Web Moves Blog

Web Moves News and Information

Sep

2003

Provide Free Content for Distribution Gain Traffic, Links and Search Engine Rank!

Gain Traffic, Links and Search Engine Rank!
Did you realize that thousands of website operators use a simple technique to generate targeted visitors to their websites without paying a dime in advertising? It’s true.

In fact, the technique works so well that many of them don’t want you to discover how they get those thousands of website visitors and make so many sales on virtual “auto-pilot.”

Their method? Creating tightly focused articles other people publish in their ezines (online magazines and email newsletters) and post on their websites.

This method rates so powerful that some even call it “the web’s best kept traffic secret.” Now, you may ask, “Why would an ezine publisher or website owner publish my articles for their subscribers?”The answer: Content!

Over a 100,000 ezines and newsletters operate on the web (along with millions of websites) covering everything from pets and cooking to investments and real estate. Many of them need tightly focused content and they simply can’t produce all of it themselves. Look at it this way… it’s the same reason newspapers use the Associated Press. Individual newspapers often can’t afford staff writers to cover every story, so they accept articles from outside their organization.

You can do the exact same thing for various ezines and websites catering to your niche audience! You can get valuable publicity — exposure you often couldn’t even pay for if you wanted to — by providing valuable, content-rich articles in exchange for a byline and a link to your website (called a “resource box”)!The following represent only a few of the enormous benefits of writing and distributing simple articles online:

The Benefits
** Attain “Expert” Status **
Let’s face it! In the eyes of virtually everyone who reads your articles you rank as the “expert” on the subject. Just look at people who write newspaper columns. You may disagree with their viewpoints, but they still have an elevated status in your mind compared to the “average Joe” off the street.

** Pre-sell Website Visitors **
If your article appeals to a niche audience hungry for more information on a very focused subject, you actually pre-sell them better than any sales pitch. In their minds, you’ve already delivered content they really want so when they click over to your site you already have a “reputation” in their minds.

** Traffic Lasts Longer **
Even though the Internet changes very quickly, webmasters are usually very slow to remove content from their sites. Once you get an article posted on another person’s website, you have an excellent chance of that article staying there for weeks, months, even years.

** Increase Links To Your Site **
In a recent search I found just a dozen of my articles posted on over 813 different websites! Not only do those postings bring me traffic, but they also help my search engine positioning because of my increased “Link Popularity.”

** Builds Your Affiliate Base **
Fact: Affiliates always take the path of least resistance. If you provide excellent articles they can easily post on their sites or copy and paste into their ezines, your affiliates will promote you more often and more effectively compared to those who don’t give them tools. Plus, as you make more sales and publish articles, other people will see you providing excellent tools and will want to sign up as your affiliate so they can use them too!

** Build a Huge “Opt-In” Email List **
You can use articles to build up a huge list of subscribers by simply compiling several articles into a series and delivering them at preset intervals. Often called a “mini-course,” this technique allows you not only to prove to your subscribers that you deliver great information, but enables you to capture their name and email adress so you can send them articles and special offers in the future (with their permission).

** Requires No Special Skills **
People often think they need to be a “writer” in order to publish articles, but that’s not true! FACT: If you have a passion for a subject and can talk and explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will love to read.

Summary
So if you operate a website selling virtually any type of product or service (whether your own or as an affiliate), publishing and promoting with articles should rank high on your list of traffic generation strategies. No other method of generating targeted traffic to your website provides the quality, quantity and steadiness of traffic in such a simple, straightforward, and cost- effective manner.

Author Bio:
Jim Edwards of TheNetReporter.com

Sep

2003

Google Adsense Could Mean Death To Affiliate Programs!

Google Adsense
The popular search engine, Google has introduced a dramatic new contextual advertising service called Adsense. This new program could mean death to affiliate programs on those web sites that qualify for the Adsense program. Why would Google advertising affect affiliate programs? Because Google is making Adsense ads available to smaller content rich sites.

Adsense dramatically simplifies the process of choosing appropriate advertising for sections of sites. Since it’s all automatic with Adsense, I’m through with searching for affiliate programs to fit my content. It just doesn’t pay enough to justify the effort in most cases. While I won’t dump existing producers, I’m dropping those affiliate programs that don’t produce like hot potatoes.

I’ve moved house often over the last few years and in that process have struggled to keep affiliate programs abreast of the latest contact and banking information. Several honest affiliate program managers have emailed me after getting my affiliate checks returned from previous snail mail addresses. Adsense will resolve this issue for me as I needn’t keep the hundreds of affiliate programs up-to-date on my latest mailing address and/or banking information – only Google Adsense. I’m dropping smaller unproductive affiliate programs.

Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs penned an interesting and insightful article on Adsense this past week where he mentions this as an issue and predicts the death of smaller or weaker affiliate programs.

I agree.

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/adsense.shtml

Google Adsense simply requires the host site to paste in a few lines of HTML code on their pages where they want those ads to appear. Once Google has spidered your content pages, they can assess what those pages are about. Adsense serves a series of ads that match and compliment your page topics automatically without site owner participation!

I’ve been impressed how Adsense has performed for me in just the last week. I’ve actually enjoyed looking at my own sites to see what ads are served to match my content. WebSite101 demonstrates very well how Adsense works. If you visit the HTML tutorial, you see Adsense ads for web page editing software or web hosting. If you visit my email tutorial, you’ll see Adsense ads for email broadcasting software and targeted email list broadcasting services. If you visit the Domain Name tutorial, you’re served Adsense ads for Domain Registrars and web hosting. If you visit the Anti-Spam Tutorial, you get Adsense Ads for Spam Filtering Software.

http://www.website101.com/email_e-mail/
http://www.website101.com/HTML/
http://www.website101.com/Domain_Name
http://website101.com/SpamFilter/

You get the idea.

I like not having to mess with my own ad-serving software and twiddle with the rates and I absolutely LOVE not having to do any ad sales. I’m sold and wholeheartedly recommend Adsense to anyone with sufficient content to support it.

Between my 3 main sites,

http://WebSite101.com
http://SearchEngineOptimism.com
http://PrivacyNotes.com

I’ve got over 1000 pages of good solid content that I’ve built over the last 6 years. I’ve struggled in vain to get that content to pay by carefully choosing affiliate programs to fit neatly into dozens of topic areas. My two biggest producers have been software sales and health insurance referrals for small businesses. Those have been sporadic producers.

My biggest complaint is that I can’t track what is producing clickthroughs. Google simply tells me clickthrough percentage, number of ad impressions per day and average earnings per clickthrough across all of my sites. That makes it very difficult to know where to concentrate my energy to produce additional revenue generating content. But it does seem to offer site owners incentive to maintain quality content and spread the ads across all content pages.

My privacy site runs a variety of HIPAA compliance ads, GLB compliance ads, and DoNotCall List Compliance ads. It seems the money in privacy is in charging large corporations to keep them within the letter of the law so they don’t get sued for violations.

It is interesting to see my own site ads to know where the money is in PPC for each of the topic areas. Sometimes it’s just not what you expect. I’ve got an article about Google’s reverse phone lookup and how to get out of reverse phone lookup databases that is on the Privacy site and it sometimes shows ads about “low long distance rates”. Clearly the keyphrase “Phone number” is triggering ads that are quite off target on this page.

While Adsense won’t outperform my total affiliate income from the many programs spread across my sites, it WILL, if current trends continue, match my total affiliate income and therefore double advertising income!

The biggest benefit was the incentive to rebuild WebSite101, which got it’s design in 1998. I’ve needed to do that, but man is it tedious adapting all that content while maintaining page names and fitting it all back together with existing affiliate links and updating outdated stuff. Adsense gave me the incentive to do that by making my content finally pay for itself. It also gives me incentive to keep adding more relevant content.

