SEO Expert. SEO Tips. SEO Consultant. No SEO BS..

Twitter ReTweets. The ReTweetability Index

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:16:20 PST

Looking for whose tweets are shared most with others? Then this is the site for you. It can also help you build your follower list, find who is tops by specific keywords and so on. http://www.retweetability.com/

Below is from the site. But click here to visit and check out who is listed

The ReTweetability Index measures and ranks Twitter users based on the infectious power of their tweets. This number accounts for number of followers and Tweets overall, so it is a true indicator of infectiousness.

There is some math involved, but in simple terms, users with a high ReTweetability Index have a greater percentage of their content spread by a greater percentage of their followers, implying that when they do tweet, it's worth reading.

Some might say their content is just that good. Whatever the reason, these users have proven to be highly ReTweetable, and this metric ranks them in a way that accounts for disparities among follower counts and Tweet totals.

And, it does take quite a while to measure everyone's ReTweetability score, so the index has a delay.

SEO Scams. Search Engine Scams

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:33:23 PST

Search engine scams. Business owners beseiged by offers to optimize Web sites, but are they legitimate?

The letter smacked of urgency. "Attention: Important Notice." "Act Today!" "PLEASE COMPLETE AND RETURN ENTIRE FORM." "Make Checks Payable to: DOMAIN REGISTRATION."

Jim Theile peered over the letter in the back office of his lamp shop in Santa Rosa. If he didn't pay $169, it appeared he would lose his domain www.lampandshade.com.

The letter was downright confusing, Theile thought. It seemed to say his Web site would not appear in online search results unless he sent in a check.

"It just didn't sit well," he said. "The hackles on my back really went up."

The letter was misleading at best -- a downright scam at worst. It listed no Web site, and offered only the address and phone number for a processing center in New York.

"I realized they were just selling a search listing," Theile said. "Basically, they just want you to send a check. Who knows what, if anything, they actually do."

Perhaps no area online is more maligned with shysters aiming to rip off small businesses than the field of search engine optimization -- a legitimate industry intended to help businesses get their Web sites ranked higher in search results by Google, Yahoo and others.

As search engine optimization has become an increasingly important issue for small-business owners, its technical complexities have opened the doors wide for scammers who prey on people's ignorance about the evolving technology.

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, primarily deals with the design and management of Web sites. In other words, SEO professionals provide tips on how to build and manage your Web site so that Google is more likely to rank it higher when someone searches for keywords that apply to the site.

For instance, if you own a Santa Rosa bakery specializing in wedding cakes, then you want your Web site to be at the top of Google results for the keywords "Santa Rosa wedding cakes."

A properly designed Web site, which includes these keywords, is the first step in getting a good rank.

But some unscrupulous characters promise to vault your business to the top of search results, if only you'll pay them a few thousand dollars.

There are three things a prospective SEO company might say that should raise a red flag.

If a company guarantees to get your Web site listed in the top 10 of a Google search, then just walk away, because that's a bad sign, said Miriam Ellis, an SEO consultant in Petaluma.

"We don't control the search engines. We can't guarantee that," said Ellis, owner of Solas Web Design.

Also, if a company says it will submit your Web site to search engines, that's a bad sign too.

"You don't have to submit your Web site to search engines. Search engines crawl sites," Ellis said. "If they say otherwise, it's a deal breaker. Walk away."

To be clear, someone can submit a newly registered Web site so Google will crawl it sooner, but it would happen shortly anyway. And Google doesn't charge a fee either way.

Finally, an SEO company needs to provide referrals. If they can't provide a list of clients, it's not a good sign, Ellis said.

Theile gets contacted six times a month from people wanting to redesign his Web site, or optimize it for better rankings on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Some are legitimate operations, but many are just hustlers.

"They are trying to take advantage of people, especially people who are older," Theile said. "We have to be cautious, because it happens so often you might make a mistake and be taken advantage of."

Ranking high in search results is becoming increasingly important to small business owners as potential customers turn to Google to find a local business, eschewing the well-worn phone book.

Google, which is used for about 70 percent of online searches in the United States, uses a highly-guarded equation that factors in several variables to determine how a site is ranked. But there are three main areas it looks at, Ellis said.

Older domain names rank higher.

Sites rank higher when other sites link to them, especially if the other sites also rank high. This is called "Google juice."

Sites that have lots of text with keywords will rank higher for those words. So if the owner of a wedding cake business blogged about her experience baking wedding cakes on her business's Web site, it would more likely appear higher in searches for the words "wedding cake."

Ellis specializes in what is called local SEO, which is when businesses want to attract local customers to their site. She provided some tips on how to do that:

Go to maps.google.com and click on "Put your business on Google Maps." Make sure your business is listed, fix any errors, and authenticate you are the owner. It's free.

Then go to Yahoo, MSN, Citysearch, Yelp, Yellowpages.com and other sites and do the same thing. Make sure your business phone number, address and Web site are all included and correct.

"The more you have on these other sites, the better impression it will give Google as to where it should rank you," she said.

The chief reason a Web site might not get properly ranked is it is not built correctly. Sites must be designed with SEO in mind. Otherwise Google might have trouble indexing the site, and then rank it lower.

Once the Web site is properly designed to be crawled by search engine spiders, which do the virtual indexing, small-business owners can take the next step in SEO, said Jamie Lowe, an SEO consultant who runs www.searchenginemarketing.com.

First, people should consider what keywords they want associated with their Web site. It's best to find niche keywords such as "Santa Rosa auto mechanic," because broad keywords, such as just "mechanic," are already associated with other Web sites.

"A local small business can find hundreds of small niches," Low said.

To help find good keywords for a small business Web site, Low recommends these online tools:

www.google.com/sktool

www.keyworddiscovery.com

www.wordtracker.com

Developing good search results is the most cost-effective way to market online, Low said.

Sitting in his lamp shot on Fourth Street, Jim Theile said he had no plans to spend money on SEO -- and for good reason. The site, which he launched in 1997, already ranks No. 1 on Google when using the keywords "Santa Rosa lamps."

"The man who built my Web site, he did a good job," Theile said.

Source: You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com. Check out his blog at DailyGeek.Pressdemocrat.com or on twitter.com/eWords

Search Engine Optimization Sock Troll

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:24:50 PST

Search Engine Optimization Sock Troll Alert!!

What is a search engine optimization sock troll you may ask. Well, it is not a what, it is a he. A man, who likes to to do seo (search engine optimization), loses his socks in the dryer and is far from troll looking. Sure, he may be in the same biz as I am. But that doesn't man I can't respect him as a human being, even if he is a search engine optimization sock troll.

You see, not all SEO professionals are alike. Some, like me with far to many years of experience need to help and guide out underlings, such as my dear friend the search engine optimization sock troll.

So, with great pride, I introduce you to my fellow SEO guy: his name is not important, but his seo identity is: search engine optimization sock troll, and you can visit him at ArteWorks

Compete with Established Websites on Google

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:58:26 PST

3 tips to compete with established websites on Google

Old websites have a big advantage over new websites. Websites that were around several years ago had far fewer competitors and it was much easier for them to get high rankings in that environment.

As these websites have been around for a long time, search engines trust them more and they had a lot of time to get inbound links. If you have a new website, it will be difficult to compete with these established sites.

It is possible to compete with the big players if you have a new website. Here are three tips that will help you to compete with established websites:

Tip 1: Use less popular versions of your target keywords

It's nearly impossible to get high rankings for competitive keywords. Of course, these keywords should be included on your web pages but you should also optimize your web pages for less popular keywords that are not targeted by your competitors.

If your competitors target the keyword "pizza new york" then you might optimize one of your pages for "pizza newyork". Even if your version of the keyword gets only a fraction of the original keyword, you will still get more visitors than before.

It is much better to rank #1 for a slightly less popular keyword (you will get some visitors) than to rank #60 for a very popular keyword (you will get no visitors).

