Posts tagged SEO
Stop Your Outbound Links Murdering Your SERPs!
Mar 10th
We all know that both on-page and off-page internet marketing tactics can help boost your Google rankings. We also know that there are on-page factors that can get you banned from Google – things like copying someone else’s content, keyword stuffing, etc. Did you know, though, that there are off-page factors that can also get you kicked off the world’s biggest search engine? If you link to ‘bad neighborhoods’ … even if you link at a time when the web page is perfectly respectable, but the domain later gets marked as a link farm, a spammer, a keyword stuffer, etc, you could get banned by Google. So how do you find these nefarious sites that could undo all your good SEO work? Follow our guide.
Those nefarious site links can really make your rankings hurt...
1. Check out Bing.com
The lord and master of most of our computers, Microsoft, has created an awesome tool for checking whether you’re linking to spam – if you use it with a bit of ingenuity. You can use the ‘linkfromdomain’ command (without the apostrophes) to check whether links that originate in your domain point to spam.
2. Make a list of probable spam terms
Start off with drug names, pharmaceutical misspellings (like viagar and viegra, viox, sialis, etc), porn, sex, casino, poker, insurance deals, home finance, home equity, 4u, bllogspot, etc. Check out the lists (1 and 2) of words that trigger spam email filters to create a more extensive list.
3. Search for two or three words in conjunction with the linkfromdomain command
So you might type “linkfromdomain:webmarketinngexperts.com.au gambling casino poker” into Bing. Starting off by targeting several words at a time helps cut down the sheer number of pages that might use the term innocently.
4. If you’re concerned, do individual word searches
Alternatively, you can also search for individual terms that are far less likely to ‘innocently’ appear on web pages. Spam filter words like ‘Shemale’ or ‘lesbian’ are good examples.
5. Check out the sites and decide whether you want to keep the link
In many cases, instances of these words will be innocent. In some they will not – and better you find out than Google! Get rid of anything shady looking ASAP, or you could face an uphill battle to get your Google ranking back.
Is Google News for Yews?
Mar 4th
Google news sends almost a billion visitors to publishers worldwide … in a month! If you are doing internet marketing for a site with ‘newsworthy’ content, it is well worth investigating how you can start having Google news index your content. You can start your investigations on the very next line!
Artist's conceptulaization of the Google bot discovering news
Why publish in Google News?
Apart from the whole ‘be part of the billion clicks’ thing, there are very important SEO reasons for getting published in Google News. If your news article is highly relevant to a search, it automatically gets excellent real estate on the Google front page, via the ‘news results for xxyyz’ box. Additionally, if you have a highly trafficked article, you may get to the iGoogle news widget box, and get clicks from everyone that uses this widget on their iGoogle home page.
Getting content indexed
You can just leave your content there to be discovered … but considering the whole point of news is to be fresh, and Google might take up to 30 days to get round to your site again, submitting a Google News sitemap is a much better strategy. There is a Wordpress plugin for this purpose, or you can follow the guidelines from Google itself.
Using categories and subfolders
Google uses your own categories and subfolders, as well as the URLs they create and the keywords that naturally occur on your site, to decide what your content is about. You don’t want to keyword stuff (although do use keywords instead of referential phrases like ‘it’ or ‘them’).
If your news content is more of local interest, put it into a ‘State/Region/City’ subfolder on your site to help the dear Google bot.
Use static URLs
Otherwise you’ll destroy your Google ranking everytime it is refreshed. Create a permanent and unique URL for every story, and include ‘articleID=’ in the string to help Google identify it as news.
Put the date into the text
Placing it between the title and the body text helps Google News know the proper date of publication, as well as identifying it as news rather than ordinary HTML.
Don’t break up the text
If you ordinarily have advertisements in the middle of an article, or links to related posts at the bottom of the fold, take them out on your news pages.
And of course, don’t forget Yahoo News – still a significant source of traffic.
Four Things You Should Know About SEO in a Personal Search World
Mar 3rd
The launch of Google’s personalized search function in the not-too-distant past is still impacting the world of SEO. There are a lot of people panicking, probably equal numbers of people saying that they aren’t concerned, and many, many more that are simply oblivious. Today we are looking at some of the things that (as a business owner engaged in web marketing) you should know about Google’s personalized search.
1. People that don’t remain signed into a Google account don’t get it … to the same extent
Personalized search gives preference to results that you have visited before, and in order to do this it stores information about your surfing on its database, under your account. If a person doesn’t have a Google account, they don’t get the same level of personalized search – however you will still see results from your home region preferentially displayed, in most cases.
