SEO Viet Nam, SEO VN

History of the Blog

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:16:00 -0800

We all know that the modern concept of the blog developed from online diaries. The Wikipedia definition of blog is:

"A blog is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog."

But do you know how the term blog actually came about? I was curious so I did some research. The term "weblog" was actually coined by US blogger Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. Barger is best known as editor of Robot Wisdom, an influential early weblog. Barger used the term to describe the new kind of website that was emerging at the time that was a sort of an annotated bookmarks list available for public viewing, a “log” of journeys around the fledging web with links and commentaries.

The short form, "blog," was coined by his colleague Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase wee blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. You can actually see this in an archived version of the site from the Wayback Machine and he later discusses the impact his joke has had.

The word blog has now been adopted as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog"). But who is considered to be the world's first blogger? Ah that opens a different can of worms entirely and is a post for another day. Stay tuned!

Google shifts strategy

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:15:00 -0800

It used to be that Google was all about new products. While the internet giant still has new products in the works, a report in The Washington Post says Google has redirected its engineers to focus on improving existing products and technologies.

The idea behind the shift, which includes the launch of Android and OpenSocial, is to make online activity so easy for consumers that they will do everything on the internet.

"Google is trying to make itself into a ubiquitous brand where it's everywhere on the web," said Jennifer Simpson, an analyst for the Yankee Group research firm.

Google turns to X Factor's Fuller for push into TV

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:13:00 -0800

Internet giant Google is in secret talks with Simon Fuller, the British entrepreneur behind the Spice Girls, about a joint venture that could change the way TV is watched over the internet.

News of the collaboration will prompt speculation that Google's plans for the TV market include generating original content and competing with major broadcasters.

Executives from the £229bn internet giant have been in discussions with Fuller, who invented Pop Idol, the world's most successful TV franchise, for about a year. Although details of the deal are a closely guarded secret, sources close to Fuller say it could revolutionise the way entertainment and music are distributed.

'It's a big idea on a global scale,' he said. 'It will change television in much the way iTunes changed the way music is disseminated.'

Last year saw the launch of Google Video, which offers full-length TV programmes and films on a pay-per-view basis over the internet. The company signed up partners including ITN, US network CBS and music company Sony BMG to provide content. Hit shows, including CSI, Survivor and the US version of Big Brother were available online. Users paid around £1 to watch shows; live sports events cost more. The venture was not a success, and Google changed its strategy, ploughing money into YouTube, which it acquired last year.

Although he is best known for his association with the Spice Girls and managing David Beckham, Fuller created the Pop Idol format and its hugely successful US spin-off American Idol. Versions of the programme are now screened in more than 30 countries. He also shares the rights to hit show The X Factor with Simon Cowell, Fuller's collaborator and occasional rival.

The winner of last year's show, Leona Lewis, had a number-one hit with 'Bleeding Love' and her new album, Spirit, is expected to top the charts when it is released tomorrow.

Cowell, an American Idol judge and the programme's star, created The X Factor but reached an agreement with Fuller after he threatened to sue Cowell for copyright infringement. Another Fuller show, The Next Great American Band, debuted in the US last month.

More people are watching TV on-line than ever before as new technology, including powerful broadband connections, allows users to download video footage. PCs are eventually expected to merge with TV sets, and some of the world's biggest companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Google want to muscle in on this massive market.

Earlier this month, it emerged that Google's advertising revenues had overtaken those of ITV1, Britain's biggest commercial TV channel.

E*Trade Heading To The Deadpool?

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:12:00 -0800

Shares in online broking firm E*Trade fell by over 50% Monday on speculation that the company may file for bankruptcy protection due to exposure to bad debt as part of the wider sub-prime mortgage crisis.

E*Trade is a granddaddy amongst online service providers, having been found in 1991 by TradePlus as a e-stock broking service for users of America Online and Compuserve. The company boomed during Web 1.0, and despite the downturn continued to thrive as more and more share owners moved away from traditional high priced broker services to low price online alternatives.

E*Trade’s quest to expand its business and sustain growth may end up being its downfall; the company built a “significant” mortgage business providing loans to its customers, but in doing so moved away from the fundamental product that had kept them well during previous downturns.

Citi Investment Research analyst Prashant Bhatia said that the loan writedowns and a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry “could lead to a significant number of clients closing accounts,” suggesting a run on E*Trade accounts may be possible. E*Trade has a $3 billion loan exposure with a market cap of just $1.52 billion.

EU Reviewing Google-DoubleClick Deal

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:12:00 -0800

(AP) - European Union antitrust regulators launched an in-depth probe Tuesday into Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad tracker DoubleClick, saying an initial investigation showed the deal would raise competition concerns.

The EU's executive commission set an April 2 deadline by which to reach a final decision on the deal.

The deal has raised widespread concerns by Google's rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. _ both of which fear it will shrink competition for Internet advertising.

The European Commission described Google and DoubleClick as "the leading providers" of online advertising space and services and ad-serving technology.

The EU said its extended probe would examine whether the deal "could lead to anti-competitive restrictions for competitors operating in these markets and thus harm consumers."

DoubleClick helps its customers place and track online advertising, including search ads, which Google has turned into an extremely lucrative business. Google places ads on Web pages that targeted consumers are likely to use, generating money for smaller publishers and lesser-visited pages.

The EU said a preliminary probe, launched after Google notified the EU of its bid for New York-based DoubleClick in September, found the proposed combination "would raise competition concerns."

Other advertisers have expressed concerns that the deal would leave Google in a dominant position on the Internet, while consumer advocates have cited concerns about data privacy.

Google has insisted its acquisition of DoubleClick would help expand the Internet ad market.

Google shares rose $17.97, or 2.8 percent, to $650.04 in afternoon trading Tuesday.

Google Offers $10M in Software Prizes

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:10:00 -0800

(AP) - Google Inc. is offering $10 million in prizes for people who build the best software to enhance the company's upcoming cell phone operating system.

The Mountain View-based company is developing a free cell phone software package that it says will make it easier to surf the Web over mobile devices. It also will give Google more opportunities to sell ads and services.

The operating system will be based on computer code that can be openly distributed among programmers, which Google hopes will encourage developers to create new software and improvements that could spawn new uses for smart phones.

Winning offerings could encompass simple aesthetic improvements like personalized home screens or more complicated social-networking programs that merge data from the Web _ such as maps or personal Web pages _ with data from users' phones _ like contact information or the phones' geographic locations.

As part of the Android Developer Challenge, a panel of judges will pick 50 winners from entries received from Jan. 2 through March 3, 2008. In the first phase of the competition, those winners will each get $25,000 and be eligible for ten awards of $100,000 and another ten $275,000 awards.

The second phase of the competition will feature another $5 million in prize money.

Google did not specify how the applications will be judged. The company only said the winning programs will "provide consumers with the most compelling experiences."

Google also released a tool kit Monday for working on the new platform, which is to be released in the second half of next year.

Four cell phone manufacturers _ Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., HTC and LG Electronics Inc. _ have agreed to use Android in some of their phones. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said he eventually hopes the software will be integrated into thousands of different devices.

Twenty-nine other companies have signed on as members of the alliance.

Android will compete with mobile operating systems made by Microsoft Corp., Palm Inc., Research In Motion Ltd., and Symbian, which is owned by Nokia Corp. and several other major phone makers.

10 Search Engine Marketing Myths Debunked

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:07:00 -0800

By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007
In this article, I'm going to try and debunk a few myths floating around the Internet about what's required to get your site visible in search engines. Here goes:

Myth 1 - You need to buy a domain with keywords in it

I'm sure you've seen them, domains like: www.paris-hilton-pink-diamond-dog-collars.com. For some weird reason, webmasters seem to think that they need to have a keyword-stuffed domain to do well in the search engines, the more hyphens the better. Well it just isn't true.

In fact, Google spam evangelist Matt Cutts is known for warning against using over-stuffed keyword domains. If you have a look at one of the last sentences of this post of his he talks about possibly attracting Google's attention with keyword-filled domains and gives an (excessive) example. Could he be hinting that using ultra-keyworded domains may trip a filter of some kind? I think so.

Myth 2 - You need to submit your site to 1000 search engines and directories

Ok, I don't know who started this silly rumor but it's NEVER been true. Latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings show that over 95% of the search market share is dominated by the top 5 search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live Search, AOL and Ask. As long as your site is found in these engines, you can rest assured you've covered the main bases. Despite this, I still get emails offering to submit my sites to the "most popular" 1000 search engines.

Myth 3 - You need to stuff keywords into as many areas of your site as possible

I like to think this rumor was started by the same idiot who started 1). It's correct that search engines actively seek to match your site content with search queries, but stuffing the same keywords over and over into your site code via visible or invisible text DOES NOT automatically make your site relevant for searches containing those keywords. It's more likely to trip spam filters and earn your site a ranking suppression. In fact, you might as well hold up a big red flag to Googlebot that says "COME AND GET ME".