Tip 2: Optimize your web pages for as many keyword variations as possible

Repeat tip 1 with as many keywords as possible. For example, you might use "best pizza in new york", "recommended pizza restaurant new york", etc. Even if each keyword delivers only some visitors, you will get many visitors with all keywords combined.

Another advantage of getting high rankings for many of these long keywords is that your website becomes relevant to a topic. The more high rankings your website has for keywords that are relevant to a topic, the easier it gets to get high rankings for more competitive keywords.

Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords and optimize as many web pages as possible. People who search for long keywords are usually people who really care about the subject. These people are more likely to buy something and they might also link to your site.

Tip 3: Create web pages just for getting links

Some web pages on your website should generate revenue, others should help you to get inbound links. The more inbound links your website has, the easier it is to get high rankings.

Create web pages that solve the problems of the web searchers. Write "how to" articles about a very special topic. These web pages often get many inbound links. Of course, you should also actively build inbound links.

Getting high rankings for a new website is not difficult if you choose the right way. Do not attack the big players directly. Start with many related keywords and then proceed to the more competitive keywords.

Focus on both optimizing your web pages and getting good inbound links. Your website must have good optimized content and good inbound links if you want to get high rankings on Google.

SEO Drama Queen Advice

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:51:31 PST

SEO Drama Queen Advice

It is time to look at those SEO questions from the folks who need help and guidance in achieving web site visability. Let take a read of some of the Dear SEO Drama Queen email which floods her box every day…..this is a Prozac moment about to happen in the SEO world.

Dear SEO Drama Queen I want a number one ranking for my web site. The keywords are men's clothes, sneakers and hats. I read so much out there on how important it is to be on Google. Can you promise me a #1 ranking for my 3 keywords? Thanks BA

Greetings BA
Of course I can guarantee #1 ranking’s on Google for those very generic keywords that compete against millions of other sites. AN SEO who couldn’t isn’t worth their wait in gold. It is easy. First, I need you to purchase about 100,000 shares of Google stock. Once you are a major holder, we can then bribe Google to either place you on top or we threaten to sell their stock to Yahoo!.

Let me know when you have made the stock purchase
Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen I contacted an SEO company and they stated their fees are $300 a month for 6 months. They stated they needed to access my site, will make changes to code, write content, and help me decide on keyword phrases, develop a blog, train me for social networking and on and on. I think this is a rip-off as I have seen SEO for $25 a month and they do not need to work on my site or have me make changes. Plus they submit the site to 1000’s of engines. Should I go with the less expensive company? Thanks ST

Greetings ST
Cheaper is always better. Why should actually do anything to your web site. Do not use your valuable time on making your site better when you can have someone do everything for $25 bucks. I mean, why should you suffer, it is only your business, so do not put in the time and effort if someone else can do it cheap. Let’s face it, your $25 bucks pays for them to spend a minute of time placing your URL in an auto program and pressing a button. Even though your site doesn’t even need to be submitted to the top search engines as they will find you naturally, getting submitted to 1000s of search engines will guarantee you some great spam emails. Heck, save the $25 bucks, let the engines find you on their own and go to the movies instead.
Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen I wanted to make fast money online. I joined a program that gives me a template web site and even provides me with products to sell. They said the site is built to do well on the search engines and the money would be rolling in. I selected mattresses, even though I know nothing about them, but they promised I could make $1000 a month with just a few sales. I paid the fee, went into the online builder and selected my site template, pressed some buttons and now have a site. But after 2 months I cannot be found at all….even when I search by my domain name.
HELP!
ZK

Dear ZK

Oh my! You mean they lied to you? Shame on them. You take the time to select a product you know nothing about, pick a web template you believe looks good and expect the money to be rolling in. Sure, your site is held deep in their sub-directories with all the other ‘want to get rich quick’ client sites, but just because it has no original content, uses keywords, has no proper meta tags and about 100 other seo factors, doesn't mean the company lied to you. It means they slightly mislead you, and the only one making money is them. I am shocked, appalled even. But surely, they would not totally lie to you. Maybe you should buy more sites from them for other products you know nothing about and maybe one day, you will get found and make a sale.
Best
SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen After much reading and searching, I found an SEO company that has a good standing in the SEO world. I paid the fees and the process began. But, I was expected to work on the site as well. I was expected to provide content or actually pay them to write content for my site. I was expected to make my site easier to read by engines, change navigation schemes and work on marketing lingo and something they called ‘site stickiness’. They even wanted me to begin a blog. Why am I paying them when I feel like I do all the work. This must be wrong. Am I getting ripped off? I have seen other SEO companies that say I do not need to make any changes and they will add 100’s of pages to my site that promise top rankings. What should I do? Worried LM

Dear LM
Get your money back now! How dare this SEO Company expect you to actually work with them on making your site more SEO ready? I mean it is your site, you should have some say in it, and if you do not want to make changes that will help the SEO achieve their goals…well move on. Go with that other SEO Company. Let them add 100’s of hidden pages to the site. That way, in 3-6 months when Google realizes what has been done, any rankings achieved will be dropped…but do not worry, you will have 3-6 months of great placements and make lots of money. Then you can remove those bad pages, send an apology letter to Google and repeat the process again. I am sure that will be just perfect. Do not follow that other SEO Company as they expect you to work with them in a team effort, and as we know, there is no ‘I” in team.

Best
SEO Drama Queen

StockTwits. Get Stock Updates On Twitter

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:05:23 PST

StockTwits is a social, stock microblogging service.

StockTwits is an open, community-powered idea and information service for investments. Users can eavesdrop on traders and investors, or contribute to the conversation and build their reputation as savvy market wizards. The service takes financial related data - using Twitter as the content production platform - and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc.

Log into the site with your Twitter details and you will be presented with a user interface filled with comments and stats showing the top ticker buzz, the top StockTwit talkers, and the top gainers and losers.

One great feature is the ability to add stocks and save them to your own portfolio and limit the conversation around it to your most trusted sources. Watch the whole stream or create your own filters. Another cool feature is the way the site aggregates 'buzz' and discussion around individual stocks. No other financial site on the web does that. And it does it real-time because of the Twitter integration.

The site doesn't have a lot of features and users love it for that. The beauty is the simplicity. Messages are short and allow a person to read several interesting bits of stock information from various sources at a glance. The lightweight approach highlights the power of delivering vertical value to a horizontal community, where both constituencies share a common passion: the desire to consume and share real-time information.

Discovery is a key focus of the site. It's important for people to find other traders and investors that help them improve. Using StockTwits it's really easy to get the full history of "tweets" of any contributor.

In essence, StockTwits helps people interested in stocks to socialize their ideas. It focuses on stock trading, letting users discuss their latest stock trades in an interface using Twitter as the content production platform, adding features like graphs and the ability to filter messages.
StockTwits - Real Investors. Real Ideas. Real time. Click here for free sign up

Twitter Reminder Service

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:52:11 PST

Twitter Reminder Service

Twitter is a popular "micro-blogging" service that allows you to send updates (up to 140 characters in length) via SMS, IM, the website, and third-party applications. It also has a handy feature which allows you to send direct (private) messages to your friends on Twitter. Add rtm as your friend, and you can add and interact with your tasks by direct message (and get reminders too!). Visit the Twitter Reminder Service by clicking here

Getting started

If you're not already using Twitter, you'll need to sign up for an account. You'll also need to add rtm as your friend on Twitter (either by clicking the 'add' link on rtm's profile page, or sending the message 'follow rtm' to Twitter). Then, complete the quick and easy set up process in the box on the above right.

Getting reminded

Once you're set up with Twitter, you can receive task reminders as direct messages to your Twitter account. These will be sent according to your general reminder preferences (more details on reminder settings are available in the Getting Started guide). To disable reminders on Twitter, send a direct message with !off to rtm, or toggle this option on the Remember The Milk 'Settings' screen under the 'Reminders' tab.

Visit the Twitter Reminder Service by clicking here

Access Your Personal Computer Through Google

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:45:14 PST

Access Your Personal Computer Through Google. Google plans to make PCs history

Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals' personal data.

