The Link Popularity Blog is a forum for Webmasters, link exchange partners and search engine marketers who want to learn how to improve their Website rankings, to find link partner options and use link popularity and search engine optimization. With BigLinx, you also have the option of using our link exchange SEO tool and a whole arsenal of items that will drastically improve your page rankings.
For many novices to search engine optimization keyword usage is a mystery if not an overlooked skill. Understanding how to select and use keywords is a core skill in successful SEO. To master keyword usage, SEMs should focus on three things: Keyword Research, Content Development and Link Popularity.
KEYWORD RESEARCH In its simplest form, keyword research is the process of reviewing the major SE histories to discover the volume searches for specific keywords. The first stage of this process is understanding what keywords are actually searched. For example, if you are selling cell phones it would be nice to to know whether more users are searching "mobile phone" or "cell phone" or camera phone". More importantly, if certain keywords represent higher profit sales for your business (e.g., camera phones are more profitable), then this should be accounted for, as well.
The KW research process actually becomes rather more complex however, because like most commodities that involve supply demand it is important to find YOUR niche. Let me explain... Unless you have an "unlimited" budget, you will be hard-pressed to compete with other cell phone sales organizations to get top rankings. So at some point you will need to find a "beach head" -- a narrow focus that you can attack to begin gaining traction. For example, you might find that "2 megapixel camera phone" is new and therefore has fewer competitors. This may be an appropriate way to find a market for the right product.
These same concepts apply to any category of product or service.
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT Understanding the intricacies of content development requires a more detailed explanation than will be offered here. However, it is worth noting how important content development is to success. That is, SEMs should consider integrating blogs, wikis, forums or other tools to incorporate more content.
The key here is to develop a content strategy that is grounded in relevancy. Do not add a blog and fill it with junk and keyword stuffings. Why? Because even if your site does get good rankings, your prospective customers will find junk on your website. You will have zero credibility. So add useful content or don't add anything at all.
And, if you are operating a database related site, consider opening up SOME of your DB to the public. This will give the SEs a whole lot more content to crawl. You can find creative ways to provide limited access to database content, which will present a bigger picture of your website to the SEs and give your prospective clients a bit of "bait".
LINK POPULARITY Finally, developing relevant, inbound links to your site is key. Again, there are many different ways to do this. This could include publishing articles for redistribution, developing a highly useful tool that others in your industry will point to, developing a strong affiliate program, etc. You need to look at your business and find the right option.
The universe of search engine optimization is constantly changing. So, unless you are going to hire an SEO professional, it would be wise to stay abreast of the ongoing changes in the SEO community and the tools available to aid in your pursuit of rankings.
To that end, below is a list of useful search engine forums. It is a good idea to register for one or more of them, read regular updates and participate in the discussions.
SEO Chat - A free service with articles, news and tips for SEO.
This is a tale of two cities -- no make that universes. In one universe, you have traditional marketers, whose purpose in life it is to create content shaped to a customer's needs and behaviors. In the other universe, you have programmers, whose existence is dedicated to building efficient, flexible and reliable platforms for delivering that very content.
This is not a new tale. Anyone who has worked in a technology environment has probably observed the clash of marketing and product development. But today, the setting has changed. Today, the "rise of search" has compelled these two groups to cooperate at an ever-increasing depth and frequency. Search engine optimization or search marketing has become central to the success of both groups and, therefore, has become the a new fertile ground for breeding success (and waging war).
The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be quite a mystery to your average marketer. More often than not, search marketing consultants are vague about the techniques they employ. Often, this is for a good reason. After all, how many traditional marketers are equipped to understand the SEO implications of a simple website decision like using Flash or graphics.
And, while programmers have a deep understanding of the technology distinctions -- say, client-side versus server side scripting -- they are rarely concerned with the nature and quality of the content displayed.
Fortunately for both groups, the SEM community has a new bible of sorts at its disposal. Search Engine Optimization with PHP (and the soon to be released ASP version) is designed to be a bridge between these two communities. The book is a collaboration between Jaimie Sirovich, a search marketing consultant, and Christian Darie, a software engineer.
It seems unlikely that an experienced marketer will learn much about marketing. Nor will a good programmer learn much about programming. But with this book, each group has the opportunity to learn about the other's area of expertise.
So, who should read this book? Well, if you are a search marketing consultant, you probably (hopefully) are quite familiar with the concepts covered. You may benefit from the fairly comprehensive coverage of systems or foreign language SEO. But in general, if you've been at this for a while, you will most of this book to be light reading.
Overachieving programmers, will certainly have more to benefit here. This is especially true in areas such as site planning, content relocation and inadvertent black hat mishaps.
