Turnkey Online Success and SEO

How "Doing The Right Thing" Can Destroy Your Bottom Line!

2007-09-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

Due to the highly volatile political scene that we are confronted with these days, marketers sometimes get their priorities confused.

It seems that as the country becomes more and more polarized between those in the "right camp" and those in the "left camp", many people get confused regarding "doing the right thing" politically. As people become highly agitated with anything that interfers with their views, they become blind to the fact that voicing those views in the wrong forum can not only disrupt their business, but destroy it.

From the time I was knee high to a grasshopper, I was taught not to share politics or religion in mixed company. The reason was very elementary. Most people have very strong feelings regarding their political or religious bent. When discussions begin with those who have opposing views, fireworks can be the outcome of the "discussion"

With the advent of the internet and proliferation of talk radio, people are becoming more educated regarding their political views as well as their "adversaries" political views. The outcome of this is that more and more people espouse their opinions in public forums than ever before in history. Afterall, we do have the freedom of speech, don't we?

Of course, the answer to that is yes. Does that mean you have to declare your beliefs during every facet of your life? I don't think so...I have seen small retail businesses go belly up due to the management "doing the right thing" and associating their political and/or religious beliefs to their business.

Today, I received a marketing letter in which the publisher began trumpeting his views about an issue that is very much in the forefront of controversy today. He of course, believed that he was "doing the right thing" by inviting all his customers to join in his "cause". It obviously did not occur to him that anyone could possibly have an opinion different than his. I for one had a diametrically opposed opinion of the issue from him. The end result was that even though I have spent close to a thousand dollars purchasing products from this person during the past year, I have now unsuscribed from his newsletter and blocked all emails from him. I wonder if he even considered that this could be the result of him "doing the right thing"? Was I right or wrong for reacting this way? I guess the answer to that is your choice to make...I already made mine.

As I have learned during the past 6 decades, there are very, very few thoughts that do not come with opposing views. (Are there any?) Consequently, I believe deeply that there is no right or wrong, only personal opinions.

Certainly, many believe that the proliferation of their political and/or religious views is more important than loss of earnings that they may realize if those views are integrated with their business. However, I wonder how many would believe that, if their business or career was destroyed due to their arrogant belief that they can spread their message far and wide with total impunity.

The point is that whether you wish to realize it or not, your political and/or religious beliefs that have nothing to do with your chosen profession can alienate anywhere from a few to a landside of customers, causing them to run for the exits. Online and offline marketers are not immune to the devastating results that can occur when they are "doing the right thing".

If one wants to become an activist for any cause, one may be wise to consider first if their activities will be associated with their business in any way. If it will, they may want to ask themselves whether or not they will be OK with it if that association destroys their business. If the answer to that question is no, they may want to find a different forum in which to excersise their freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is a constitutional and godgiven right...Don't get confused when exercising it when you intertwine it with marketing your business...Use it wisely...And...at the right place and right time. Sometimes, when you are marketing and exercising free speech together..."Doing the right thing" is not always "Doing the right thing"!

Turnkey Online Success and SEO

2006-01-18T00:03:00.000-06:00

Turnkey Online Success and SEO

"Are You Deliberately Keeping Your Website Out Of The First Page Of Google?"

2006-01-17T23:51:00.000-06:00

Search engines are very difficult to completely understand. There are no complete explanations of how their ranking algorithms work. But the very fact that the average person does not intuitively know how to crack the search engine algorithms leads to all sorts of questions; Usually variations of:

“How do I get my website to the top of the search engine results pile?”

Now if you have been following my newsletter, you will know that search engine optimization is not magic or something equally difficult to understand. Instead, I learnt it as a step-by-step process and that is how I have always considered it. Nothing too fancy; in fact, I could probably summarize it all in the following points:
An understanding of how search engines “think” .
Knowing what search engines “want” .
Learning proven optimization techniques .
Applying your knowledge time and time again (experience).

Of course, SEO is not explained by those four sentences, but what they do is that they give you a structure within which you can learn and carry out SEO on your business with exceptional results. In short:

Get it right, and do it better than your competition.

But what does this have to do with today's discussion?

Basically, when you have “followed” the SEO strategies to the letter, and are still not seeing your website rank anywhere near where it “should” be on a particular keyword, then you have one of the following problems:

Your website may have been sandboxed (specific only to Google).
Your website might be penalized or even removed from the index by a search engine for going against a stated guideline.
A search engine might “think” that you are spamming them.
In the first case, you will have to “wait it out” with Google, while consolidating on your positions in the other search engines by continuously building links and adding content. The second case will never happen if you follow the advice given in my lessons; if your website is penalized, compare what you have done with what I have told you, and you will probably find out that something has gone wrong.

However, like I said in the beginning, search engines are notoriously difficult to understand – and sometimes you can do everything right and still not be ranked correctly. Conspiracy theories apart, this is the part of the equation that search engines do not always get right. SEO experts usually term this as over-optimization , and like many SEO issues this one has a lot of debate on it in SEO forums about whether websites are actually penalized for over-optimization or simply banned for spam.

What exactly is over-optimization?

Over-optimization happens when your website is considered “too good” by Google – either in terms of a sudden volume of backlinks, or because of heavy on-page optimization. In other words, if Google considers that your website optimization is beyond acceptable limits , your website will be red-flagged and automatically restricted or penalized.

There is a fine line between over-optimization and spamming, and it is on this line that Google can appear to err. However, this is not a mistake by the search engine – in fact, Google calculates rankings by considering thousands and thousands of different factors – and a lot of importance is attached to average “trends” within the niche / keyword range that a website is optimizing for.

The bottom line is that over-optimization is non-spamming search engine optimization that is misread by Google as being beyond acceptable limits, thus leading to a penalty in search engine rankings.

What criteria does Google use?

To understand why Google can consider certain websites over-optimized, it is important to factor in the criteria that Google uses to rank websites.

When fully indexing a website, Google does not just look at the optimization of the target website; it also compares the website with all the other websites that belong to the same niche / category / keyword range. Through this comparison, Google can then figure out the following:

Is this website “way more” optimized than the current top ranking websites?
In the past, have over-optimized websites been discovered as spam websites?
What are the trends / acceptable limits for well-optimized websites in this niche/keyword range?
Since Google is automated, it cannot do what we do – look at the webpage and determine if the purpose is spam or delivering truly useful information. Instead, the search engine uses historical trends to predict what the acceptable limits of over-optimization are, and how likely over-optimized websites are to be found out as spam.

In other words, your website may be red flagged as being a potential spamming website even though your only fault might be that you were “perfect” in optimizing your website while your competition was left far behind.

