing page and web site. One of the best side benefits of using proper SEO methods for organic search results is that you also get better value on your cost per click your Adword campaigns.
Goolge has a “quality score” they assign to every keyword or phrase in each of your adgroups (an adgroup is a group of keywords and phrases tied in with a specific ad in your campaign). This quality score can now be displayed on each word. To find out how just do a search in Adwords help section.
This quality score is based on several attributes that judge the relationship of the content between the ad, the landing page, and click through rate (CTR) for that keyword or phrase. There are three scores that I have seen (there may be more), Good, OK, and Poor. Good implies that your keyword matches well with your ad and your landing page. OK means that you’re close, but not the best. And poor means that you had better change something.
Of course there’s also that dreaded Inactive, which means you are not even near the relationship that Google wants to see between the keyword, CTR, ad, and landing page. And you can either raise your bit to $10 or get your keyword, CTR, ad, and landing page in sync.
Here’s Google’s own definition:
“Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.”
Google rewards or penalizes you in price of a click based in part on that score. “Good” keywords get a lower cost than “Poor” ones. How much difference? Well it’s hard to say unless you can see what state the SEO is in on the landing page.
I’ve seen as much as a 30% decrease in cost. I know that many of the Adwords users don’t really care about natural or organic search results initially. They plan on using Pay Per Click advertising methods to drive traffic to their web sites right from the beginning.
So many times they haven’t even done the most basic SEO on their landing pages. And the impact can be dramatic. Sometimes we also tweak the ad a little, to make a better fit between the Adgroup and landing page too.
What’s really impressive, is Google immediately rewards the better SEO. I have seen the results of good SEO in a matter of hours, at most in one day. And if you want to see a happy advertiser, have them login to their Adwords account the day after they do some effective SEO work. You can can’t beat that smile off their face.
That’s one of the biggest positive factors with Adword campaigns, immediate gratification on any changes. It’s always a good business practice to track all changes and results. No matter how well your Adwords campaign is doing, it can usually do better. And small changes can have a big impact on results, even on your landing pages.
So my advice to any Adwords users is to take a hard look at your landing page SEO. You not only get the benefits of better organic search rankings, your Pay Per Click costs can go down too. And with the competition being so fierce, any way to reduce you cost can really count.
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02 Nov 09 Ten Seo Tips To Get You Higher Yahoo And Google Listings
SEO tips can help you to get higher Yahoo or Google listings, but only if you use them. Most people think that they know better, even so called SEO professionals who have to use PPC advertising to get their websites listed highly enough to be seen. Who are they to tell us what to do, when they cannot it themselves?
I have had some of them write to me criticizing my ‘crap’ HTML and also my ‘useless’ linking strategies. My site has ‘only a Page Rank of 3’. So what? It is sitting at between #1 on #5 on Google from day to day, at # 1 to #4 on Yahoo from day to day and at #1 on MSN. I will gladly accept their criticism of my HTML and linking when they achieve the same. Till then, perhaps they would be better buying my book that complaining about my websites!
I would feel more predisposed to them if they stopped criticizing me – I only started to do the same to them when I got sick of their comments when they could not emulate my results. Who am I, a rank amateur, to beat them in the SEO stakes!! In fact, I have been at this for many years.
So, SEO tip #1 – don’t believe anything you are told unless those telling you it have at least one of their websites in the top 5 on all the major search engines for a competitive keyword. Mine has >800 million other results on Google.
Tip 2 – use classical search engine optimization. Use Meta tags because some search engines still use them. The main one is the Description Meta tag – Keywords is not so important but use it anyway. It does not hurt you, so use them.
The third tip relates to the title of your website. There are two points that relate to this. The first is that it should be the best keyword that you can find that relates to your niche or website. That means a good demand and low supply, though too much is sometimes written about this since such keywords are not easy to find. If you can’t something with low supply, just use what you want and decide to compete against them. Somebody has to be top, and why can’t it be you? Too many people give up in SEO too quickly. Probably because we are told not to compete against the big boys – by these big boys!!
The second point is that the title of your site need not be stated on every web page. My web page titles are those of the page, not the site. The graphics are the same, but the title is the keyword that they page is optimized for. Why do otherwise? Yet 99.99% do (just a guess!). Then fourth of my SEO tips is related to the headings on each page. The main title of the page should be in H1 tags, and the heading in H2 tags. You don’t need any more, but any subheadings can go into H3 tags, but should contain text that could be construed as minor keywords.