Marketers will benefit the most from this reading. This is true even if they avoid all the sample code and acronyms. Ultimately, marketers are responsible for the search-engine rankings of their sites. And therefore, having a solid, yet high-level, understanding of SEO is critical to their success. It also helps to ensure that there is less feuding and more collaboration.
In 2005, Google acquired Urchin's popular web analytics technology and has since re-branded as Google Analytics. The service has become a popular choice among search engine marketers (SEM) who want better insight in to the conversion rates of their various campaigns. Last week, Google released a new version of Analytics and it is worth using for two reasons. First, the service is pretty decent -- offering a slew of data views in a pretty user-friendly interface. Second, the service is free -- a price that is tough to beat.
While the interface remains boring, there have been some updates to the dashboard and some of the reporting features. Google has attempted to the interface more powerful for advanced users, yet simple to beginners. Unfortunately, while the service is pretty-looking and feature rich, in general the data views are about the same as you'd see in any other web stats service.
There are several new features that users will find useful, including:
Email reporting
Cleaner graphs
Customizable dashboards for each viewer type (e.g., marketer, webmaster, etc.)
Although this is not a revolution in the way users will see their website stats, it is an evolution. And, because it is free, it is solid choice that webmasters and web designers should consider using, if they prefer instead to invest directly in internet marketing and link popularity.
Link building is an effective tool for jump starting your SEO campaign. By developing links from other popular and relevant sites, you provide the search engines an "invitation" that your site is open for business.
However, there does reach a point at which you've done enough link building. Through this article, you will be provided with some pointers so that you can determine when you've done enough effective link building to your Internet based business website.
Generally speaking, the more inbound links that you have to your website, the higher your website will be ranked in different search engine results. Therefore, the first and most important factor that you need to keep in mind when trying to determine whether or not you've done enough link building is an examination of whether or not your own website has reached the search engine result ranking that you desire. Before you make a decision as to when you've done enough link building, you need to keep in mind the benefits of link building.
One more thing to consider when it comes to link building and making a decision as to whether you've done enough link building is to consider relevancy. When all is said and done, you must have what might best be determined to be quality inbound links. In this regard, you need to have inbound links from relevant sites, from sites that bear some relationship to your own website. Merely placing a bunch of inbound links with generic link farms will not necessarily serve your interests in either the short or the long term. If you use a link exchange like BigLinx, be certain to customize your permission settings and screen your link partners for relevancy.
As you pull together an inbound link building and enhancement program, you will want to establish goals in regard to the volume of traffic increase that you would like to have at your website. Finally, when it comes to reaching the point where you feel that you've done enough link building, you will want to consider whether or not you've realized an appropriate increase in traffic to your website. Once you've reached this market and you have achieved your ranking goal, you can slow down on your link building program.
Keep in mind that your site can suffer dramatically if you "turn off" link campaigns, so it is important to maintain the link structures that you have established. And in time you likely will want to return to link building even after you've achieved and accomplished what you set out to do through your initial link building plan. Over time, inbound links can become inactive, websites on which they are located can become defunct. Thus, it is important to revisit link building again over time.
SEO - Do You Need Reciprocal Link Manager Software?
by Chris Angus
An examination of reciprocal links software and whether deploying such software on your website can be part of a good SEO strategy.
Reciprocal links are one of the most cost effective forms of web advertising. It is also cost effective because it you don’t have to pay a cent for it. However the problem is that checking to see whether or not all of your link exchange partners are still linked to you can become a very tedious chore. Reciprocal links may be free but the entire endeavor ends up costing you in the man-hours it takes to go through every single reciprocal link on your site to see if it is still working! This is time that could be spent promoting or developing your web site in other ways so reciprocal link manager software might just be a good idea.
There are almost a hundred practical benefits to using this link software to trade links and monitor their functionality. One drawback is that the best of these types of reciprocal manager links are written in PHP/MySQL which handle unlimited tasks and data to do with your traded links. Although it sounds complex, most web hosts provide PHP and MySQL and usually programs like this are easily downloaded and up and running within fifteen minutes.
A really good reciprocal manager program can organize the look of your links on your site by creating professional looking HTML pages that make it easier for search engines spiders to crawl your links and index them. The best programs will list the links in a neat arrangement. Really good reciprocal link manager programs can also make these pages match the design of your website as well as display the link's title in the browser bar thus once again making your pages more search engine friendly than ever.
Also if a partner decides to trade links with you this amazing software can run all of your link directories together so that he or she has the option of submitting links to your other sites as well which can be another great convenience for the busy webmaster.