I’m sold and wholeheartedly recommend Adsense to anyone with sufficient content to support it. While I won’t dump existing affiliate program producers, I’m dropping those that don’t produce clickthroughs and sales – fast – like hot potatoes. Get Adsense if Google approves your site. You’ll love it too.
http://www.google.com/adsense.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketin.

Sep

2003

Search Engines From A Webmaster Perspective

Introduction
By now, virtually every webmaster has heard or read that the major search engines are responsible for 80% or more of the traffic received by most web sites and that most searchers never look beyond the first 20 – 50 search results. Not surprisingly, an entire industry devoted to search engine ranking and search engine optimization (SEO) has sprung up to capitalize on these well known facts.

Tens of thousands of web sites compete to achieve top ranking for their chosen keywords and keyword phrases. We’ve published numerous articles by various SEO experts on linking strategies, optimizing meta tags and page content, and relevant page content. And, undoubtedly, we’ll publish many more. Achieving a top ranking for a particular keyword or phrase is a major accomplishment, but the sad fact is that most web sites will never come close to reaching a top 10, a top 30, or even a top 100, listing in any major search engine.

Is it possible to be listed in the top 10 – 30 search results of a major search engine? Yes, possible, just not very likely for the average web site. It’s a lot like playing the lottery and with the same appeal. Get your site in the top 10 search results and the payoffs are big – you just need to knock out a few million competitors.

The Rise Of Pay-Per-Click
The difficulty in achieving a top ranking for a free site listing has in recent years given rise to the pay-per-click search engine phenomena. Overture’s singular success with this model has resulted in hundreds of search engines jumping on the pay-per-click bandwagon. Pay-per-click is a great idea and taps right into the frustrated webmaster/site owner market. Many site owners simply do not want to be bothered with checking keyword density, tweaking their page content, fiddling with their meta tags and undertaking linking campaigns.

With pay-per-click, you get the site ranking you can afford. A simple, understandable concept. If money isn’t a problem, the PPC system is hard to beat.

Most experts would probably recommend combining search engine optimization with PPC for maximizing traffic. And, there you have it – the two dominant methods for driving targeted visitors to your web site. Dominant, but probably irrelevant to the vast
majority of site owners and webmasters who don’t have the time to learn the ever-changing art of SEO or the budget for PPC’s and SEO firms.

What should be relevant is how to get traffic to your site without breaking the bank or having to earn a degree in SEO techniques. Where it comes from should be secondary. Don’t limit your traffic building efforts to just a few of the majors like Google, Yahoo, Inktomi and Overture. The top 8 or 10 search engines may be popular but that doesn’t mean that your site will reap the benefits.

Here Are Several Reasons Why:
1. Sometimes the numbers work against you. Another billion pages added to Google or AlltheWeb are NOT going to help the average site owner – they are just going to bury the needle – your website – deeper in the haystack. And search traffic is only important, if your website can be found.

2. The major search engines cater primarily to searchers not webmasters. Why? Because more search traffic means more revenue and there are far more searchers than webmasters.

3. Even PPC engines deliver more than top 50 search results. That means unless you’re a high bidder, your website may still not be seen by many.

From a webmaster’s perspective what you should be looking for in a search engine is the right balance of search traffic and understandable site listing/ranking options. Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask Jeeves have massive traffic, but you need to evaluate your chances for having your web site added and then ranked well. You also need to determine if a search engine is more focused on revenue generation through ads, paid inclusion and Sponsored listings than they are in catering to your concerns about where your web site appears.

More specifically, when evaluating any engine regardless of size or traffic, you should consider the following factors:

1. Free Site Listings
A few years ago, you could submit your site to almost any search engine, small or large, for free. But times have changed. Today, even many second tier engines have PPC or paid inclusion programs, and free submissions, where offered, are often given little attention. This ties right into the second feature you should be looking for in a search engine.

2. Indexing Speed
The usual pitch is that free listings can take a month or more to be added (with some SE’s, never is more likely), but a paid listing will be added within 48 hours to a week. Does this make sense? Most search engines don’t manually review site submissions so whether a submission is free or paid shouldn’t affect indexing speed. Slow indexing for free site submissions is most often nothing more than a deliberate ploy to get your
money.

3. Ranking Options
Look for a search engine that offers some clues on how to improve your site ranking, short of emptying your wallet. Few engines reveal all the factors they use in ranking sites but knowing where the emphasis is (content, link popularity, meta tags, etc.) can be enough to point you in the right direction. There are also a handful of engines and directories that offer innovative listing options that give your website a much better chance of being seen.

4. Quality Searches
Important to site owners and searchers alike. When quality sites are buried in a sea of second rate listings, no one benefits.

5. Traffic
If you want your website seen, the traffic a search engine attracts is important, but don’t be too quick to write off smaller, up and coming engines. Not too long ago both Google and Overture were considered long shots in the search engine wars. Also, keep in mind that top ranking in an engine that receives a few million searches per month may be more important to you than no ranking in an engine that receives millions of searches per day.

6. Paid Listing Options:
Look for paid listing options that offer more than fast inclusion in a database. With PPC, you get what you pay for, but with paid inclusion, you should receive more than
you would with a free listing.

If you’re not familiar with any search engines other than the big players, check out FreeWebSubmission.com (http://www.freewebsubmission.com) where you can find a list
of the 50 top search engines that still offer free site listings. Engines are ranked by their Alexa rating which indicates their user popularity. Here’s a list of the top 10 from FWS with current Alexa rankings:

1. Google – 5
2. Lycos – 44
3. AltaVista – 64
4. About – 86
5. Open Directory – 157
6. AlltheWeb – 215
7. ExactSeek – 1,999
8. ScrubTheWeb – 2,483
9. What U Seek – 2,868
10. SearchHippo – 2,905

Some other engines and directories worth considering in your promotion efforts are Gimpsy (http://www.gimpsy.com/), RoList (http://www.rolist.com), SitesOnDisplay (http://www.sitesondisplay.com) and National Directory (http://www.nationaldirectory.com).

Author Bio:
Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites. The Jayde network currently consists of 12 websites, including ExactSeek.com (http://www.exactseek.com) and SiteProNews.com (http://www.sitepronews.com).

Sep

2003

Keyword Voodoo! Invisible Metatag Mumbo Jumbo

Keyword Voodoo! Invisible Metatag Mumbo Jumbo
Search Engine Optimization clients often ask about secret keywords as if there is some sort of Keyword Voodoo that only Search engine optimization specialists understand.

Rather than simply using keywords liberally in page text, web site owners seem to believe if they use them in those invisible meta tags, that it will improve their ranking for keywords that aren’t on the visible part of the page.

Clients attempt to use site-wide keywords that reference all the products they sell from every page on the site! This widely misunderstood tactic actually hurts ranking rather than helping it. Here’s an easy rule of thumb.

If the keyword isn’t in the page body text in the single page you are looking at, don’t use it in any meta tags. If you feel you must use the keyword in meta tags, then you must also insert it into the visible page text. Not into images or their alt tags, not in title attributes, not in directory names or image names, IN BODY TEXT. If you ignore this recommendation, you dilute relevance of any keywords that ARE in body text. Start on the page!

Clients get caught up in arcane minutia of SEO worrying over details that they don’t understand, taken out of context from articles they’ve seen or arguments they’ve read in discussion lists. A litany of questions ensues.

Am I better off with generic keywords or brand specific keywords? Do I make special landing pages with targeted keyword phrases, or better yet, keyword domains focusing only on specific keywords? Do I put my best keywords all over the page or put them at the top for more relevance? Should I use those important keyword phrases in a title tags even if they aren’t on the page? How about comment tags, alt text tags, noframes tags, and noscript tags?

If you insist on believing in keyword voodoo, I suggest that you concentrate on the no voodoo tag.

For those of you who actually want to rank well in the search engines for your important keyword phrases, and who don’t want to spend time burning candles, chanting incantations and poking keyword pins into voodoo dolls, I suggest you learn the simplest of all SEO rules.