I might be wrong, but who says? I have found that if you ignore the big guys, and compete against them, they can be beat. Check out what they are trying to sell you and you will notice that much of it is obsolete. Such as site generation and article generation software. That’s not an SEO tip, just a word to the wise, from the not so wise. I have no pretensions, but I know where my home page is on Google – and Yahoo – and MSN. Just search for ‘article services’.
The fifth SEO tip is to use your keywords sparingly. Most people still think that 1% – 3% keyword density is ideal, yet it is actually too much. There is an optimum keyword density that has little to do with the keyword itself, but more to do with contextual relevance of the page content to the topic in hand. Which leads to the sixth of the SEO tips: write naturally and honestly. If you know about your subject, write about it in your own language and don’t try to meet any perceived need for a specific number of so-called keywords within your page content.
Seventh, don’t forget about your links. You can get a higher search engine listing if you have lots of links back to your website from other sites. In fact, the links are from page to page, and you get a proportion of the Google PageRank of the page linking to you, relative to the number of other links leaving that page, and also give the page that you link to a proportion of your PageRank, calculated in the same way. The problem with reciprocal links is that most pages are linked to and from pages with a PageRank of zero, even though the website home page can have a PR of 6 or 7.
SEO tip eight. Use your internal linking to maximise the PageRank of a selected page on your website. You don’t need every page on your site listed in the top 10 of Google or Yahoo: you only need one. So maximise your efforts on that one page. Visitors that page will then visit the rest of the pages on your website, and so will search engine spiders, so you know that every page on your site will be listed and with a chance of being found in a search.
The important point of that tip is to concentrate on getting one page in the top 10. That’s all you need. You will have links to all your other pages once somebody reaches that page in the top 10. Tip nine: Once you get visitors keep them there. Give them useful content and something to do, even if just to click from page to page. Offer them a free gift for completing a quiz on your topic, or free vacation certificates for certain actions: these are easily found on the internet in a form that you can either post or email for them to print their own. Offer them an opt-in form so that you can keep in touch.
That is the most important tip of all – if you can keep in touch with your visitors after they have left your site, then you can offer them new products as they come along without having to seduce them to visit your website again.
Finally, the SEO tip number 10. Enjoy what you are doing, and don’t look upon it so much as a job as something to enjoy, and to do as best as you can. I wish you the best of success since it is very sweet when it comes – as it will come with you.
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02 Nov 09 Taguchi Method: The Key In Ad Optimization?
For people who are looking for the secrets on how to master ad optimization, your prayers have been answered. With the help of Taguchi method your ad can land 10 or more times on the results pages. There is no doubt that you have probably heard of people trying to conquer Google Adwords by testing different ads that get a better click-through rate, since doing so can reduce costs considerably. Now the Taguchi method raises this kind of testing a couple of notch higher.
Just what is the Taguchi Method? The Taguchi method is actually a technique use for designing experiments that converge on an ideal product solution. It was developed in the late 1940s by a Japanese inventor named Dr. Genichi Taguchi, who was then working as an engineer at NTT (a Japanese phone company). The method has been used in designing cars and computers. So if you were wondering why the quality of Japanese cars is so high, that is all due to Taguchi.
Now you are probably wondering how this kind of method became associated with advertising. Well, the credit for that would have to go to James Kowalick who introduces the use of the Taguchi Method to significantly increase the response rate for ad campaigns.
The basic idea of the Taguchi method is to test as many variables as possible all at once. Now if you applied that in ad optimization, instead of testing two web pages (each with a different headline), you can test 40 different versions of the page, like different headlines, different graphics, different forms, including a testimonial or not, shifting the order of copy, whatever you can think of.
Then the system applied some complicated mathematical technique to determine which factors contribute the most to your goal. Then you can immediately look at all the factors and easily make your optimized page. Compare to the old ways that is easy as breeze.
Before what marketers use is the simple A/B split testing, which is very different. What you do here is make two pages, each with a different headline, and do a test to find the winner. After which you then make two different pages where you change something else, and then you find a winner from that. So by the time you have tested all 40 elements, you would have spent a lot of money and time in testing alone!