Christopher Angus is a SEO and Website Marketer. He can be contacted at: Sales (at) Brilliantseo.com Copywriter
Perhaps, you are a small business owner using your website to sell products or find qualified leads. By nature, you are a do-it-yourself kind of person, so you are orchestrating your own search marketing campaign. The good news is with time and persistence your website should begin paying dividends shortly. The bad news, you've now got yet another full time job.
Yes, search marketing is a complex blend of art and science. Pushing your web site to the top rankings requires a lot of work. And, there is no easy road mpa to follow because every site represents a different set of opportunities and challenges.
Hopefully, you've done the basics:
You have spent a fair amount of time researching your "keyword cloud" - finding highly-relevant keywords with good search volume;
You've signed up for Google and Yahoo pay-per-click campaigns -- setting your bids low initially and tracking results;
You've initiated a link trading or link exchange strategy to help your site's link popularity develop;
You may have already integrated a blog or other content management system in to your site, so you can post your thoughts and articles from others on relevant topics; and
If you are really diligent, you may have already started posting articles for others to repurpose.
So, you are doing all this work. But how do you know whether you are getting good results? For that matter, how do you measure results?
The true measure of success is difficult to capture. Of course, you can check the search engines to see what rank your site is for a given keyword. While that is useful, it does little to give you a big picture view of whether your efforts have converted in to any progress.
So, here's a list of a few tools that I like to use to help track the big picture:
Google's Webmaster Tool provides status information of your site as it actually exists within the Google search engine. Information includes, a list of indexed pages, lists of external sites linking to individual pages on your site as well as a number of index, query and crawl stats.
Use this PageRank Checker to see what your site's PR is across a number of Google's servers.
urlTrends (http://www.urltrends.com/) offers a nice wide view of your web site through a variety of sources. In addition to providing all the basics like Google PageRank and inbound link information, urlTrends provides historical trand graphs of many key data points. The service is free and there is an upgrade option that will track your results more regularly and send you the results.
iWebTool's Backlink Checker (http://www.iwebtool.com/) lets you see which sites are linking to you and provides the PageRank information, as well. Total links are not provided, so you cannot gather any objective data here. But, you can visually glance at the quality of sites ranking to you pretty easily.
SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/) has a handful of tools. But the best tool in the bunch is the Page Strength tool that displays some common results, but also includes links in Technorati, del.icio.us and other cool tools.
WebmasterEyes (http://www.webmastereyes.com/) lets you see your site as if you were wearing special "Google Vision" goggles. Go to the urlTrends homepage and type in URL, hit submit and suddenly you will see your site with Google PR built right into your site. In fact, every link within your website will display the corresponding PR for the destination page. This is a handy way to understand which pages on your site are actually beginning to develop search engine credibility. Do a "link:" search of your most popular pages and you might find that the link popularity of those pages just happens to b higher than the poorer performing pages.
iWebTools's (http://www.iwebtool.com/) tool for "predicting" your Google PageRank. The site expressly disclaims any accuracy. Nevertheless, it is another objective algorithm to monitor your sites momentum.
“How can I target the demographic that I am most interested in reaching?” The answer to that question is rather difficult.
Leave it to Microsoft to give us the tools that just might possibly answer this question. I highly recommend that you try out the AdCenter Lab suite of tools. These tools are designed to give keyword and demographic data to help with the set up of your AdCenter PPC campaign. While they are not always entirely accurate, they provide a good basis to work from. Make sure that you are using the Internet Explorer browser, or they will not work.
Search Funnels show which keywords searchers use before and after a search. For example: 3.79% of surfers search for hotel after doing a search for bed and breakfast.
I searched for vacation packages and you can see that the query rises in January and drops in September. (Click on the image for a larger view). The drawback is that there are not many words added to this tool yet. I tried a search adding snowboard, ski, rafting, and whitewater, and did not get any results for those terms. My suggestion is to also try Google Trends.
Content Categorization Engine: Search engines are putting more emphasis on categories. It is extremely important to see what the search engine thinks your site is about. Pay-per-click campaigns are also checking the landing page for the keywords that are being bid upon. If the landing page is not on topic to the word being bid, then the cost for that click is higher. I put a website for a chamber of commerce into the tool. The results are exactly what you would want those for a chamber to be all about.
Demographics Prediction is the tool to target the question at the top of the article. It will predict a customer’s age, gender, and other demographic information based on search behavior. You can type in your top keywords and determine what type of client is looking for your product. Example: “vacation package” is generally a female between the age of 25 and 34.
As with any tool, use the data carefully. While we don’t recommend basing your entire marketing strategy around the results, you find some valuable information to keep in mind when planning your campaigns.
Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Does Sitemaps depend on pageviews? - What are the top things to do in SEO? - How does Google decide to use a DMOZ snippet versus the description from a meta tag? - Should I use bold or strong tags?