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favour of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.

Home and business users are increasingly turning to web-based services, usually free, ranging from email (such as Hotmail and Gmail) and digital photo storage (such as Flickr and Picasa) to more applications for documents and spreadsheets (such as Google Apps). The loss of a laptop or crash of a hard drive does not jeopardise the data because it is regularly saved in "the cloud" and can be accessed via the web from any machine.

The GDrive would follow this logic to its conclusion by shifting the contents of a user's hard drive to the Google servers. The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google's operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware.

It is this prospect that alarms critics of Google's ambitions. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, a charity defending computer users' liberties, did not dispute the convenience offered, but said: "It's a little bit like saying, 'we're in a dictatorship, the trains are running on time.' But does it matter to you that someone can see everything on your computer? Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American government?"

Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing. Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: "There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web.'"

Source: The Observer, David Smith , technology correspondent

How To Request A Link Exchange Request

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:37:37 PST

How To Request A Link Exchange Request That Is Not Spam

Link exchange requests have a very bad reputation. The reason for that is that many people send mass link exchange requests that are nothing more than spam.

However, if you want to get links from authority sites, you have to send link exchange requests. The secret of successful requests is to write link exchange messages that aren't spam.

Get the reader's attention

If you want people to read your link exchange message, it should not sound like the dozens of other emails that the webmaster receives. Use the recipient's real name throughout your message. If your message starts with "Dear webmaster" then it's likely that it will be moved to the trash. Be personal. Write a personal message for each recipient.

Use a real email address with a real name as the sender address. Free email addresses and email addresses with numbers look spammy.
Get the reader's interest

What's in for me? You should answer that question as soon as possible in your email.

Do not list any features. Focus on benefits. First, nobody is really interested in the great features of your website. Tell the recipient how your website solves his problems or the problems of his readers.

Appeal to the ego of the recipient. Tell the recipient that you list only 10 websites in this special category and that he is in that top 10 list. It's easier to convince people if you appeal to their ego.
Create desire

The recipient of your link exchange message won't react to your request if you don't create desire.

To create desire out of interest, you can tell the recipient that you downloaded his ebook, subscribed to his newsletter or RSS feed, etc. The other webmaster is more likely to reciprocate if you have done something in advance.

Give the recipient the feeling that he's special. Include your phone number in your email message. Summarize why the recipient benefits from linking to you.

Make action as easy as possible

Don't make the recipient think. Make the linking process as easy as possible by giving him copy/paste HTML code with your link information. Of course, the code should only be an option and you should not insist on that code. If the webmaster want's to use another code to link to your site, that's okay.

Twitter Addictions. Twitter Increases Connections

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:16:29 PST

Twitter Addictions. Twitter traffic increases 10-fold in a year

Following Heather’s post yesterday on Twitter overtaking Digg in the US, here is some UK data on the most talked about website of the moment: UK Internet traffic to the site has increased 10-fold over past last 12 months. For the week ending 17/01/09 www.twitter.com ranked as the 291st most visited website in the UK, up from a ranking of 2,953 for the week ending 19/01/08. UK Internet traffic to the website has increased by 974% over this period.

Twitter was one of the fastest growing websites in the UK last year, and it shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, the service is even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher. Many people seem to find Twitter addictive: the average amount of time that people spend on Twitter.com has more than trebled from less than 10 minutes a year ago to half an hour now.

Over the last few weeks, a number of famous Twitter fans have helped boost the site’s UK profile. Stephen Fry, has over 50,000 followers, John Cleese can claim more than 30,000, and 2,000 people are following Andy Murray’s progress at the Australian Open. Jonathan Ross (13,000+ followers) has used the service to communicate with fans during his 3 month suspension from the BBC. The broadcaster - returning to British screens for the first time in three months this Friday (23/01/09) - has used his show business contacts to validate celebrity Twitter accounts, and is currently operating under the moniker “Number One Twitter Detective”.

Twitter receives the largest amount of its traffic from the USA, but its penetration is greater in the UK market. For the week ending 17/01/09 www.twitter.com ranked as the 291st most visited website in the UK, accounting for 0.024% of all Internet visits; while in the USA it ranked 350th, picking up 0.020% of all Internet visits. However, the US may overtake the UK the week following the surge in Tweets during Barack Obama’s inauguration. The new American President is already the most followed person on Twitter, with over 144,000 followers.

Back in Britain, Twitter is still most popular with younger users in urban areas, but its appeal is broadening as it grows. The fastest growing age group of users is 35-44 year olds, who now account for 17.3% of UK visitors to www.twitter.com.

Twitter is becoming an important source of Internet traffic for many sites, and the amount of traffic it sends to other websites has increased 30-fold over the last 12 months. Almost 10% of Twitter’s downstream traffic goes to News and Media websites, and BBC News is currently the seventh most popular site visited after Twitter. A further 17.6% of traffic goes to entertainment websites, while 14.6% goes to social networks, 6.6% to blogs and 4.5% to online retailers. As a source of traffic Twitter is still in its infancy, but it is becoming more important every day. A number of news sites, blogs, and video and picture websites already rely on Twitter for a significant amount of their traffic.

The most popular website visited after Twitter is Facebook. Britain’s most popular social network continues to pick up users and is now the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK. As we reported a few weeks ago, on Christmas Day Facebook received 1 in every 22 UK Internet visits. Its growth helped Hitwise’s Social Networking and Forums category account for 10.1% of all UK Internet visits during December – the first time that the industry has passed the 10% threshold. Twitter is also included in the category, and currently ranks 23rd.
Source: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2009/01/twitter_traffic_up_10-fold.html

You can follow Hitwise UK on Twitter at twitter.com/Hitwise_UK

Follow OnTheAvenues: http://twitter.comBurnsie_SEO

Google Adwords Spy. Free Adwords Spy

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:29:38 PST

Google Adwords Spy. Know What Phrases Your Competitors Are Using On Their PPC Ads

Hey, I know you're likely very busy so I won't take much of your time.
I just had to tell you about a brand new, free keyword research tool that Brad Callen just released.

It allows you to browse Google and view the Adwords keywords of ANY Adwords advertiser! Basically, it's a small file that gets installed into your web browser (i.e. Firefox).

When you do a Google search, the software automatically places a "view keywords" button
below every single Adwords advertiser.

Click the "view keywords" button and really neat popup window appears that not only shows
you the keywords that any Adwords advertiser is bidding on, but it also shows you a
TON of other information, like how much they're paying per click and so on.

It's awesome.

Anyway, here is the link where you can download the software, and it doesn't cost anything.

Click here to download for free

Hope you're having a great week and I'll talk to you soon.

Bonnie
P.S. Here's the link where you can get the free Adwords keyword tool again:
Click here to download for free

Why Bother with SEO. SEO or PPC?

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:42:18 PST

Why Bother with SEO?

So you want people to find your website? First page placement can be as simple as investing a few dollars into paid search advertising. Within minutes your advertisement can be listed at the top of the pack among other PPC listings. When it is this easy to push your site to the top why would anyone bother with traditional SEO?

Paid advertising may be a quick and easy way to get your site to the top, but for many industries it can also be incredibly expensive over the long term. After factoring in the click costs, it is still possible to make a decent profit however if the visitors were to find you in the organic listings, the profit would be much higher.

The search engine optimization industry is always changing. New firms are springing up all over the place, and many design houses seem to think they have the skills and knowledge it takes to provide these services. While some are good at what they do, they are no substitute for the real thing. It is important to work with an SEO company that is established and well recognized in their industry.

At the front end, having a professional optimize your site may seem like an expensive undertaking, but when compared to the ongoing expense of PPC, SEO is much more affordable in the long run. Typically SEO campaigns start off with a one time fee, and may lead to monthly maintenance to keep your site ranking - in most cases this is much less expensive than the paid alternative.

A properly optimized site achieving top rankings on their own will almost always outperform in terms of conversions when compared to those competing sites placed with AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture), or other PPC services. Typically 80% of searchers will click on the organic listings as apposed to the paid!