If you are still unconvinced as to whether or not the Taguchi method is indeed acceptable to use in ad optimization then take a look at the web. A quick search on the net will show you just how many people are using this method in order to improve their rankings. If that is not proof enough and notice how many optimization software that are based on the Taguchi method are being sold online. There is a very high demand for them. So, if people are willing to pay for it then it must be truly worth it.
But you do not have to spend money. You yourself could see the difference whether or not this method will work on your ad. Another way to take advantage of the Taguchi method in order to improve your ad is to apply it in Adwords. Just imagine, if you could test for one keyword, all the combinations that could get your ad the best response and optimize it dynamically, that would make your site pretty hot!
The big question is, can Taguchi help me optimize automatically to get the best Adwords ads out there? Well, the answer is yes. The interview the profit doctors did with the guy who talked about the “Taguchi method” of multi-testing many variables at once, instead of simple a/b split testing, got me interested in looking to see if there were any resources that cost less than $150,000 per test.
Success stories regarding the use of the Taguchi method in advertising abounded the net. One of the common examples cited is at the SES convention there was a company that conducted tests like this for companies such as http://ask.com and eBay, for about $30,000 per test. It was obvious that they were using the Taguchi method for this. They have refined their materials and are now providing programs for ad agencies. Admittedly, their system is now very sophisticated and of course very expensive.
Another company that does this for fortune 500 companies has clients like Colombia house, Accenture, Wal mart, Timberland, Monster, Zales, sharper image, and other big name companies. So, there is no need to say that this is a good service to use for ourselves, and then possibly to offer to our clients for big bucks. You’ll see dozens of stories like this along with a couple of testimonials from people who claim to have conquered ad optimization by simply applying the Taguchi method.
For years the Taguchi method had been successfully used for a lot of other things. For instance in manufacturing, if you want to test a whole bunch of different factors of design of a piston or engine, for example, something to get optimum results. The Taguchi method is use, so why not use it to optimize your ads?
Today, there are a lot of ad optimization programs that use the Taguchi method. All of them are easily accessible over the Internet, with their prices varying from cheap to exorbitant. For example, if you are good in math and can handle a program with kind of an arcane interface for just 2000 bucks you can buy a program that runs on your desktop. You can also get an academic version for 99 bucks.
But the bottom line is this. If you are trying to increase your profits and at the same time reduce your costs with the help of your online marketing campaign, you need to use “taguchi thinking” in order to get the results that you want.
Just how many times have you heard the old clinch, “If you are not testing you are wasting time and money.” Keep in mind that underneath all of the traffic generation techniques and the newest promotional methods, testing is still fundamental.
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01 Nov 09 Seo Spam
Spam, in almost any form, is bad for your health. The vast majority of web users would agree with that statement and nobody would even think of the finely processed luncheon meat-product made by Hormel. Even the word itself is infectious in all the worst ways, being used to describe the dark-side and often deceptive side of everything from email marketing to abusive forum behaviour. In the search engine optimization field, spam is used to describe techniques and tactics thought to be banned by search engines or to be unethical business practices.
While writing copy for our soon to be revised website, the team put together a short list of the most outrageous forms of spam we had seen in the last year and a short explanation of the technique.
Please note, we do not encourage, endorse or suggest the use of any of the techniques listed here. We don’t use them and our clients’ sites continue to rank well at Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. Also, since Google has been the dominant search engine for almost five years, most of the spammy tricks evolved in order to game Google and might not apply to the other engines.
1. Cloaking
Also known as “stealth”, cloaking is a technique that involves serving one set of information to known search engine spiders while displaying a different set of information on documents viewed by clients. While there are unique situations in which the use of cloaking might be considered ethical in the day-to-day practice of SEO, cloaking is never required. This is especially true after the Jagger algorithm update at Google, which uses document and link histories as important ranking factors.
2. IP Delivery
IP delivery is a simple form of cloaking in which a unique set of information is served based on the IP number the info-query originated from. IP addresses known to be search engine based are served one set of information while unrecognized IP addresses, (assumed to be live-visitors) are served another.
3. Leader Pages
Leader pages are a series of similar documents each designed to meet requirements of different search engine algorithms. This is one of the original SEO tricks dating back to the earliest days of search when there were almost a dozen leading search engines sorting less than a billion documents. It is considered spam by the major search engines as they see multiple incidents of what is virtually the same document. Aside from that, the technique is no longer practical as search engines consider a far wider range of factors than the arrangement or density of keywords found in unique documents.