Whether you are just starting out with search engine optimization or an old pro, keyword research is the foundation upon which top rankings are built and root keywords are the most important.
Keywords, keywords, keywords – the term used so often in search engine optimization that it can get a bit overwhelming at times. What exactly are keywords? How do I find them? How do I use them? Why is the term spelled keywords instead of key words? Ah, there are so many questions we can go into. Of course, we should talk about something far more important.
The key to keyword research is focusing on the key word. How is that for a sentence? Okay, now for something understandable. When identifying terms you wish to use in the optimization effort for your site, you must look to the base word of the area you are researching. That probably is not much better, so here is an example.
Assume I am researching the keywords for an online internet marketing company, to wit, the site promoted with this article. Should I type in "online internet marketing" into my favorite research tool? No! By doing so, I limit myself to finding only those keywords that contain these three words. Taking this approach, I would even miss the basic term "internet marketing." Obviously, I have not focused on the root word of my research.
Returning to my research tool, I should go ahead and find all the words for "internet marketing", right? No! Doing so will return more keyword phrases, but I am still limiting myself to only those phrases that contain the two words. In this case, I will miss out on phrases related to "internet advertising" or "online marketing" and so on. By taking this approach, I have followed the seo herd and missed out on some juicy opportunities.
The best approach to the above scenario is to research two words first – "internet" and "marketing". Do them separately and then work your way into the various combination of words that will appear. These are your root words. Bow before them. Treat them nicely. Research them and you might just find some massive traffic with low competition, the stuff of dreams!
There is a tendency in seo to by into the hype of going niche. Yes, certain situations definitely call for focusing on a very defined niche. When doing your keyword research, however, always start with the root words. They will lead you to the niche you can make money in.
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to "crawl" the site, and store the collected data. The default search-bracket was to scan an entire web page for so-called related search words, so a page with many different words matched more searches, and a web page containing a dictionary-type listing would match almost all searches, limited only by unique names. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had crawled. As the number of documents online kept growing, and more webmasters realized the value of organic search listings, some popular search engines began to sort their listings so they could display the most relevant pages first. This was the start of a friction between search engine and webmasters that continues to this day.
At first search engines were guided by the webmasters themselves. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as category and keyword meta tags, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. When some webmasters began to abuse meta tags, causing their pages to rank for irrelevant searches, search engines abandoned their consideration of meta tags and instead developed more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account factors that elevated a limited number of words (anti-dictionary) and were more diverse, including:
Pringle, et al. (Pringle et al., 1998) [1], also defined a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page which were often manipulated by web content providers attempting to rank well in search engines. But by relying so extensively on factors that were still within the webmasters' exclusive control, search engines continued to suffer from abuse and ranking manipulation. In order to provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their SERPs showed the most relevant search results, rather than useless pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters using a bait-and-switch lure to display unrelated web pages. This led to the rise of a new kind of search engine.
Development of more sophisticated ranking algorithms
Google was started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start [2]. PageRank relies heavily on incoming links and uses the logic that each link to a page is a vote for that page's value. The more incoming links a page had the more "worthy" it is. The value of each incoming link itself varies directly based on the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely on the number of outgoing links on that page.
With help from PageRank technology, Google proved to be very good at serving relevant search results. Google quickly became the most popular and successful search engine. Because PageRank measured an off-site factor, Google felt it would be more difficult to manipulate than on-page factors.
However, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine. These methods proved to be equally applicable to Google's algorithm. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links on a massive scale. PageRank's reliance on the link as a vote of confidence in a page's value was undermined as many webmasters sought to garner links purely to influence Google into sending them more traffic, irrespective of whether the link was useful to human site visitors.
Further complicating the situation, the default search-bracket was still to scan an entire web page for so-called related search-words, and a web page containing a dictionary-type listing would still match almost all searches (except special names) at an even higher priority given by link-rank. Dictionary pages and link schemes could severely skew search results.
It was time for Google — and other search engines — to look at a wider range of off-site factors. There were other reasons to develop more intelligent algorithms. The Internet was reaching a vast population of non-technical users who were often unable to use advanced querying techniques to reach the information they were seeking and the sheer volume and complexity of the indexed data was vastly different from that of the early days. Search engines had to develop predictive, semantic, linguistic and heuristic algorithms. Around the same time as the work that led to Google, IBM had begun work on the Clever Project [3], and Jon Kleinberg was developing the HITS algorithm.
A proxy for the PageRank metric is still displayed in the Google Toolbar, though the displayed value is rounded to be an integer, and the data updated infrequently, so it is likely to be outdated. For these reasons, and the fact that PageRank is only one of more than 100 "signals" that Google considers in ranking pages, experienced SEOs recommend ignoring the displayed PageRank.