2. Google says … “pws=0″ turns personalization off
If you want to see what the results would look like without the personalization, Google says that you can add pws=0 to the end of your search term, and get an ‘unbiased’ search.
3. Tests say … not true
It seems that including pws=0 doesn’t completely change your search results as much as simply going to a different computer. SEO tests show little difference between a logged-in query and a pws=0 query.
4. The ultimate measure of success will always be the bottom line
All the debate over personalization is really starting to bring home the fact that it is the quality of your information and website that will really help build your bottom dollar. Ironically, this is exactly what Google wants … damn them!
Six Strategies for Holding Competitions to Get Backlinks
Mar 2nd
Running a competition or a giveaway is often touted as one of the most successful and failsafe strategies for sending visitors to your site, increasing branding visibility, and getting backlinks for SEO. However, since everybody has started saying how great it is, the ‘noise’ in the competition market is that much greater. You will actually have to compete to give things away, strange as that is! So today we are looking at six strategies to help you get the most value out of your competition for SEO.
'Running' a Competition
8
1. Collect as much contact information as possible
… without scaring entrants away. It is a rich opportunity to get demographic information that you can use later in web marketing opportunities. Add a couple of demographics questions to a competition entry form, and you have instant extra value.
2. Use your own products or services as the prize where possible
Everybody wants a new iPad or a trip around the world, and these competitions will naturally create a huge following and number of entries. However, when you have to pay retail prices for the prize, the competition becomes decreasingly cost effective. Use your own products where possible.
3. Look for competition partners
You may be able to get some prizes donated if you email around your partners and offer to include their logo, tagline and contact details on the competition form. You’ll still have to donate the major prie if you want YOUR business to get the brand recognition, though!
4. List your competitions on comp sites
There is an entire community of people that play the statistical odds, entering every free competition they can, in the hope of winning prizes. There are also (naturally) websites that collect competitions for people that do this. Make sure your comp gets listed on these sites, such as::
- Loquax.co.uk (UK)
- ThePrizeFinder.com (UK)
- Compaholics (UK)
- CompetitionWinner.com.au (AU)
5. Video marketing to promote the comp
This can be ultra-effective … videos are easy to share on social sites, so lets people share with their friends.
6. Require a link back to your site
This ca be a great way to get backlinks … accept competition entries only from people who provide a link from their site to yours, in a fairly permanent place. The requirement could be reviewing one of your products and providing a link to it, for example.
The Life and Times of Google, continued
Feb 25th
A day on which a person living in Australia, America, the UK or Europe doesn’t interact with Google is a rare day. Most of us depend heavily on our computers, our internet connections, and Google. Google is the giant of the SEO world, driving the overwhelming majority of search traffic, and therefore creates a livelihood for businesses worldwide. In that spirit, today we’re continuing our Google gossip-fest from yesterday, checking out the ins and outs of Google’s relationships for our own voyeuristic gain 
Google buys Remail
Remail created an email search application for the iPhone … and as soon as Google saw the word ’search’ in a product that it didn’t own, that credit card in it’s ginormous wallet really started to itch! It has now bought Remail, and seems close to closing a deal with on2.
Real time search now to include MySpace
Previously only Bing included MySpace status updates, and there was some balance to the world. Now Google’s real time search includes MySpace status updates, Facebook updates, tweets and news results.
Google and Yahoo raise doubts over Conroy’s filter
Stephen Conroy’s controversial internet filter, which would attempt to remove content that has been ‘Refused classification’ by the Classification Board, has taken a hit from Google and Yahoo. Both search engines have said that the filters ‘would not effectively protect children’, and noted that it is the chat rooms and message boards that usually feature material relating to child porn … and these are not usually indexed by search engines anyway.
Google looks to bring 1G per second broadband speeds
It’s the way of the future – Google is now working on bringing internet connection speeds of up to 1G per second to thousands of households. Unfortunately, they are currently located only in America.
eBay Exec is new Google VP of Commerce
The hiring of Stephanie Tilenius of eBay as Google’s VP of commerce has raised talk that Google might be upgrading their checkout process or other ecommerce initiatives.
Facebook more important than Google?
People are more often getting product recommendations and referrals from Facebook than Google, according to the San Francisco Chronic. Of course, this will not outstrip demand for general search information on Google, Bing or Yahoo anytime soon.
MS Uses Google’s own platform to take a swipe
Microsoft has recently uploaded a series of videos to Youtube – hosted by Google – attacking Google Docs and Google Apps. The videos suggest that the applications don’t have the security or on-premises flexibility that most businesses need.