While PPC can bring you increased profile and (hopefully) additional profits, one of the biggest downfalls is that when you stop paying, the rankings and traffic are gone. If you take on a professional SEO for a one time website optimization and in the event that your rankings slip for your target phrase, you may retain a number of secondary keyword rankings, and your traffic will not entirely disappear. Remember that in most cases, the initial rankings can be maintained through the use of a monthly maintenance program.

While hands-on SEO is often the best solution to achieve top rankings for the do-it-yourself webmaster, chances are tapping into the brains of a professional SEO through a consulting service can give them the edge they need to compete while reducing costs considerably.

There is no substitute to a properly optimized website when it comes to performance and overall conversions. Sites ranking in the natural listings tend to convert at a higher rate and draw higher numbers of targeted traffic. As the Internet continues to increase in popularity, it will only become more and more difficult to be found, which places more weight on optimization. For anyone thinking of placing their business online, they should strongly consider hiring the services of a professional SEO to get things off to a positive start.

SEO for PHP Web Sites. PHP SEO Issues

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:34:44 PST

SEO for PHP Web Sites. PHP SEO Issues

PHP pages have a reputation of being more difficult (or at least different) to SEO than static HTML pages. Here's an overview of the major issues encountered when trying to make PHP scripts rank well. While this focuses on PHP much of it is still relevant to dynamic pages in general.

PHP Speed

While page size does affect load time, spiders run on servers connected to high bandwidth networks, so download time is less important than the latency of the PHP script's execution time. If a spider follows a link on a site and is forced to wait too long for the server to process the PHP code behind that page, it may label your page as unresponsive.

The biggest delays in a PHP script typically are the database and loop code. Avoid making SELECT * calls, instead explicitly name all the columns you want to retrieve, and if you are using MySQL, test your queries using the EXPLAIN statement. To optimize loops consider using duplicated code instead of low iteration loops, also use as many static values, such as count($array) values inside the loop as you can, generating their values before the loop once.

URL Cleanliness

A major goal in getting search engines to treat your PHP created pages well, is to make them look and act like static pages. If you have a large site you can use Apache to fake static looking URLs, or, with a smaller site, you can simply keep your GET variables to a useful minimum. In either case, however, never allow a spider to see links with different URL's to the same content. If the URL is different, the page should be too.

One of the major problems most webmasters have with getting their dynamic pages to index is URL cleanliness. Since many dynamic pages are created with GET variables, lots of pages have URLs that look like:

Page.php?var=lkdjdfhv&var2=345&var3=kfjdks

Most of the search engines will be able to follow this link, because it has 3 or under get variables (a good rule of thumb is to keep the number of GET variables passed in the URL to under 3), but any more than 3 variables and you will run into problems. Try using less GET variables, and make them more relevant, rather that useless id numbers use titles, and other keyword rich bits of text. This is an example of a better URL:

Page.php?var=category&var2=topic

If the page requires more variables you may want to consider combining the variables by delimiting them with a hyphen or another unused character, and then splitting the variable in the target page.

Masking dymamic URLs

However the mere presence of a question mark in the URL will introduce a delay in google's indexing of the page. This from Mike Grehan's Interview with Daniel Dulitz of Google:

“So the mere presence of a question mark in the URL doesn't throw us for a loop at all. We will crawl those pages more slowly than we do with pages without question marks in the URL. Purely because they've identified themselves as being dynamic and we certainly don't want to bring anyone's site down because we're hitting the database too hard.”

Small sites will not need to worry much about this delay as it means your server is hit every few minutes, not a few times a second, but for larger sites this can slow down your site's inclusion into the index.

Making dynamic pages look static without mod_rewrite
A way to mask bulky dynamic page URLs (and avoid the question mark delay) is Apache's ForceType in combination with a PHP command to interpret URLs like: www.example.com/books/computers.html as referring to a page called “books” which is executed as a PHP script (I usually make a link on the linux server from “books.php” to “book” to make editing the script easier). The function will return an array of the additional values, including the category “computers”. This can be accomplished by inserting a line like this into the .htaccess file in the root of your web documents directory:

SEO for Dynamic Web Sites . Database Web Site SEO Issues

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:35:20 PST

Database Web Site SEO Issues

It is very important that static pages be used as well as pages that are called up from a database are not easily read by engines.

To summarize:
1. Search engines have problems indexing dynamic content.
2. If possible, use static URLs to reference dynamic content.
3. Otherwise, try to link to your dynamic URLs from static pages.
4. If your budget allows, consider using paid-inclusion trustfeed programs.

Dynamic content is delivered to the Web browser in a different form than it exists on the server, while static content is stored on the Web server in the same format that is delivered to the Web browser. Dynamic site pages are generated from a database "on the fly" as users request them.

You can often tell when you are looking at a dynamically generated page, because dynamic URLs contain one or more "query strings," or question marks (?) while static URLs do not, but there are exceptions to this rule, which we shall discuss below.

Search engines have a hard time with dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs may cause search engines to mistake a small site for a very large one because an unlimited number of URLs can be used to provide essentially the same content. This can cause search engine spiders to avoid such sites for fear of falling into "dynamic spider traps," crawling through thousands of URLs when only a few are needed to represent the available content. Here's how three popular search engines handle this:

* The FAST search engine will crawl and index dynamic URLs as quickly and easily as static ones (at this time).
* AltaVista doesn't crawl dynamic URLs at all, but it will index each dynamic URL that you take the time to submit individually.
* But these two search engines are relatively insignificant. Google will crawl dynamic URL's at about a third the speed and depth at which it indexes static pages. It will barely crawl at all if there are session IDs in the query strings, because it will soon discover that multiple URLs lead to the same page and regard the site as being full of duplicate content.

Another challenge dynamic sites throw at search engines is serving up different core content at the same URL. This might result when a site has content that may be viewed at the same URL in multiple languages, depending on the browser settings, or content, such as on a news site, which changes every few minutes.

Search engines want to be accurate they want visitors to a particular URL to see the same content the spider saw. They also want to be comprehensive. They vie with each other to have the largest database. Thus, they have billions of pages to index and typically can only visit each URL once every few weeks or so (although Google is pretty good at recognizing content that changes frequently, and spidering it more often).

Here is a good article
http://spider-food.net/dynamic-page-optimization.html

SEO for Dynamic Web Sites
Dynamic content itself is not really a problem, because the server does all of the work *before* the page is served to the user agent. However, almost everything that is normally associated with dynamic content and database driven sites is a very real problem. This includes:

Cookies - Spiders naturally cannot accept cookies
Forms - including hidden fields, spiders cannot fill out forms.
Query Strings - Spiders are *designed* to balk at query strings in URLs
In short, all of the main ways of passing values back to the database for generating content are something that the spiders either cannot or will not handle.

Traditionally, the response of promoters to these limitations was to create static pages that the spiders could handle, but obviously, the content is not dynamic, it requires additional work to create static content, and it is very limiting. It is however the simplest of all the solutions.

A better way of handling things is to 'wrap' dynamic content inside a static-seeming page using SSI (Server Side Includes) to bring the dynamic pages inside a static .SHTML file. You can hard-code variables into the SSI calls to bring in limited dynamic content into a form that the spider can handle.

This approach still has the limitations regarding creating additional pages, but at least the content itself is dynamic, and thus updates with the database. You can even hide the nature of the page by creatively adjusting the HTaccess files of the server, making the server treat .HTM files as if they were SHTML, so that you can have a htm extension on the urls, leaving the spider none the wiser about any dynamic aspects to the page.

The ultimate solution however is to make the full dynamic site accessible to spiders, without them ever knowing that its dynamic. This requires the most (and most technical) work, but it means that no special static pages are required at all, and the full dynamic content can be accessed. This is what TrustFeed does.

The first part of this is to hide any query strings. To do this we must again alter the way that the server handles and parses files, and we must teach the database a new trick. We have to teach the database to place the variables into a new format - one that looks like a standard URL.