Myth 4 - Your site has to be flat HTML

Wrong again. A few years ago, search engines had difficulty indexing sites that were built using dynamically-generated pages or pages with multiple parameters in their URLs. So the recommendation by SEO experts at the time was to use flat HTML pages or convert existing pages into HTML and/or use mod_rewrite to convert dynamic URLs into flat ones. However the search engines have all become better at indexing dynamic site content now and also provide a universal sitemap protocol to enable webmasters to ensure all their pages are submitted and indexed.

Myth 5 - You have to swap links with as many sites as possible

I'd like to strap whoever started this story to a couch and make them watch re-runs of The Golden Girls for a whole year. Because this is probably the most persistent and frustrating myth there is about search engine marketing and it's one of my pet peeves. I am bombarded daily with emails from webmasters who tell me it's "...extremely valuable to swap links to boost your Google PageRank" or who tell me I should form 3 way reciprocal link partnerships because it "...will help boost the link popularity of our sites in a way that is undetectable to Google". Excuse my French, but that's Bollocks!

Reciprocal links are pretty much worthless for search engine value these days. In-bound one way links from high quality sites are much more valuable from a search engine relevancy perspective. If you are going to seek out reciprocal links, for heaven's sake, swap links with sites that offer related or complementary content to yours! What's the point offering your site visitors a link if it doesn't relate to what they are seeking on your own site? Don't seek out links based on perceived search engine value. Swap links because they offer traffic to your site or valuable resources to visitors of your own site. If you base your linking strategy on search engines alone, you'll end up with a Free For All link farm that search engine staff will mock as they slap a ranking penalty on it.

Myth 6 - You have to buy an existing domain to be successful

This myth started shortly after Google began "sandboxing" new sites for a period of time before releasing them into the main index. The phenomenon became known as the aging delay. Webmasters were stumped when they couldn't find their pages listed for any keywords in Google for months at a time and when learning of the sandbox effect, some decided that purchasing an existing domain could help them avoid the sandbox altogether.

A similar rumor suggested that purchasing a domain with a high Google PageRank would automatically transfer the PageRank and traffic to any new site built on the existing domain. Neither of these assumptions is true. Hindsight has shown us that the sandbox does not actually exist, merely that Google has become a little more picky about which sites to feature in their main index versus the supplemental index and older, better linked sites have a better chance than brand new ones with no link reputation.

As for purchasing existing domains, this can actually backfire on webmasters because Google's latest algorithm looks closely at domain registration details and if a domain has changed hands too many times or has had dodgy content in the past, it could attract suppression filters until the newest version of the site has built up some trust-rank.

Myth 7 - You only need to optimize your META Tags

Back in 1996 when I first began optimizing web sites, nobody knew anything about SEO and so even slight changes to a web site meant you could outrank your competitors. Simply optimizing the title tag of a page could bring on a Top 5 position in the SERPS. Adding keyword-rich META Description and META Keywords tags too pretty much guaranteed you a top spot. Now it's a completely different story. Most search engines don't even support the META Keywords Tag anymore and Danny Sullivan recently determined that Google's never supported it.

You have to offer search engines more than optimized title and META tags if you want your pages ranked highly for related search queries. You need to optimize the copy on your pages, reduce code bloat, provide a logical navigation structure, have good link popularity, update your site regularly, have sticky content and make sure your site code validates, amongst other things. Despite this, many webmasters assume that if they add an optimized title and META tag to every page, their job is done. Not so! You've got to think bigger than that.

Myth 8 - Any traffic is good traffic

I received an email recently from an online ad agency that had developed what they thought was a knockout SEO tool that they wanted me to review. It was basically a membership site designed to generate traffic via a voting and points system where you earn points for visiting sites and receiving visitors from the same network. As I explained to them, the concept merely builds false traffic and fake link popularity, which goes against practically everything in Google's webmaster guidelines. It is also very open to manipulation and is, in my opinion, operating on flawed logic.

This mutual optimization idea has been tried before. It doesn't work because it only attracts the most aggressive clickers and the whole thing turns into a competition between 2 or 3 lazy webmasters who think traffic at any cost/quality is the way to run an online business. It's not. Unqualified traffic that's unlikely to convert to sales or sign-ups is only wasting valuable bandwidth and hosting resources. Visitors that disappear from your site a few seconds after they arrive skew your site metrics and send a message to search engines that your site is not worth visiting. You want traffic from qualified leads, loyal repeat visitors and new visitors via highly targeted search queries.

Myth 9 - If you're not found in Google, you're screwed

I said it recently and I'll say it again: Google is NOT the Internet. There are plenty of ways to market your web site online, so you shouldn't become discouraged if you can't seem to crack good results in Google. I know of plenty of sites that receive more referrals from Yahoo and MSN than Google and that's the way they like it. Bento Yum is proof that an e-commerce site doesn't need Google (or any of the 4 main search engines) to survive. Owner Jennifer Laycock has deliberately blocked search engine robots from the site to prove that an online business can thrive via word of mouth and social media buzz alone.

But even if you can't live without Google referrals, you need to have back-up traffic channels in place. Never rely too heavily on a single source for your traffic. What if something happened tomorrow that stopped all your Google traffic? Would your site survive? It should, if you're doing your job well. Keep adding good content to your site, update and submit your sitemaps regularly, seek out high quality back links and the traffic will come.

Myth 10 - Search Engine Marketing is expensive

Not so. You can market a web site on a shoe-string budget or no budget at all! You don't need to spend thousands on SEO services or PPC advertising. Simply invest at least an hour per day learning how to optimize your web site for better search engine rankings, submitting it to relevant search engines and directories, adding fresh content, building up backward links and marketing it via social media networks such as Digg, Facebook, Del.icio.us etc.

Not sure where to start? Visit webmaster forums, read search marketing related blogs and sign up for related newsletters and you will soon learn everything you need to know about marketing your web site successfully.

Content is Dead. Community is King Now

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:05:00 -0800

By Stoney DeGeyter (c) 2007
I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over again. And every now and then a new study pops up seemingly proving, once again, that content is... uh, good.

But much like a TV producer suggesting "video is king" or a radio advertiser demanding that "audio is king", so goes the SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role--and an important one at that, but it's not the be-all, end-all of online marketing. Not even close.

But the roots of the "content is" movement are important for our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and hoping they ranked well. Little or no thought or consideration was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it's only rankings that matter, right? But those of us who learned to game search engines slowly began to learn something that those in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or turn people off, depending on what's written and how it's written.

So the movement to developing good content--real content--was an important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over). We got it. We know.

The King is Losing His Grip on the Kingdom

But like any worthy cause, we've reached a point where the mantra has been used and abused to the point where we use whatever we can find to prove once again that content is... y'know, that. Take a recent study by OPA and Nielsen/ NetRatings that shows that Internet users are spending more time than ever on content based websites.

Share of Time Spent Online

Commerce: 13.8%
Communications: 32.0%
Content: 49.6%
Search: 4.5%

That seems to confirm what many have been saying for years. Content is... uh, great for web marketing. And I've seen a few posts around the blogosphere and forums using this data to make that connection. The problem is, it's not really there.

With the rise in popularity of blogs and social media sites it's no wonder that more people spend their time reading online than anything else. While time reading and gathering information online has increased, time spent shopping has actually decreased, down over 2% from a year before. But does that tell us anything about marketing online? No, not really.

We know people like information and we know they like to communicate. We also know people like to shop and online shopping has continued to íncrease year over year. All this study suggests is what we spend most of our time doing on the web. Well, true enough, I don't spend most of my time shopping.

Since when is it the goal of ecommerce sites to get people to spend a long time on their site? Isn't it more important to drive shoppers to the sale and get the conversion? Step 1: Get traffíc. Step 2: Keep visitors engaged. Step 3: Close the sale. That's not necessarily a process that necessitates long periods of time spent on a site.

In no way do I want to diminish the importance of content on ecommerce websites. Having a database of information that helps visitors make their decision, helpful tutorials, etc. can improve your visitor's overall experience and keep them coming back to your site. But the goal of all of that is to lead people to the sale.

Community Killed Content and Stole the Throne

If I were to interpret this data I wouldn't necessarily come away thinking content is... so very important. What I would conclude, however is that we need to build websites that meet a number of users needs. Adding more content to your ecommerce site is not the magic bullet. What is, however, is creating a great user experience and providing just the right amount of information and customer engagement that shoppers need to get to the conversion goal. That can be done through a number of means.

Many online stores are already paving the way by opening the door to ratings and reviews. Others are doing that by creating blogs to disseminate important and relevant industry information along with tips and tutorials. Still others do that by creating an information database that can visitors frequent to gain additional insights.

I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.

Promoting Your Products with Search Engine Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:05:00 -0800

Do you have a new product or an existing product that you'd like to promote? Search engine marketing can be an effective technique if you know how to optimize your online campaigns and manage your marketing spends effectively.

Most major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN offer pay-per-click advertising. Additionally, you can find search engine marketing opportunities that are associated with an annual fee such as ExactSeek.

You can expect less traffic from second tier search engines like ExactSeek simply because these engines reach a much smaller audience. None-the-less, using second tier search engines can be a great value depending on how competitive the keywords are that can be associated with your product.

Search engine marketing is largely focused on using pay-per-click advertising to promote and sell your product. There are generally two approaches that you can take to best utilize this marketing method. The first approach is to use common keywords associated with your product or service. The second method is to use long-tail keywords or keyword phrases.