The Life and Times of Google
Feb 24th
If you depend on internet marketing for the success of your business (and there are all sorts of businesses, from eBay to Ricardo’s Hairdresser around the corner, that do), then you will also be very interested in what Google is doing. Every little movement has an immense impact on the search environment … at least, when you are as big and as fat as Google is! So today we turn all gossip rag-ish, and in a testament to the quality of publications like ‘New Idea’ and ‘Famous’, take an intimate look at Google’s life details over the past month or so 
Google Buzz - Saving the World?
Google Buzz gets launched to mixed reception
Most gossip journalists concur that Google Buz has been getting buzz in the press for the wrong reasons … the main one being the default privacy settings. In some cases, people feel that their physical safety has been horribly compromised by Google’s Buzz introduction. However, there are some real advantages to Buzz, not the least of which is the opportunity to set up a Google profile and get followed links to websites from a PR10 site.
Electronic Privacy Info Centre complains to FTC
This US based group, concerned over the privacy breaches engendered by Google Buzz, wants the FTC to investigate and consider forcing Google to make Buzz an opt-in feature, rather than opt-out.
Google Books saga comes to an end
In 2005, Google was sued over copyright infringement by a group of authors and publishers, because of the preview feature on Google Books. It seems likely that the lawsuit will be settled in the next week or so, and if it is, Google will be able to create a subscription library for its collection of over 12 million books, sell books direct from its site (bye bye, Amazon!), and display portions of books for free.
Google works on creating real-life Babel fish
Before the Altavista Babelfish search engine (and its AMAZING accuracy … not), it seemed incredible simply that computers could translate between different languages. Now Google is working on creating a more realistic ‘Babel fish’, with Google Goggles. They would use OCR, Optical Character Recognition, to pick up what a text is saying, and then run it through Google Translate, and spit it out in comprehensible form.
How NOT to Get a PR10
Feb 23rd
Ironically, the site pr10(dot)com ranks extremely highly for search terms like “how to get a pr10″. This would be unsurprising … if it weren’t for the fact that every piece of ‘web marketing’ advice on the site is very, very thickly veiled sarcasm. I would almost think the authors deliberately wanted to drop the Pagerank of every site other than their own by using these tactics! So, in retaliation (and courtesy of pr10(dot)com), here is how NOT to get a pr10. Optional subtitle – How to get dropped off the Google index.
Google - not as antiquated as they once were
1. Use hidden text on your site
The suggestion is to colour code your text so that the text is either the same as the background colour, or visually very close. The example given is to use 00FF33 and 00FF66, so that Google will index your keywords on the page but humans can’t see them.
2. Use full stops as links
Put full stops down the bottom of every web page, each one linking to Google, to Yahoo, and to your own site.
3. The ever-increasing non-magical Pagerank
Sorry, this tip is so ridiculous that I have to quote directly from pr10(dot)com:
“This tip is probably the most powerful one on here. Make at least three pages on your site and link them as follows:
Page 1 >>>>>> Page 2
Page 2 >>>>>> Page 3
And this is the kicker
Page 3 >>>>>> Page 1
Google will give points to page 2 from page 1, then to page 3 from page 2, and then – if you link it back to page 1 – it starts all over again. I can’t even count how many points this will end up giving you. Just don’t abuse it too much – or the big sites will complain you are taking too much PR from them.”
4. Use lots of meta keyword tags
Having your meta keyword section stuffed with your keywords may have helped several years ago (and to be fair, the pr10 site is copyright 2002), but nowadays the technique does little to nothing. You won’t get de-listed, but you will have wasted your time.
5. Link to a Google page that contains all the inbound links to your site
This supposed magic trick just doesn’t work! The in vitro data is not supported by in vivo testing. You are supposed to link to pages that link to your sites using “link:www.whatever.net”, thus listing all of the inbound links for that page and pushing up their Pagerank, and therefore your own.
If these tips didn’t seem so much in earnest, I would laugh at them … as they are published on the net, I certainly worry that they’ve irrevocably hurt many people’s SEO rankings.
5 More SEO Strategies You Can Do in Ten Minutes
Feb 22nd
In some ways, SEO and internet marketing are very big tasks. However, there are plenty of component tasks that you can undertake to help push up your rankings, that take less than ten minutes. Today we give you the fast lane version of the SEO handbook!
Life in the fast lane
1. Answer a question on Yahoo Answers
This is one of the biggest and most popular question and answer sites on the net now, and even new questions rank quite well in Google for search terms phrased in the form of a question. Answer a question that you have expertise in, provide a link to a relevant resource on your site, and you’ve just marketed yourself, sir!