4. Mini-Site Networks
Designed to exploit a critical vulnerability in early versions of Google’s PageRank algorithm, mini-site networks were very much like leader pages except they tended to be much bigger. The establishment of a mini-site network involved the creation of several topic or product related sites all linking back to a central sales site. Each mini-site would have its own keyword enriched URL and be designed to meet specific requirements of each major search engine. Often they could be enlarged by adding information from leader pages. By weaving webs of links between mini-sites, an artificial link-density was created that could heavily influence Google’s perception of the importance of the main site.
In the summer of 2004, Google penalized several prominent SEO and SEM firms for using this technique by banning their entire client lists.
5. Link Farms
Link farms emerged as free-for-all link depositories when webmasters learned how heavily incoming links influenced Google. Google, in turn, quickly devalued and eventually eliminated the PR value it assigned to pages with an inordinate collection or number of links. Nevertheless, link farms persist as uninformed webmasters and unethical SEO firms continue to use them.
6. Blog and/or Forum spam
Blogs and forums are amazing and essential communication technologies, both of which are used heavily in the daily conduct of our business. As with other Internet based media, blogs and forum posts are easily and often proliferated. In some cases, blogs and certain forums also have established high PR values for their documents. These two factors make them targets of unethical SEOs looking for high-PR links back to their websites or those of their clients. Google in particular has clamped down on Blog and Forum abuse.
7. Keyword Stuffing
At one time, search engines were limited to sorting and ranking sites based on the number of keywords found on those documents. That limitation led webmasters to put keywords everywhere they possibly could. When Google emerged and incoming links became a factor, some even went as far as using keyword stuffing of anchor text.
The most common continuing example of keyword stuffing can be found near the bottom of far too many sites in circulation.
8. Hidden Text
It is amazing that some webmasters and SEOs continue to use hidden text as a technique but, as evidenced by the number of sites we find it on, a lot of folks still use it. They shouldn’t.
There are two types of hidden text. The first is text that is coloured the same shade as the background thus rendering it invisible to human visitors but not to search spiders. The second is text that is hidden behind images or under document layers. Search engines tend to dislike both forms and have been known to devalue documents containing incidents of hidden text.
9. Useless Meta Tags
Most meta tags are absolutely useless. The unethical part is that some SEO firms actually charge for the creation and insertion of meta tags. In some cases, there seems to be a meta tag for virtually every possible factor but for the most part are not considered by search spiders.
StepForth only uses the description and keywords meta tags (though we are dubious about the actual value of the keywords tag), along with relevant robots.txt files. All other identifying or clarifying information should be visible on a contact page or included in the footers of each page.
10. Misuse of Directories
Directories, unlike other search indexes, tend to be sorted by human hands. Search engines traditionally gave links from directories a bit of extra weight by considering them links from trusted authorities. A practice of spamming directories emerged as some SEOs and webmasters hunted for valuable links to improve their rankings. Search engines have since tended to devalue links from most directories. Some SEOs continue to charge directory submission fees.
11. Hidden Tags
There are a number of different sorts of tags used by search browsers or website designers to perform a variety of functions such as; comment tags, style tags, alt tags, noframes tags, and http-equiv tags. For example, the “alt tag” is used by site-readers for the blind to describe visual images. Inserting keywords into these tags was a technique used by a number SEOs in previous years. Though some continue to improperly use these tags, the practice overall appears to be receding.
12. Organic Site Submissions
One of the most unethical things a service-based business can do is to charge clients for a service they don’t really need. Charging for, or even claiming submissions to the major search engines are an example. Search engine spiders are so advanced they no longer require site submission to find information. Search engine spiders find new documents by following links. Site submission services or SEO firms that charge clients a single penny for submission to Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask Jeeves, are radically and unethically overcharging those clients.
13. Email spam
Placing a URL inside a “call-to-action” email continues to be a widely used type of search marketing spam. With the advent of desktop search appliances, email spam has actually increased. StepForth does not use email to promote your website in any way.
14. Redirect spam
There are several ways to use the redirect function to fool a search engine or even hijack traffic destined for another website! Whether the method used is a 301, a 302, a 402, a meta refresh or a java-script, the end result is search engine spam.