One method might be to use a special folder name. For this example lets use 'dynamic'. We would teach the database to encode its variables as if directory names, after the directory called dynamic/ as with the following (non-working) example: The url with query string
http://domain.com/cgi-bin/page.php?databit=value&moredata=value
could become
http://domain.com/dynamic/databit/value/moredata/value/

The disguise is designed for dynamic variables, there would be a script to pull the variables from any URL containing /dynamic/ within its path. Everything that follows the /dynamic/ directory is really just data-pairs seperated by the / character. The htaccess file is used to make the server send this to a script, rather than serve the file.

A simpler method, that is often used in cloaking scripts is to use the htaccess file again to recognise files with a .HTM extension as CGI scripts, while still regarding files with a .HTML extension as standard web pages. In that way, rather than needing to have the 'dynamic' directory you can simply hide variables any way wanted so long as the url ends in a HTM extension, and so long as all genuine HTML files end in a HTML extension.

It is not of course a quick and easy solution and does not promise better rankings. It requires some time and effort to implement. Search engines and spiders can happily crawl through as much of the site as they are allowed to, and the URLs are also neater and tidier to the human eye.

How To Build Links. Basic Link Building Tactics

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:25:26 PST

How To Build Links. Basic Link Building Tactics

Even in the age of hyper-personalization and geo-location in search, the number of inbound links pointing to your site is still the most important aspect of developing and securing top search engine positions. That's right, it's not about internal linking structure, keyword density or the presence or absence of title tags - it's about getting websites to link to yours. So how do you do that in 2009?

Link building hasn't really changed much over the years and it probably won't in 2009 either. Link building involves getting other Web sites to link to your site. The creativity we apply to link building however is what separate the high-rankers from the non-rankers. Think of link-building as a word of mouth recommendation; the more dramatic, compelling and interesting the recommendation, the more believable and attractive the proposition of visiting becomes for the user.

In the eyes of search engines, it's both the quality and quantity of recommendations that matter. It's not about making sure your site is worth a link (it is expected that our sites satisfies even the most critical user), it's about going out and getting them. That concept understood, let's look at few basic link building tactics you can (and perhaps should) employ in 2009. We'll push the envelope in an article next week about "Genuine Advanced Link Building" - look for that article early next week.

Write and Distribute Press Releases Frequently: You very well might have the next great idea or that next amazing product that everyone needs to have, but if no one knows about it then you're pretty much spinning your wheels. One way to spread the word is through the use of press releases. Website Magazine has written extensively on how to use press releases to secure publicity and it has remained one of the best, yet most basic, ways to get links (and to do it quickly). Follow the guidance on press releases we've outlined previously, build a working list of established media outlets and bloggers and pursue their attention (politely) through every means possible (including on social networks). In 2009, resolve to send out press releases to your list directly via email or using services such as PRWeb, BusinessWire or PRleap.com.

Become a Guest Blogger: One of the easiest ways to get attention on the Web (regardless of the industry you are in) is to work for free. Now I know that this idea might go against every fiber of your business-savvy being, but the value of doing something (which in itself is extremely valuable) for someone else works and it works well. Guest bloggers have a captive audience and an unmatched opportunity to build a viable relationship with an audience that is not their own. Resolve in this new year to be a guest blogger a few times, if only to test the waters. Identify blogs or email newsletters which you think your message would be valuable to and offer to share your expertise (for free of course) in exchange for a link or even some advertising. Take the idea of guest blogging further by recruiting your own guest bloggers - you'll be shocked at what kind of promotional effort people will put in on your behalf!

Share Your Insights Through Commenting: One of my favorite down-time activities is writing comments on blogs that I find using the StumbleUpon toolbar. While the traffic that StumbleUpon itself sends is of the lowest quality imaginable in terms of providing conversions, the service is excellent at helping users discover sites that they might find interesting or valuable. Search the service using individual keywords and couple that effort with comment tracking services such as CoComment for the purpose of measurement. The benefit of course is that you are identified as a participant in the conversation, which positively impacts your future link building prospects. If by chance the weblog you leave a comment on uses "follow" links instead of "no-follow" links, all the better for your link building efforts.

Do Something Nice: If you've got an advertising budget, consider shifting a portion of those funds to secure natural (or at least semi-natural) links. Say for instance that you use an open-source software that requests donations. Why not make a donation and ask for a link from the developers site? Or say for example that you write a weblog on music like WM's Senior Editor Mike Phillips; why not consider writing a post on how to give back to music charities - someone will notice and grant you a link! Resolve to reap what you sow in 2009 and you'll be that much closer to Web success at the start of 2010.

Create Authority Documents and Share Socially: An authority document is one that people look to for guidance on a) how to do something, or b) how to do something better. Content does not exist in a vacuum however - it won't pull people on to your site on its own merit. You must share that information through an active network of Web friends and colleagues to make it stick in the Web's sphere of influence. That's why Website Magazine and others spend so much time discussing social news/bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious, micro-blogging communities like Twitter and social networks like Facebook. These are opportunities where one can share their ideas and their content. Remember, authority does not happen overnight - it happens gradually with sudden increases (bursts) of influence. Resolve in 2009 to develop one well-thought out authority document each month of 2009 and, build out your social profile and share your content on as many social networks as possible, encouraging you friends to do the same.

Source: Websitemagazine

Twitter Cool Tools

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:17:05 PST

Twitter Specific Tools:

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends' status on Twitter and lets you make posts from your browser status bar. It also allows you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts in one click. Retweet This is an application designed for use with the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in. It allows you to append a retweet button to the end of each Twitter entry to encourage your followers to retweet your posts.

Classify Twitter Users is a script that allows you to classify Twitter users and decide whether they are worth following based on their friends, followers and post ratios. Another Greasemonkey app, it's a great tool to help you weed out the Twitter spammers and fan boys from the socially healthy. You can set the script to use your Twitter user scales (e.g. spammer, social climber, social rock star) or just gather more information about people you are following.

TwittAd allows Twitter users to monetize their account by accepting advertising on the background image of their Twitter user profile. You decide the duration and price advertisers pay for exposure and get paíd for every hour you serve the ad.

TwitterCounter lets you add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are by the number of persons following you.

Twitter Grade measures the reach and authority of a Twitter user, calculated by the pace of their updates, the completeness of their profile, their number of followers and the network power of those followers.

Twitter Grader displays as a score out of 100 and is consistently updating and adapting as your Twitter account grows. Based on those grades, Twitter Grader lists the Twitter Elite globally and in each country, just like Technorati does for bloggers.

TwitPic, as the name suggests, is a photo sharing tool for Twitter. When logged in, it allows you to upload photos and post them with comments as a Tweet. It works with a range of Twitter clients such as Twitterific, Twhirl and MobileTwitter and stores all your photos in a single location with updated viewing stats. As far as Twitter image sharing goes, this is king for reliability.

Twuffer is a Twitter buffer. It allows Twitter users to compose a líst of future tweets, and schedule their release. Twuffer is ideal for making hourly, daily or monthly announcements or send post-dated birthday greetings or reminders to people about upcoming events. It's also perfect if you're the type of person who wants to give the impression that you don't ever sleep.

iTweet is another interface for Twitter. It has built-in auto-refresh, search and hash tags and features full follow, block and notifications features. Users can view and post user bio, location and URLs inline with their tweets. Another cool feature of iTweet is the ability to Retweet a user post with a single click.

Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter. Similar to Digg, on Twitturly, people "vote" for a URL. The more votes it gets the better it ranks. If it does well enough, it gets promoted to the home page and as the votes rise it gets displayed higher up the home page. Twitturly differs from Digg in that instead of voting on their site, you vote by participating on Twitter. Each time that you send a link to your followers on Twitter, Twitturly takes a note of it and applies your vote to that URL. It's a great way to follow the loudest global conversations.