2. Create a list
There’s no need for your articles all to be 1000 word rants. Keep your list short and simple, and try to make sure that the resources it offers aren’t available elsewhere on the web in the same context.
3. Link out to someone else, and let them know
I you like a company, a product or a service, link to them from your website (as long as the link is relevant and in context!). This is the equivalent of bringing a batch of muffins over to someone ’s house … a great pretext for further conversation and friendships. Good karma online can never hurt your SEO rankings!
4. Comment on a blog post that you find thought-provoking
However, only if you can add something to the discussion. Telling the author that he’s created a great post will never encourage people reading the comments to click on your link … adding something useful or insightful to the conversation will.
5. Work on your LinkedIn profile
Especially if you are in B2B operations, your LinkedIn profile is a valuable web marketing tool. Expand your connections, update your resume, join in with Group discussions, etc.
5 Acceptable SEO Techniques to Learn From the Black-Hatters
Feb 22nd
One thing that few self-service style SEO guides make clear is the distinction between white-hat and black-hat tactics. SEO is a tool that can be used in a variety of different ways … so while a fork can be used to pick up food, it can also be used to stab somebody. Google is trying to avoid being stabbed with the forks they hand out, in the form of the reward that their algorithm provides to different sites! However, every current black-hat technique started out as a legitimate way for Google to differentiate between sites for relevance. So how can you get back to basics, and safely use those ‘black-hat’ style techniques?
Black and White Hat SEO are opposite sides of the same thing...
1. Hide your text
Black hatters use hidden text for nonsensical keyword stuffing. Legitimate sites can still get the benefit of any keywords that may be located in hidden text, but without cluttering the page itself, using JQuery effects like mouseovers to make text appear, etc. Here is a legitimate example (text in the question marks).
2. Mis-spelled terms
It is a popular black hat technique to try and rank for misspelt versions of popular terms, for example, ‘credtit report’. If you have a common misspelling in your industry, define it somewhere on your page, and let visitors know the correct version.
3. Grow your own farmed links
Create a network of related blogs in house, each focusing on a niche within your company or industry. A single person should be able to manage four or five, still very professionally.
4. Pay for your links
But not in the standard black hat way – donate to charitable organizations or community organizations that have a ‘Sponsors’ page with followed links.
5. Do some brand jacking
Do you have a legitimate tale of disappointment from a corporation? People love to complain, and they love bad news, and they love to hear about how terrible a place is before they do business with them. It is a legitimate purpose – just don’t overdo it, your site will develop a negative ‘aura’!
5 Indirect Ways to Build Link Popularity
Feb 20th
When it comes to SEO, the on-page stuff is fairly straightforward. Your web content in most cases will be dictated by your business offering, and if you follow best practices like setting up a regularly updated blog, etc, there is a limited amount you can do to differentiate yourself from other businesses who have their own web marketing experts.
Get your link popularity with ... a skateboard!
Link building, though, is where some websites truly excel, and build top rankings for themselves. Today we’re looking at some of the sneaky, indirect and very effective ways to build links for a site! There’s no instant reward of seeing your link come up in a blog comment or at the bottom of an article … but a little effort can go a lot further here.
1. Build trust in your site
Do this by minimizing grammar and spelling errors, having an About Us section, allowing customers to contact you via phone as well as email, putting up a Privacy Policy (and noting on email signup forms that you do not sell or rent email lists), and adding payment security accreditations.
It certainly doesn’t get you any links directly … but don’t forget that people’s own site ranking may go down if they link to a ‘bad neighborhood’. Remove all possibility that your site could be seen as such, and you could get a lot more links with no extra ongoing effort.
2. Answer a question
Most of the question forums on the internet don’t provide ‘followed’ links – that is why this is an INDIRECT method of link building. If you answer a question on Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, or Wikianswers exceptionally well, providing a link to relevant resources (that would be your site), there is a good chance that people writing their own blog posts will pick up on it and link to you also.
3. Use Wiki
Add links to Wikipedia pages which link to other pages, which link to your site. If your site got a great review on a blog, try to add that link to a relevant page. The keyword being relevant!
4. Write a review
People are often nervous about buying things online, when they have to hand over the money long before even seeing the packaging of the product, let alone trying it. Reviews are big business on the web, so write an honest and thorough one and it will become a needed (and linked to) resource.
5. Trade a link
BUT! BUT! Only with sites that will send you relevant and qualified traffic. If you have a business partner that offers something complementing your own products and services, write a blog post on them, or find another way to trade links with them. This should obviously not be overused, at the risk of getting a Google penalty.