Google takes both on-page and off-page optimization into account when checking for over-optimization / spam, and as such it watches out for over-optimization in all ranking factors – your backlinks and your tag optimization (meta tags, title tags, header tags) being most important.

A lot of what I am talking about becomes invalid if one tries any overt search engine spamming technique , such as stuffing your pages with keywords, white on white text (something I talked about in the first few lessons) or backlink spamming (building too many backlinks with the same anchor text in a short period of time.

But it is also possible that you have followed advice and still have your website penalized for over-optimization. The real question then is:

How can you avoid such penalties ?

Avoiding the trap of over-optimization

As I mentioned at the start of this lesson, search engine optimization can be boiled down to two simple steps:

Getting it right and…
Doing it better than everyone else .
In the context of over-optimization and avoiding unnecessary penalties, this rings especially true. If you optimize your website within search engine guidelines and according to proven optimization practices, you have it right. While putting too little time on SEO is a serious mistake, the search for perfection within SEO is a time-wasting and fruitless effort. Too much focus on getting the page structure “just right” can divert attention away from the more mundane but equally more important tasks – such as adding more content or monetizing the website.

The next step is to eschew perfection and find out what your competition has done. Suppose that you are optimizing your website for the term “landscaping”. Which of the following approaches would you realistically choose?

• Go full-throttle on your search engine optimization, spending as much time as necessary to get maximum value out of each word, link and page in your website, so that you can get the highest ranking possible.

• Analyze the top 10 webpages for the term “landscaping” and understand what optimization has been performed on them (natural or artificial). Calculate the number of backlinks, check for authority inbound links – and once you have figured out what your competition is doing, and do exactly the same – only a bit more .

The first approach might mean that you are guaranteed a top position on the search engines, but has two problems – you will waste a lot of time and resources in this search for perfection and more importantly, your website may be flagged for over-optimization. On the other hand, the second approach does just enough to beat the competition – without pushing you or your budget to the limit.

Over-optimization is a phenomenon that is particularly difficult to figure out – how does a SEO expert really determine whether his new website is in the sandbox, penalized for over-optimization or just doing badly in the search engines? While trying to find out the real cause for your poor rankings may satisfy curiosity, you would be better served by following the “second approach” above.

Search engine optimization is a long-term, low-intensity process. You keep building links and adding content, so that eventually your website not only escapes the infamous sandbox but it also starts to rank really well on the search engines. And as for over-optimization – as long you follow search engine guidelines and don't go too far above your competition, you will be fine.

Terry Vogler
turnkeywebpros.com
ezautoshippers.net
trafficannouncer.com
golfhack.com
rxpricebusters.com

Author of this article is Brad Callen of seoelite.com

Google and the Mysterious Case of the 1969 Pagejackers

2005-02-23T14:04:00.000-06:00

Lost a lot of traffic from Google recently? Slipping in the SERPs? You've heard of the Google Bomb, Google Whacking, the Google Dance and Googlisms, but there's a new Google-word you might be interested in if you're losing your Google Juice. What is this new term? I call it 302 Googlejacking. The problem seems to have been around since at least August 2003, and is commonly known as the Google 302 Pagejacking issue. To be fair, it has affected other search engines as well.

If you're curious, there are some things you can check that will show whether or not you've been afflicted by what some people call a bug at Google. (Who knows, maybe it's just a 'feature' we don't understand. ;) Also included are some side notes on the 1969 cache bug/feature that might be related, Google Update Allegra, a poll on the big three and more. If you're into SEO, read on.

Googlejack Test

Type the following into the nearest Google searchbox:

all inurl:yourdomain.com

Look through the results. If you see a Title and Description that are identical to your site with the URL for another site underneath it, you may have been pagejacked, or as I say it, Googlejacked.

Technical Details:

Two primary types of redirects are used on the web - 301's and 302's. A 301 redirect means 'moved permanently.' This is the type of redirect you should use most of the time if you care about search engines. The other type, a 302 redirect, basically means 'moved temporarily.' When someone redirects to your site using the 302 method, Google seems to be associating their website (i.e. their URL) with your page (i.e. your CONTENT.)

If you want to read more, please, visit the original source at kuro5hin.

Article By kpaul

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Google Allegra

2005-02-23T13:57:00.000-06:00

Word has it Google's dancin again and the latest Google update is dubbed Allegra. I don't follow how / why these updates are given their names but so far it's looking decent. I've received complaints that folks sites have disappeared and others have increased in the rankings but that's nothing out of the norm. As I dig into the changes I'll provide insight.

Some rumors include an emphasis on GeoLocation with regards to sites and this would fit into the Local tab being moved to the Google homepage but right now it's just speculation.

Here's another good article on the Google Allegra update . They think they've already found a spam trick that's gaining ground called 302 hijacking. Basically, you 302 a url to someone else's url and you begin to rank well for their keywords. I think this will get fixed next month but we'll see.

Posted by: Jason Dowdell 7:30 AM

Permanent Link: Google Allegra Update

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Google's Giant Sandbox

2005-02-17T09:21:00.000-06:00

What is the Sandbox?

Before we get too far into an explanation as to what Google's sandbox is, it must be noted that not everyone even agrees that the sandbox exists. The sandbox is actually nothing more than a theory developed to explain what many different SEO experts have witnessed with their listings. Whether or not the sandbox really exists is actually irrelevant when we know that the effects of the sandbox exist.

Google's sandbox is a relatively new filter that appeared to be put in place back in March of 2004. This happened after the widely publicized updates of Austin and Florida, and the implementation of what is known as the Austin update. If you are not sure what those are, there is no need to worry as those updates are for the most part in the past. The sandbox filter seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on an initial "probation" status. The effect of this is that new websites may get into Google's SERP's (search engine results pages) relatively quickly and may even perform well for a couple of weeks. When the filter is applied to the new website it is referred to as being put in the "sandbox". The new website still appears in the result pages, but it does not rank well regardless of how much original, well optimized content it has and regardless of how many quality inbound links it may have. The filter keeps new websites from having immediate success in the search engine result pages.

The sandbox filter seems to affect almost all new websites, with very few exceptions. It is important to note that the filter is not a punishment for anything a webmaster does with a new website. The filter is merely an initiation period for new websites.

The sandbox filter also affects competitive keyword driven sites more than sites that key in on less competitive keywords. If your website focuses on very competitive keywords, you are likely to remain in the sandbox for a longer period of time than if you focus on keywords that are relatively non-competitive.

Why Does the Sandbox Exist?

There is a lot of debate as to whether the sandbox filter is a good thing for Google to implement or not. Obviously webmasters who are trying to get their sites well positioned in Google do not like the sandbox filter as it prevents them from receiving the huge levels of traffïc that a top listing in Google can bring. The filter was not implemented at random, however, and there are some good reasons for the filter's existence.