Put your keywords in the text on your web page! If the keywords aren’t already included within the body text of your web site in sufficient density, then it won’t matter what HTML tags you use or where you put them.

Often clients react with intense surprise when I tell them that the keywords they are targeting are nowhere to be found on their home page and we need to add them.

One surprised site owner pointed to the graphic images across the top and bottom of their pages where keyword phrases loomed in giant stylized type across the page. They asked about the menu bar along the left of their site template, “You know, those that change color as you hover your mouse over them?” Sorry, those are images.

The solution is NOT in the images with words painted on them by fancy graphics programs, but in real body text.

Here’s a quick test I recommend to clients. Visit your site home page online. Go to the browser menu, choose “Edit” and then “Select All”. This highlights all text on the page. Then go again to the browser menu, again choose “Edit” then click on “Copy”, which will copy
that highlighted text to your clipboard. Now open up Notepad from your Windows “Start” menu by choosing the “Programs”, then “Accessories” and finally “Notepad”.

When the blank page of Notepad text editor opens, paste the text you’ve copied from your page into it by going to the Notepad menu bar, choosing “Edit” then “Paste”. Many who don’t do their own design work are startled by how few words of text actually appear when doing this little test. This serves as a wake-up call when they experience this demonstration and begin to come to an understanding that this text is all the search engines see, or care about.

This text shows clearly that not everything that you can see on the page is actual text. Much of it is made up of images with stylized text painted on to them by a graphics program. What you see on that Notepad page now is your visible body text. That text that you now have in front of you is all that matters to the search engines. They don’t care about the images or invisible Voodoo meta tags.

Even then, surprised clients blurt, “We included those keywords in the invisible HTML code on the page lots of times in special (Voodoo) meta tags our developer used.”

Entrepreneurs often hire developers based on stellar client lists or personal recommendations from partners or even staff members, but search engine optimization is rarely understood to be among the skill sets needed within web design jobs. SEO is done only by specialist Keyword Voodoo practitioners that come in later to save site owners from “invisible HTML tags” haunting their keyword-less pages.

What do SEO’s do? Add the keywords to the body text – FIRST, before anything else is done. There are clearly additional things we do as well, but the path to highly ranked web pages is not in the HTML that you CAN’T see, it is right in the body text of the page in the form of visible words on the page.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing

Sep

2003

Reciprocal Linking Techniques For A Successful Web Site

Reciprocal Linking Techniques For A Successful Web Site
Building a successful web site is a process that works best when done in a deliberate, logical step-by-step manner. The first step is to build a top quality web site that is packed with interesting and useful content.

Next, you need to submit your site to the major directories and begin a well thought out advertising campaign.

But the single most important step is getting a top ranking in the major search engines, most notably Google and MSN.

When ranking the sites in their index, Google places a very high importance on “link popularity”, that is the sites that have the most high-quality incoming links generally rank higher in Google. Getting links to your site from other sites is an absolute must for a top ranking in Google and the other top search engines (top 10 at a minimum).

The question that you may be asking is “How do I get these links?”. There are many ways to attain links to your web site, but it can be very difficult for new sites to get other sites to link to them.

There’s a simple way to jump-start the process however. It’s called “reciprocal linking”. This is how it works: You search for sites that are in the same general topic area as yours (but not sites that compete directly). After you find a list of suitable link exchange partners, you place a link to their site on your site. Then you email the webmasters of the other sites and ask for a link exchange.

Do not send generic copies of the same email to each webmaster however. Rather, take a few minutes to browse each site. Then write a personalized email to the webmaster explaining what you liked about the site (be specific) and why you think a link exchange would benefit both parties.

Be sure to address the webmaster by name if at all possible. Also, be sure to give him your link exchange information. This should include the title of your site, a short description, and the URL that you want his site to link to (this doesn’t have to be the home page). And be sure to include the URL of the page that already has his reciprocal link on it.

After you have sent the emails, expect a few rejections for various reasons. This is normal and expected so don’t be at all discouraged. You will also quickly get a few emails from webmasters accepting your offer. Verify that your reciprocal link is in fact on their sites and then send a “thank you” email.

A great way to find potential link partners is to do a Google search on one of your main keywords or phrases. You will most likely have many pages of sites listed in the search results.

Here is a simple way to find out which of these sites actively exchange links: Go to the bottom of the Google search results page. Click on “Search within results”. In the text box type in “Add URL”. This will return only the sites in your original search results listings that have an “Add URL” link on their web site. You can also do a search for “link exchange”.

If you aggressively pursue link exchanges on a regular basis, within a few short months you’ll have built up good rankings in the search engines with a steady flow of targeted traffic to your web site!

Author Bio:
Rick Rouse is the owner of RLROUSE Webmaster Resources and the author of “Super Webmaster SEO Toolkit” which gives step by-step instructions for getting a top 10 listing in Google & Yahoo.

Sep

2003

Google Drives 70% Of All Web Traffic! Wake Up MSN, YAHOO!

Google Drives 70% Of All Web Traffic! Wake Up MSN, YAHOO!
A recent post in a discussion list suggested that Google is becoming the Microsoft of search (dominating web search as Microsoft dominates PC operating systems). So I decided to research a theory – one I’d developed about search engine traffic. I dug into the traffic stats on three of my own sites and those of several clients that I monitor traffic for.

While this case study is tiny and certainly NOT conclusive, I’ll wager it has strong parallels across small business web sites. The conclusions drawn are admittedly opinion, based on very limited statistics, but those are all that matter to those of us seeing tiny search engine traffic from supposedly monstrous portals.

The participating clients from this case study ALL submit their sites to paid inclusion programs from AltaVista, Inktomi and AskJeeves/Teoma. Two use LookSmart LookListings and all but one are listed in YAHOO! Directory. All are listed in the Open Directory Project and all submit to smaller industry specific directories and smaller search engines. One uses Overture PPC on a limited basis, while none use Google Adwords. All were optimized by yours truly and each represent varied industries in retail, professional services and one is an information site only, is non-commercial and sells nothing. Each of them ranks well at most search engines, but see little traffic from those good rankings.

The research I did confirmed what I’d only assumed before by backing it up with solid numbers. On my own sites and those of clients that I reviewed, Google sends over 70% of all search traffic to every one of those domains in every case. This includes Google foreign variants, Google Directory and Google image search (image search numbers are tiny). The foreign Googles send tiny numbers of visitors from non-English speaking countries, but English speaking Google traffic from the UK, Canada and Australia drives more traffic than either Yahoo or MSN according to traffic statistics of those sites reviewed for this case study.

With the highest difference between compared search engine traffic of 8 percent variation between studied domains, I’ve compiled a list of average traffic delivered by search engines for those sites to which I have access to traffic logs. The Google percentages are inclusive of those portals that use Google results such as iWon.com and Yahoo web results. Direct Yahoo results are for sites listed in their directory.

Google 74%
Yahoo 14%
MSN 9%
Ask 2%
All other SE’s 1%

I’m concerned, not that Google is too big, but that the other search engines just don’t get it, don’t deliver it and don’t want to give it up. What is IT? Traffic!

I attribute this to one thing. Those search engines don’t want to give up visitors to FREE search results. They are happy to send visitors off if they gain income from that traffic in either PPC ads or advertisements of ANY sort. Knowing that those free results will lose the “eyeballs” of searchers, they struggle to deliver both PPC ads and sponsor ads that most closely approximate the search phrase entered by the searcher. Thankfully, all have dropped banner ads from the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages).

They cannot stand the idea they will lose the visitor and seek to entice them to click on something, anything that’ll earn them income. Even if it means delivering NON-relevant results to entice the searcher to use a different search phrase seeking to gain more relevant results, thereby viewing more ads and additional PPC ads the visitor may click on to deliver income to the portal.