Search engines like Google make it very easy to find appropriate keywords to promote your website. Once you set up a Google Adwords account, you can have Google spider your site and propose relevant search terms. When evaluating the list, look for those search terms that are frequently searched for but face little competition. This results in a list of targeted keywords that you can promote.

You can also use the Overture keyword search tool which is available online. Simply enter the common search term or phrases associated with your website and evaluate search traffic results. The only downside to using this method is that you will only know how popular the search terms are but not the competitiveness of the terms.

Long tail keywords involve searching for common search phrases that have little traffic but also very little competition. Again, you can use Google or other tools to find these long-tail keywords. Taken in isolation, a few long-tail keywords won't generate significant clicks or revenue for you. However, when bidding on dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these long-tail keywords, you may find that you can generate significant traffic and conversions.

One of the key aspects of search engine marketing, regardless of which search engine you choose, is measuring the effectiveness of your keyword campaigns. With the help of Google tracking, this is easier than ever. By placing a small block of code on your payment confirmation (thank you) page, Google conversion tracking can tie the sale back to the specific text link or display ad that generated the sale.

Evaluate this information on a regular basis and fine tune your online search marketing campaigns. You should also set daily spending caps for your keyword related efforts.

Depending on the keywords you choose, the quantity of those keywords, and so on, your costs can be significant. Daily caps protect you by setting a maximum spend for your campaign.

Search engine marketing is a great way to promote a new or existing product or service if you carefully select your keyword phrases, place caps on your daily spend, and track conversions. When using this form of online marketing, pay attention to your successes and failures and reinvest where returns are positive.

Reciprocal links are (still) not dead

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:36:00 -0800

Reciprocal links are not dead. Weren't dead before. Aren't dead now. I know it and you know it. But for just a second let's pretend otherwise.

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I've said this before and I'll say it here again.

There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It's all about how you use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.

Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links now, right?

The fear tactics have run their course and, frankly, nobody is engaged in old-school mass reciprocal link swapping (for the love of God people, if you're still doing that, knock it off!) But for the sake of science and posterity, I now, over a year later, present the results of my (almost forgotten) reciprocal link test.

The Set-Up

On one of my sites I created a master testing page. From this page I linked to eight new pages created specifically for this test. Each of those pages contained a few paragraphs of content with the word "reciprocallinksarenotdead" linked to an external web site. The goal was to watch the search results to see what sites appeared in the SERPs for our test term.

For the sake of creating a good testing ground, we linked to four sites that linked back and four sites that didn't. From here we split things up even further by linking to two sites in each group to that we considered to be "high authority" for their industry, and two that we considered to be "lower authority" for their industry. We then split this again using one to link using the target site's keyword in the link and the other not.

The Sting

I started out checking up on this daily seeing if Google, Yahoo or MSN cached the pages linking out and then watching if/when they showed up in the SERPs. The result was quite a roller coaster ride. One day the test pages would be cached and the next day the cache date was from several days prior. This happened frequently. The same thing with the SERPs. One day all the test pages would show up and the next day gone and then the next day just some of the test pages showed up and the next others, but not necessarily the ones from the previous day. It was interesting to watch.

After about several weeks of daily monitoring I started to cut back to every few days, then weekly then, well I kind of forgot about it with the occasional thought "Hey, I wonder how that test is going", in which I'd take a quick look and forget all about it again. Here we are now, over a year later and I think I can confidently display the results as definitive.

The Results

Google's result page:

Low authority, non reciprocating site
Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Test page linking to #9 below
Test page linking to #2 above
Low authority, reciprocating site
High authority, reciprocating site
High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

Google supplemental results show the remainder of the testing pages. Missing from SERPs: High authority, non-reciprocating site.

Yahoo's result page:

Low authority, reciprocating site
High authority, non-reciprocating site
High authority, reciprocating site
Test page linking to #8 below
Test page linking to #2 above
Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Low authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Link to a blog post that uses keyword as part of the URL

Missing from SERPs: Low authority, reciprocating site, High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

MSN's Result page:

High authority, reciprocating site
Test page linking to #10 below
Test page linking to #1 above
Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
Low authority, non reciprocating site
High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
High authority, non-reciprocating site
High authority, non-reciprocating site
Low authority, reciprocating site

The Happy Ending

We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links.

Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt's post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I'm sure Matt is right. But the key word there is "excessive".

If all you do is look for low-quality reciprocal links that ad no value to any user's experience then, yes, that can, and should do you some harm. But don't be afraid of reciprocation. If someone links to you out of kindness, feel free to link back to them out of gratitude. It's not going to hurt you one bit and the link to you won't be devalued. Just be sure you're adding value, not reciprocating for the sake of reciprocating.

Top 6 reasons why your search engine rankings have dropped

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:34:00 -0800

Have your rankings dropped recently? Before you do anything, you should try to find out what has caused your ranking drop.

The better you understand the reason why your rankings dropped, the better you can prevent your website from future ranking drops. There are six major reasons for ranking drops:

1. Your website changes

Most webmasters update their web pages regularly. As long as the changes are only small, this won't have a big effect on your rankings. However, if you re-design your web pages or if you optimize a page for a new search term then search engines might re-calculate your search engine rankings.

Google even has a filter for changed web pages. If you change your web pages, Google will temporarily apply a filter to your sites. Details can be found here.

Required action: If you have web pages with high search engine rankings then you should change these pages with great care.

2. The links to your website change

If you have an old website with a grown inbound link structure then it's not likely that your site rankings will drop because of a link change.

If the links to your site are mainly paid links that suddenly disappear or get discounted by Google then the loss of these links can be enough to cause a significant ranking drop.

In addition, sudden changes in the linking structure of a website make your website suspicious.

Required action: If you heavily rely on paid links you might want to reconsider your linking strategy. Try to get inbound links that last.

Continually getting links is essential to keep high rankings. If you don't work on your links then your website will be replaced by better linked web pages in the search results.

3. The websites of your competitors change

Everybody wants to be on Google's first result page. For that reason, it's only natural that other websites will be listed better than yours if you don't react.

Many websites target the same keywords as you do. If these other websites have better content and better links than your site then it's only natural that these sites get better rankings.

Required action: You must offer better content than your competitors. Make sure that you offer many web pages that are relevant to your search terms and that you have better inbound links than your competitors.

4. Spam elements on your web pages

Search engines don't like spam. If search engines find out that you use cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages or any other spam technique on your web pages then it is extremely likely that your website will be penalized.

Required action: Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Just because your website hasn't been penalized yet doesn't mean that search engines won't find the spam elements in the near future.

5. Search engine algorithm changes

Search engines are continually improving their ranking algorithms. While most changes are rather subtle, some ranking algorithm changes can have a major impact on the rankings of your web pages.

Required action: Wait for some days to find out if the ranking drop is not just temporarily. Then optimize your web pages so that they reflect the latest search engine algorithms.

6. Technical problems

Your web server can be the reason for a ranking drop. If your website is down when the search engine spider tries to access your website then search engines cannot give your web pages high rankings because they don't know your pages.

Some websites display the correct web page in the web browser but the server returns an error code. In that case, search engines won't index the web pages.

Required action: Make sure that your website is hosted on a reliable server that has no downtime. Check the HTTP status code that your website returns.

Almost any website owner will see a significant ranking drop sooner or later. Don't panic if this happens to you. Try to find the reason for the ranking drop and then act accordingly.

Website marketing: Reality check

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:32:00 -0800

Editorial By Anne Kennedy

November 2001: Think about it. The top of anyone's mind is a very cluttered place these days. Rising above the signal to noise ratio requires repeated impressions focused directly on your target market. Repetition increases perception and so, builds awareness.

Nowhere is this more true than on the Internet, which comprises around two billion pages, with 30,000 new ones added every day. Effective placement in online media such as search engines and directories is essential to making sure the users who are looking for your site succeed in finding it.

How do you interest your target market in looking for your website?

Simple: promote your website, even if you have an established offline business. If you don't, how will your target audience know what you are doing and why it is worth their while?

Use as many offline tactics to promote your online business as you can afford: advertising, media relations, direct mail, trade shows. In addition, take advantage of emerging online promotion tactics. And of course, optimize your website for searches.

Then, be sure your website delivers on your value promise. This is essential to increasing your conversion rate, the number of visitors who complete the transaction you want them to at your site.

Whether eCommerce, or supply chain exchange, your website must work for the user. Technology is an arena in which you truly get what you pay for. The experience, knowledge and expertise to produce an effective business online doesn't come cheap. If you didn't pay much, you most likely didn't get much.

[Sidebar] Ten Tactics Online

List in a business directory for your industry
Buy an ad in a newsletter your target market reads
Launch opt-in email marketing campaign
Use promotions on you site to encourage repeat business, e.g. discount prices, coupons
Start your own affiliate program with related websites
Purchase positions for targeted keywords
Use a button to your site for branding
Make registration very visible to capture user information and create your own email database
Send an email newsletter, in text, to maintain interest in your website
Create your own links page to add value and visibility.