As the SEO community figured out the basic elements of Google's ranking algorithm, inbound links, original content rich with keywords, and the proper use of anchor text, search engine spammers began to take advantage of these elements, setting up websites that were in clear violation of Google's policies with the knowledge that eventually those websites would be banned. This, however, did not matter. If a search engine spammer got a website to rank well in Google for even one month, the profïts justified the cost of building the site in the first place. All that needed to be done in the future was to rebuild the sp@m websites with different domains and slightly different content. The idea for spammers was a simple one - capitalize on Google's traffïc for as long as possible (before being banned), then do it all over again with a new website. The method was extremely effective and easy to implement.

What made this all the more easy to accomplish was Google's extremely fast indexing. While other search engines would take several months to index a new website, Google could index a website in as little as one month (sites are currently being indexed within a few days). Search engine spammers were living large off of Google's generosity.

To solve this problem, Google determined that it would compromise by continuing to index websites quickly, attempting to get as much new, fresh content out to the general public as possible, but new websites would not be trusted as implicitly as they had been in the past. Instead, all new websites would be put on probation. As time passed, and a website continued to pass any sp@m filters, it would begin to perform well in the rankings. Eventually, the site would be allowed to "leave" the sandbox and join the rest of the established websites.

How Does This Affect My Website?

If you have a new website, there is a good chance that you will be placed in the sandbox. This should be expected, but it should not change the way you build your website or market it. You should use the sandbox filter to your advantage.

Google still ranks websites in much the same way that it did in the past. Websites are judged on the quality of their inbound links and the quality of their content. Google will continue to change how they evaluate inbound links and content, but the basic elements of ranking will remain the same.

While your website is in the sandbox, you should use the time to build your traffïc using regular traffïc building methods such as writing articles, building a strong community of visitors, and partnering with websites that offer some synergy to your visitors. During this probationary time, you have an excellent opportunïty to build all the elements that cause websites to perform well in the search engines. When your site finally does leave the sandbox, it should be very well positioned within Google.

Is My Website in the Sandbox?

When webmasters learn about the sandbox filter, their first question is always whether or not their websites have been placed in it. Determining whether or not you are in the sandbox is relatively easy.

First, being placed in the sandbox is different than having your website banned. If you do a search for your domain in Google and it returns zero results for your website (and you had been previously listed in Google), there is a chance that you have been banned. One of the best ways to determine if you have been banned is to look at your log files to see if Google is visiting your website. Banned websites typically do not receive Google visits, regardless of who is linking to them.

If you have not been banned, but do not rank well with Google, you should look at the quality of your content and the quality of your inbound links. You should also see if you rank well for non-competitive keywords. Remember how the filter affects competitive keywords more than less competitive keywords? Well, you can use this to determine if you have been sandboxed. Finally, if you rank well in all the other major search engines, but do not show up at all in Google's rankings, you have probably been sandboxed.

Is There A Way to Get Out of the Sandbox?

The quick answer to this is yes, there is a way out of the sandbox, but you will not like the answer. The answer is to simply wait. The sandbox filter is not a permanent filter and is only intended to reduce search engine sp@m. It is not intended to hold people back from succeeding. So eventually, if you continue to build your site as it should be built, you will leave the sandbox and join the other established websites.

Again, if your website has been placed in the sandbox you should use this time to your advantage. It is a great opportunïty to build your traffïc sources outside of the search engines. If you have a website that does well in the search engines, you may be tempted to ignore other proven methods of traffïc building such as building a community, or building strong inbound links through partnerships. However, if you establish traffïc sources outside of search engines, when you finally leave the sandbox, you will see a welcome increase in your traffïc levels.

Conclusion

Google has been going to great lengths to reduce search engine sp@m. Some have faulted Google for this, claiming that legitïmate sites are being affected as well as the sp@m websites. While this is probably the case, as an owner of a website, you need to place yourself in Google's position and ask yourself what it is really looking for in a website. Google is looking for websites that offer quality content and still relies on the natural voting system that was first used to establish pagerank. Google may change the way it qualifies content or inbound links, but the basic elements of a quality website will always remain the same.

No website owner in his right mind "likes" Google's sandbox. However, a smart website owner will use the sandbox as an opportunïty to build a website that Google simply cannot reject.

About The AuthorMark Daoust is the owner of Site-Reference.com. This article originally appeared at http://www.site-reference.com/Search-Engines/5147/index.html.

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MSN Search Official Launch

2005-02-16T14:54:00.000-06:00

Without fireworks, with a simple few lines communicate on their Blog, Microsoft guys have officially announced the launch of their neww MSN search engine, which, consequentially, is not in beta anymore. As forecasted earlier last month on this blog, this happens in February, just a few weeks after their beta rump-up announcement.

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Do reciprocal links still work?

2005-02-15T10:29:00.000-06:00

Rumor has it that reciprocal links are not as effective as one way links. Some people in online discussion forums claim that one way links from a web site to another site work far better than reciprocal links. Is this true and what do you have to do about this?
What are one way links? What are reciprocal links?

If you link to another web site and the other web site links back to you, it's a reciprocal link. If you link to another web site and the other web site doesn't link back to your site, it's a one way link.
Why are links to your web site important?
Links to your web site improve the link popularity of your web site. If your web site has good incoming links, the ranking of your web pages will increase on major search engines.

Google has an official statement about this topic:

PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives.
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value.
Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

Basically, this means that your web site will get better rankings if many other web sites that are related to your own web site link to your site.
So are one way links really better than reciprocal links?
No, reciprocal links and one way links work just the same. The reason why some people think that reciprocal links don't work is that many webmasters who engage in reciprocal linking don't care about theming but only about the number of links. One way links are usually from topic-related sites.

If you link to any Tom, Dick and Harry you'll end up with a links page full of unrelated web sites. The jumble of links on the page is the reason why the links don't have power, not the fact that you're linking back to the site.
What do you have to do now?
Just go back to the original concept of reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is about building partnerships with related web sites and about spreading your reach within a specific industry or topic.
When you build links for your web site, concentrate on other sites that have a similar theme like your web site. Links from related web sites will have a positive effect on your ranking, no matter if these links are one way links or reciprocal links.

Building high quality reciprocal links is one of the best ways to promote your business on the Internet. Focus on web sites that are related to your own web site and try to get links from these web sites. Axandra software tool ARELIS can help you to find these web sites.

By the way, don't focus too much on the green PageRank bar in the Google toolbar. Although Google uses PageRank for its ranking algorithm, it's very likely that the official PageRank of a web site that is displayed in the Google toolbar is not the real PageRank that Google uses for its ranking algorithm.

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Search Engines, Blogs: "rel=nofollow" !