I believe these search engine traffic percentages are a direct reflection of relevance delivered by those search engines. The more relevant the results, the more likely they’ll send a higher percentage of traffic to your site.

74% of search traffic referred:
Google offers their own PPC results, offers no outside banners, Amazon links or effluvia related to the search. They deliver relevant results and visitors love that, then leave freely to return next time they want relevant results.

14% of search traffic referred:
Yahoo offers Overture PPC results (which they’ll soon own), Amazon links and sponsorship links, along with that “Also search in: Yahoo! Shopping” link at the bottom of every result page, hoping you’d rather shop than to actually find what you were searching for!

9% of search traffic referred:
MSN offers Overture PPC results, “Broaden your Search” (LookSmart) links, “Shopping Results on MSN” links and a sponsor text link at the bottom of every page as though you didn’t really want to find anything but their ads.

2% of search traffic referred:
Ask offers more paid results than any other search property with 5 sponsor links at the top of every search result page and TEN links to further paid sponsor results in a “Related Searches” footer to every result page. Ask sponsors provide search ads. Doesn’t Ask understand that most searchers see right through this?

Relevance at each of these search engines declines further with progress down the list of traffic referred. Is it any wonder Google is the leader? They lead in relevance, therefore in search engine referred traffic. All any engine need do is provide relevant results with limited sponsors and no excessive “shopping” or multiple source PPC links and book links. If they do that, they’ll compete effectively with Google. More relevant search engines deliver the traffic to web sites, NOT to their advertisers.

I have a bold suggestion to make to MSN as they develop their new in-house search engine. Drop the ads, sponsors, book links, shopping links and resist the temptation to bring back banner ads. Searchers want to find what they are looking for and easily see through transparent attempts to sell stuff to them and keep them from leaving. Let go of searchers by delivering highly relevant search results while clearly labeling limited numbers of sponsor or PPC ads! The result will be devastating to Google by giving searchers a real alternative that they may prefer using!

YAHOO! has a huge task ahead of them – to integrate the recently acquired Inktomi, Overture (and Overture’s recent acquisitions Altavista and Fast/AlltheWeb) search technology into their search mix. Clearly they’ve plenty of technology now and won’t need Google when they add all these ingredients to the search soup they are cooking up. Yahoo will possess all the best technology and must only decide to provide relevant search results WITHOUT shopping links, excessive sponsor links, book links and other clutter to the SERP’s. I suggest that if they show only limited Overture PPC ads and clearly labeled sponsor ads along with the relevant results – that they can also threaten Google’s lead.

If the re-born, re-cooked and massively complex YAHOO! or the “new” MSN resist the temptation to send searchers to advertisers rather than sending them to relevant results, then we will have three very strong competitors in the search market. The numbers of search referrals will level off at about 30% per competitor and Google will have to fight to gain back their current dominance. If YAHOO! or MSN seek to favor advertisers over searchers, Google will maintain dominance – clear and simple.

I encourage all webmasters to do their own comparisons of traffic referrals now and then again when YAHOO! and MSN weigh in over the next year with their “new” offerings. It could get very interesting if there were some true competition in search, so referred traffic from YAHOO! and MSN starts to deliver to webmasters rather than advertisers.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing

Sep

2003

5 Ways To Get Other Websites To Link To Yours

5 Ways To Get Other Websites To Link To Yours
In-bound links from other web sites to yours provide two avenues to success for your site.

First, the number of quality in-bound links pointing to your web site are a major factor that the search engines (including Google) use to rank web pages in their databases. Lots of high-quality in-bound links can help boost a page into the “top 10” of a search engine’s search results page (SERP).

In addition to the search engine ranking benefits provided by in-bound links, they are also a very steady supply of referral traffic to your web site! If you are able to attain a large number of links from quality sites, you will get about as much traffic from referrals as you get from the search engines.

The big question is “How do I get other sites to link to mine?”.

There are several techniques that you can use to entice other webmasters to link to your site:

1 – Simply ask the webmaster for a link! If your site can be a valuable resource for the other site’s visitors, send the webmaster a polite, personalized email asking for a link. Tell the other webmaster why a link to your site would be beneficial to his visitors (and his site).

For example: Your site sells books about web site promotion. Your web site would probably be of value to the visitors of a site that features web authoring books or tutorials. And since your site compliments (but doesn’t compete with) his site, he may well be happy to give you a link!

2 – Offer the other webmaster a freebie in exchange for a link. You could offer a free software download, a free service (such as search engine optimization for his site), or a testimonial for his site (with your link in it of course).

3 – Write articles about a topic in your field of expertise. Offer to let other webmasters use the article on their websites or in their newsletters. At the end of the article will be a “resource box” that provides information about you and a link to your web site. Writing free articles is a major traffic-builder!

4 – Produce and distribute free ebooks about topics in your field of expertise. Give (or better yet sell) other webmasters the right to distribute your ebook via their web sites or newsletters. Of course, each ebook will have information about your web site as well as a link to it!

5 – Exchange links with other web sites that compliment (but don’t compete) with yours. Do a Google search on one of your target keywords. Contact each webmaster with a personalized email explaining why a link exchange would benefit both sites (be very specific). Then ask to exchange links. It helps to already have his “reciprocal” link in place before you contact him with the URL of the page on your site with his link on it.

There are numerous other techniques that you can use to get in-bound links to your site. Simply use your imagination. If you devise a well-thought out plan for your link campaign and apply it with diligence, you can watch your search engine rankings and web site traffic steadily climb to ever new heights!

Sep

2003

How To Reach All the Engines

How To Reach All The Search Engines
Hi Jill,

I don’t know if you will recollect, but we have communicated several times and your feedback is always so helpful. Hope you can give me a little assistance here.

I am using WPG’s page critic. It is quickly apparent that what works for one search engine is frequently quite different on another. What is the answer?

I could use a robot.txt file and create a different version of each index page but is this a smart approach? Does this look to be like
spamming? How do you handle these differences?

Thanks in advance.

Jerry

~~~Jill’s Reply~~~

Hi Jerry,

Nice to hear from you!

The answer to your problem is to simply not use PageCritic. It’s totally wrong, from my perspective. Pages can and do rank highly on
all the search engines. There’s never a need to design a page for any particular engine at the exclusion of others.

Make your pages the best they can be for your users and search engines in general, and your site will do great!

Jill

[Apparently my reply didn’t quite answer Jerry’s concerns, so he wrote me back with additional questions. See below…as the Q&A
continues… J]

Jerry’s Response
Hi Jill,

The thing that drives me crazy is how well all of my sites do on Google and how poorly they do on MSN (why, btw, do all of MSN’s results come from LookSmart?). So, knowing what needs to be done to the page to move up in MSN is important. Do I simply rely on
Searchenginewatch or others for that insight?

I’m surprised to hear your response. I know better than to use the [WebPositionGold] submitter or the page generator but I thought their knowledge base and page critic were good tools for getting general insights on a page vs. search engine.

Do you mind telling me how you determine what to do on a page when faced with a similar dilemma?

What is about WPG that you believe makes it an invaluable SEO tool?

Again, thanks for your help and feedback.

Jerry

~~~Jill’s Reply~~~

Hi Jerry,

The thing that drives me crazy is how well all of my sites do on Google and how poorly they do on MSN (why, btw, do all of MSN’s results come from LookSmart?).

MSN is all about the money. If you care about doing well with them, you probably should pony up to LookSmart and pay for every click to your site. Unfortunately, the Inktomi listings only show up *after* the LookSmart listings. Of course, even Inktomi wants some of your cash these days. If you absolutely need to be doing well in MSN, you can use paid Inktomi inclusion and tweak your pages to your heart’s content. You’ll be spidered every 48 hours and can see what works and doesn’t. You’ll need to shoot for the phrases that have no LookSmart listings, though, as there’s no way to beat them with Inktomi “natural” results.

So, knowing what needs to be done to the page to move up in MSN is important. Do I simply rely on Searchenginewatch or others for that insight?