Today, most search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to compete for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors in ranking the listings on its SERPs; the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ widely: a web page that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEOs have carried out controlled experiments to gauge the effects of different approaches to search optimization. Based on these experiments, often shared through online forums and blogs, professional SEOs form a consensus on what methods work best.
SEOs widely agree that the top signals that influence a page's rankings include:
Google wants to create quality search engine results just as badly as you want to acquire high search engine rankings. Fortunately for us, Google provides web masters with plenty of guidelines and tips for building a Google-Friendly site.
Unfortunately, many web masters simply aren't listening. Most web masters seem to be pulling tips and strategies from almost every source but Google itself. However, Google has some of the most beneficial SEO tips to be found online.
Below are just a few of the questions that you can find answered directly by Google.
Q.Does Google index dynamic pages?
A. Yes. Google indexes dynamically generated pages. This includes pages with the following file extensions: .asp, .php, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for the Googlebot and may be ignored.
Fortunately, there is a solution. If you feel that your dynamically generated pages are being ignored, you may want to consider creating static copies of those pages for the Googlebot. Keep in mind, if you choose to do this, be sure to include a robots.txt file that disallows the dynamic pages so that Google doesn't see those pages as duplicate content.
Q.Does Google index sites that use ASP?
A. Yes. Google is able to index most types of pages and files with very few exceptions. This includes pdf, asp, jsp, html, shtml, xml, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf, cfm, and php. This is not a complete list, but it gives a good overview.
Q.Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash?
A. Yes. Google indexes pages that use Macromedia Flash. However, Google may have problems indexing Flash pages. If you are concerned that your Flash content is inhibiting Google's ability to crawl your site, you may want to consider creating HTML copies of those Flash pages. As always, you will need to include a robots.txt file that disallows the Flash pages so that Google does not recognize those pages as duplicate content.
Q.How do I add my site to Google's search results?
A.According to Google, inclusion in Google's search results is free and easy. They also state that it is unnecessary to submit your site to Google. Google uses software known as "spiders" to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to the index.
When a spider misses a site, it is often because of one of the following reasons:
The site is not well connected with other sites through an inbound linking structure.
The site launched after Google's most recent crawl was completed.
Poor web site design makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl your content.
The site was temporarily unavailable at the time of crawling or an error was received. You can use Google Sitemaps to see if the Google crawlers received errors when trying to crawl your site.
Q.How can I get my web site into Google's Mobile index?
A. Google Mobile offers Google Web Search, Local Search, and Image Search for web sites that are configured for mobile devices. Google adds new sites to their mobile Web index every time they crawl the Web.
To let Google know about your mobile site, it is best to submit a Mobile Sitemap. To help ensure that Google's mobile crawlers can crawl and index your site, you should:
Use well-formed markup
Validate your markup
Use the right DOCTYPE and Content-Type for the markup language that you are using.
Q.Will participation in Adsense or Adwords affect my listing in Google's free search results.
A. Google's advertising programs are independent of their search results. Participation in an advertising program will have no effect on your organic search engine rankings.
Q.Why does my site have a PageRank of zero?
A. Yes. Google has an answer for this as well. According to Google, a page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to that particular site. In addition to this, pages that have recently been added to the Google index may also show a PageRank of zero. This is simply because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked yet.
The key is to be patient. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with further crawls.
Q.My URL changed. How can I get Google to index my new site?
A. Google cannot manually change your URL in the search results. However, there are steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition.
First, you can redirect visitors to your new site. To do this, simply use an HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect. This ensures that Google's crawler will discover your new URL.
To preserve your rank, you will need to tell others who link to your site about your change of address. To find a portion of the sites that link to yours, you can go to the Google search engine and type in: site:www.mydomain.com . To obtain a comprehensive list of links that point to your page, perform a Google search on your URL in quotes: "www.mydomain.com".
Q.How often does Google crawl the web?
A. Google's spiders crawl the web on a regular basis to rebuild their index. Crawls are based on a number of factors, including Pagerank, links to a page, and a web site's structure. This is just a small list. There are a variety of factors that can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.
Q.How do I create a Google friendly site?
A. To help Google find, index, and rank your site, it is suggested that you follow their Webmaster Guidelines.
Here are some of the general guidelines that Google offers to web masters:
Have other relevant sites link to yours.
Submit a sitemap.
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo. For a complete listing of web directories, go to StrongestLinks.com.
Make sure each and every page is reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer your visitors a site with links that point to the most important parts of your site. If your sitemap is larger than 100 links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
Keep the links on any given page to a reasonable number (less than 100).
Check for broken links and correct HTML.
Create a useful site that is full of information-rich content. Your pages should be written in a way that clearly and accurately describes your content.
Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your web site. Most search engine spiders see your site in much the same way as Lynx would.
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session Ids or arguments that track their path through the site.
Make use of the robots.txt file which tells crawlers which directories they can or cannot crawl.
Q.How can I report a site that is spamming the Google search results?
A. Google is constantly working to improve the quality of their search results. Therefore, they have implemented a program that allows web searchers to report spam that they find within the search engine results. These Spam Reports are submitted directly to Google engineers and are used to devise long-term solutions to fight spam.
However, before you submit a site as being spam, Google highly suggests that you take a look at their webmaster guidelines to determine if sites are acceptable or not.
A. Sites may be blocked from the Google index if they do not meet certain quality standards. Google does not comment on the individual reason for pages being removed. However, they do reveal that certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling the search engines may result in removal from the index.
If you receive a notification that your site violates Google's quality guidelines, you can correct your site to meet their guidelines and then request reinclusion.
So there you have it, some of the many tips that Google is handing out for free. If you want to obtain high search engine rankings for the long-term, Google actually provides some very good advice.
When the World Wide Web began, web developers either generated content themselves, or took existing documents and coded them into hypertext markup language (HTML). In time, the field of web site development came to encompass many technologies, so it became difficult for web site developers to maintain so many different skills. Content developers are specialized web site developers who have mastered content generation skills. They can integrate content into new or existing web sites, but they may not have skills such as script languageprogramming, database programming and graphic design.
Search engine optimization specialists commonly submit content to Article Directories to build their website's authority on any given topic. Most Article Directories allow visitors to republish submitted content with the agreement that all links are maintained. This has become a method of Search Engine Optimization for many websites today. If written according to SEO copywriting rules, the submitted content will bring benefits to the publisher (free SEO-friendly content for a webpage) as well as to the author (a hyperlink pointing to his/her website, placed on a SEO-friendly webpage).
Keywords are the fundamental building blocks of successful search engine marketing. If you don't get them right you will find that everything you expect to follow simply will not. Targeting the right keywords is everything and is the most necessary ingredient to online success for your business.
Does this sound like online marketing 101? A foolishly simplistic bit of advice. Perhaps, but consider this: Nearly everyone, professional and amateur is basing their selection and purchase of keywords on data that couldn't be more distorted if it were being viewed through a funhouse mirror.
Take a few moments to read on and set yourself apart from the vast majority of online marketers who don't understand and thereby misuse the results supplied by the two most basic keyword selection tools. The assumption about Overture's STST and Wordtrackers's KSS is that the results they give, while different are somehow straightforward and require no interpretation. Given that these tools are nearly all we have to bring keyword choices into focus and make intelligent decisions in the midst of rising keyword pay-per-click costs and increasingly keen competition.
The key to reading the tealeaves lies in an attempt to answer, with hard numbers, the following question.
Why are the keyword search query numbers supplied by Overture's search term suggestion tool (STST) so incredibly different than those supplied by Wordtracker's keyword selection service (KSS)?
The answer to this question will precipitate a change in the way you evaluate keywords and thereby how well they work for you. The short answer is that Overture and Wordtracker are different types of businesses. Let's explore.
Overture's STST is a tool which was designed to help users buy keywords. And it may go without saying but it needs to be said, Overture is helping you to buy keywords from Overture.
Wordtrackers purpose is a tool to help users in their selection of keywords which will help your optimization efforts. And to help you decide which to buy elsewhere.
So Overture makes its money as the keyword retailer whereas worktracker makes it's money being sort of the Consumer Reports of keywords.
Overture succeeds when it convinces you that there are a lot of searches for what you are selling. They make their money when you buy in to their data and purchase keywords from them. Wordtracker succeeds when it convinces you that you have made keyword decisions based on the realest and most accurate data available. They are fee based and their profits hinge on the accuracy of the data they provide.
Different types of businesses, indeed.
Decoding the data.
Take for instance the search team "keyword," Overture's STST show there were 180,468 searches for the 30-day period ending the last day of December. When you divide this number by 30 (days), you get an average of 6,016 combined searches per day for the term "keyword".
I'd like to buy that keyword if I was going to get 6016 sentient beings looking at my site every day. Therein lies the reason for Overture returning this particular take on the facts. It's not that their numbers are inflated, it's just that they aren't properly deflated. In a moment you'll read how, once adjusted, these numbers are pretty low.
Adjustment number 1. Artificial searches.
You're going to want to take these out of the number. Overture's STST numbers include automated bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors, page popularity analyzers. These will never buy anything from your site. As far as you're concerned any hit generated by automated software should be disregarded. This group also includes page-popularity checkers, pay-per-click bid optimizers or any other machine generated monitor or tabulator that queries an engine for a "pet" keyword .
