SEO Updates | SEO Tips | Search Engine Updates

Official Google Blog: Being bad to your customers is bad for business

2010-12-29T05:44:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog: Being bad to your customers is bad for business

Being bad to your customers is bad for business

12/01/2010 12:06:00 PM

A recent article by the New York Times related a disturbing story. By treating your customers badly, one merchant told the paper, you can generate complaints and negative reviews that translate to more links to your site; which, in turn, make it more prominent in search engines. The main premise of the article was that being bad on the web can be good for business.

We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.

As always, we learned a lot from this experience, and we wanted to share some of that with you. Consider the obvious responses we could have tried to fix the problem:

Block the particular offender. That would be easy and might solve the immediate problem for that specific business, but it wouldn’t solve the larger issue in a general way. Our first reaction in search quality is to look for ways to solve problems algorithmically.
Use sentiment analysis to identify negative remarks and turn negative comments into negative votes. While this proposal initially sounds promising, it turns out to be based on a misconception. First off, the terrible merchant in the story wasn’t really ranking because of links from customer complaint websites. In fact, many consumer community sites such as Get Satisfaction added a simple attribute called rel=nofollow to their links. The rel=nofollow attribute is a general mechanism that allows websites to tell search engines not to give weight to specific links, and it’s perfect for the situation when you want to link to a site without endorsing it. Ironically, some of the most reputable links to Decor My Eyes came from mainstream news websites such as the New York Times and Bloomberg. The Bloomberg article was about someone suing the company behind Decor My Eyes, but the language of the article was neutral, so sentiment analysis wouldn’t have helped here either.

As it turns out, Google has a world-class sentiment analysis system (Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis for News and Blogs). But if we demoted web pages that have negative comments against them, you might not be able to find information about many elected officials, not to mention a lot of important but controversial concepts. So far we have not found an effective way to significantly improve search using sentiment analysis. Of course, we will continue trying.
Yet another option is to expose user reviews and ratings for various merchants alongside their results. Though still on the table, this would not demote poor quality merchants in our results and could still lead users to their websites.

Instead, in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.

We can't say for sure that no one will ever find a loophole in our ranking algorithms in the future. We know that people will keep trying: attempts to game Google’s ranking, like the ones mentioned in the article, go on 24 hours a day, every single day. That’s why we cannot reveal the details of our solution—the underlying signals, data sources, and how we combined them to improve our rankings—beyond what we’ve already said. We can say with reasonable confidence that being bad to customers is bad for business on Google. And we will continue to work hard towards a better search.

Google Webmaster Analytics Update 2010

2010-10-15T03:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Images explain more than words J (Saves Time too for think).

Today once I login into Google Analytics notices some enhancements there, reference image are attached too.

Instead of playing with words, I think I must keep my discussion to the point and be specific about Topic.

Here you go:

1. Parameter handling as Separate Tab

2. Inside Parameter Handling

3. Search Queries

**Queries manually removed by me

4. Links to your site

In a more in-depth look with 100 anchor text

5. Keywords

Keywords shows variants of keywords as well.

Look forwards to hear from readers and researchers. J

Google SEO Updates

2010-09-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

Can Google's new search features impact SEO and internet marketing strategies?

Yes
No

During the course of last one year, I have noticed certin changes in Google Search Result Page. Where I a trying to make a list of change on result page, yet my order could be wrong :).

1. Google trying 4 Paid Listing above natural results:

2. More Than 8 Site Links:

More Important Pages Are Shows with Links.

3. Left Hand Side Tool Bar for more in depth Search, After Bing :)

4. Google Checkout Option in Adwords

Source: http://www.ebuzzmaster.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/google-adwords-images-folded.gif

5.Google Product Search Results

Source: http://www.ajazi.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/google-product-search.gif

6. Google added breadcrumbs to search results

7. Caffeine Update

Please Let me know If I missed something................