2005-01-23T10:05:00.000-06:00

From the MSN blog, a couple of days ago:

...Paul told me that Google is planning on announcing support for a <rel=”nofollow”> tag on individual <A> links. Any link with this tag will indicate to a crawler it is not necessarily approved by this page and shouldn’t be followed nor contribute weight for ranking. Our Search Champs suggested this and it has been a part of our plans since, we think it’s a great idea.

I quickly circulated this around our hallway and also to the MSN Spaces team – and we got quick agreement from both teams. Over the coming weeks, our MSNBot crawler will start respecting this new tag, and sometime after that MSN Spaces will start to support this as well (I expect Mike Torres and MC will have more details – the team has already made investments to help prevent blog spam to begin with). Cheers to Yahoo! and Six Apart for also supporting this movement....

What a brilliant idea! Now the thousands of blog contributors that honestly comment on someone else's blog are considered spammers exactly like those few ones that spammers are indeed: spammers win again, legitimate contributors lose again.

Spam-fear is the new Internet drug and unfortunately the spammers are its pusher and the internet community is addicted. After terrific email spam filters that think that an email from your mom is spam just because she asks you to call her, and so you will never read it, because it's directly moved into the trash-can, now the "engeniuos" rel=follow attribute will keep all the legitimate commenters away from the blogs and will encourage the spammers to spam even more.

Why should i give my contribution to a competititor blog if all i get back is:"you are a spammer, because you are commenting my blog"?
You spam-crusaders are ridiculous: you are destroying the spirit of the Internet! You don't want spam on your comments? MODERATE THEM, you lazy! That maybe MSN or Google or Yahoo do not have enough money to pay an employee to moderate a blog with 300 (!!!) comments per days? That maybe the small blog owner gets hundreds of comments per day on his blog?? Come on guys, if you cannot moderate 10 comments per days or in the 90% of cases even a couple of comments per week, stop blogging and go for a holiday!

Moderation is the ONLY way to fight spam and to not penalize the honests: spammers have their own blacklist of sites being difficult to be spammed; start moderating and you will see that spammers will stay away from your site. The rel=nofollow attribute is just rubbish and it will be a catastrophe, you will see. And especially giants like Microsoft will not be immune from this catastrophe.

Imagine the huge community hating Microsoft and going to spam thousands of blogs (and not only) with links back to Microsoft with the attribute rel=nofollow. Or imagine this scenario: all the 581,000 sites linking back to Yahoo decide to boycott Yahoo's express inclusion policy and put a rel=nofollow attribute on their links to Yahoo; the results would theoretically be that Yahoo does not have any site linking back to them, officially.

Unfortunately, i suspect that Google MSN and Yahoo would implement this new filter on their algorythms with an exception: links to Google, MSN and Yahoo sites would be immune from the rel=nofollow attribute. They win, spammers win, we lose.

Here we will not implement this ridiculous idea, and we will check all the links in the comments for being sure to delete the rel=nofollow attribute so, spammers, you are welcome to come and try to spam this blog. We will moderate, and if your link it is not approriate or related to the topic, your comment will be simply deleted...in the name of the only possible crusade against spam: (rel=nofollow)=NOFOLLOW!

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Msn Search Beta Moves to Regular Msn Search

2005-01-18T10:51:00.000-06:00

As anticipated a few days ago, Microsoft have moved one step further, with its new search engine. The new MSN search, in fact, is still in beta, officially, but now it's the only searchable engine at MSN. If you make a search at MSN.com for turnkey websites you get the results directly from the beta search engine. This means that Microsoft is now delivering all the regular MSN search engine traffic to its new beta search engine. So, great news for those of you (and of us ;-) ) that have made SEO for the new MSN search engine: it's harvest time!

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Microsoft's Beta at search.msn.com Rump-up

2005-01-11T21:44:00.000-06:00

From the Microsoft Blog we have got to know these great news:

"As you know we have been testing the beta of our new search service on an opt-in basis for several months now. From time to time we also route some of the customers from our live search service at search.msn.com through the Beta web site in order to do scalability testing. Next week we intend to begin turning up the dial and direct more of our users to the Beta. You’ll continue to see us doing this on occasion for the forseeable future. As before, the service remains in beta status and we will officially launch it when it’s ready. "

Oshoma Momoh,

General Manager, MSN Search Program Management

This is going to be really great news, especially for those who practice ethical SEO: the new MSN Search Engine returns really relevant results and it doesen't seem to be foolished by aggressive SEO operators like it happens to Google and Yahoo.

As i have said a few weeks ago, when i predicted that something would have started happening very early this year, once again i forecast for the new MSN search engine to come out completely from its beta status by the end of February or beginning of March, if not before. Let's wait and see.

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MultiCameraFrame?Mode=

2005-01-11T21:25:00.000-06:00

"Blogs and message forums buzzed this week with the discovery that a pair of simple Google searches permits access to well over 1,000 unprotected surveillance cameras around the world - apparently without their owners' knowledge."

Editor's note: These cams can be found by searching for inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode=" or inurl:"view/index.shtml" on Google.

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How To Determine If Your Site Is Banned In Google

2005-01-04T18:23:00.000-06:00

Step 1: Check log files or Web analytics reports for search engine activity.

Instead of relying on positioning software to determine whether or not a site is banned in Google, review your log files or Web analytics reports to see if Googlebot is actually crawling your site. Staff with advanced technical skills can review log files; less technical staff can review Web analytics reports. If you notice a significant drop in Google crawling, it can mean one of two things:

Site has been banned, or
Google has difficulty crawling your site due to technical reasons.

Step 2: Check index count.

A site's index count is the number of pages that are included in a search engine index. A page cannot rank unless it is included in the search engine index. One way to check the index count in Google is to perform the following search: site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com If your site is included in the Google index, it has not been banned. However, if your site has an index count of zero, it is a strong indication that your site might be banned.

Step 3: Check link count.

A site's link count is the number and quality of links pointing to a Web site. Link development is actually a more complex process than it seems. But for the purposes of this process, all we are concerned with is the actual number of links to your site that Google can find. Whenever you do a link count on Google, remember that it is done on a per URL basis. In other words, you will have a link count number to your home page, a different link count number to an individual category page, and so on and so forth. Since most sites tend to have the highest link count to their home pages, then getting a home-page link count is probably all you will need to do. In Google, getting a link count is very simple: link:www.yourdomain.com If there are links to your site in the Google index, your site has not been banned. However, if your site has a link count of zero, it is a very strong indication that your site might be banned.

Step 4: Review and fix possible technical issues.