All of the search engines want the same thing — to show the pages that are the most relevant to the search query. Keep working on your pages so that they are the most relevant in all respects, and you’ll eventually get lots of highly targeted traffic and sales.

I’m surprised to hear your response. I know better than to use the submitter or the page generator but I thought their knowledge base and page critic were good tools for getting general insights on a page vs. search engine.

If you like numbers, I suppose PageCritic can be interesting. But years ago when I ran some high-ranking sites through the PageCritic and it told me that they needed to be changed, I decided never to look at it again. It only works for the algorithm du jour. If you want to chase whatever algorithm is up to bat on any given day, more power to you.

I prefer a long-term approach, which blankets all the engines with lots of keyword phrases that are relevant to my sites. This way when some phrases are ranking highly in some engines, and others are ranking highly in other engines, I still have good representation across the board. Rankings do change. They can change on any given day. Up and down, down and up. That’s life in the SEO game. The trick is not to look at the minutiae, and see the big picture instead. Forget about rankings even. Are you being found in the engines for relevant phrases, and are you converting that traffic into sales? That’s what matters.

What is about WPG that you believe makes it an invaluable SEO tool?

It’s really not an invaluable tool to me anymore. Five years ago, when we had many competing search engines and it was important to be ranked highly in all of them, WPG as an easy way to check positions. Today, there are only 2 or 3 search databases that anyone cares about, making it easy enough to do some spot checking by hand. Or even
better — to simply check server logs. That’s the best indication of how you’re doing.

Hope this helps!

Jill

Author Bio:
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine marketing consultant and editor of the free weekly email newsletter, the High Rankings Advisor.

Sep

2003

Untangling The Web

Make Online Marketing An Effective Sales Tool
All businesses should have some kind of Internet presence, if only to help the occasional Web searcher find the phone number to a nearby brick-and-mortar store. Like most corporations, many HVAC and sheet metal companies today want their Web sites to go beyond a simple online brochure, but they also need to get a decent return on investment to justify operating, promoting and maintaining an engaging Web presence. Here are some ways to ensure your Web site stands out.

An effective Web site not only needs to be attractive, it has to be easy for visitors to find and use. It has to create interest in a company’s products or services. Ideally, it will make visitors want to buy, or at least call a company for more information.

Thanks mostly to software and a growing online-marketing industry, companies now have full control over how and where they appear online, and company officials can know exactly how many people come to their Web site, where they come from, what they do and how much they buy.

Internet Exposure
Some online customers know a company’s Web address and type it into their browser directly. When that happens, it’s an indicator of good branding, which is mostly established through off-line marketing efforts. The best way to catch this valuable traffic is by selecting a good Web address, sometimes called a “URL.” Preferably, the address will include the company’s business name or a brand name people commonly use when referring to the company (usually without the “Inc.” and “Corp.” attached). Addresses should avoid hyphens, if possible, and officials should buy similar, available Web addresses that people might type in when looking for the company. These additional Web address can then instantly redirect visitors to the main Web site.

To capture those potential customers who don’t know a company well enough to type in a direct address, a Web site needs to appear in online databases called “search engines.” Popular examples include Yahoo, Google and Alta Vista. A search engine scans the Internet for Web sites that contain a certain word or phrase.

To maximize online marketing efforts, a corporation’s Web site should appear in the No. 1 position when someone types in the company’s name. Ideally, the Web site should appear prominently when a visitor types in any phrase that relates to what the business sells. Some manufacturing companies don’t bother pursuing good search-engine listings, figuring their potential clients are not searching for information or products online.

No Need To Guess
But no company needs to guess whether people are looking for them online. Software and Web applications are available that can tell officials approximately how many Web users are searching for their products. One of the most popular Web-based tools is WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com). A one-day subscription is available for $7. This software gives its users a list of how many people search for a phrase. These statistics can give Web site owners an idea of which phrases are more searched than others in a particular industry. (See Figure 1)

Appearing under any phrases in a search engine is a bit more complicated than it looks. Most search engines provide two types of listings for searches: sponsored listings and free listings. Companies can appear in both of these types of listings.

Exposure in the free listings is determined by the search engine itself, which searches online for Web sites to index in its database and then determines, based on a Web site’s code and content, where it should appear in the free list of results for particular phrases. This method explains why most Web sites appear when someone types in their business name. The Web site content usually contains that name multiple times, basically telling the search engines that the name of the company is an important phrase for the Web site.

There are ways to encourage a search engine to see the Web site as important to other phrases beyond the company name. This is called optimizing a Web site for search engines and an entire online-marketing industry has developed to help companies optimize their Web site for free search listings in Google (www.google.com) and other search engines.

Pay For Placement
Most companies, however, direct their online-marketing efforts towards a simpler task: paying to appear under the sponsored listing section in multiple search engines. There are many places online to pay for placement, but the two most common search engines offering paid placement are Google and Overture (www.overture.com), which serves as a distributor of paid listings to the search engines such as Yahoo and MSN. Both these engines let Web site owners bid on a per-click cost for a sponsored ad and let the company determine what phrases it would like that ad to appear under. Web site owners then pay every time a user clicks on their sponsored ad.

WordTracker software also helps subscribers know how much a particular phrase costs on the search engine Overture. (See Figure 2)

Although search engines are the most popular and easy way to increase a Web site’s online exposure, companies can also buy “banner ads” – ads that appear across the top of a Web page – and listings in industry-related Web sites and newsletters. Associations, press publications, and related industry or online-resource Web sites offer advertising to qualified buyers in Web site directories, through banners on front and internal pages, and within their online newsletters.

Tracking Traffic, Volume And Behavior
Once a Web site has a decent online presence in general search engines and industry-related Web sites, traffic will increase and, hopefully, so will customer leads and sales. But companies don’t need to rely on hope to determine if their Web site is bringing in buying traffic. Web sites are hosted on servers that track basic information about site traffic in what’s called a “server log.” Software is available to help companies compile this log information and organize it into reports that can tell a company where users specifically come from, what pages those users go to once they enter the Web site, and how many of those users buy products or request more information on the Web site, among other things.

The amount of details available about traffic volume and behavior within a Web site is dependent on the software used to compile that information. One of the largest Web site server-log software is WebTrends (www.webtrends.com), available by subscription in several versions, depending on a Web site’s statistical needs. There are, however, hundreds of software packages available, each offering companies something different in compiling capabilities. Some compile reports that indicate general trends of traffic volume and behavior, while others can tell companies details like how much they paid for an ad in Overture, which products those Overture visitors bought online, and then what the specific return on investment was for that phrase and ad in the Overture engine for a month’s time. Other software helps companies gather information about visitors, which can then help the company compile reports about a specific visitor’s behavior on the Web site each time he or she visits. Online bookseller Amazon.com is one well-known example.

Once a company chooses the best software for its needs, reports can be generated to answer questions like:

Is the marketing attracting qualified traffic?

What Web sites refer buyers and leads?

How does traffic move through the Web site?

What pages do users typically leave from?

What percentages of users buy or request information on the first visit?

How much does it cost for every online lead or buyer?

Making Sales
Compiling and analyzing Web site statistics can only be effective if the Web site design and marketing has been done with goals in mind. Companies that want an effective Web site need to have a business and marketing plan for the site and not operate it haphazardly. If the Web site is more than just an online brochure, it can represent the company as a mini-business in a virtual world.

Most companies want online visitors to buy product or services from them, but that goal is typically too simplistic to be effective. Online-marketing research indicates that most first-time Web site visitors don’t purchase a product or service during their initial exposure to the Web site.

One commonly quoted figure estimates that on average, only 2 percent to 3 percent of Web site traffic will perform a “most-wanted-response” during a Web site visit, even if that response is not a purchase but a request for information or signing up for a newsletter. Web site goals can be even harder to determine when a company sells products through a distribution network.