Benefits of Article Submission

2010-07-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

Why Use Article Submission:

Article submission helps in drawing one way back links for website.
Theme based (Website related content) links can be drawn with the help of article submission.
Articles websites have a larger reader database, so you can get potential reader who are often read and write about products and services on their blog and websites, so increase the possibility of natural linking.
Article submission directories offering subscribe option (RSS Feed), which will help in getting larger reader database.
I would recommend an article section on website, which will get ranking for targeted key phrase and helps in achieving ranking on keywords as well via internal linking.
Key phrase based Article titles also helps in ranking on key phrases.
As we know SEO is all about content, to make website more crawl able and rank in NEWS section in Google and under latest update. It will also results in faster indexing of website.
With Google new search index caffeine on 6/08/2010 – that provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than Google last index. Lead to availability of fresher content on website.
Article submission generates interest in the content of your website so as to attract new, unique visitors.

Sitemaps many content types

2010-06-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

Sitemaps: One file, many content types

Have you ever wanted to submit your various content types (video, images, etc.) in one Sitemap? Now you can! If your site contains videos, images, mobile URLs, code or geo information, you can now create—and submit—a Sitemap with all the information.

Site owners have been leveraging Sitemaps to let Google know about their sites’ content since Sitemaps were first introduced in 2005. Since that time additional specialized Sitemap formats have been introduced to better accommodate video, images, mobile, code or geographic content. With the increasing number of specialized formats, we’d like to make it easier for you by supporting Sitemaps that can include multiple content types in the same file.

The structure of a Sitemap with multiple content types is similar to a standard Sitemap, with the additional ability to contain URLs referencing different content types. Here's an example of a Sitemap that contains a reference to a standard web page for Web search, image content for Image search and a video reference to be included in Video search:


        xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1"
        xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
   
    http://www.example.com/foo.html 
    
       http://example.com/image.jpg 
    
     
    http://www.example.com/videoABC.flv    
      Grilling tofu for summer

Here's an example of what you'll see in Webmaster Tools when a Sitemap containing multiple content types is submitted:

We hope the capability to include multiple content types in one Sitemap simplifies your Sitemap submission. The rest of the Sitemap rules, like 50,000 max URLs in one file and the 10MB uncompressed file size limit, still apply. If you have questions or other feedback, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/sitemaps-one-file-many-content-types.html

5 Easy SEO Tips

2010-06-28T23:45:00.000-07:00

5 Easy SEO Tips For Starting An Internet Home Based Business

You may also have recognized how much information overload there is concerning SEO and starting an internet home based business, which makes it difficult to separate the correct tips from the useless scams.

However the truth is that SEO is not difficult for a newbie, when the logic has been explained to you correctly. SEO is a greatest and most effective way to drive traffic to your site, when you are starting an internet home based business. So read these tips carefully, they are especially for a newbie.

1.Write SEO Articles, Blog Posts, Forum Posts And New Pages.

All these promotions follow the same requirements as to the SEO or search engine optimization. This makes it wise to use all of these methods together and to guarantee the maximum visibility and reach in the Internet.

2.The Keywords Are The Most Important Elements In The SEO Content.

But they will never be more important than the content, their job is to serve the surfers and the search engine spiders, so that they will find your information. This feature is based on the fact, that the Net is ran by the information and majority of searches will start from the search engines.

The keyword selection starts from your internet home business idea or from your promise to your target group. When you are starting an internet home based business, you have decided what, how and to whom you offer something unique.

Now to get converting traffic to your site, your keywords must draw related people to the site, i.e. people who search information by keywords that leads to your site or which you have used.

I recommend that you will select long tail keywords, i.e. keywords, which include several words, of which many phrases are already separate keywords. These keywords are normally low demand ones, but will drive more targeted visitors and are especially effective during a longer period of time.

3.Finetune Your Keyword Density Correctly.

The keyword density means the amount of keywords compared to the total number of words in your article. When you are starting an internet home based business, I recommend that you use keyword after every 100 words in your article, not more often.

4.Use Bolded, Italic And Underlined Keywords.

You can make your SEO more effective by using your keyword once in bolded, italic and underlined form. This serves also your readers, because it will put more strength to the core idea of your article.

5.The Author Box Is Important.

In the end of the article you can write the so called Author Box or Bio Box. This is the place for your own name, a short enthusiastic description, why the reader gets more useful information, when he will click the link, which has the major keyword in the hyperlink.

This is all. Now you can make your SEO article work when you are starting an internet home based business. And it will work online for a long period of time.