If your site's index count is low and Google is finding links to your site, then the site might not be banned. Google might have a difficult time crawling your site due to technical issues. Items to review include: · URL structure · Robots exclusion protocol · Server redirects which are improperly formatted · Site navigation scheme(s) · Poor cross-linking · Password protection Technical issues often arise after a site redesign and server changes. For those of you about to redesign your site, especially if you are going from a static to a database-driven site, make sure you bring in a professional search engine marketer early in the design process to ensure that your design/development team isn't doing something to prevent the search engines from crawling your site. Also, Google has technical issues from time to time. I call it a search engine hiccup. Usually, the technical glitch is resolved within a month.

Step 5: Resubmit and monitor.

After fixing all possible technical issues, resubmit your site to Google at http://www.google.com/intl/en/addurl.html. I generally submit the home page and site map (as a back-up). Google should be able to crawl your entire site from your home page. You don't have to resubmit your site to be included in the Google index if Google were able to find high-quality links to your site. People just like the security of being able to submit. After resubmission, review your log files and Web analytics reports. You should see more Google activity once technical issues are fixed. However, if you see little or no Google activity, then it is a very strong indication that your site has been banned.

Step 6: Review spam penalty checklist.

To review, your site has probably been banned in Google if you see the following:

Log files/Web analytics reports indicate that Google is no longer crawling your site.
Index count is zero.
Link count is zero.
No technical issues exist that prevent Google from crawling your site.

Step 7: Review Google guidelines, terms, and conditions.

If Google has penalized your site, you will have to change everything that violates their terms and conditions. You can review their Webmaster Guidelines at http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html and general Webmaster Info at http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/. All too often, unsuspecting Web site owners have hired a search engine marketing firm that spams the search engines. With Google, it is common to find free-for-all link farms, doorway pages and domains, and cloaking. In order to get your site unbanned, you will have to find the exact issue (or issues) that violates Google's terms and conditions. You will have to send this information in an email to Google when you ask to be let back into their index.

Step 8: Email Google, resubmit, and monitor.

For the sake of this article, let's assume that the spam problem is a doorway domain that gets link popularity through a link farm. When you send an email to Google at help@google.com, make sure you include the following information in the email:

The domain that you believe has been banned.
All of the contact information of the person in charge of that domain.
The reasons why you believe the domain has been banned. (Hint: show Google that you've read their terms and guidelines).
What you have done, specifically, to change your site.
If you hired a search engine marketing (SEM) firm, then you need to give them the name and URLs of the SEM firm, the URLs of the doorway pages, and at least a couple of links to the FFA link farm.
An apology and a promise that it won't happen again.

In general, a Google software engineer will not directly reply to your request for re-inclusion. You will know if your site has been accepted back into the Google index by reviewing your log files and Web analytics software for Google activity.

Conclusion:

It must be rough to suddenly lose Google traffic after three years of search engine visibility. Maybe it was a Google hiccup. Maybe the site was redesigned. Maybe the competition has better quality content and better link development. Or maybe the Web site owner hired an SEM firm that spammed the search engines. Hopefully, this 8-step process will help readers get on the right track.

Related links:

About the Author:

Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com/) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.

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How Web Design Can Affect Search Engine Rankings

2004-12-29T12:57:00.000-06:00

Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when being promoted on the search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration when building or updating your web site.

1. Size Matters. The size of a web site can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search engines love content, so if you have only a few pages to your site and your competitors have dozens, it's difficult to see a top page ranking for your site. In some cases it may be difficult to present several pages of information about your business or products, so you may need to think about adding frëe resources for visitors. It will help in broadening the scope of your web site (which search engines like) as well as keep visitors on your site longer, possibly resulting in more sales.

2. Graphics-Based Web Sites. While web sites that offer the visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may seem like the best choice for someone searching for your product, they are the most difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned anything from point #-1, small amounts of content will not result in top rankings. If you really must offer the visitor a graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on the search engines and your new found visitors will also have the option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.

3. Dynamic Web Pages. If most of your web site is generated by a large database (such as a large book dealer with inventory that is changing by the minute) you may find that some of your pages do not get indexed by major search engines. If you look at the URL of these pages they can be extremely long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages are automatically generated by the database as needed, the search engines have a tough time keeping them up to date and relevant for search engine users.

One way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine friendly site map listing all your static pages just to let them know that you do have permanent content on your site. If search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages within a good internal linking system, this may also lead to the pages getting indexed. The link popularity of your site may carry more weïght in this case as well, so if you can't offer as much static content as your competition, make sure you have an aggressive link campaign on the go.

4. Proper Use of Html. There is quite a bit of sub-par web design software out there. Word processors usually have a way to create html documents which can be easily uploaded to a site via ftp. However, in many cases the code that the search engine robots see is mostly lines and lines of font and position formatting, not relevant content. The more efficiently written web sites usually achieve higher rankings. Our choice for web design software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry standard. It also makes using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut down on the amount of text formatting in html code. Hand-coding html to design sites is also a good method if you are proficient enough.
There are some no brainers too: Web sites with abnormal amounts of hyperlinks, bold or italicized text, improper use of heading, alt, or comment tags can also expect to see low rankings.
5. Choosing a Domain Name. The golden rule to web development of any kind is to keep your visitors in mind above all else - even search engine optimization. When choosing a domain name, one should pick either your business name (if you have a high-profile business name such as Chapters or Coca-Cola) or a brief description of your products. Domain names can always help with search engine optimization, since it is another area of your web site in which important keywords can appear. Forget about long-winded domains such as www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com. No one will ever remember it and it will be hard to print on business cards or in ads.

If you need to change your domain name for any reason you obviously don't want to losë existing rankings. An easy way to do this, and one that is currently supported by most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you to keep your existing rankings for your old domain name, while forwarding visitors to your new web site instantly.

6. Using Frames. Don't use frames. Frames are a thing of the 90's (and in the Internet world that is eons ago) and are not even supported by some search engines. The search engines that are able to index your site through frames will most likely frown upon them. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using frames can usually be done with the help of PHP includes or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Some browsers are not frames-compatible, so there is the danger of some visitors not being able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthly scripts being written.

7. Update Your Information. Not only does information printed two or three years ago reflect badly on your organization when it is read by a visitor, it is also looked down upon by search engines. Web sites that continuously update and grow their web sites usually experience higher rankings than stagnant sites. When the trick to SEO is offering visitors the most relevant information, you can bet that the age of web pages is taken into consideration by search engines. Consider creating a section of your site devoted to news within your organization, or have a constantly updated resources area.

Many shortfalls of web sites can easily be attributed to designers who just don't keep the user or search engines in mind. Search engine algorithms are quickly improving to try and list the most user-friendly sites higher, given that the content and link popularity are there to back it up. So first and foremost, know your target market and make your web site work for them before focusing on search engine optimization. If you build it (properly), they will come.