Mr Tweet Similar to LinkedIn , it looks through your extended network and makes suggestions to help you build effective relationships on Twitter. For example, which of your followers should you be following in return? Who are the most influential people you should be following? Who are your followers following?

Twitter Search is Twitter's own built-in and oft-overlooked search tool. You can use it to search for other Twitter users, keywords, hash tag topics and a range of cool shortcut items.

Microsoft Internet Explorer Security Flaws Warning

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:47:31 PST

Microsoft Internet Explorer Security Flaws Warning

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users.
It's a shame Microsoft have not been able to fix this more quickly

Q&A: Stay safe online

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the firm in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified.

Browser bait

"In this case, hackers found the hole before Microsoft did," said Rick Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro. "This is never a good thing."

As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.

"What we've seen from the exploit so far is it stealing game passwords, but it's inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals," he said. "It's just a question of modifying the payload the trojan installs."

MICROSOFT SECURITY ADVICE
Change IE security settings to high (Look under Tools/Internet Options)
Switch to a Windows user account with limited rights to change a PC's settings
With IE7 or 8 on Vista turn on Protected Mode
Ensure your PC is updated
Keep anti-virus and anti-spyware software up to date

Said Mr Ferguson: "If users can find an alternative browser, then that's good mitigation against the threat."

But Microsoft counselled against taking such action.

"I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw," said John Curran, head of Microsoft UK's Windows group.

He added: "We're trying to get this resolved as soon as possible.

"At present, this exploit only seems to affect 0.02% of internet sites," said Mr Curran. "In terms of vulnerability, it only seems to be affecting IE7 users at the moment, but could well encompass other versions in time."

Richard Cox, chief information officer of anti-spam body The Spamhaus Project and an expert on privacy and cyber security, echoed Trend Micro's warning.

"It won't be long before someone reverse engineers this exploit for more fraudulent purposes. Trend Mico's advice [of switching to an alternative web browser] is very sensible," he said.

This could be the moment when the minnows in the browser wars finally score a significant victory

PC Pro magazine's security editor, Darien Graham-Smith, said that there was a virtual arms race going on, with hackers always on the look out for new vulnerabilities.

"The message needs to get out that this malicious code can be planted on any web site, so simple careful browsing isn't enough."

"It's a shame Microsoft have not been able to fix this more quickly, but letting people know about this flaw was the right thing to do. If you keep flaws like this quiet, people are put at risk without knowing it."

"Every browser is susceptible to vulnerabilities from time to time. It's fine to say 'don't use Internet Explorer' for now, but other browsers may well find themselves in a similar situation," he added.

Google Bounce Rate Can Affect Your Rankings

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:09:54 PST

Does Google use the bounce rate of a web page to specify the position of that page in the search results? What does this mean for your website rankings and what can you do to get a better bounce rate?

What is the bounce rate?

There are two definitions: the bounce rate of your website is the percentage of visitors who see just one page of your website or the percentage of visitors who stay on your site for a small amount of time (only a few seconds).

The bounce rate helps you to measure the quality of traffic that your website gets and it also helps you to find out where your web pages could be improved.

Google's definition of the bounce rate

The Google Analytics documentation defines the bounce rate as follows:

"Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors."

This Google definition already indicates that Google thinks that web pages with a high bounce rate aren't relevant to website visitors. If your web pages have a high bounce rate for a search term, Google might lower the rankings of your website for that search term.

Does Google use the bounce rate as a ranking factor?

Google has the ability to collect the bounce rate with the Google toolbar and Google Analytics. In addition, Google can measure the time between visits to their search engine by the same user and they can use the Google Chrome browser to measure the complete surfing behavior of users.

Last month, a webmaster performed a test that showed a significant ranking change as a result of a significant bounce rate change. The test is not very conclusive but chances are that Google really uses the bounce rate as a ranking factor.

The bounce rate alone might not be used by Google but combined with other factors, it could have an effect on the rankings. For example, Google could measure how many people start a new search for the same topic after visiting your web page. That would be an indicator that your website is not suitable for the chosen keyword.

What can you do to lower the bounce rate of your web pages?

A high bounce rate is usually a sign of a low quality web page. This means that your web page either doesn't offer what the visitor is searching for or the usability of your web page isn't good.

If you improved the contents and the usability of your web pages, you might lower your bounce rate from 75% to 65%. This would lead to a remarkable 40% increase in conversions (35 out of 100 visitors now stay on your website instead of 25 out of 100 visitors).

In addition to improving the usability of your web pages, you can lower your bounce rate by tailoring your landing pages to the keywords and ads that you run. If your landing pages offer the information that the searchers are looking for then you will get a lower bounce rate.

Lowering the bounce rate of your web pages has two major benefits: it's likely that you will get more visitors from search engines and you will get a higher conversion rate. The only exceptions to the scenario above are one page websites and web pages that offer very compelling content on a single web page (for example Wikipedia pages).

Search engines use many more ranking factors than just the bounce rate. If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you should make sure that your web pages offer all elements that are necessary to get high rankings.

Google Rankings Drop? How To Gain Google Top Rankings

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:41:04 PST

Google Rankings Drop? How To Gain Google Top Rankings

Has your website lost its rankings in Google? Did your rankings drop or did your website vanish completely from Google? In that case, your website might have received a Google penalty and you might have to file a reinclusion request.

There are several reasons that can cause a ranking drop:

You changed your web pages. After a web page change, Google temporarily downranks web pages. This process has been described in a Google patent. In that case, you don't have to worry about the ranking drop and you'll get your old (or better) rankings back after some time.

Other web pages are better than yours. No web page can keep its rankings forever. Your competitors might have built better web pages with better content and better inbound links. In that case, optimize your web page content for your keywords and try to get better inbound links.
Google thinks that you use spam elements on your web pages and applied a penalty to your website. In that case, you have to file a reinclusion request.
How to find out if your website has been penalized

Search for your domain name on Google. If your website does not come as the first result, it's likely that it has been penalized.

If Google cannot find any page of your website if you search for "site:yourdomain.com" (replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name) then it's nearly sure that your website has been penalized.

Action plan: what you can do to get your rankings back

Before you ask Google to reconsider your website, you should make sure that everything is okay with your site:

Fix all on-site issues that might have caused the problem.

If you use hidden text or nearly hidden text on your website then remove it. Reconsider any use of display:none and visibility:hidden that you use in the CSS code of your website.

If you use keyword lists or any other form of keyword stuffing on your web pages, then remove these elements. Check your web page titles, the meta tags and even HTML comments.

Remove any unnecessary redirects, unrelated links and all duplicate pages. If you use cloaking or bot blocking scripts on your server, disable these scripts. Make sure that your HTML code is clean and that your web pages look nice. Don't use any automatically created doorway pages.

Fix all off-site issues.

Off-site issues are often the reason for ranking penalties. If you participated in automated link exchange systems of if you paid a cheap overseas link building service to get links to your website then it's likely that these links have been flagged as spam links by Google.

Google does not like automated link systems at all. Remove all automated link systems from your website and try to make sure that these linking systems do not link anymore to your site.

If you purchased links to improve your rankings, try to get rid of these links. Google has officially stated that they consider paid links spam. Do not buy links.
How to file a reinclusion request

When you have removed all on-site and off-site elements that could have been flagged by Google, you can file a reinclusion request.

Keep your reinclusion request short and to the point. Be friendly and explain what exactly you have done to clean up your website.

Ranking drops can cost your business a lot of money. For that reason, you shouldn't use any search engine optimization services that promise quick-fix solutions. If something looks too good, too inexpensive or too easy to be true then it probably isn't true.

If you use ethical search engine optimization methods to optimize your web pages then you can be sure that your website gets high rankings without offending Google. It can take longer to get high rankings with ethical methods but you will also keep your high rankings much longer.

How Google Ranks Web Pages New Patent

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:34:08 PST

How Google Ranks Web Pages New Patent

Google has recently filed a patent that details many points that Google uses to rank web pages. The title of the patent is "Information retrieval based on historical data" and it confirms the existence of the Google sandbox and that it can apply to all web pages. The patent filed by Google is towards the end of this posting.