Source: http://tutorials-tips-tricks.info/5-easy-seo-tips-for-starting-an-internet-home-based-business/

International SEO Keyword Research Trends

2010-06-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

International SEO: Keyword Research With Google Trends

If you run multiple stores for different English-speaking countries (geo-targeted with subdomains, subfolders or top-level domains like .co.uk, .co.au, .ca etc), it’s important to pay attention to the keywords in your category names and product page titles. The terms that your countrymen (and women) use to describe your products may not be the same as the lingo abroad. And the keywords you choose to describe your categories and products have a huge impact on SEO in your international markets.

Example: “flash drive” vs. “USB drive” vs. “memory stick”

According to Google Trends, the term “USB drive” is most popular in US and Canada, and “memory stick” most popular in the UK.

Example 2: “slow cooker” vs. “crock pot” vs. “crockpot”

Americans love the branded term “crock pot” and are most likely to use the 2-word rather than “crockpot.” The rest of the English speaking world is more likely to call it a “slow cooker.”

Ideally your category labels and product page titles will be optimized to reflect the most popular search for each respective region. (Make sure you’ve geo-targeted your domains using webmaster tools). Synonyms should be included in your meta data so customers who use them can still find your products in your on-site search, and in product descriptions so you can still be found in search engines for any of the synonyms.
Another reason to use the more common term in navigation menus is users tend to scan menus with a “trigger keyword” in mind. They’re thinking “memory stick” and if they don’t find that quickly in your menu, often it’s off to the search box or off to another site.

Not only can you apply this research to on-site optimization, but also pay-per-click and email campaigns (hint, geo-segment your PPC and email campaigns).

Even if you don’t target geographic regions, you can still benefit from using Google Trends data — find out if the keywords you’re using are really the most popular of its synonyms in your region. Can’t think of synonyms? Google’s Keyword Tool can help you out. I suggest you start with your most profitable category.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 1:03 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: http://www.getelastic.com/international-keyword-research-with-google-trends/

Quality links to your site

2010-06-28T00:59:00.000-07:00

A popular question on our Webmaster Help Forum is in regard to best practices for organic link building. There seems to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on how to approach the topic. Different perspectives have been shared, and we would also like to explain our viewpoint on earning quality links.

If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content -- something that lets your expertise shine -- people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can serve this purpose as much as providing useful tools.

A promising way to create value for your target group and earn great links is to think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience. Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility. This can help you gain lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers who generate direct traffic and "spread the word." Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site's reputation in a positive way.

Humor can be another way to gain both great links and get people to talk about your site. With Google Buzz and other social media services constantly growing, entertaining content is being shared now more than ever. We've seen all kinds of amusing content, from ASCII art embedded in a site's source code to funny downtime messages used as a viral marketing technique to increase the visibility of a site. However, we do not recommend counting only on short-lived link-bait tactics. Their appeal wears off quickly and as powerful as marketing stunts can be, you shouldn't rely on them as a long-term strategy or as your only marketing effort.

It's important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site's reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they're likely to have no positive impact on your site's performance over time. If your site's visibility in the Google index is important to you it's best to avoid them.

Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.

It can be a good idea to take a look at similar sites in other markets and identify the elements of those sites that might work well for yours, too. However, it's important not to just copy success stories but to adapt them, so that they provide unique value for your visitors.

Social bookmarks on YouTube enable users to share content easily

Finally, consider making linking to your site easier for less tech savvy users. Similar to the way we do it on YouTube, offering bookmarking services for social sites like Twitter or Facebook can help spread the word about the great content on your site and draw users' attention.

As usual, we'd like to hear your opinion. You're welcome to comment here in the blog, or join our Webmaster Help Forum community.

Written by Kaspar Szymanski, Search Quality Strategist, Dublin

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site.html

Google search index Caffeine

2010-06-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

Today (8th June 2010), we're announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don't build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you're not searching the live web. Instead you're searching Google's index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here's a good explanation of how it all works.)

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, we've built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before — no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We've built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it's a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

Google Videos Optimization Promotion practices

2010-06-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

We'd like to highlight three best practices that address some of the most common problems found when crawling and indexing video content. These best practices include ensuring your video URLs are crawlable, stating what countries your videos may be played in, and that if your videos are removed, you clearly indicate this state to search engines.