Protect Your Brand With SEO Research

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:28:00 -0800

Feature article By Paul J. Bruemmer, TrademarkSEO.com

In today's competitive environment, many advertisers resort to using competitor trademark names as keywords in paid-search advertising. These trademark names appear in the search engine results pages for Google, Yahoo! and affiliates and partners when you buy Google AdWords or Overture Precision Match sponsored listings. Therefore, it's possible for your competitors to drive substantial traffic to their web sites by virtue of your trademark name, using your reputation to attract visitors.

A fine example of this is the sticky situation with Google AdWords. In an Internetnews.com article titled "Google Adwords Under Further Trademark Scrutiny," Google was quoted thusly:

"As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad text that they choose to use. We encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with our advertisers, particularly because the advertisers may have similar advertisements on other sites."

I can certainly understand Google's position. Can you imagine what would happen if it were forced to reverse its policy allowing advertisers to buy keywords containing trademark terms belonging to others? This would severely impact Google's revenue, and no doubt would require exhaustive efforts on their part to prevent such activities from occurring.

It's interesting to note that originally, Google AdWords did not sell trademarked keywords. However, it currently sells trademarked keywords in the U.S. and Canada (but not internationally) with the proviso that the trademark name can't be used in the ad copy itself.

The Best Defense is an Offense

Is there any way to protect yourself from competitors raiding your trademark? One way is to hire an SEO vendor to help identify your competitors and then research their search engine advertising activities. Your legal department can subsequently use the SEO research data to protect your trademark and reputation. This step will prove invaluable toward defending your future and ongoing business.

Most often, it will be the smaller, "wannabe" companies riding on your coat tails by using your trademark terms as keywords in their advertising. These companies will generally avoid the threat of legal action upon receipt of a cease and desist letter. Not only are you protecting your name and reputation, you are crushing the competitors that you don't want representing your firm.

Building Your Marketing Network

Another benefit of mining this competitor data is to assist those whom you do want to benefit from using your trademark name. For instance, you may have affiliates, resellers, and a number of associates with whom you can negotiate on a recurring basis. These are the folks you trust with your trademark and reputation -- your friends and family marketing network. There's something in it for you when they profit from your success.

Knowing who is using your trademark in keyword search advertising or in the body text of their web site has a directly positive effect on managing your brand, your trademark, and your reputation. Make sure your SEO vendor covers this critical marketing aspect for your online success.

A Word of Caution

It goes without saying that you don't want to use trademark names other than your own in keyword phrases. Profiting from the use of another company's trademark or brand without relevance or permission is unacceptable and could even result in legal action against you.

Reviewing the above information on trademark term research while interviewing SEO vendors will help you to identify those vendors who provide added value to your search engine marketing and optimization campaign. ----

Paul J. Bruemmer is founder of trademarkSEO. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ClickZ, MarketingProfs, Marketing Today, WebProNews, SitePoint, SEO Today, SEO Consultants, MarcommWise, Pandia, B2B Interactive and Search Engine Guide. TrademarkSEO is a search engine optimization firm based in Santa Ynez Valley, California and serves clients nationwide. His company provided search submission services to over 10,000 websites, including many of the most prominent names in American business.

Current and Future Search Trends:What the Top Internet Search Engines Are Doing

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:26:00 -0800

By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Medium Blue
The future of search is unclear – what is clear is that change is rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are occurring today with the top Internet search engines – but I am by no means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover additional developments in depth.

Universal Search

In May 2007, Google – the leader among top Internet search engines -- got people talking (again) when it rolled out its latest search concept, Universal Search. Universal Search was Google's attempt to create a single page of search results, rather than separate pages for types of results, such as videos, images, maps, and websites. When it was first introduced, many search engine optimization firms raced around exclaiming that this was one of those search trends that would change everything and that new optimization rules should be created and followed immediately.

I published an article in early 2007 in which I noted, "The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use."[1] I also wrote, "Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users' search habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you essentially define what searching is and how it works."[2]

And in fact, Universal Search didn't quite take off the way Google had hoped. A post on MediaPost's Search Insider by Mark Simon boldly states, "Universal Search will probably not be viewed as the greatest Google fiasco since Google Video, but it's clear that it's failed to deliver on the vaunted promises made by Marissa Mayer back in May."[3] So will we see more of Universal Search, or will it be quietly put to the side? Will other top Internet search engines want to use it for themselves? Only time will tell, but it seems like Google needs to do a lot more work before users really warm up to it.

Personalization and Personalized Search

Personalization on the other hand seems to be one of the search trends working very well for Google and many of the other top Internet search engines. In an article I wrote a few months ago, I said "The basic principle behind personalized search is simple. When you go to Google and type in a search query, Google stores the data. As you return to the engine, a profile of your search habits is built up over time. With this information, Google can understand more about your interests and serve up more relevant search results."[4]

As it works right now, if you use a Google product (Gmail, Google toolbar, AdWords, etc.), Google is keeping track of what you search for and what websites you visit, and it's then tailoring your results appropriately. Search for "bass," and Google will know whether you mean the fish or the instrument. As I pointed out, though, there are major issues with search trends like personalization:

Privacy issues that arise from personalized search are also a big question. The EU recently announced that it is probing into how long Google stores user information (this probe was subsequently extended to include all search engines). AOL recently committed a serious blunder when it released search data from 500,000 of its users, and it was discovered that it was fairly easy to identify many people by the search terms that they use... [5]

Yet if nobody makes a fuss about this, then it's very likely Google – and the other top Internet search engines - will start tracking everyone behind the scenes, whether they use a Google product or not.

It's actually already starting – right now, the cookie Google places on your machine (did you even know they did that?) will expire in two years – but they won't really expire at all. According to the official Google blog:

In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.[6]

Seems it won't be long before Google knows what you're searching for before you do.

Expanding "Sneak Peeks"

Ask, one of the smaller of the top Internet search engines, has been using sneak peeks to entice searchers for a while now. Searchers who use Ask.com can mouse over an icon next to many results and see a screen shot of the website. No clicking needed. Google, always watching for search trends, seems to have noticed, because they've filed a patent for expanding their own snippets.[7] Soon searchers on Google may be able to read expanded summaries of pages, or longer clips of page text. This tactic appeals to searchers who are now demanding more and more information faster and faster from the top Internet search engines, and who don't want to waste precious seconds clicking on a link and then on the back button to find just the right site for their needs.

Syntax Queries

When Ask was Ask Jeeves, the butler was supposed to listen to your search queries in the form of questíons and then get answers for you. The problem was, this just didn't work exactly the way it was supposed to. Instead of answering the question based on syntax, the engine still responded to searches in the same way others did, by analyzing the words and returning a líst. Jeeves was retired with a bit of fanfare, and the engine handles queries in the more traditional manner for now. But all of the top Internet search engines have continued to work on this concept, with Google again leading the way since it has the manpower and brainpower to do so. I expect that within the next year, this will be one of the search trends that the engines will want to focus on with a greater push toward answering questíons rather than just returning related results.

Speech Recognition and the Mobile Market

Speech recognition is really going to be one of the huge search trends in the coming months and years for the top Internet search engines. In an interview from this past summer, Peter Norvig, director of Google Research, noted, "[Google] wanted speech technology that could serve as an interface for phones and also index audio text. After looking at the existing technology, we decided to build our own. We thought that, having the data and computational resources that we do, we could help advance the field."[8] With speech recognition in place, one could go to Google (or another of the top Internet search engines) and use a microphone to ask a question aloud, or just say some keyphrases, and get a líst back immediately.

And speech recognition has the biggest benefit for top Internet search engines when it comes to users of mobile devices. Let's face it, as advanced as those keyboards may have gotten, they're still a pain to use and it's time-consuming to type in more than a few sentences. (That's y txt msgs r lk ths, u c?). Norvig is on top of that too, noting, "In general, it looks like things are moving more toward the mobile market, and we thought it was important to deal with the market where you might not have access to a keyboard or might not want to type in search queries."[9]

More to Come

As I noted in the beginning, this is just a small sampling of the search trends for the top Internet search engines today. Google, Yahoo, and even Ask are all working tirelessly to get your business and to make search easier, faster, and more accurate. Keep checking back for future articles covering some of the other trends and following up on the ones I've already discussed.

References

1. http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/universal-search.html
2. Ibid
3. http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=637
4. http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/personalized-search.html
5. Ibid
6. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/cookies-expiring-sooner-to-improve.html
7. SEMClubhouse.com
8. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19050/?a=f
9. Ibid

Websites: It's the Experience Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:25:00 -0800

By Jerry Bader (c) 2007
The other day I picked up a book that was sitting on my night table for over a year. It's just a small book and seemed like an easy read, perfect for falling sleep. It was called, "The Invisible Touch" by Harry Beckwith. Mr. Beckwith has written several books and is an expert on positioning, branding, and client relations. I wasn't sure if I was going to bother reading it or not, but after looking at the introduction I was hooked. This guy knew what he was talking about; he must because I agreed with most everything he said. That surely makes him an expert, at least in my eyes. Anyway, he tells a story about going to a concert for one of his favorite artists, a Laura Nyro. He purchased her recordings and loved them for their exquisite sound and her technical playing ability but the concert was a disaster.