Since most people need to return to a Web site multiple times before requesting information or making a purchase, some of the most effective goals for a Web site involve keeping the visitor engaged with useful information and capturing e-mails and names to entice visitors back to the Web site until they’re ready to buy.

The most common way to capture information is by offering an industry newsletter that provides valuable resources or information on a weekly or monthly basis. But contests, request-for-information forms, and free trials or products can also be good customer-retention goals for a Web site and can all inspire qualified leads to give an e-mail address, name or phone number.

Once a company establishes some activities for visitors, they can track the conversion rate between the total number of visitors and those that perform the desired actions on the Web site. If those goals are clearly established and analyzed, the information about how visitors find and interact with the Web site can justify changes in the marketing plan, content creation and Web site design. This information will also justify the costs of owning and operating the Web site, and can give companies hard figures about online lead costs and the costs of sales conversions.

WordTracker software also helps subscribers know how much a particular phrase costs on the search engine Overture. (See Figure 2)

Once a company chooses the best software for its needs, reports can be generated to answer questions like:

Is the marketing attracting qualified traffic?

What Web sites refer buyers and leads?

How does traffic move through the Web site?

What pages do users typically leave from?

What percentages of users buy or request information on the first visit?

How much does it cost for every online lead or buyer?

Author Bio:
Article by Sage Lewis, founder and president of the web site promotion firm SageRock.com. He has been employed as an Internet Strategist and design/promotion consultant for 6 years.

Sep

2003

Inside Search Engine Strategies, San Jose

Day One
Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies rolled into San Jose this week, bringing an unprecedented four days of search engine marketing advice (SEM) and news to more than 1700 attendees. If you still had reservations about the legitimacy of search engine marketing, one look at the impressive roster of exhibitors, sponsors and attendees would quickly dispel any doubts.

More than 48 companies, including Google and Yahoo, decided to exhibit at the event (the highest number of exhibitors ever for SES) and speakers included representatives from all of the main search engines as well as the top SEM companies.

At the immensely busy registration desk, a buzz was developing with attendees enthused about recent developments in the search engine industry. With Overture, Google and Lycos, just a few of the search engines expected to make some big announcements during the proceedings, the conference was expected to provide a lot more than just ‘how-to’ information.

Day One of the conference had been designated as a ‘pre-conference’ day with the sessions taking on two distinct tracts. Danny had decided to move all the beginners SEM sessions to this day and additionally take the opportunity to provide an annual update on the economics of the search engine industry.

As part of this exclusive insight to the world’s largest SEO conference, I decided to take a seat in many of the search engine economic sessions. A notable exception being my own presentation on ‘Search Term Research’ (which I provided as part of the beginners itinerary).

One of the most interesting sessions of the day was unquestionably the Search Monetization Strategies. While none of the panelists could agree on what ‘monetization’ meant, they all had some interesting information to share.

Sheryl Sandberg, VP of Global Online Sales & Operations for Google was the first to speak on the topic. Discussing the growth of Google, she shared with us that Google is not only the largest search engine property, but is also the fastest growing. Focusing on the ‘how do make money’ side of Google’s operations, she offered that with more than one hundred thousand advertisers, eight-eight different interfaces and products in 11 languages, Google had taken great steps to secure its position.

Sandberg also shared with the audience the great success they had seen with their Google Search Appliance product, allowing any business to purchase an easy and effective search tool for their own website. With companies on board that include Boeing, Cisco and Xerox she confirmed that this is a growing market for Google. She also took the time to showcase the recently launched AdSense service, which allows the average website to display Google’s AdWords campaigns and receive commission on the click-thrus. The success of AdSense is in part due to the fact that Google is able to spider the website of the proposed partner and use an algorithm to determine which ads would be most relevant to the page being displayed. This format was far more accurate than simply asking the website owner which terms they thought were relevant to the page.

Finishing, Sandberg offered answers to audience questions which confirmed the following:

1. Google has no plans to introduce a ‘paid inclusion’ or trusted feed service at anytime in the future.

2. While Google’s AdWords campaign does track the click-thru rates of an ad, they do not track how long a visitor remains on the advertiser’s website.

3. Commenting on eBay’s request to remove any ads that infringe on their copyright, Sandberg confirmed that these requests could be made by any company concerned about trademark or copyright infringement.

While Google is still the darling of the search engine industry, Yahoo has caused quite a stir with their recent acquisitions. Tim Cadogan, VP of Search for Yahoo explained some of the initiatives Yahoo had taken to improve their search offerings. One of the most interesting Yahoo developments has to be their new Product search. While still in beta-testing, this service strikes an uncanny resemblance to Google’s new Froogle service. Perhaps its no surprise that the new service from Yahoo will also include sponsored listings from Overture.

Cadogan also describe some other steps Yahoo has taken to improve user access to search. These included:

1. Showing Yahoo Yellow Pages listings in search results for products or services that also include a zip code. E.g. Pizza delivery 95110

2. Search for Weather or Maps for a location will bring up relevant information not just search results.

3. Including a search box in Yahoo Mail accounts so that a user receiving an email on a product or service can search without leaving their mailbox,

With the addition of Tony Mamone of LookSmart and Jim Diaz from Ask Jeeves, a lot of information was shared. Look for more details in a future round-up of the session.

Another session of interest was the Advertiser Roundtable. This was an opportunity for respected experts in the search engine marketing industry to discuss future developments of the search engine technology, in particular PPC and Paid Inclusion.

Most of the panelists agreed that there needed to be a lot of improvements made to PPC or paid inclusion if the search engines wish to see marketers continue to use these mediums. Dana Todd of SiteLab International made a valid point when she complained that with all PPC solutions an advertiser must pay the same click-thru rate whether their ad was shown on one of the top search engine partners or on some lowly unknown search engine. She suggested that a model would need to be developed which would provide for different costs per click depending on the quality of traffic.

Kevin Lee of Did-It.com offered that there are two types of company that place high bids for search terms. Those that are very smart and those that are incredibly dumb. The smart bidders are the ones that track traffic and understand the value of their visitors, while the dumb ones simply keep increasing their bids without knowing if the high bid brings a ROI.

Asked whether PPC and paid inclusion would overtake Organic SEM, Frederick Markini of iProspect suggested that there would always be a need for a balance in online marketing. With PPC there is always a risk that a company will run out of money or no longer be able to keep up with escalating bids, he argued that organic SEM did not suffer from these factors.

The Industry Analyst Roundtable session brought together some of the industry’s best know analysts. Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman of Search Engine Watch were joined by Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld.com and Greg Notess of Search Engine Showdown.

This open forum took on a simple format with audience members interacting with the panelists. Some topics discussed, of which I will bring further details of after the conference, included:

1. Anecdotal evidence that simple paid inclusions did offer some assistance with obtaining better search engine ranking despite claims to the contrary by the search engines themselves.

2. The limitations of PPC; advertisers are limited to only being displayed for search requests that they have identified and bid on. Many search terms have no PPC bids on them.

3. The constant evolution of search engines. Google replaced AltaVista, will Nutch replace Google?

4. Should XML Trusted feeds be labeled as such, clearly identifying their placement in search results?

Day Two of the conference will revert to the normal format expected from SES and with three distinct tracts being offered, there should be lots of varied information to report back. In the meantime, please excuse me while I prepare for tonight’s ‘Google Dance’ a soiree taken place at the Googleplex where I hope to track down a Google employee and find out exactly what is happening with their PageRank these days.

Day Two
Day Two of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose promised to step up the pace with the offering of three separate itineraries for search engine marketers to choose from. While many attendees were recovering from the Google Dance the night before (which should probably be re-named ‘Googlepalooza’ as the open air event offered a soundstage with DJs, marquee tents, Segway rides and massage chairs all designed to sweep attendees up in further Google hysteria), they soon got down to business when Danny Sullivan took to the podium to give an unprecedented keynote address on the state of the Search Engine Industry.