To find out what this means to your web site and what you have to do to optimize your web pages so that you get high rankings on Google.

Part 1: How your web page changes influence your rankings on Google

The patent specification revealed a lot of information about possible ways Google might use your web page changes to determine the ranking of your site.

In addition to web page content, the ranking of web pages is influenced by the frequency of page or site updates. Google measures content changes to determine how fresh or how stale a web page is. Google tries to distinguish between real and superfluous content changes.

This doesn't mean that it is always advisable to regularly change the content of your web pages. Google says that stale results might be desirable for information that doesn't need updating while fresh content is good for results that require it.

For example, seasonal results might go up and down in the result pages based on the time of the year.

Google possibly records the following web page changes:

the frequency of changes
the amount of changes (substantial or shallow changes)
the change in keyword density
the number of new web pages that link to a web page
the changes in anchor texts (the text that is used to link to a web page)
the number of links to low trust web sites (for example too many affiliate links on one web page)
Google might use the results of this analysis to specify the ranking of a web page in addition to its content.

Section 0128 in the patent filing reveals that you shouldn't change the focus of too many documents at once:

"A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.

Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate spam. For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a 'stable' period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a 'doorway' document.

Another indication may include the disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."

This means that the Google sandbox phenomenon may apply to your web site if you change your web pages.

What does this mean to your web site?

First of all, you should make sure that your web page content is optimized for Google. If your web page content is not optimized, all other ranking factors won't help you much.

Try to find out if the keywords you target on search engines require static or fresh search results and update your web site content accordingly. Make sure that you don't change too much at once so that your web site won't be put in the sandbox.

Google's Patent
ENTITY DISPLAY PRIORITY IN A DISTRIBUTED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM

Abstract
A system for ranking geospatial entities is described. In one embodiment, the system comprises an interface for receiving ranking data about a plurality of geospatial entities and an entity ranking module. The module uses a ranking mechanism to generate place ranks for the geospatial entities based on the ranking data. Ranked entity data generated by the entity ranking module is stored in a database. The entity ranking module may be configured to evaluate a plurality of diverse attributes to determine a total score for a geospatial entity. The entity ranking module may be configured to organize ranked entity data into placemark layers.

1. A geographic information system (GIS) comprising information about a plurality of geospatial entities and configured to prioritize the geospatial entities according to a ranking mechanism.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the ranking mechanism uses data about a meta attribute of a geospatial entity to determine the geospatial entity's priority.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the meta attribute comprises one of: quality of information available about the geospatial entity, an attribute of a description of the geospatial entity, and an attribute of a definition of the geospatial entity.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the meta attribute comprises an indicator of the geospatial entity's popularity.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the meta attribute comprises one of: an age attribute, a stature attribute, and an importance attribute.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the meta attribute comprises a relationship of a geospatial entity to its place in a hierarchy of geospatial entities.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein an entity of the plurality of entities comprises a collection of geospatial objects and wherein the priority of the entity is determined responsive to a characteristic of the collection of geospatial objects.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein an entity of the plurality of entities comprises a geospatial entity defined in an on-line forum and wherein the ranking mechanism uses data generated in the on-line forum to determine the rank of the geospatial entity.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the ranking mechanism uses data harvested from a website on the internet about a geospatial entity to determine the geospatial entity's priority.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the ranking mechanism determines a geospatial entity's priority from a combination of weighted data from a plurality of meta attributes of the geospatial entity.

11. A computer-implemented method for ranking geospatial entities, the method comprising: receiving geospatial entity data; evaluating attributes of geospatial entities included in the received geospatial entity data; ranking the geospatial entities based on the evaluation; and storing the ranked geospatial entity data.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the geospatial entity data comprises data generated in a community forum.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the geospatial entity data comprises data associated with a specific user and further comprising using the ranked geospatial entity data to generate a map for the specific user.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising selecting geospatial entities for a geographical display based on the rankings of the geospatial entities.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising providing the ranked geospatial entity data to a map system configured to generate a map that includes ranked geospatial entities and unranked geospatial entities.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising selecting geospatial entities to include in navigation instructions based on rankings of the geospatial entities.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising selecting a geospatial entity to associate with an advertising term based on the geospatial entity's ranking.

18. The method of claim 11, further comprising providing the ranked geospatial entity data to an application for generating a search result based on the ranked geospatial entity data.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein evaluating is performed responsive to user instructions for providing personalized geospatial entity rankings.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the user instructions comprise a weighting to be applied to an attribute of a geospatial entity identified in the geospatial entity data.

21. A system for ranking geospatial entities, the system comprising: an interface for receiving ranking data about a plurality of geospatial entities; an entity ranking module for generating place ranks for geospatial entities according to a ranking mechanism based on the ranking data; and a database for storing ranked entity data generated by the entity ranking module.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the interface is configured to provide the ranked entity data to a requesting application.

23. The system of claim 21, wherein the entity ranking module is configured to evaluate a plurality of diverse attributes to determine a total score for a geospatial entity.

24. The system of claim 21, wherein the entity ranking module is configured to organize ranked entity data into placemark layers.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein each placemark layer corresponds to at least one of: a level of detail, a density, an altitude, and an entity category.

26. The system of claim 21, wherein the requesting application is a map server system configured to use the ranked entity data to generate a map including entities selected on the basis of place ranks.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the entity ranking module is hosted on the map server system.

28. An entity ranking module hosted on a client device, the module for generating rankings for a plurality of geospatial entities and the module comprising: an interface for receiving entity data that defines a plurality of geospatial entities and ranking data that describes the plurality of geospatial entities; and a ranking engine for generating rankings for the geospatial entities, wherein the rankings are used to select which of the geospatial items to include in a map to be displayed on the client device.

29. The module of claim 28, further comprising a memory for storing data about a user of the client device and wherein the ranking engine is configured to apply a ranking mechanism responsive to the user data.

30. The module of claim 29, wherein the user data comprises user preferences about the relative weightings of attributes evaluated by the ranking engine.

31. The module of claim 29, wherein the user data comprises a user defined geospatial entity.

32. The module of claim 29, wherein the user data comprises an indication of a user's interest in a geospatial entity and wherein the ranking mechanism assigns a rankings premium to the geospatial entity based on the user's interest.

Chinese Internet Sacks Staff Over Paid for Search Listings

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:18:09 PST

Chinese internet giant sacks staff over paid for search listings

China's internet giant Baidu has promised to overhaul its operations after state media accused it of allowing unlicensed medical services to buy high search rankings.

The search engine dominates the market in the world's largest internet population, with around 60% of users — well ahead of Google, which leads the field internationally.

But the case caused Baidu stocks to plummet and highlighted users' complaints about the way the Nasdaq-listed firm allows companies to buy their way into search results.

Robin Li, Baidu's chief executive, told the state news agency Xinhua today that the firm had sacked staff and more could follow.

He said: "Baidu employees who are found to have been involved in the scandal will be penalised … We have already fired people who helped fabricate documents for unlicensed suppliers.

"We have removed the key words of all four clients mentioned in the report and have begun to double-check the licences of all other hospitals and pharmacies on our client list."

Baidu said in a statement that it had removed paid search listings for firms which were unable to file their licence details, pending checks.

Those customers together account for around 10%-15% of Baidu's revenues, the statement added.

The state-run China Central Television (CCT) reported earlier this month that the search rankings had steered people suffering from illness to unlicensed and expensive hospitals or to medicines that failed to cure them.

One patient told the broadcaster he spent more than10,000 yuan (£950) at a clinic, as it topped Baidu's results, but it failed to cure his abdominal pain, which was subsequently treated successfully by a public hospital for 100 yuan.

The unlicensed clinic paid Baidu almost 17 yuan a click to get a prominent ranking, according to the report. CCT also alleged that some companies which did not pay were omitted from results.