Ms. Nyro performed with her usual skill and precision, but she nevër once looked at the audience, preferring instead to sit at the piano staring offstage while she played. Each song was preceded by a perfunctory introduction that was barely addressed to the audience. Needless to say, Harry was disappointed, as you can imagine anyone would be.

The Difference Between Products and Services

The point of the story Harry Beckwith was making was that there is a big difference between products and services. To quote from his book, "Products are made; services are delivered. Products are used; services are experienced." In this case, recordings are products and concerts are services. This got me thinking of my own experience, perhaps not quite so genteel as Mr. Beckwith's but instructional, nevertheless.

Marketing Is Creating Memorable Experiences

When I was a young man, just after graduating from College in New England, I started working in the family business. My father exiled me to the shipping department where he figured my newly earned business degree wouldn't get the company in too much trouble. One day he came out from his office to the plant floor where I worked and said, "Come on, let's go to lunch." My father knew I didn't eat lunch so this was a special moment, as he didn't bother asking me to lunch at work. Perhaps this was the day that I would finally be allowed into the ranks of real businessmen who worked in the office and wore ties to work.

As we got into the car I asked where we were going, to which he answered, "The Dirty Bagel." He looked over at me and saw me roll my eyes and grunt in disgust. Of course I knew the place he was taking me. Every businessman in Toronto who worked in the garment district knew "The Dirty Bagel." It was a legend more than a restaurant.

Its real name was just "The Bagel" but everybody called it "The Dirty Bagel" to distinguish it from another uptown, neighborhood place where the same businessmen eat breakfast on the weekends and where their wives lunched after shopping. Back then it was rare for upper middle class women to work, so they shopped and ate lunch when they weren't taking the kids to the dentist or hockey practice.

"The Dirty Bagel" and the "The Bagel" both served the same kind of food, simple meals, bagels and coffee. The downtown version was old, grimy, and well worn, while the uptown version was new, well lit, and well ... cleaner. The waitresses in the new place were middle-aged, chewed gum, had pencils stuck behind their ears and called everyone "Hon." The waitresses in the downtown version were old, actually ancient, spoke with thick European accents, and were just plain nasty. If you asked for an extra pad of butter or more cream for your coffee, instead of getting a "Sure thing Hon" you were more likely to hear something like, "Sophia, listen to Mr. Big Shot, he wants more butter. Hope he knows a good heart doctor..." and as she turned to leave you probably over-heard some Yiddish profanity under her breath.

Now you may be thinking, why would a bunch of rich, privileged businessmen who owned their own businesses, wore expensive silk and mohair suits, and drove Lincoln Continentals, put-up with nasty old ladies who tossed the food on the table and treated you like you were in prison? At least that's what I wanted to know.

On this particular occasion, the food arrived skidding across the table like a curling stone looking for the button (that's the red center of the bull's eye for the uninitiated). After mopping-up the spilled coffee and reassembling my bagel and egg salad, I asked my father, "Why on earth do you come here, the place is old, the waitresses are nasty, and the food is something you could brown bag?" My father looked at me, smiled and said, "It's for the 'experience." And then he took a bite out of his giant twister bagel and winked.

These businessmen were old school, not an MBA in the bunch. They survived the Depression and built substantial businesses with little or no formal business education in conditions that were quite frankly antagonistic. No matter how successful they became, they always remembered where they came from and what was important. These men were characters, who built their businesses by force of personality and shrewd decision-making. "The Dirty Bagel" offered these men an experience that kept them grounded and reminded them how they got to be successful.

Of all the lessons I've learned about business and marketing over the years, this was probably one of the most important. It's about the experience stupid!

If Your Website Isn't An Experience, What Is It?

Today every business has a website but so many are sterile, impersonal and lack any kind of meaningful experience for the visitor. Businesses spend so much time worrying about driving traffíc to their websites that they forget what happens when people arrive.

If you provide your website audience with an experience, it is something your competition can't appropriate. On the other hand, if all you're providing is a commodity, it's something somebody else will eventually provide cheaper and faster in which case you may end up eating at your own version of "The Dirty Bagel" and not because you want to remind yourself where you came from, but rather where you're going.

History of the Search Engine - What Came Before Google?

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:25:00 -0800

Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex.

But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine:

Ted Nelson
Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Ted's project Xanadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off, much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Ted's work.

George Salton
George Salton was the father of modern search technology. He died in August of 1995. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the Saltons Magic Automatic Retriever of Text, otherwise known as the SMART informational retrieval system. It included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms. His book A theory of indexing explains many of his tests. Search today is still based on much of his theories. History of the search engine uses some of the same techniques even today.

Alan Emtage
In 1990 a student at McGill University in Montreal, by the name of Alan Emtage created Archie; the first search engine. It was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. Archie users could utilize Archie's services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, telneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files. With Archie, Alan Emtage helped to solve the data scatter problem. Originally, it was to be named archives but was changed to Archie for short.

Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill
Archie gained such popularity that in 1991 Paul Linder and Mark P. McCahill created a text based information browsing system that uses a menu-driven interface to pull information from across the globe to the user's computer. Named for the Golden Gophers mascot at the University of Minnesota, the name is fitting, because Gopher tunnels through other Gophers located in computers around the world, arranging data in a hierarchical series of menus, which users can search for specific topics.

Tim Berners-Lee
Up until 1991 until there was no World Wide Web. The main method of sharing information was via FTP. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to join hypertext with the internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire (a prototype created with help from Robert Cailliau) to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor, called WorldWideWeb, and developed on NeXTSTEP. He then created the first Web server called httpd, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon.

The first Web site built was at: http://info.cern.ch/ and was first put online on August 6, 1991. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994. Tim also created the Virtual Web library which is the oldest catalogue of the web. The history of the search engine is a fascinating story.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Owners

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:21:00 -0800

Small business owners are often limited by small marketing budgets and manpower. But that doesn't mean they can't compete against larger businesses or websites when focused on search engine optimization. SEO is a basic marketing tool that everyone should use regardless of size.

Can the small websites compete with the big guys?

I'm often asked by small business owners if they stand a chance against larger websites when it comes to organic search results. My response is that size doesn't matter. When it comes to improving natural search results, it's all about the keywords you choose and how competitive those keywords are.

What makes a keyword competitive?

One way to determine the competitiveness of a search term is to simply type that search term into Google and notice the number of web pages that contain that search term. This number appears in the upper right-hand corner of the search results page and appears as, "Results 1 - 10 of about 228,000,000 for [your search term here]."

The large number you see gives you an indication of how many websites contain the keyword term or phrase you're searching for. Not all of these sites would necessarily be competitors, but have been indexed by Google none-the-less. From my perspective, when this number is less than 3 or 4 million, the particular search term would not be all that competitive in and of itself.

Determining just how competitive the search term is.

There are a variety of methods to determine true keyword effectiveness (KEI, etc.). However, if you're just a regular person trying to figure out how difficult it will be to rank well for a particular keyword, consider the following. In addition to the number of sites that contain your keyword, how well optimized are the top 3 sites that appear on the search result. You can determine this by:

1. Visiting the site and determining the Google PR of the page. This information is available by downloading the Google toolbar and looking in your browser. You will see a green bar and ranking (ex: PR5), which tells you how Google ranks this page/website with regard to popularity. Any site with a Google PR6 or better is well established and will be difficult to outrank in the near term.

2. Visit Google and type, "link:www.competitorwebsite.com". Be sure to replace 'competitorwebsite' with the website name you are researching. Remember, this should be a website that appears on the Google search result for the keyword term or phrase you're researching. This will tell you how many sites are linking to this particular website. The larger the number the more difficult it will be to outrank.

3. Look at the website code. Simply visit the competitor's website and go to "View", "View Source". Look for the meta tags of "Title", "Description", and "Keywords". Are the meta tags at the very top of the page? Does the website also use h1, h2, and h3 tags? If so, they probably know something about SEO and have applied some on-page optimization techniques.

Using the above will give you a good sense of whether of not you can compete for given keywords. As you've figured out by now, a company's size is no indication of their level of experience in optimizing their own website. You'd be surprise of the type (and size) of companies that call me for SEO advice.

Keep this in mind the next time you think that size matters!

2 Dozen Ways to Improve Your E-Mail Marketing Results

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:05:00 -0800

I suppose I can title this article "25 Email Marketing Mistakes I've Made." But rather than focus on the negative, below I've outlined the best practices I've come to adopt over the years. Hope you find something here useful.

1. Diversify your Content: If your entire email focuses on one product, service, or topic, you risk alienating all but the few people who will be interested. Unless you have segmented your database based on previous behavior, do not send an email on only 1 topic. I consistently find that the click through rate increases in proportion with varied content.

2. Don't Stress about Spam Words: Many experts will tell you to avoid words like "free" or "sale". In my opinion, ISPs tend to be moving away from content based spam filtering in favor of reputation based filtering. In other words, your sending IP address and from email are more important than whether or not your email contains certain words. Personally, I've used words like "free" in the subject line without any affect on delivery rates.