Best Practice 1: Verify your video URLs are crawlable: check your robots.txt
- Sometimes publishers unknowingly include video URLs in their Sitemap that are robots.txt disallowed. Please make sure your robots.txt file isn't blocking any of the URLs specified in your Sitemap. This includes URLs for the:
  - Playpage
  - Content and player
  - Thumbnail
  More information about robots.txt.
Best Practice 2: Tell us what countries the video may be played in
- Is your video only available in some locales? The optional attribute “restriction” has recently been added (documentation at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472), which you can use to tell us whether the video can only be played in certain territories. Using this tag, you have the option of either including a list of all countries where it can be played, or just telling us the countries where it can't be played. If your videos can be played everywhere, then you don't need to include this.
Best Practice 3: Indicate clearly when videos are removed -- protect the user experience
- Sometimes publishers take videos down but don't signal to search engines that they've done so. This can result in the search engine's index not accurately reflecting content of the web. Then when users click on a search result, they're taken to a page either indicating that the video doesn't exist, or to a different video. Users find this experience dissatisfying. Although we have mechanisms to detect when search results are no longer available, we strongly encourage following community standards.
  
  To signal that a video has been removed,
  1. Return a 404 (Not found) HTTP response code, you can still return a helpful page to be displayed to your users. Check out these guidelines for creating useful 404 pages.
  2. Indicate expiration dates for each video listed in a Video Sitemap (use the element) or mRSS feed ( tag) submitted to Google.

For more information on Google Videos please visit our Help Center, and to post questions and search answers check out our Help Forum.

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-videos-best-practices.html

10 Essential Design Tools for Social Media Pros

2010-03-24T06:00:00.001-07:00

10 Essential Design Tools for Social Media Pros

Posted using ShareThis

Why AdWords Preview results different to organic results

2009-04-29T00:27:00.000-07:00

Why are my Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool results different to the main results?

When using adwords preview tool compare that with organic listing it seems in preview tools results for organic listing are coming from US data enter instead of respective county for which searched for.

It seems that Google showing showing ads to their respective country and organic search result's are coming from US data center.

Changing Contents without Changing Theme

2009-01-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

Changing Contents without Changing Theme - A Strategy to Fight Duplicate Content Filter: Any better suggestion and a Good Name?
========================================

After Google's Duplicate Content Update, I was thinking about a new way to create unique content with the same theme.

It is quite easy to rearrange words, even sentence structures, and replace synonyms (unlike Semantic Markup) of several keywords through Microsoft Word. But, every human has a limitation and can't go beyond this & create large amount of versions of the same theme. One way or the other, some versions or portion of the versions will be redundant.

To resolve this, the best way is to involve several content developers or analyzer to replace synonyms and rearrange words & sentence structure while keeping the same theme. It can be quite handy for Affiliate Marketing websites.

Another way to do it is by providing the contents in French & Spanish. And assigning different French & Spanish Translators or Machine Translators to Translate the content back to English. And then allowing them to fine tune (proof-read) the contents. The reason I chose French & Spanish, is because the Machine Translation of French & Spanish is very smooth. Moreover, no two translations will be the same.

It can be done in 3 ways:
- With MS Word & Other Semantic/Thesaurus Tools (Something like Manual Semantic Markup)
- With Thematic Content Differentiators (English 2 English)
- With Translators (Multilingual to English)

Question-1: Can you suggest me any Good Name for this (Changing Contents without Changing Theme)?

My suggestions are:
- Themetic Content Differentiation/Alteration
- Semantic Differentiation/Alteration
- Natural or Organic Semantic Parsing/Differentiation
- Manual Semantic Markup

I would be pleased to know your choice among these suggestions. However, would highly appreciate innovative name.

Question-2: Do you have any better suggestion about Differentiating Thematic Contents?

Note: The reason I don't like Semantic Markup, is because it may become Black Hat in future and Search Engines rewards people working the hard way.

SMO Social Media Optimization activities

2008-12-03T22:48:00.000-08:00

SMO – Social Media Optimization Activities

Activities:

1. Tagging and book marking -- Include calls to action for users to tag, bookmark and delicious, Digg your stuff.

2. Forums – Participate in forums.

3. video ads - you tube

4. viral marketing

5. banners

6. Encourage the mash up -- RSS - Syndicate your content

7. Blogging through word press and blogger and submit in technorati ( blogging search engines) and blogosphere ( blog collector).