When these automated faux hit generators are done pumping up the numbers on Overture they go over to MSN, an Overture partner, and do the same thing. Overture adds another hit. In Overtures defense, there is no way for them to differentiate between a hit from a person or an automated one. Like I said, they haven't inflated their numbers.
As you can see search term query tabulations are swelled significantly by these automated queries.
There are other aspects that contribute to these artificially high numbers. We continue with our adjustments.
Adjustment number 2- Duplicate Searches
Overture's viability as an advertising medium for online businesses hinges on the fact that they provide lts to "tens of thousands of Web sites" which include AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN Search, HotBot, and AllTheWeb and many more. They purport to reach 80% of active U.S. Internet users.
Similar to their high numbers this fact, taken out of context sounds great to potential advertisers. But it's part of the same hype cycle that has their numbers so high.
According to Overture itself, statistics on searches are compiled from Overtures partner search engines. This furthers the distortion of query counts. Here's how.
When, for instance, a visitor conducts a search on AltaVista, there are really two searches being conducted. One at AltaVista and one that lists the Sponsored Matches supplied by Overtures pay-per-click engine.
It's not possible to know the exact degree of the distortion of query counts as a result of this but what can certainly be gleaned is that one person often generates multiple hits when doing a single search.
If that user seeks additional results and tries his search on another engine which happens to be a partner of Overture there will be more hits still calculated by Overture. Google counts only searches that were done "on-site" and eliminates duplicate searches in their count query. If Overture did the same, their numbers would be further adjusted downward, or as I've said properly deflated.
Adjustment number 3- Plurals and Singulars
Overture combines the plural and singular in compling their query count.
They combine not upper case and lower case results as well. These factors apply upward pressure to their numbers as well.
Ok. So Overture is providing using some fuzzy numbers. What can you do to get a clearer picture?
Using Meta-Engines is a better way to calculate queries. You can get numbers which don't include artificial and duplicate queries by using Composite engines like Metacrawler and Dogpile.
Auto-bots aren't pointed at these composite engines because there's nothing to be gained by doing so. Ergo Searches conducted on Meta engines are more likely do be done by sentient beings.
Meta Engines do not offer pay-per-click options. And they do not "add-url's" so they do not attract bot traffic.
Meta Engines don't have duplicate searches in their query counts either. This is because their results are compiled from a single source and not combined from many partner sites.
Using Meta Engines helps get your numbers down into a more realistic area but there are problems that occur there too. For instance keyword spam.
This involves using cgi-scripting to manipulate the Metaspy metacrawler voyeur.
By conducting searches at set intervals, spammers try to inflate the importance of certain search terms to artificially increase the value terms related to their business.
A Word about Plural, singular, upper and lower case searches.
SEO's have to decide how they are going to deal with this issue. There are costs and benefits to combining query search numbers in different scenarios.
Sometimes the difference between singular and plural as far as meaning are slight and the words can be treated as the same. There combining results makes sense. Other times you have a different situation. Take for example the words "tap, taps, Tap, and TAP" Look at the results on Overture for the search term "tap" All of the following were found in the top ten sponsored listings.
Machine threading taps, Tap / Rap support software Beer taps Tap Dancing TAP A Stock TAP Terminal Phone Numbers
These have nothing in common obviously, but this is the sort of imprecision that results from combining singular, plural, uppercase and lowercase keywords.
Sharpening up the fuzzy numbers and achieving proper deflation of the Overture keyword query counts.
Overture's STST shows 180,468 searches were conducted. This includedes the combined count of the search terms keyword, keywords, Keywords, KEYWORD and KEYWORDS - the combined total of all singular, plural, capitalized, upper and lower-case searches.
Then Divided by 30 you get 6,016 searches per day that meet this criteria.
Really though, they receive just 40-60 per day total
Here's how we did the deflating -
Fact: Overture's STST suggests a combined average of 6,016 page views took place between Overture and its major partners.
Fact: Each of these results pages lists between 10 and 40 URLs with descriptions.
Factor in Zipf's Law which states that traffic for any keyword on a search engine will be in proportion with its popularity rank.
Factor in how the title and description affect a user's likelihood to click on a Web site.
Factor Penn State University's findings that 55% of users check out one search result only, and 80% stop after looking at three results.
Factor in known elements leading to an estimated, but educated, conclusion as such...
Also consider that Wordtracker's Web site appears in the top-ten of Overture's results throughout their partner sites, this would suggest they would be getting about 10% of the total click-throughs from all major engines, pay-per-clicks, and directories.
This would be about 602 visitors per day.
But Wordtracker is currently ranked 1-10 on just around 25% of the major engines, directories and pay-per-click portals for the search term, keyword(s)... Calculate the estimate...