3. Make it Readable with Images Disabled: Always take into account the appearance of your email with images disabled. For email clients such as Outlook, this is now the default feature. Even popular web mails like Hotmail now disable images unless the sender is in the address book of the recipient. The best tactic to create readable emails with images block is use an alt description.

4. Create an Online Version: Always provide an online version of your email for users having trouble viewing images. I've calculated from emails I've sent in the past that around 5% of users will use this feature.

5. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are the most likely to get you in trouble by clicking the spam button. Consider automatically removing a subscriber that hasn't opened an email in several months.

6. Proofreading: Always have every email proofread by at least 2 detail oriented people. There's nothing more embarrassing than a typo in an email blast.

7. Monitor Replies: When you send out thousands of emails, you're bound to get a few replies. Occasionally, you'll get some good feedback from your subscribers. In addition, some people reply with unsubscribe requests.

8. Unsubscribe at Top: I know what you're thinking, "At the TOP!?" Yes, at the top. Lazy unsubscribers have a tendency to click the spam button instead scrolling down to find the unsubscribe link. By placing the link at the top, you might increase your unsubscribe rate, but that's better than an inflated spam complaint count.

9. Don't Over or Under Mail: If you send too much, you'll get deleted or marked as spam. Oddly enough, if you send once every 3 months you may have the same problem. Keep your brand top of mind for your customers by finding the perfect balance between over and under mailing.

10. Forward to Friend Feature: Many users automatically do this, but it doesn't hurt to ask. First time potential customers can be very open to a company when it is introduced by a friend or colleague.

11. Subscribe Feature for Forwards: Make it easy for potential new subscribers to subscribe if they receive your email as a forward. Include somewhere in the body a subscribe link.

12. White List Reminder: If you want your subscribers to add you to their white list or address book, you need to ask. Sure, not everyone will add you. However, those who do are likely the people who care most about receiving your emails and, therefore, you have the most to lose if your emails get flagged as spam.

13. Single Click Unsubscribe: I generally recommend keeping the unsubscribe as simple as possible. However, you may want to confirm the action if you place your unsubscribe at the top of every email in case users click the link on accident.

14. Privacy Policy: Always place your privacy policy at the bottom of every email. Assure customers that you obtained their email address in a legitimate fashion, and you will not sell their personal info.

15. Don't Rent Lists: Some may disagree on this, but I've never seen anything good come from a rented list. Don't risk your sender reputation with emails from questionable sources. If you want to reach a new audience, consider a joint venture with another firm in a similar but non-competing industry.

16. Develop your Brand: Remember that your emails will slowly build your brand in the minds of your subscribers. Even if they never click-through and make a purchase, be sure to keep a consistent and accurate corporate image with your email content.

17. Call to Action: Each section must contain a specific call to action that avoids vague phrases like "click here." You'll be surprised how an effective call to action button or link can improve your click through rate.

18. Mix Freebies with Products: Too much selling can burn people out. Engage your subscribers with useful, free content. For example, if you sell home theater equipment, send out an article on the explaining the benefits of newer technologies. When you provide additional value to your customers with learning resources, they are sometimes even willing to pay more for your merchandise. In addition, strategies like this keep your brand top of mind.

19. Find Your "Tuesday": For the eCommerce sites I've worked with, Tuesday morning has always resulted in the best open, click-through, and conversion rates. However, every company is different.

20. Same Day, Same Time: Be consistent in the time you send your emails for two reasons. First, the ISPs see inconsistency as a possible spam flag. Spammers can care less when they send out mass emails. Second, your customers will begin to anticipate your emails at a certain time each week, possibly increasing the likely hood of them opening and clicking through.

21. Keep the Good Stuff above the Fold: Remember that many email clients will obscure a large portion of your email unless the user scrolls down. Make sure the top 400 pixels are as engaging as possible. I can't tell you how many times I've had to send artwork back to the design department because the top of the email failed to grab your attention.

22. A/B Test 1 Variable at a Time: It took me far too long to learn this. For years, I would change several factors in each successive email blast, but never could find that perfect mix. If you really want to find out what works, you can only change 1 variable. For example, should the subject line be short or long? Keep the same content and split your list in 2, sending half a longer subject and the other half a shorter one. Do not change any other variables!

23. 600 Pixel Width: Due to the limitations of many email clients, stick with a width somewhere between 500 to 600 pixels wide.

24. Experiment with Subject Lines: I wish there was a magic principle I can share with you about subject lines. Unfortunately, there isn't. The best we can do is test, test, and test again. Sometimes short subjects are better, sometimes long, sometimes intriguing, sometimes urgent, whatever works best for you. Here's a great article on email subject lines.

25. Begin Segmentation & Personalization Now: In a few years, email marketers that don't practice segmentation and personalization will be left in the dust. There are an endless number of ways to segment your email list. Some popular ways are by purchase behavior, geography, or ordering frequency.

As a long term strategy, I would also greatly encourage researching transactional and trigger based email marketing, as they tend to product much better open, click-through, and conversion rates. To learn more about eCommerce Email marketing, please visit the Palmer Ecommerce Marketing Blog

Font Basics for Branding Your Small Business

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:04:00 -0800

By Erin Ferree (c) 2007
There are many components of a brand identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and the Visual Vocabulary. There's a lot of information available about the use of logos, colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much on the effective use of fonts. So, here's some information on the creative, practical, and technical aspects of fonts.

Font Basics

A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet, designed with similar characteristics. This is also known as a typeface.

Fonts are usually designed to include several style variations. This can include styles like light, regular, bold, semibold, ultra bold, and italic. Some fonts also include "Expert" versions, which are fonts that include fractions and mathematical symbols.

Font families are typically packages of fonts that include all of the different versions of a font. Using fonts with large families will give you a wide range of fonts to use in your materials, for variety and emphasis.

There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the most common classes of fonts are:

Serif fonts, which have little "feet," called serifs, at the ends of the lines that make up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts include Times, Palatino, and Garamond. These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and old-fashioned.

Sans-serif fonts don't have those feet. "Sans serif" means "without serifs." Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are some of the most common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are more clean and modern.

Scrípt fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush Scrípt and Nuptial Scrípt are two common scrípt fonts.

Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or headlines.

There are other types of fonts as well, including handwriting fonts and all-caps fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common and useful in business communications.

Creative Font Usage Guidelines

Each type of font has certain characteristics that translate into that font's personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted, traditional or modern, legible or decorative, or any number of other personality traits. The traits of the font that you use in your marketing materials and business communications should reflect and enhance your company's brand.

Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:

A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.

A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery, depending on its legibility.

A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.

A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.

A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a serif font.

A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.

All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.

Each piece of marketing material or document created should have a maximum of three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of the bold and italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does not count as additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it looks unprofessional.

Practical Font Usage Guidelines

Fonts can require special consideration when you send materials to a professional printer for reproduction, use them on your website, or send Word documents to others. Here are some basics on using fonts and preserving their appearance in these cases.

In printed materials, it's easier to read long blocks of copy that is set in a serif font. Sans-serif fonts are usually used in print for short blocks of information, like headlines, pull quotes, or bulleted lists.

When sending your materials to be professionally printed, make sure to address your desires regarding the use of fonts. You can either include the fonts with the files you send to the printer (which might be considered a copyright license infringement), rasterize your artwork (convert it to pixels, so the font data is no longer needed), or outline your fonts (creating shapes out of the fonts, an option that's available in most vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand), so that they can be printed accurately. Outlining the fonts is the best way to ensure that your fonts will remain accurate and sharp.

Online, in websites, emails, and HTML newsletters, sans-serif fonts look the best: they're clean, clear, and easy to read. There is one other trick to online font use: you have to make sure that you use fonts that will be installed on the computers of people reading your site. Otherwise, your text will appear in the default font selected by their browser, which is often Courier, a very plain font. That limitation does leave you with several fonts to choose from, though, including Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS.

Serif fonts could also be used on websites; however, it's best to use them in limited quantities, such as for headlines and subheads. Some fonts that are available to use on the web include Times, Times New Roman, and Georgia.

Another issue that commonly arises with online fonts is the difficulty in controlling the size and appearance of those fonts. Standard font tags in HTML don't provide precise sizing control and need to be used several times throughout each HTML document, so making changes can be time-consuming. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, to precisely control the exact size of your fonts and to make site-wide font, size, or color changes with one simple alteration.

In Word Documents, you also want to make sure that the fonts that you use for the text will be available on the recipient's computer. Good fonts to use are the standard fonts that come installed on PCs, which include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino, Courier, and Trebuchet MS.

In order to insert a small amount of customized text - such as your logo, tagline, or address information - create an image of that information and place it in the header and footer of the page.

Another way to preserve the appearance of text is to export your document as a PDF file and send it to the recipient; PDF files embed the fonts into each document so that they can be viewed on any computer and still look right.

Some Technical Info About Font File Types

When you purchase fonts to use on your computer, you'll often be given a choice of buying a PostScript, True Type, or Open Type font. Here is a brief explanation of the characteristics and problems with each of these formats:

PostScript fonts are considered industry standard and are therefore preferred by professional printers. There is a format of PostScript fonts available for Macintosh computers and another format available for Windows computers; those fonts cannot be shared between Macs and PCs.