8. photo sharing – flickr

9. social network - Creating and promoting Groups

10. ORM - Online reputation management

11. Content travel - such as PDFs, video files and audio files.

12. contest, quiz, poll, opinion, review

Promotional Rules:

Increase your linkability
Make tagging and bookmarking easy
Reward inbound links
Help your content travel
Encourage the mashup
Be a User Resource, even if it doesn‚Äôt help you
Reward helpful and valuable users
Participate
Know how to target your audience
Create content
Be real
Don‚Äôt forget your roots, be humble
Don‚Äôt be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
Develop a SMO strategy
Choose your SMO tactics wisely
Make SMO part of your process and best practices

If you have some other ideas please post a comment here and i will include here. :

Importance of Linking building

2008-11-27T01:17:00.000-08:00

Importance of Linking

The easiest way of improving your ranking in the search engines is link building. Link building is the practice of encouraging other websites to link to your own website. If other websites are linking to your website, your "link popularity" will increase, search engines will deem your website important, and in turn, you should receive more traffic. The majority of search engines use link popularity as an important factor in ranking relevancy. Link popularity simply is the number of links from other websites that point to your website. The links that we use on the site have a useful mechanism of re-directing net users who made a visit to another site going to your own site address. If you are able to capture the right way of performing the re-direction thru good linking strategy, then you have a better chance of getting the outcome that you desire- more traffic. But Search engines are not just looking for the number of links; they are looking for quality links. Quality links are links from website that possess a high Page Rank. As Search engines consider the theme of a website which links to you, it is best to get links from websites that are associated with the industry in which you do business.

How to obtain links

One of the preeminenft ways to advance your sites link popularity is to offer quality and informative content to your visitors and get natural links in return. If they find the information interesting enough, they will naturally link their website to your own.

Directory submissions are the fastest and easiest way to obtain inbound links. But, because Internet directories link to thousands of other websites, their value gets diluted by all the other links. You should submit to industry related directories to indicate to the search engines your line of business. A Google search can help you find these types of directories.

A good way to generate inbound links to your website is to write articles. These articles can then be submitted to article syndication websites, where other webmasters are free to use your article on their website. They must however provide a link back to your website in return for using the article.

Another way to generate quality inbound links is through reciprocal linking. This type of strategy involves contacting other webmasters and proposing a link exchange.

Link popularity is a very important strategy for attaining high rank with search engines. The link building process must be given high priority in your Internet marketing efforts.

Seo Updates

Where did peoples goon googleyahoomsn

2008-11-24T05:41:00.000-08:00

Where peoples go on google.com, yahoo.com, rediff.com

Where peoples go on google.com

google.com 76.71%
images.google.com 7.64%
mail.google.com 6.68%
maps.google.com 2.10%
video.google.com 1.88%
news.google.com 1.11%
translate.google.com 0.53%
pack.google.com 0.51%
earth.google.com 0.41%
groups.google.com 0.36%
toolbar.google.com 0.30%
picasaweb.google.com 0.24%
books.google.com 0.21%
scholar.google.com 0.17%
services.google.com 0.13%
tools.google.com 0.10%
desktop.google.com 0.10%
dl.google.com 0.09%
picasa.google.com 0.08%
docs.google.com 0.07%
directory.google.com 0.07%
blogsearch.google.com 0.05%
finance.google.com 0.05%
answers.google.com 0.05%
partnerpage.google.com 0.04%
sketchup.google.com 0.03%
bizsolutions.google.com 0.02%
spreadsheets.google.com 0.02%
talkgadget.google.com 0.02%
wwww.google.com 0.01%
Other Sites 0.20%

Where did peoples go on Yahoo

mail.yahoo.com 42.03%
yahoo.com 33.03%
search.yahoo.com 5.60%
my.yahoo.com 1.62%
finance.yahoo.com 1.19%
personals.yahoo.com 1.17%
news.yahoo.com 1.09%
fantasysports.yahoo.com 0.85%
music.yahoo.com 0.73%
games.yahoo.com 0.71%
groups.yahoo.com 0.62%
sports.yahoo.com 0.58%
answers.yahoo.com 0.56%
sbc.yahoo.com 0.56%
chat.yahoo.com 0.50%
europe.yahoo.com 0.46%
login.yahoo.com 0.40%
360.yahoo.com 0.37%
rd.yahoo.com 0.28%
maps.yahoo.com 0.27%
profiles.yahoo.com 0.27%
bcst.yahoo.com 0.26%
ard.yahoo.com 0.22%
members.yahoo.com 0.21%
movies.yahoo.com 0.21%
hotjobs.yahoo.com 0.20%
rds.yahoo.com 0.20%
messenger.yahoo.com 0.20%
shopping.yahoo.com 0.19%
weather.yahoo.com 0.19%
Other Sites 5.22%