Ergo, the Wordtracker site should expect roughly 25% of this predicted click-through traffic, which is 150 visitors per day.
So when you compare the calculated estimate to the known facts…
Wordtracker receives 10-15 visitors per day for the search term keyword(s) Overtures STST overestimates this by a factor of ten.
Wordtracker estimates they receive 25% of the total traffic. This indicates that the total traffic is about 40-60 per day.
Wordtracker's service returns very different data.
Using the same search term(s) keyword(s), we pulled a result from the Wordtracker database (on January 13, 2004) that predicts searches per day conducted throughout the major engines, directories and pay-per-clicks on the Internet.
This number - 618 - Wordtracker took directly from results taken from Meta-engines, Metacrawler and Dogpile to get rid of results distortion.
Wordtracker further adjusted the number downward by filtering out keyword spam. Keyword spam is filtered out by finding search terms that are being searched at intervals too regular be coming from people.
If the searches are too regular they are assumed to be artificially generated and taken out before arriving at the final number - 618.
Considering even such dependent variables such as position, title, and description, we would predict a website to receive about 10% of the total traffic due to top-ten placement, targeted title and relevant link-description.
And finally, we should expect no better than 25% of that total traffic, due to the fact that Wordtracker has top-ten placement in only 25% of the relevant engines.
So the calculations show...
618 x 10% = 61.8 x 25% = approx 15 visits per day.
This jibes much more closely with Wordtracker's actual 10-15 per day average number of visits generated by the 5 variations of the search term keyword across all of the major engines.
Now what do you do? Who's numbers do you like?
It depends of course on what you're using them for. Are you trying to ascertain the relative popularity of a item or topic? Overture can help you with that and it's free. It paints a good broad brush picture of relative position between terms.
Take this example:
58,312 home insurance 57,315 home owner insurance 233,854 auto insurance 570,337 car insurance
You can learn that searches on car insurance are ten times more common than searches on home owner insurance. Plenty of information on relative position and popularity…
But... Don't go thinking that this search on car insurance represents some 570,337 possible customers.
Remember, Overture showed us 6016 hits per day for the term keyword. Wordtracker is getting 15 visitors. Do the math and figure out if the 15 visitors per day is worth the cost of the keyword.
Overture's pitch is appealing, but it's dangerous for you to believe. As I've just demonstrated their numbers are not properly adjusted to be useful. What you need is the most accurate information to make the most informed possible choice about keyword selection and purchase. That's what Wordtracker provides, accurate information about keywords.
It's very common for SEO's to focus too much on trying to figure out a search engines algorithm. They believe if they can crack the algo of Google for instance their page will be get a better rank.
Maybe, maybe not. But here's why I think this isn't the best mindset.
1. Things change. These algorithms are changed from time to time. They are maintained and managed by humans who will flip a switch eventually and your crack will no longer be effective. You're chasing smoke.
2. Search Engines aren't your customers. They aren't going to buy your products. Write your pages and content for the people whom you serve. People whom you want for customers.
3. Google has some number of factors that influence a sites rank, people usually think it's around 100. Spending a huge amount of time cracking the Algorithm is to focus on only one or two of a hundred factors. It's like going on a blind date, spending two hours picking out a pair of shoes meanwhile you have spinach in your teeth.
Take a different tack.
Isn't the real goal to achieve top rankings that remain high and translate into business and customers?
Don't lose the forest for the trees. If traffic doesn't turn into sales then what is the point? You're kissing your sister. You've spent all your time and energy making sure Google's algorithms like your site, and your users needs haven't been properly addressed.
5 ways to Achieve Top rankings without Chasing Algorithms.
1. Stop focusing on the Search engines. They aren't your audience. Write for your audience. In the longer term this will add value to your site that will translate to indelible traffic.
2. Remember the basics. Always use your main keyword phrase in your title tag. Use META description and keyword tags, link text, heading tags, and the like.
3. Each page should have it's own unique tags and be focused on a keyword. One per page.
4. Write your content well. Content and Context are crucial. Keep it new. Keep it coming. Always remember to be mindful of your keyword phrase, synonyms, related words and surrounding text. Try using ThemeMaster if you need help with this. It's a great program.
5. On Page and Off page factors are important. Focusing on one at the expense of the other will end up hurting you. Find the balance. On-page factors to consider are your tags, body text, prominence, relevance, and the like. Off-page factors include link popularity and link reputation (what those inbound links "say" about your Web page when they link to you).
Is search engine research important? Yes. It's critical. By way of an example: Earlier this year pages began falling in Gooogle's ranking and SEO's everywhere were trying to figure out how to preserve their hard won rankings.