True Type fonts are often found on Windows machines. These fonts do not print as well as Postscript fonts.

Open Type fonts are the newest type of font. They are cross-platform compatible, but many fonts aren't yet available in this format.

With this information about the creative, practical, and technical aspects of font usage, we hope that you can make font choices that will enhance your brand

How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day!

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:02:00 -0800

(An Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic)
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007
Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportuníty to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketíng or site.

Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.

In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon... basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.

These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining. But is this social bookmark traffic useful?

Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketíng efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a site like Digg or Stumbleupon?

As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer's advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.

Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportuníty to really study these sites.

Of course, nothing happens without a reason... I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.

But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000's of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.

So be warned; if you're actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.

In my case, it didn't crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.

But still I am not one to waste an opportuníty, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic. It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.

Most of this traffic will:

simply bounce back

very few visitors will spend much time on your site

very few visitors will even venture into your site

very few will sign-up to your newsletter

very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels

(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)

Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites is that it's very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days... until your item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, not to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.

Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant. They grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.

It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.

So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic useless? First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere. Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it's game over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you're offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your pitch, read your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.

Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.

Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.

If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.

These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can't hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it hasn't been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded - your site's traffic rank will improve. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa's traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web's traffic, but it's a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure... sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume more traffíc means more votes. So wouldn't getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can't be judged with the one brush.

This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.

If I, or anyone, wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, they would have to create site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into their marketing funnels. I don't know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely - the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you're offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users. So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.

For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.

Can you really buy web traffic?

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:02:00 -0800

Many people wonder about generating traffic to their websites through paid traffic offerings. This topic is highly debated among the industries top SEO managers because some believe in the practice and others do not.

Paid traffic services can be useful as part of an overall traffic generation strategy. I have used paid traffic services in the past and believe they do present some value when used in conjunction with Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Email Marketing.

So What's the Rub With Paid Traffic?

Have you ever wondered where paid traffic comes from? The services that generate paid traffic do it through a few key methods.

1. Traffic Exchange.

Using this method, these sites sell access to their traffic exchange networks where individuals surf for credits. As they earn credits viewing websites like yours, their ads/websites are displayed across the network for others to click on. If this method is being used, you may certainly experience a decrease in performance only because the same individuals are seeing your ad over and over, reducing their likelihood to click.

2. Search Engine Marketing.

A great way to generate traffic for others is through search engine marketing like Google, ExactSeek or Yahoo! Traffic generation sites buy keywords in bulk or many long-tail keywords and resell the traffic generated from them. If they can do this at a profit, its a win-win. This is a difficult strategy only because the cost of keywords change frequently based on industry demand.

3. List Marketing.

Traffic generation websites also generate traffic through email marketing and house lists. These techniques are usually leveraged through daily, weekly, and monthly electronic newsletters. Driving less traffic than the first two methods, the list marketing option usually rounds out a comprehensive traffic generation strategy.

So to answer the question about paying for traffic, is it worth? My answer is that as part of an overall traffic generation strategy, paying for traffic can be beneficial. It all comes down to how you use paid traffic acquisition as part of your overall marketing strategy, the quality of the traffic generated and the costs associated with the traffic.

The other factor to consider is the quality of the traffic you receive. The purpose of most traffic acquisition strategies is to improve sales, generate leads, and/or conversions. To that end, I would only recommend paying for traffic if you have a way to measure the traffic to your site, the path the traffic takes through your website and whether or not that traffic actually converts. Whether you consider a conversion to be the completion of a web form or the actual purchase of a product, your buying this traffic for one reason and one reason only - conversion. Keep this in mind before you spend any money on traffic.

Although you can find plenty of sites willing to give you traffic in exchange for a fixed fee, I personally prefer to sign up for my own traffic exchange, purchase my own keywords, and manage my newsletters and email lists. By doing so, I have a better handle on where the traffic is coming from and ultimately the value of this traffic. Keep that in mind before you run out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on acquiring traffic that may or may not convert for your web site.

Where's Your Social Responsibility Google?

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:27:00 -0800

By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007
Unless you've been living on a desert island with no Internet access, you've probably seen the recent blog fallout from Google's latest crack down on alleged link brokers.

This week it seems that Google made some type of manual Toolbar PageRank reduction on a handful of major blogs and portal sites like the Washington Post, ProBlogger, CopyBlogger and Forbes.com. Some of these sites had PageRank scores of 7 which have now dropped to 5, scores of 6 which have now dropped to 4 and so on. The blog buzz is that the sites have been singled out by Google as using their high PageRank scores to sell links and have been punished by the world's most popular search engine as a result. There is currently no proof of this and no public statement by Google acknowledging or denying the situation.

A lot of bloggers have weighed in with commentary, observations and opinions. Every time I read a new post about the so called smack-down I imagine some Googlers at Mountain View laughing hysterically and high-fiving each other for turning the tables on the SEO industry yet again.

The situation has even got the SEOs turning on each other. One of the world's best known SEOs, Jill Whalen, made a post in response to the situation that included a comment about one of the affected sites, Search Engine Guide. Jill's post has been interpreted in some circles as a type of attack. Here's the comment Jill made in her post:

"Even my very good friends at Search Engine Guide were smacked down. I hadn't been to their home page in ages since I usually visit through direct article links, but when I looked at their home page today and scrolled down to the bottom, I was taken aback to see what looks more like a link farm than anything else!"

I've known Jill a long time and I read her remark about Search Engine Guide as a quick off the cuff comment, not a deliberate attack. Without putting words in her mouth, I think it sounded more shocking than she meant it, probably because she was typing as a response to first impressions of Search Engine Guide after not seeing it for so long and because (being ridiculously busy) she was probably in a hurry. So the comment itself didn't raise an eyebrow for me. But I WAS concerned about how the general webmaster community would interpret the comment.

Yes, she has every right to her opinion. But being who she is and the industry reputation she's built up, Jill has incredible influence over a large number of webmasters and SEOs who absorb her material. Persons reading her article that are unfamiliar with Search Engine Guide may permanently associate the site with the term "link farm" and all the negative connotations that brings. No matter her intent, her remark definitely has the power to hurt Search Engine Guide and their reputation. The site's publisher Robert Clough obviously thought so, as he was prompted to make an uncharacteristic post in response.

Personally, I think Jill should have considered the possible backlash from her casual comment and worded her post much more carefully. After all, with industry influence comes responsibility. Which brings me to the main point of this article. Google now has extreme influence and power over the Internet. When they make changes to their algorithm or the way they cache and filter web sites, it has a dramatic impact on not just web site owners, but business and life in general. Millíons of people rely on Google to survive, literally. In that respect, this attempt at link bait humor is a little too close to reality to be funny.

With such powerful social influence, I think it's about time Google started taking more responsibility by being more transparent with their activities. If too many webmasters are doing the wrong thing with regard to linking, or an algorithm change has occurred, why not launch a media release to set the facts straight? Not everyone knows about Google's Webmaster Guidelines, or has a Webmaster Tools account. But a lot of people read the newspaper. If they want webmasters to co-operate, Google has to recognize it's a two way street.

By slapping on this latest penalty, (if it is indeed a penalty), Google seems to be claiming to *know* the intent of these sites. But what if they're wrong? What if, as Jennifer Laycock claims, they are merely selling advertising space without Google being a consideration? There's nothing in Search Engine Guide's advertising material relating to PageRank OR Google. To assume they are trying to use their site's high PageRank as a selling point is pretty arrogant and irresponsible of Google, in my opinion.

Without some type of public acknowledgement from them, we can only assume Google's latest move is an attempt to control how webmasters use their own web site space. That's a huge line in the sand they've crossed and I don't know about you, but it makes me nervous.

Exclusive: All That You Need To Know About RSS

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:27:00 -0800

By Jo Han Mok (c) 2007
You probably have seen this three-letter acronym called RSS in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

What are the benefits of RSS? RSS has benefits for both readers (users) and web publishers.

1. It gives you the latest updates.
Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site you learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.

2. It saves on surfing time.
Since a RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user's time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user.
Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox.
Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

5. It is sp@m free.
Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates, thus your privacy is kept safe from sp@m mails.

6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free.
Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questíons on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user is asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool.
Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending sp@m mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.

What are the drawbacks of RSS? The disadvantages of RSS use are brought about by its being a new technology and some user-preference concerns.

1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators.

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffíc and demands on a server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How do I start using RSS?

There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a líst of RSS feeds of different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.

An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program also known as desktop aggregator and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free of charge. All you need to do is to register an account then you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize or choose which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.

1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.

Editor's Note: A good directory of both web-based and desktop aggregators for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms can be found at NewsOnFeeds.com .

2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.

3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.

After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published real time at the source website.

RSS and Internet Marketing

The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where their intention was to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepage to contain links to websites that interest them, similar to bookmarking websites.

The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available on the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a hit-and-miss operation.

Medium to big-scale companies who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); and newspaper and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN). Smaller businesses can also look at networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. - a fishing supplies store could look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.

Clearly, RSS is an innovation in information management on the worldwide web as well as online marketing. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.