About The Author Copyright John Metzler of Abalone Designs, November 2004. This article may be freely distributed if credït is given to the author. Abalone Designs is a family-run Search Engine Optimization firm in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Visit Abalone Designs for a frëe personalized analysis of your web site.

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Search Engines Newslets

2004-12-28T13:13:00.000-06:00

Some quick news about search engines that we have picked up here and there.

- MSN.com may soon have a new look.
- New search engine Nokodo.com opens to the public on January 1, 2005.
- MSN releases a Wiki for MSN Search.
- Further information about Google's library project.
- Take a look at the top searches on Yahoo in 2004.
- Google/Yahoo Rivalry Moves Into 2005
- Microsoft Search to be pervasive

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Google Worm Targets AOL, Yahoo

2004-12-28T13:05:00.000-06:00

Days after Google acted to thwart the Santy worm, security firms warned that variants have begun to spread using both Google and other search engines.

The Santy problem originally flared up a week ago as bulletin board Web sites found their pages erased and defaced by the worm's own text. The worm spread by targeting pages that used vulnerable versions of the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software, and used Google to locate those pages.

After Google took measures to prevent the worm from executing Google searches for the faulty bulletin board software, Santy variants are making the rounds using AOL and Yahoo search, according to security firms, and are still targeting Google as well.

"Perl.Santy.B is a worm written in Perl script that attempts to spread to Web servers running versions of the phpBB 2.x bulletin board software prior to 2.0.11," warned Symantec in a Dec. 26 bulletin. "It uses AOL or Yahoo search to find potential new infection targets."

AOL, which uses Google for its underlying search technology, said it was looking into the problem and was uncertain whether Google blocks already in place would prevent misuse of AOL's search site. Yahoo, which dumped Google's search technology in February, could not be reached immediately for comment.

Several other variants are cropping up. Santy.c targets Google once again. Kaspersky Labs today renamed Santy.d and Santy.e Spyki.a and b., citing significant differences in the worms' structure from earlier Santies. The security firm also said the new worms were using the Brazilian Google for their exploits.

Security researches last week faulted Google for not responding more swiftly to the emerging Santy threat.

The Santy worm and its variants affect only targeted bulletin board sites and do not pose a threat to Web surfers who visit them.

Source: Paul Festa, News.com

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New Scam Alert

2004-12-13T17:48:00.000-06:00

A new phishing technique has been discovered that is designed to capture online banking details without requiring users to click on a website link.
According to security experts at MessageLabs, all users have to do to become potential victims is simply open an email, which then silently runs a small program that attempts to rewrite the files of targeted machines.

The next time the user legitimately attempts to access their online bank, they will be automatically redirected to a fraudulent website, enabling their lo-in details to be stolen. The risk is currently low, according to MessageLabs, which has only intercepted copies of emails targeting three Brazilian banks.

Look here to see anti-phishing techniques

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A is for Amazon, B is for Best Buy: Google Suggest Feature

2004-12-13T09:17:00.000-06:00

The Google Suggest Tool Launched Friday in Beta and it's amazing! How they continue to come up with brilliant, innovative tools that enhance and improve search is beyond me. Having hundreds of genius engineers on staff, listening to their ideas - then implementing those ideas is leading to great leaps in search usability.
Try it yourself at: http://labs.google.com/suggest/.

The Google Suggest Beta tool not only completes words in a drop-down list that shows ten possible and or likely ways to complete any word you begin to type in the search box, it shows beside each of those possible word combinations - how many times that option is searched at Google!

Even though I was in the middle of working overtime to begin a major client initiative, I couldn't stop experimenting with the tool from an SEO perspective. The Google Suggest tool allows you to see instantly how often specific keyword phrases are searched! Chëck out the competition for keywords.

Google Suggest is something that appears to be destined for integration into the standard search page simply because it is far more valuable as the similar option some browsers offer to complete words as you begin to type them into web forms. The controversial Gator-form completion tool launched a huge advertising company based only on things users with the Gator tool had already typed into web forms.

But the difference hëre is astounding, in that it shows you things others have typed into the search box and how often! This means that they must instantly access their database via the search box and instantly return results that change with each keystroke! Though interesting, it is not foolproof. Several times I typed quickly and the feature appears to drop behind and miss letters that I've typed, showing results for the first two letters, but missing those letters typed after.

The Google Suggest FAQ answers to frequently asked questïons promise that the auto-complete feature is not based on your surfing or search history. An inevitable concern that arises as you type queries and see the javascrïpt function complete words that you wouldn't otherwise type. A deliberate attempt to search adult terms turns up innocuous word completions and beyond that, appears to filter the most commonly searched phrases on the web. Adult phrases appear (necessarily) not to be completed as it would show things that children using the feature shouldn't see. Nice touch that!

The FAQ also tells us that the word completion feature of Google Suggest is based upon the Google Zeitgeist, itself a fascinating look at popular culture that is always available to the curious.

One question asked on the Google Suggest FAQ page addresses an odd issue . . . "How do I get back to normal Google?". The answer is simply to type the http://www.google.com/ URL in the browser address bar or click the Google link, as it appears to lock you into using the feature until you specifically launch a new browser window. Though, personally, I'd rather stick with Google Suggest as it seems that they've come up with another tool I can't live without.

Interestingly, the Google Blog links to the following URL http://labs.google.com/suggest/ but if you look in your browser address bar, you are redirected to http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en which suggests Google intends full implementation and may offer on/off toggle option from the main page in the near future.

You must use relatively recent browsers in order to use the Google Suggest feature, but it supports Internet Explorer 6.0 (or newer), Netscape 7.1 (or newer), Mozilla 1.4 (or newer), Firefox 0.8 (or newer), Opera 7.54 (or newer), or Apple Safari 1.2.2 (or newer). (Interesting side note hëre, type the single letter "F" in the text box of Google Suggest text box and the result is "Firefox 20,000,000 results." Something that will no doubt make Microsoft a bit nervous.)

Google continues to innovate in ways that fascinate me. I'm behind in my work because I've toyed around and analyzed this new Google feature beyond reason. If MSN and Yahoo don't offer similar tools in their search, I can't imagine being without it and will stick to Google for my searching. MSN's "Search Builder" feature almost had me as a convert. Yahoo's "My Search" options almost had me setting Yahoo as my home page. Search tools are coming fast and furious over the past couple of months and this industry is a fascinating space to watch these days.

I've gotta get back to work. I'll resist the temptation to experiment further with the Google Suggest tool. New ideas keep popping into my head on fascinating new ways to use it. Like "What is the most commonly searched word beginning with each letter of the alphabet?" "A is for Amazon" "B is for Best Buy" "C is for CNN" etc. Maybe "How is the prefix 'un' most often used?" That didn't work, I get United Airlines as a suggestion. Google, I have a suggestion for a new tool! How about Google Prefix or even Google Antonym! Imagine the fascinating tools that developers will build using the Google API if they include this new Suggest feature in the API!