But in a statement, the internet firm insisted: "Baidu has never excluded websites of any customers because they did not pay for keywords, and Baidu does not tolerate such practices."

Source:Tania Branigan in Beijing

The Evolution (Not Death) Of SEO

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:25:16 PST

The Evolution (Not Death) Of SEO

Great article from Jenn. She has great insight into the SEO world and for that, it makes me proud to be part of the ecombuffet.com team. Providing clients with exceptional organic seo/sem services is what makes you and ecombuffet standout as a continued reputable, trustworthy seo company. Read Jenn's article below or follow this link: http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/11/25/the-evolution-not-death-of-seo/#comment-5123

There is a lot of talk about the “death of SEO” and “the death of ranking reports” lately. It all stems from some sessions at PubCon in Las Vegas.

Remember we all want to get our message out there and have our voices heard and one way to do that is to make a dramatic statement. So that is what you are seeing. The truth is SEO is not dead - it is just evolving. And the other truth is…. the more things change, the more they stay the same.

What I mean is; of course the SEO universe is evolving - search is so much more sophisticated than it ever was before. We have universal search, geo-targeting and we have personalization.

However in spite of all that - the foundation has not really changed. To get ranked you should have always been focused on creating high quality content, getting good links into your site and creating a useful, informative site that is focused on the user experience and ultimately on getting the sale. None of that has changed - that is all just as important.

People talk about the death of ranking reports - but for those that know what internet marketing is all about - you should know that ranking reports were never that important. Sure we provide them to clients, to give them an indication of where they stand in the engines - but the real results come from how much increased traffic and sales they get, not from how many rankings they can see on their report.

It’s true with personalization, universal search, intent based search and geo-targeting the landscape is changing and different results will be displayed for different people. That is all good news!

Sure it means you won’t get reliable ranking reports and you may even get less total traffic but the traffic you do get will be more targeted since your webpage coming up in the SERPs was matched to a query that was specific and relevant based on their location and search history.

I’m hearing a lot of talk that makes me think people have misinterpreted what was said at PubCon.

It is true that we need to focus on more than just ranking reports (but as I said, I believe that was already the case). However, you still need a high quality site that shows the engines it is relevant to whatever the query is, in whatever context the person is searching.

In other words if you go with the example Bruce Clay gave at PubCon: If someone performs a search for “java” they may be looking for programming, or may be looking for the beverage, and some are looking for travel information. Theoretically, personalized search will know that and provide results accordingly.

The fact is in all 3 of those scenarios some sites have to come up on top - so you just have to make sure your site is optimized to let the engines and the site visitors know which of those queries you are relevant to (programming, coffee or travel) and then your site can come up on top!

So What Now?

The truth is optimizing your site is more important than ever since traffic is going to be so much more specific and targeted and as a result conversions will be higher.

You should focus on understanding your site visitors and what they want. Focus on what they do when they come to your site. Focus on building content that delivers quality information.

If you don’t know what personalization, universal search, geo-targetting and intent based search is, stay tuned for my next article.

The final thought I will leave you with: Working with a company that is current on SEO trends and understands what all these changes mean is going to be vital to your success.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Google Layoffs - 10,000 of Google Workers Affected

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:39:40 PST

Google Layoffs - 10,000 Workers Affected

Now I know why my Google stock is oing down. This is from WebGuild.org
By Daya Baran at November 23, 2008
Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google.

By law, Google is required to report layoffs publicly and with the SEC however, Google has managed to get around the legal requirement. In fact, one of the ways Google was able to meet Wall Street’s Q3 earnings expectations was by trimming “operational” expenses.

Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”.

The classification affords Google several advantages such as:

1) Hire full time employees without full time benefits. The classification enables Google to pay them above minimum wage, provide no health benefits, no insurance coverage, no stock options, and no offer of permanent employment.

2) By under-reporting actual employee headcount, Google looks good to Wall Street. A low headcount gives the illusion that productivity per employee is more than it actually is, which in turn looks good in the eyes of Google shareholders which is ultimately good for Google’s stock in the short term.

So, how does Google get around the SEC requirement regarding material information? Google has hundreds of lawyers figuring out how not to get caught. One of them is by moving workers from job to job every few months so that their status remains temporary. That is why you probably have never spoken to the same person twice at Google and that is also why there is somebody new on the job and most times you know more about their job than they do.

A bulk of the workers have been there for up to five years and many know others who had been there for seven years or more moving from job to job.

There is no question the economic downturn is hitting Google hard and with the slowdown in online advertising, their troubles are just beginning.

Google Launches SearchWiki. Re-Ranking Your Google Searches

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:41:18 PST

Google Launches SearchWiki. Re-Ranking Your Google Searches
SearchWiki: make search your own.

Below is all you need to know about SearchWiki from the Google Blog

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it. Or maybe you'd like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.

Today we're launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don't feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

Watch our lead engineer, Amay, demonstrate a few ways to use SearchWiki in this short video:

This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives. We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users' search experience, and this is yet another step along the way.

Source Cedric Dupont, Product Manager, and Corin Anderson, Software Engineer

Washington State SEO Company Sued. SEO Ripp-off

bsburns@cox.net (Bonnie Burns) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:02:45 PST

Washington State Sues SEO Company Visible.net

Yep...you get what you pay for. Those SEO companies that soliciate without cause, send spam emails, make guarantees that cannot be kept, break the rules of ethical SEO practices better take notice!!

The Washington State Attorney General announced in a press release yesterday that it was suing a Redmond-based SEO company, Visible.net. According to the Complaint, Visible also does business under the name WebMarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com (that's not a typo). The AG also names the owner of the companies, Gilbert Walker, as a defendant in the case.

The defendants sell website design, SEO, and other internet marketing services, along with providing e-conmmerce services to process online purchases for merchant customers. They promote their services through their website and by telemarketing. Packages include an intial startup fee of 3,749.99 up to $9,749.99 plus a monthly fee of $39.9 to $99.99.

“When it comes to Internet search results, every small business wants to pull rank,” Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “Merchants hoping to increase their online sales paid thousands of dollars to Visible.net and Captures.com but didn’t always receive the top listings and other services they were promised.” The Ag's Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit, said that AG's office and the Better Business Bureau have received nearly 90 complaints about the defendants, showing a pattern of recurring problems since at least 2005.

Washington filed the lawsuit on behalf of consumers and accuses the companies and their owner of violating state consumer protection and telemarketing laws. The complaint makes the following claims:

Defendants misrepresented their ability to increase their customers' traffic, ranking, and sales.

Defendants misrepresented that their customers will obtain increased sales by using defendants' services, for example stating that they will have "more busienss than they can handle," that they will be making money within "60 to 90 days," and that they will have a "hard time keeping up with Internet orders."

Defendants also misrepresented that they are affiliated with other marketers in order to sell services to prospective clients. For example, they falsely represented that they are affiliated with Specialty Merchandise Company, a drop-ship. SMC is a "membership program" whereby member/resellers pay a monthly fee for the right to advertise and sell products that SMC directly ships to their members' customers. The defendants directly solicited these members, claiming that they were affiliated with the company. A number of consumers agreed to p[urchase defendants' services in the mistaken belief that they are, in fact, affiliated with SMC.

The defendants are also accused of wrongfully claiming that its customer services representatives can be reached at any time when, in fact, customers are often unable to reach representatives and sometimes do not receive return calls.

Defendants allegedly failed to provide refunds or honor cancellation requests. They continued to bill the credit cards of some consumers who have attempted to cancel and submitted alleged debts to collection agencies.

The defendants also failed to register with the Washington Department of Licensing as commercial telephone solicitors and failed to provide written confirmation of a consumer's rights under the Commercial Telephone Solicitation Act.

The AG is seeking civil penalties and consumer restitution in addition to a court order halting the deceptive practices.

Visible.net has not yet issued at statement about the lawsuit, but a representative said that they will probably post something on their blog.

I'll keep you updated as the case develops.

Best Regards,
Sarah L. Bird

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/washington-state-sues-seo-company-visiblenet