While Danny started off his address with a comical look at the recent acquisition upon acquisition, he soon got down to the nitty-gritty of the future of search. With over 5 billion searches conducted in the month of June, he confirmed there is no doubt that the search engines are here to stay. Danny decided to look into his ‘crystal ball’ and made some predictions of what is to come. Some important observations included:

• Yahoo will launch its new search engine sometime in 2004 with a combination of Inktomi, AltaVista and AllTheWeb technologies.

• MSN should also be ready to launch their own crawler in 2004, with the possibility of purchasing any of Ask Jeeves, FindWhat, LookSmart or even Google, to help speed up the implementation.

• AOL is likely to continue its partnership with Google as this remains a non-competitive relationship for them.

Moving on to audience reach of the search engines, Danny explained how Google’s current reach of 76% of all searches would be diminished in 2004. He predicted that Google’s total audience would reduce to around 51% with Yahoo at 25%, MSN at 15% and the other engines making up the remainder.

Discussing the future popularity of the search engines he suggested that Google might become a victim of its own popularity with both reporters and users experiencing ‘burn-out’. With tongue-in-cheek he predicted that Ask Jeeves would make valiant attempts to become the ‘Avis of search engines’ by positioning itself as the #2 preferred search engine. He also believed that LookSmart would position itself as the most popular supplement to primary search results, continuing its current trend of being a provider to other search engines.

Turning to paid placement and paid inclusion, Danny expected to see growth and development in this side of the industry as search engines look to increase their Advertising revenue from their search results. Citing results from an IAB survey, Danny didn’t believe that search engine users would object to paid advertising as 64% of them are already aware that it exists and 52% of those do not care, so long as the paid advertising is relevant to their search. Drawing from his previous journalism experience, he estimated that in the coming years search engines would increase the amount of paid advertising shown on a search results page from an average of 25% to around 70%.

Danny wrapped up his keynote address by answering a question on everyone’s mind; ‘Will SEO still be important?’ He strongly believed that search engine optimization (SEO) would still be a dominant part of the industry as there will need to be a balance between paid ads and organic listings.

While the Search Engines & Trademarks session concentrated on information that would be of interest to those involved with the legal aspects of a company’s campaign, there were some interesting comments that stood out.

The recent incident where eBay asked Google to remove any sponsored ads that included their trademarked name, drew claims of hypocrisy from the panelists. They pointed out that while eBay did not want companies to bid on the word ‘eBay’, one could go to Google and search for trademarked names such as ‘Barbie’ and instantly see paid ads for the product on sale at eBay.com. The panelists also touched on cases that are currently working their way thru the legal system. They suggested that, while it is fair for a company to use trademarked names in comparative examples, the waters become very murky when simply bidding on a competitor’s brand name. The best advice from all of the panelists was to seek legal advice before bidding on the trademarks of any company.

A new topic to SES was ‘Cleaning up the Mess’; a look at how to clean-up spam that had been left by another SEO company. Many of the panelists discussed techniques for identifying spam including viewing Google’s cache of the site and the source code. In addition, Matthew Bailey of The Karcher Group offered an assortment of techniques for spotting spam and rectifying it. Some of these tips included:

• With Google’s PageRank fluctuating wildly over the past couple of months, he urged SEOs to not automatically assume that a low or zero PageRank meant a penalty on the website.

• However, if you do determine that a site has been banned by Google, fixing the problem and then sending an apology email to Google outlining the problems fixed and promising not to do them again, was the best approach to getting a ban lifted.

• Bailey also suggested viewing the website with a text viewer such as the one located at http://lynx.browser.org to determine how a spider might be viewing the site.

Shari Thurow of GrantasticDesigns.com also suggested some things to keep an eye out for when reviewing a website. She pointed out that a site might not be banned, but may be using techniques that were preventing it from getting listed. These included:

• A recently redesigned site that had switched from static content to dynamic.

• A newly implemented Robots.txt file might also have an adverse effect on a site’s ranking if not correctly formatted.

• The new use of cookies or session IDs might also be to blame for a websites sudden drop in ranking.

All of the panelists suggested that businesses should review the contract of any SEO firm being considered to ensure that they would not be taking any risks. A clearly outlined ‘anti-spam’ policy was considered to be among the top things to look for when choosing an SEO. With the use of doorway pages being viewed one of the worst things an SEO could implement in an ‘organic’ optimization campaign. However, as Danny Sullivan pointed out, using doorway pages for PPC was totally fine and acceptable. Although, he confirmed that using them for ‘crawler’ listings would be bad for anyone’s website.

It seems that a new search engine statistic or survey is released every week. The Search Engine Ratings session promised to shed some light on exactly where all of this data is coming from. Up first was James Lamberti of comScore Networks to provide details on how his company collects information and what they know about search engine use. Lamberti explained that comScore uses data collected from more than 1.5 million online consumers who agree to have their Internet activity monitored passively. Unlike some consumer rating companies, comScore is able to track various types of Internet activity including searches, click-rates and conversions.

They are unique in that they are able to track online activity in addition to asking the normal consumer survey questions. The benefits of this were apparent when Lamberti offered two stunning statistics.

1. 15% of Google visitors do not actually go there to search. He gave an example that many people have Google set as their homepage when they launch their browser. This registers a visitor for Google even though no actual search was carried out.

2. 20% of consumers surveyed attributed their searches to the wrong search engine. For example, they may have said they went to AOL, but the data tracked by comScore showed they actually used MSN.

The remainder of the panel was made up of experts from Nielsen/NetRatings, Hitwise and Statmarket. While none of them could agree on percentage share of search engine users, between them they offered some very interesting statistics:

• While Google may be dominant in the US, in Japan, Yahoo receives 74.19% of all searches.

• There were 5.5 billion searches carried out worldwide in June 2003, up 28% compared to the previous year.

• In 2002, more than 25% of all online product purchases originated from a search engine.

• While 96.9% of US searches are carried out on US search engines, only 56.6% of UK searches were done on a UK search engine. In fact, the US Google is more often used in the UK than Google.co.uk.

The end of the ratings session also marked the end of the second day of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose. Day Three brings Google co-founder Sergey Brin to the Keynote address podium and advanced topics of search engine marketing and search engine technology are also introduced.

Day Three: A Chat With Sergey Brin
Day 3 of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose included a wide range of sessions covering broad topics such as ‘Meet the Crawlers’ and the more targeted ‘Google API’. However, there was not an empty seat available when Danny Sullivan sat down with Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, on the eve of his 30th birthday, to chat about the past and future of the world’s most famous search engine.

Sitting in two elegant arm-chairs with a large plasma screen providing a back-drop of a roaring log fire, the setting suggested that we were ease-dropping on too old friends who were reminiscing about the past.

Google’s growth

It has been five years since Google entered the search engine arena and in that time the then unknown challenger to AltaVista has grown from 15 million pages indexed to a colossal 3+ billion, serving 76% of US searches. Danny Sullivan recalled how Brin had attended one of the earlier conferences and had asked the audience who had heard of Google. Back then, few hands went up. Laughter circulated today’s audience when Danny gave Sergey the opportunity to ask the same question; ‘Who here has heard of Google?’

Danny then proceeded to real off the developments that Google had made this year alone; AdSense, Toolbars, buying Blogger, launching Google News Alerts etc. Asked if Sergey was proud of these accomplishments, he replied modestly, that despite the list sounding impressive, he believed they were ‘not doing enough’ in his mind. Sergey wanted his company to expand even further and provide searchers with even more technological developments and enhancements that would expand the use and enjoyment of Google.

Expanding content on the web

Danny wanted to know from Sergey which of the past year’s accomplishments he was particularly pleased with. After giving the question some thought, Sergey offered that the recent launch of their ‘AdSense’ service was his proudest moment. The affiliate type service allowed small businesses an opportunity to display Google’s AdWords sponsors on their own website, providing a means for many companies to increase income from their website by sharing in the revenue these sponsorships generated. Sergey expressed his desire for AdSense to ‘spur the next generation of content on the web’.