4 Steps to Combat Website Plagiarism

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:26:00 -0800

Publishing your website can be one of the most exciting times for a business owner. After all of your hard work and persistence, the whole world now has access to your products or services. You have either paid hundreds of dollars to have someone write your site content for you, or you have put your heart and soul (not to mention hour upon hour of hard work) into creating content of which you can be proud. In either case, you've invested time and/or money into your website copy. Now that it is out there for the whole world to see, it may be a target for all kinds of unscrupulous individuals.

Copyright infringement is a very common occurrence on the World Wide Web. How do you protect yourself? And, what can you do if someone steals your content?

It's important for you to know that anything you have written is copyrighted. You can register a copyright, but you don't need to in order for it to be illegal for someone to copy or reproduce your work without your permission. Any written text, painting, drawing, musical composition, photograph or computer program, be they published or not is protected by copyright law. Unfortunately, just because your work is copyrighted doesn't mean it is safe. Some individuals don't know that copyright laws apply to the internet, and others simply don't care.

With millions of websites out there, it's difficult to know if your website has been targeted by thieves. A great tool to use in the protection of your website content is www.copyscape.com. Simply enter your website URL and it will scan the web for you. This is a free service, but if you have been a frequent victim of copyright infringement, you might want to consider their paid service, which automatically scans the web regularly for any duplicates of your content.

What do you do if you are one of the unfortunate victims of copyright infringement? How can you deal with the offender and avoid the high cost of litigation? The following are some simple steps that you can take to ensure that the infringer removes your material from their website.

1. Contact the offender. You can usually visit the "contact" page of the offender's website to obtain their contact information. If for some reason you can't find their coordinates that way, you can perform a search for "who is" to find many sites that can provide information about the website owner by simply entering their URL. The website owner's contact information should be posted here, but if not, their website host will be and you should contact them. Keep your first contact civil. Calling or emailing the responsible individual with a stern, yet professional demeanor will be much more effective than yelling or name calling. Remember that the owner of the site isn't necessarily the writer, and if they are, then being nasty may not have the desired effect and in fact may create more problems for you in the long run.

2. Send a cease and desist order. If your initial contact didn't get the desired results, your next step should be to send a cease and desist order. You do not need to hire a lawyer to create one for you. A simple search for "cease and desist order templates" should give you an order that can be altered to meet your needs. Send one copy by email and one copy by registered mail and make it look as official as possible. Include a date by which the material should be removed. You want the offender to know that you mean business.

3. If action is still not taken, send a cease and desist order to the offending party's web host. Again, the host information is available by performing a search for "who is". The majority of hosts will take action by temporarily removing the offender's site until the copied material is removed.

4. The situation should be resolved at step 3, but one more step that can be taken is to notify search engines of the infringement. Performing a search for the "DMCA" or "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" policies for each search engine will provide the information you need to contact each of them in order to request that the offender's website be removed.

Finally, it's always advisable to protect yourself by keeping records of the dates your content was placed on your site. This ensures that the other party can be proven wrong it they claim to have posted their content first.

Placing your website and it's content on the internet for the world to see is a proud moment. It's nearly impossible for you to be able to prevent the theft of its content, but the next best thing is knowing what to do if it does happen.

20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

noreply@blogger.com (seo4vn) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:24:00 -0800

By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007
My recent article 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools listed 20 of the most popular time-saving tools you can use to help you with your search engine marketing efforts.

The article proved quite popular with both search engine marketers and webmasters, some of whom decided to send me their favorites that weren't included in the list. I also discovered a few more of my own since I wrote the original article, so I decided to add to the list by reviewing another 20 tools.

So here are 20 MORE must-have search engine marketing tools:

1. SEO Toolbox
The SEO Toolbox is a collection of 11 free SEO tools developed by the team at SEOmoz, including a backlink checker, URL inclusion checker, an outbound link checker, domain age detection and a PageRank checker.

Price: $0

2. EditPlus
EditPlus is a 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmers' editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

Price: Shareware (Registration fee encouraged)

3. WordPress
Like Blogger, WordPress offers hosted blogging and blog templates. Unlike Blogger, WordPress also offers a stand-alone publishing platform to enable you to host and fully manage your own blogs.

Price: $0

4. Marketing Experiments
MarketingExperiments is an online laboratory engaged in research publishing and education. Their mission is to test and document every conceivable marketing method on the Internet.

Price: $0

5. Web Page Analyzer
Web Page Analyzer is a free web page analysis tool and web page speed tester to help you improve your web site's performance. Enter a URL and the tool will calculate page size, composition, and download time.

Price: $0

6. Web Accessibility Toolbar
The Web Accessibility Toolbar has been developed by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It's particularly helpful for site usability testing and there are versions for both Opera and Internet Explorer users.

Price: $0

7. Search Engine Friendly Layouts
SearchEngineFriendlyLayouts offers CSS-based layouts that are known to be search engine friendly (easier for search engine robots to index). All of the XHTML, CSS and Javascrípt code used in the layouts are provided for use free of charge.

Price: $0

8. The Interactive HTML Tutorial
Dave's Interactive HTML Tutorial is a tutorial for anyone who is serious about learning HTML code or who just wants to brush up on some of the basics. It includes code descriptions and integration examples.

Price: $0

9. Indextools
Indextools is another popular web site analytics program that also offers built-in PPC bid management tools.

Price: From USD 49.95 per month

10. WordTracker
WordTracker was one of the very first keyword research tools available on the Internet. It helps you pinpoint the most popular keywords for your product and services, generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and PPC search campaigns, research your online markets and find niche opportunities to exploit.

Price: From USD 30.00 per week

11. CSS Layout Techniques
CSS Layout Techniques catalogs search engine friendly web site templates based on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). All code is made freely available for download. The site also includes links to various online CSS resources and tutorials, appropriate for both the novice and the seasoned CSS veteran.

Price: $0

12. RSS Feeds Submit
RSS Feeds Submit is automatic RSS and blog submission software that submits your feed to over 80 search engines and directories automatically. The creators claim it's the quickest way to submit your feeds to the most popular RSS directories and blog search engines. You can also choose to submit your site manually to directories that require more detailed information about your feed.

Price: USD 29.95

13. iBusinessPromoter (IBP)
iBusiness Promoter (IBP) is a suite of professional web promotion tools created by Axandra.com that helps you with all aspects of website promotion and search engine optimization. It includes tools for optimizing your pages and links, researching keywords, submitting your site to search engines and directories and search position querying to determine how your site pages are ranking for particular keywords.

Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Price: From USD 249.95

14. Bid Rank
BidRank is a desktop application that you run on your PC to help you manage your PPC campaigns and automate the keyword bidding process. There are two versions of the product available: BidRank for Yahoo! which is a Yahoo! approved third party bid management tool to help you manage Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns. Then there's BidRank Plus which works with multiple pay-per-click search engines, including Google AdWords, to help you manage multiple PPC keyword accounts.

Price: From USD 14.90 per month

15. Hot Banana Web CMS
Hot Banana is an easy-to-use Web Content Management System (Web CMS) that helps marketers build and manage SEO-friendly Web sites that can be automated and optimized for maximum lead generation and conversion performance. Content Management Systems are notorious for being SEO unfriendly but this one is purposely built to avoid such problems.

Price: From USD 329.00 per month

16. WebPosition
WebPosition is a powerful suite of tools aimed at improving your web site's search engine positioning and monitoring performance. WebPosition allows you to review your search engine rankings, target your keywords, optimize pages using built-in expertise, submit URLs to search engines and analyze conversions using WebTrends site metrics.

Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Price: From USD 149.00

17. Competitive Intelligence
Trellian's Competitive Intelligence provides the means to monitor your competitors' web sites to identify their major traffíc sources. You can find out which sites are responsible for sending traffíc to their pages, including search engines and the search keywords used.

Price: From USD 99.95 per month

18. HTML Toolbox
The HTML Toolbox from NetMechanic is an online tool that helps you discover HTML errors and syntax that prevents browsers from processing your HTML and prevents visitors (both humans and spiders) from reading your site. HTML Toolbox automatically fixes html problems upon request with one quick clíck. The Toolbox includes several tools in one, including a HTML Checker and Repairer, a Spell Checker, HTML Validator, a Browser Compatibility Checker and a Load Time Checker.

Price: Free for up to 5 pages

19. Web CEO
Web CEO claims to be the most complete SEO software package on the planet. The latest version of this SEO/SEM software provides the ability to research keywords and keyphrases that will bring most targeted visitors to your site; optimize your Web pages for better search engine visibility; submit your site to search engines; research, analyze and build links; manage pay-per-click campaigns; track your positions in search engines; review site traffíc statistics; get rid of errors on your sites; find bad links before your visitors do; edit your Web pages; upload any file or folder to your site and monitor the availability of your web site.

Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.

Price: From USD 199

20. AdWatcher
AdWatcher is a suite of tools designed to help you receive the maximum ROI for every advertising dollar you spend from online marketing campaigns, be it Google AdWords, banners, text links, or email marketing. It detects and combats clíck fraud and allows you to manage all of your ad campaigns from one easy-to-use interface. Essentially, it provides clíck fraud monitoring and ad tracking.