15. Misuse of Web 2.0 Formats (ie Wiki, social networking and social tagging)
An emerging form of SEO spam is found in the misuse of user-input media formats such as Wikipedia. Like blog comment spamming, the instant live-to-web nature of Web 2.0 formats provide an open range for SEO spam technicians. Many of these exploits might even find short-term success though it is only a matter of time before measures are taken to devalue the efforts.
Search engine optimization spam continues to be a problem for the SEO industry as it tries to move past the perceptions of mainstream advertisers. When under-ethical techniques are used, trust (the basis of all business) is abused and the efforts of the SEO/SEM industry are called into question. Fortunately, Google’s new algorithm appears to be on the cutting edge of SEO spam detection and prevention. Let’s hope 2006 is the year the entire SEO industry goes on a spam-free diet.
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01 Nov 09 Search Engine Rank: Google Page Rank Misconceptions – 2
Improved search engine rank is difficult enough to obtain without you having to trawl through all that has been written about Google Page Rank in order to find the truth. There are many misconceptions about Page Rank, and Part 2 of this article dispels the most common of them, the first being that Yahoo and MSN have their own version.
In fact this is not so. Yahoo had a beta version of a ‘Web Rank’ visible for a while, ranking complete websites, but it is now offline. MSN has no equivalent as far I can ascertain. The term ‘PageRank’ is a trade mark of Google, which is why I refer to it as Page Rank and not PageRank. A small difference, but a significant one.
If you are one of those that believe that the more links you can get to your website the better, then you are wrong. When Google started the Page Rank frenzy by putting that little green bar on their toolbar, they didn’t realize the consequences of what they were doing. People fought to get as many links to their website as possible, irrespective of the nature of the websites to which they were linking.
That is misconception Number 2. You do not link to websites, you link to web pages, or should I say, you get links back from web pages, not websites. It is, after all, the link back that counts isn’t it? The link away from your site doesn’t count. Wrong! Misconception Number 3. The link to your web page counts no more than the link away from your web page. In fact, it could count less. You could lose out in the reciprocal linking stakes if your web page is worth more than the other person’s.
Let’s dispel that misconception right now. When you receive a link from a web page (not web site) you get a proportion of the Google Page Rank of that web page that depends on the total number of links leaving that page. When you provide a link to another web page, you give away a proportion of your Page Rank that depends on the number of other links leaving your web page.
The Page Rank of the website you get a link from is irrelevant, since that is generally the rank of the Home Page. You will likely find that all these great links you think you have from PR 7 or 8 websites are from a links page that has a PR of ZERO! So you get zilch for the deal. If you are providing them with a link from a page on your site even of PR 1, then you lose! Most people fail to understand that.
No incoming link can have a negative effect on your PR. It can have a zero effect, but not negative. However, if you have an incoming link with zero effect, and an outgoing reciprocal link with a positive effect to the target page, then you will effectively lose PR through the deal. Every web page starts with a PR of 1, and so has that single PR to share amongst other pages to which it is linked. The more incoming links it has, the higher PR it can have to share out.
If your page has a PR of 4 and has three links leaving it, each gets twice the number of PR votes than if 6 links leave it. Your page with a PR of 4 has to get a similar number of PR votes incoming as it gives away to retain its PR. In simple terms, if your PR 4 page is getting links from a PR 8 page with 20 links leaving it, you lose out big time! It’s simple maths.
No page ever gives away all of its PR. There is a factor in Google’s calculation that reduces this to below 100% of the total PR of any page. However, that is roughly how it works. You don’t get a proportion of the whole website ranking; you only get part of the ranking of the page on which your link is placed. Since most ‘Links Pages’ tend to be full of other outgoing links, then you won’t get much, and will likely get zero.
That is why automated reciprocal linking software is often a waste of time. If you want to make the best of linking arrangements, then agree with the other webmaster that you will provide each other with a link from equally ranked pages. That way both of you will gain, and neither loses. Some software allows you to make these arrangements.
Another misconception is that only links from external web pages count. In fact, links between your own web pages can be arranged to provide one page with most of the page rank available. Every page has a start PR of 1, so the more pages you have on your site then the more PR you have to play with and distribute to pages on your website of your choice.
Search engine rank can be improved by intelligent use of links, both external and internal, but Google Page Rank does not have the profound effect on your search engine listing that many have led you to believe. Good onsite SEO usually wins so keep that in mind when designing your website.