An IPO for Google?

Turning to the question on everyone’s lips, Danny asked Sergey if an IPO was on the horizon and when might Google make a public offering. Giving his answer, you could tell that Sergey was a man that had envisioned building a better search engine to assist the world, with the last thing on his mind being answering to Wall Street. ‘We debate [going public] periodically at board meetings’ said Brin and it ‘would be nice to have currency to do acquisitions, [however] there are significant management distractions with being public’. While his statements seemed to signal that Google does not intend to become a public company, Brin did admit that there is a ‘good chance eventually’ that they would issue an IPO but that it is ‘not the most pressing thing.’

Google acquiring MSN?

If issuing an IPO was not in the future of Google, was an acquisition strategy likely to be developed? Danny couldn’t resist putting a twist on a recurring question, ‘Any chance Google would buy Microsoft?’ Sergey joined the audience in raucous laughter as everyone dismissed this as being a possibility, although with Google’s reputation and dominance, you would be forgiven for thinking that this impossible scenario could just happen. On a more serious note, Danny did ask Sergey whether Google would entertain any advances made by a rival company such as MSN. ‘We have always said ‘no’ thus far’ explained Brin, but he went to on elaborate that they ‘can’t discount any approach’. This statement created more questions than it answered, suggesting that rumors of an approach by MSN and Yahoo had an element of truth.

Preventing misuse

Turning to the technology developments that Google had planned for the future, Danny asked Sergey to elaborate on the work that goes into the constant development of the famed Google PageRank. Sergey explained that it was still very much an important part of Google’s ranking system and that more than half a dozen new ranking technologies are tested each month with roughly half of these being integrated into Google’s PageRank algorithm. He went to on discuss the issues Google faces with spam and indicated that Google is aware of the ‘corrupt’ uses of some companies in an attempt to manipulate the PageRank but he made it quite clear that they have technologies to deal with any misuse.

Paid inclusion not likely at Google

A request that is often made to Google is that they introduce a paid inclusion option so that those interested in obtaining faster inclusion into the index, have a means to do so, at a premium. While many representatives of Google have expressed in the passed that this is unlikely to happen, Sergey made a point of clarifying his dislike of introducing paid inclusion. ‘I don’t really believe in it’ said Brin, adding that he wanted to ‘keep any kind of payment from objective search results’. ‘Objective search’ the very thing that has made Google popular, hence his reluctance to tinker with its formula for success. In the second part of the question, Danny asked whether Google had given any thought to offering some form of ‘paid support’ to allow webmasters a faster and easier way of communicating a problem with Google engineers. This was also a ‘no go’ as far as Sergey was concerned as he believed that by offering this type of premium support it would sap resources and ‘slow down [Google’s] pace of development.’

As the ‘virtual fire-place’ started to die down, Danny asked Sergey what was the worst thing about being at the helm of the worlds most popular and most analyzed search engine. After taken a few seconds to consider the question, Sergey offered a simple answer, ‘coping with the growth’. While many of us might think that we would love to be involved with a company growing as rapidly as Google, being in control of behemoth such as Google can be a daunting task for someone who has yet to celebrate his 30th birthday.

Day Four
While many attendees had decided to forego day four of Search Engine Strategies, San Jose in order to catch a flight, those that did stay, were offered some very diverse and interesting sessions to choose from.

The most important topic of the day for any search engine marketer had to be Converting Visitors into Buyers. While some marketers concentrate on simply obtaining top rankings in Google, Yahoo and other search engines, those more experienced SEM’s know the importance of actually converting that valuable traffic. An impressive panel of speakers provided the audience with ideas and solutions to increase a website’s conversion ratio.

While iProspect is known for its expensive service, their pricing does allow for extensive work in the area of visitor conversion. Conversion Product Manager, Larry Kerstein, shared with the attendees different factors that help ensure a website encourages conversions. While the natural thought process might lead a website owner to write text that screams ‘buy it now’, Kerstein suggested that in some instances your visitor may not yet know that they need your product or service. He suggested that the copy on a website should inform and educate a visitor so that they can ultimately decide what meets their needs. Once they know what it is you offer and why it is better than your competitor’s product, you can then encourage them to order. Talking to the buyer in the language of the buyer and using benefit statements rather than product specifications, were all conducive to increasing client conversion, according to Kerstein.

Michael Sack, Chief Product Officer for Inceptor offered similar advice but suggested that you ‘do not have to take apart your website to increase conversions’. Citing an example taken from Dell’s website he backed-up his theory by demonstrating that the computer manufacturer had increased conversion rates by 6% simply by enhancing the category structure of certain areas of their website. Sack provided research from Shop.org that suggested that the average conversion rate for the retail sector was just 1.8%.

Sack also gave attendees examples of questions a visitor may ask themselves when at your website:

• Why should I buy from you?
• Should I trust you?
• What is special about your company?

The most important part of Sack’s message was that website owners should simply ‘expose their content on the Internet’. By this he was suggesting that too few websites offer enough information about a product or service and with many people using the search engines to research a purchase, marketers needed to provide this valuable information. Finally, Sack told attendees to constantly ‘test, analyze and adjust’, giving a great example of how different types of pages tested on MSN yielded conversion rates from 1.75% to more than 3%.

Repeat speaker Heather Lloyd Martin took the conversion process to a different level when she challenged that the conversion begins with enticing a search user to actually click on your listing. She implored marketers to ensure that Title tags and Descriptions were compelling to humans and not just search engine friendly. She explained that a site ranked lower on a search results page, could have higher click-thrus than the number one listed site, if it’s listing were more enticing and targeted.

Of course, in order to accurately track all of these conversions, a website owner would need to ensure accurate reporting and tracking of visitors. The Measuring Tool Vendors session brought together different web analytics companies together in one room to tout the benefits of each of their respective products.

Representatives of all the major analytics tools were in attendance, each offering the benefits of their product and how it worked. The companies included:

• Urchin.com ‘ software based analytics starting at $895 with additional modules priced at $695. A 15 day trial is available at their website.

• ConversionRuler.com ‘ for the minimalist looking for a cheap alternative. Focused on reporting PPC data the service is priced ‘per click thru’ analyzed with a free trial available.

• WebTrends.com ‘ the most well known web analytics service and most popular. Comprehensive stats can even show you which stage of a website’s checkout process causes the most abortive sales.

• ClickTracks.com ‘ the newest, but arguably the most original web analytics package around. ClickTracks displays website visitor behavior directly on the pages of your website. Different demos can be downloaded from the website.

John Marshall of ClickTracks was particularly entertaining when he decided to skip thru his entire presentation in about 30 seconds so that he could discuss a book that he felt would provide great insight for marketers looking to collect and present data. Marshall suggested that each attendee purchase Edward Tufte’s ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’ as it would assist them in analyzing website data. While the unique abandonment of his own product to discuss a book may have seemed crazy, I suspect that Marshall knew that the findings of the book would lead marketers to conclude that ClickTracks unique display of website analytics was the perfect solution to their needs.

As the last day of the conference wound down, a wave of satisfaction appeared to be felt by all of those involved. The attendees, staff, exhibitors, speakers (and those of us who had agreed to write daily articles when they should have been relaxing) all agreed that the event had been the most successful and well received search engine conference yet. The industry is growing at a rapid rate. Not only is there change in the landscape for the search engines, but search engine marketers are also changing and adapting. With the successful launch of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), marketers even have a ‘trade union’ in an industry that is expected to grow by billions of dollars each year.

If you were not able to attend the conference in San Jose, I hope this series has given you an insight into the developments taking place and maybe even encouraged you to attend the next conference in Chicago in December. If you were able to make it, I’m sure you will agree that the event was an outstanding success.

Author Bio:
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.