About The Author - Mike Banks Valentine practices ethical SEO. Contact Mike at: SEOptimism.com. This article is available online at RealitySEO.com with links to resources. You may use it on your site, blog or newsletter if you maintain this resource box and make links live hyperlinks.

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Accoona.com Launches New Artificial Intelligence Search Engine

2004-12-11T10:46:00.000-06:00

NEW YORK -- The Accoona Corporation

-- New search engine empowers users to find the most relevant information through its Artificial Intelligence powered search engine

-- Accoona.com, in partnership with ChinaDaily.com.cn - the largest English language website in China to launch today

The Accoona Corporation, an industry pioneer in Artificial Intelligence Search Technology, announced today the launch of Accoona.com. The company's Web-Search Platform, www.Accoona.com, features a breakthrough Artificial Intelligence powered search engine. Accoona's Artificial Intelligence Software(TM) greatly improves relevance by returning search results based on the meaning of words, rather than the traditional key word matching methodology.

"Accoona's Artificial Intelligence Technology will elevate Search Engine performance to a new unprecedented level, allowing the most relevant search available today." said Eckhard Pfeiffer, Accoona's Chairman and former CEO of Compaq Computer.

Accoona has also entered into a distribution agreement with Yahoo's Overture, providing Overture Targeted pay-per-click search results to Accoona.com users.

In addition to its US launch, Accoona simultaneously debuted in China in coordination with its partner, The China Daily Information Company, the official and largest English language web destination of China. Through a 20-year exclusive partnership with China Daily, and its Web affiliates throughout China, Accoona expects over 10 million daily unique users from China.

"It is my belief that, as a unique online business information search engine, Accoona.com can provide another fast track for the business exchange and cooperation between China and other countries." Stated Qizheng Zhao, Minister, State Council Information Office, People's Republic of China. "My department will continue to support such efforts to promote Chinese enterprises in doing business with companies throughout the world."

Accoona's International Web Search Platform is complemented with one of the World's largest Databases of Online Business Information, comprised of hundreds of millions of records on millions of companies worldwide. The company has spent almost all of 2004 building and acquiring data for this unique business database and Accoona will offer this business information free of charge to Internet users worldwide. Accoona merges traditional website content with relevant business data utilizing the Accoona QuickProfile(TM), a new presentation feature that takes the search experience to the next level. One-click access immediately delivers relevant business information such as primary contact, address, email, fax, phone number, and other important data.

Accoona also introduced a new interactive search experience for its users with its SuperTargeted(TM) search feature. The user has further control in the search process by highlighting key word(s), thus emphasizing what key word(s) are more important within the search query. For example, the user entering a 5 key word query is able to highlight one or more key words to prioritize the key words within a search query. The Accoona Search Engine automatically ranks the results beginning with the pages with the "highlighted" key word(s) or the meaning of that key word(s) that is more relevant to the others as determined by the user. The corresponding, "SuperTargeted(TM)" search results are then merged with the Accoona QuickProfile(TM) business data.

About Accoona

The Accoona Corporation's new proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology will revolutionize the search engine business by understanding the meaning of search terms, and providing more relevant results. The user's search will be further enhanced through the introduction of SuperTargeting capabilities and the Accoona QuickProfile features. The global launch of the new Accoona.com search engine will provide users with more useful results than ever before.

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Turnkey Web Pros Adds a Pharmacy Web Site to Their Portfolio of Turnkey Online Businesses

2004-12-04T11:00:00.000-06:00

It has been estimated that up to 30 million American men suffer from sexual dysfunction. 40,000 Viagra prescriptions are filled per day.
According to research by Cyber Dialogue, 36.7 million US adults already use the web to find healthcare content, and health-related e-commerce has attracted 11 million consumers.

By 2005, Cyber Dialogue predicts that these numbers will increase to 88.5 million content seekers and 55 million shoppers. eMarketer estimates that the online health, beauty aids and drugs (HBAD) market will reach $2.2 billion in 2001, double the total for 2000, and rise rapidly to $7.1 billion in 2004.

Keeping in mind these tremendous statistics, Turnkey Web pros has added today a new online business to their protfolio of turnkey websites: a Pharmacy web site.

This new turnkey business comes with a state-of-the-art design and sells the most wanted pills at the cheapest prices on the Net and it is a real money-generating machine. All comes with the usual, standard fully featured turnkey package featuring a domain name, traffic, marketing support, hosting and a money back guarantee, all included, for a low one time fee.

For more information visit http://www.turnkeywebpros.com .

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Google PageRank is For Entertainment Use Only

2004-12-02T10:18:00.001-06:00

Shocking news, last night, while i was jumping here and there in the search of some sort of confirmation to the rumors that want Google updating backlinks and PR (PageRank) soon.

This is what i found at the valuable Search Engine Journal :

I can not confirm this to be accurate, but a post at Search Engine Watch just a few minutes ago claims this to be the case. The member said that he emailed Google asking why a page’s PageRank is zero and he got the following response from Google.

The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for entertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers to access this data, Google updates the PageRank data very infrequently because is it not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is several months old.
If the toolbar is showing a PR of zero, this is because the user is visiting a new URL that hasn’t been updated in the last update. The PR that is displayed by the Google Toolbar is not the same PR that is used to rank the webpage results so there is no need to be concerned if your PR is displayed as zero. If a site is showing up in the search results, it doesn’t not have a real PR of zero, the Toolbar is just out of date.

Apparently, Google is still using PageRank to rank sites but just not displaying the current value to the Google Toolbar user.

Bad news? Good news? Certainly good news for those of you having a PageRank equal to zero: this might mean that probably your PageRank is everything but zero; but at the same time, if the claim is genuine, this might mean a complete change in the SEO (search Engines Optimization) world.

In fact, supposing that high PR still plays a major role in ranking at the top of Google, how can you determine what your real PR is, now? And most of all: is PR still playing any role at all, in SEO?

Google to Update Backlinks and PR (PageRank)

2004-12-01T17:54:00.000-06:00

We are noting a deep and frenetic activity on Google servers and we definetely think that Google is going to update backlinks and probably also PR (PageRank), this time. This are great news for those of you who have worked hard, lately, submitting their sites to directories, exchanging quality-content links and working on SEO (Search Engines Optimization) ethically. We will keep you up to date, a soon as our supposition is proven right. Cross your fingers.

What Is Search Engines Optimization (SEO) ?

2004-11-30T19:58:00.000-06:00

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves making Web pages more search engine friendly to promote them as the most relevant solutions for the search engines' users.