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01 Nov 09 SEO And Blogging
SEO and blogging can be used together to provide you with an almost unbeatable combination, not only for free advertising, but also to make money.
If the objective of your website or your blog is to provide information, or to operate a website on a non profit-making basis, then both search engine optimization and blogging can work together to improve your current traffic level. If your aim is to make money, either for a bit extra to pay the credit cards each month or as your main or sole means of income, you can use a blog and a properly designed website to improve your traffic flow.
So let’s cut to the chase as they say, or hang out the baby and see what drips off, or put out the mat and see what it collects from your feet! How can people be serious about these things at so-called serious business meetings? Beats me! Anyhow, lets open the refrigerator and see what’s fresh.
SEO – THE QUICK WAY
First SEO. If your website looks good to the search engines then it will have a good chance of being listed. But let’s be realistic: the best is Google, so keep Google sweet and the rest will follow. Design each web page, including your home page, round one keyword or keyphrase. Don’t try to optimize any page for more that one keyword or you will fail.
Forget the Meta tags. Put them in if you have the time, but not for the quick way. Put your page title in …. tags and include your page keyword in it. It must not be only your keyword, but that should be part of it. For example, if your keyword is ‘Using Blogs’ the your title could be:
Using Blogs and SEO to make Money’
That’s a good sized title, and a good way to use the keyword ‘using blogs’ for your page. Now, the first heading or headline should be ‘Using Blogs’ Just that, and put it in H1 html tags. Don’t worry about the purity of your html because Google doesn’t give a toss as long it can understand your H1 tags and Title.
If you have any graphics, even a payment graphic such as the one that Clickbank provides, add an alt relation to it: . This reinforces the information to the spider that the theme of the page is ‘using blogs’.
Use your keyword in the first 100 characters of your body html, for example, title:
“Using Blogs”
“Using blogs in combination with good webpage SEO has been proved time and again an extremely effective technique in the science of making money. The secret is to understand the needs of bloggers and of search engine users, and how to combine the two into a single money-generating machine that you can design to work on autopilot while you work on your next money-spinning project.”
Look at that again: I have used the keyword in the heading, and all the words in the Page title in the first 100 characters. The keyword is used immediately and the rest of the title also in the first sentence. If you also use the keyword once more in the last paragraph the crawlers will love it and you will have a head start on your competitors.
You could then continue on the theme of blogs, and have another section on the same page with the heading: “Using Blogs and SEO” contained within H2 tags that expands on the theme of blogs and SEO while introducing the concept of using blogs and web pages together to their mutual benefit.
INTERNAL LINKING STRATEGY
That is all you need do on each page, but do it on EVERY page that should be optimized for every different keyword that you have identified as being worth while to use on your website. However, there is one more thing you must do and that is to design your internal linking strategy to your best advantage. It should allow your visitors to easily navigate between pages, and also reach pages that they want to see such as your Privacy Policy and Contact details.
However, it is more that that. It is also a means of leading the search engine spider to dance your dance, and not Google’s Dance, as it were. Lead the spider to the pages you want it to see when you want it to see them, and bar it from seeing those it doesn’t have to see. You can allow humans to see pages that you have barred from spiders. Simply place a big ‘Humans Only’ sign above each door, and spider cannot get in.
BLOGGING
Your blogs should be updated to show every change you make to your website, but be optimized for different keywords to those your website is using. I have tested blogs with and without the same keywords and my web pages, and they generally work best when not competing.
For some reason that I cannot apply logic to, I get better results from my website when linked to blogs that have different keywords, that the same. However, that’s unimportant. What is important is that, unlike article directories, the articles in your blogs can advertise as many websites or products as you want. That is one of their major benefits when used in conjunction with websites. You can use one to advertise the other without fear of losing anything because they both belong to you. You cannot have a net loss with links between two of your own sites.
If you ping your blog to every web2 site that you are registered with then you can get a lot more traffic than if you had only used SEO for your free traffic. Blogs, too, are free, so use them.
CONCLUSION
If you use easy SEO and worry only about the elements I have mentioned above, you will have a great chance of your webpage home page being listed high on Google and the other search engines. If you use your blogs to advertise your site, not only to other bloggers but also to the many social bookmarking and Web2 sites that you can join, then you can achieve success in much less time than you might have imagined.
If you are not willing to put the blogging and Web2 work in, then you will not be so successful, and do not deserve to be.
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