The improvements can mean the difference between achieving top rankings, which can result in thousands of monthly visitors, and being lost in oblivion.

Why is search engine optimization important?

Search engine optimization is basically about following search engine rules. If your Web page fits the criterias that a search engine considers the most important factors in terms of relevance, then it will reward you with a top ranking.

Search engine optimizers simply modify Web pages to fit these criterias. This gives the Web pages a better chance of being selected by the search engines as the most relevant page for the search query.

The importance of keyword research

The Internet is basically a massive disorganized library. Search engines are like librarians. They both try to organize the content, so that people can find what they're looking for without too much effort.

With books, librarians have the benefit of bibliographic databases and the information on the book covers to help them organize their library.

Search engines don't have such a luxury. There aren't databases of every single Web page ever created. The Internet is just too big. There's too much information to index.

The only way a search engine can try to organize the mass of information available on the Internet is by the use of keywords and links.

It makes sense to think that if a Web page contains enough keywords related to a certain topic, it should be relevant to a search for information on that particular topic.

So part of the search engine optimization specialist's job is to make sure the Web pages target the keywords that people search for when looking for products, services or information related to what the Web page offers.

The variety of keywords used to search for the same product, service or information is quite staggering.

For example, here are the most popular keyword phrases used by people searching for information on search engine optimization:

search engine optimization
search engine ranking
search engine optimisation (notice the English - as opposed to American - spelling of optimization?)
search engine placement
website optimisation
search engine positioning
web site optimization (notice a space between "web site?")
high search engine ranking
web page optimisation
search engine promotion
top search engine ranking
high search engine rankings
search engine rankings
better search engine placement
web site optimisation
high search engine placement
search engines optimization
website optimization
search engine optimizations (notice the "s" at the end of optimization?)
high search engine positioning
engine optimization resources

You notice how many different variations people use to search for information on the same topic?

The fact is, unless a page contains all of the keywords in a search query, then it will have very little of appearing at the top of the rankings.

Before Web pages can be optimized, you must conduct research to determine which keywords to target. This involves finding targeted keywords, determining their popularity, assessing the amount of competition, and then deciding which keywords to use in your Web pages.

Lee Johnson is the editor and publisher of the "Lee Johnson: SEO" Blog", that we warmly suggest you to have a look at: it features very interesting articles on how to rank high on search engines, ethically.

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Build Your Reputation Up as a SEO (Search Engines Optimization) Expert - Columnists Wanted

2004-11-30T11:49:00.000-06:00

"Turnkey Online Success" Blog popularity is growing every day, and we are in demand for your help.

If you are a SEO (Search Engines Optimization) expert, a web promotion guru, a web design freak; if you don't expect for your articles to be read only by other experts and gurus, but also and especially by newbies and newcomers; if you are not afraid to unveil your skills and your hints; and, finally, if you want to be recognized as an "expert" throughout the all Net and you want to have free publicity for your web site and business; if you want all this things, we want you.

We are committed to create a space where words like SEO (Search Engines Optimization) or SERPS (Search Engines Results Placement) are not confused by the newbies with State Earnings Organization or State Earnings Related Pension Scheme, a space where newcomers can find REAL, valuable information for promoting their online business in an ethic though effective and successful way.

We see too many forums out there populated by too much self-indulgent people who look like talking an extra-terrestrial language. Nothing against that, as long as you are already an expert; but how can you become a SEO expert if you don't even understand what SEO means?

So, if you have something to share with the "poor, down-to-earth people", and let them UNDERSTAND what they are supposed to do and why and how they are supposed to do that, we want to hear from you! We will give you full editing access to this blog, full credits to any news, hints and articles that you will post in here, and even to any discussion that you will ignite in here. We will also create a personalized profile and all your contributions (with credits) will be posted on our newsletter sent out to more than 12,000 double opt-in subscribers, as well.

So, if you want to make a difference, apply today sending an email to info@govindam.com, with your name, email address, some info about yourself and a few lines explaining the kind of contribution that you can give and we will likely take you aboard!

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Submitting to Directories Can Be a Tough Job, But You Cannot Miss It

2004-11-28T19:09:00.001-06:00

How much time do you need for submitting your web site to the hundreds of Internet directories out there? And is it worth and necessary?
It can be really time consuming and the answer is: "yes, it is necessary and worth!".
Many people would say that it's not really time consuming: at the end there is plenty of automatic online and offline programs promising to do the job for you in a matter of minutes.
Well, forget them! Directories don't like automatic submissions at these days and you would just throw away your money, if not the chance to be indexed at all.

But let's start from the opportunity of submitting or not. Submitting your web site can bring you several advantages that you won't renunce to:

traffic
visibility
back links
PR (Google PageRank)
better search engine ranking

For those of you not knowing what PR (Google PageRank) and back links mean i'm going to explain it briefly:
PR is how Google rate an indexed web site. From the Google site itself:

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."

A back link is when a website publish some information about your web site and establish a link from their site back to yours, so that their visitors can find your web site through their own one.
Here the importance of submitting your site to the directories.

Understood why it is worth to submit your site, then, let's see how you can do that manually in the shortest time possible.

Open your favourite text editor and create a new document. You may want to call it something like "Directories-Submission.txt". In this document write down the title (20-50 characters), press ENTER twice (in order to creat 2 line breaks), the description (up to 200 characters), press ENTER twice again and the URL of your website (just the main URL, like http://www.yoursite.com); now, press ENTER twice again and write down 5-7 keywords related to the content of your site, each one separated by a comma.

Then, visit this list of free directories (submitting your site to those directories is free) that we have built up for you and start clicking the first one on the list. When at their site, look for something like ADD URL or SUBMIT YOUR SITE and click on it; now fill in the fields with the info that you have saved in your text document simply making a cut and paste and submit your site (with some directories you will have to pick up a category for your site, first, and then to submit from inside that category. Always submit to a category related to your site content: there is no point to submit a website about jokes into the Politics category, just because some jokes are about politics...your site is about jokes and that or leisure and fun are the categories where you should submit it. And don't forget that submitting to the wrong category means almost certainly not to be indexed!).

Some directories may ask you to confirm your email address, but mostly won't. If you submit to the right categories, manually and correctly and if your website has any sort of decent content, you may expect to have your site indexed within 1 or 2 weeks. If you will submit your site correctly to all the directories on our list, you may expect a nice boost of traffic very soon, since you will have a nice bunch of back links, a better PR and consequentially a better search engine ranking for your site keywords; without talking of some traffic coming directly from those directories.

And with this simple system, you can easily save several hours of work when submitting your site to 300 directories. And don't forget that it's free! Well...almost...at the end, your time costs money...