Where did peoples go on Rediff.com

rediff.com 56.11%
login.rediff.com 4.91%
im.rediff.com 4.17%
f1mail.rediff.com 3.23%
f5mail.rediff.com 2.81%
imsports.rediff.com 2.80%
imadworks.rediff.com 2.21%
adworks.rediff.com 1.98%
mail.rediff.com 1.63%
specials.rediff.com 1.60%
f4mail.rediff.com 1.51%
immail.rediff.com 1.49%
mboard.rediff.com 1.40%
f1plus.rediff.com 1.32%
in.rediff.com 1.26%
money.rediff.com 1.10%
f1check.rediff.com 0.81%
f5check.rediff.com 0.79%
f5plus.rediff.com 0.75%
f4plus.rediff.com 0.66%
search.rediff.com 0.64%
ia.rediff.com 0.53%
search1.rediff.com 0.48%
f4check.rediff.com 0.43%
f1webmsngr.rediff.com 0.41%
portfolio.rediff.com 0.40%
shopping.rediff.com 0.31%
register.rediff.com 0.28%
toolbar.rediff.com 0.27%
qna.rediff.com 0.24%
Other Sites 3.46%

These are the approx stats provided by http://pi.trellian.com/pi-getrank.html?cdomain given an Idea that what peoples are finding and their interests.

It's an open discussion for visitor to provide there on views on that stats that while designing a website what should be the navigation strucuture and what steps designers and developers need to keep in mind.

Looking for your opinion.

Create Closed SEO Cartel

2008-11-07T01:45:00.000-08:00

Create Closed SEO Cartel

In experimental SEO labs, others are toying with the hypothesis that if you do not have a massive enough single body to create a black hole, you can try to create one with a network of tier 2 or 3 trust sites. Similar to the single black hole site, these tiny blacklets only link to other sites within their network. As these experiments are still in their crudest forms, they can still be identified in many cases by their identical footer links.

Most of these networks are currently created either by link selling / trading arrangements or are owned entirely by one or two firms. But as they evolve, look for all off network linking to be no-follow. Look for tighter agreements to create massive conglomerates. We see blog networks grasping at the edges of this idea, but they’re clearly not there yet.

Take page rank sculpting to the next level. Make it page rank sculpting across a closed network. Create a Link Juice Cartel with a dozen or a hundred trusted sties. Don’t external link to anything without a no-follow. Try to make all links be on site or on network.

But a word of caution, don’t be flagrant about your SEO ambitions with any of the above strategies. If you call it SEO, brag about it, and it works, Google going to penalize or try to make an example of you. Google doesn’t like to be gamed . . . and they really don’t like it when you brag about it. Use other language and tiptoe around what you are doing like a politician.

When you do any of the above and they work, remember the latest and greatest strategy in SEO is to just STFU about specifics and let the money roll in.

Source: http://seodailyupdates.blogspot.com/2008/09/time-to-roll-your-own-black-hole.html

What is Squeeze Page

2008-11-01T01:07:00.000-07:00

What is Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a web page that is specifically designed to compel visitors to opt in to your web site. A well-designed squeeze page can convert as many as half of the people who visit it, into opt in email list subscribers.

In order for the squeeze page to be able to do its work most effectively, there must be no other way for the visitor to get into your web site without opting in first to your opt in email list.

So the squeeze page will have an opt in box that leads to your autoresponder, and that is the only action that someone would be able to do at that point.

In my case, my index page is a squeeze page. This means that for anyone to get to any of the other pages in my website, including my sales pages, that they have to opt in to my email list first.

Now, you may be thinking, but what about all the others that didn’t opt in to the list? What if they would have bought something from me?

Well, let me ask you this. If they don’t trust you enough to opt in to your list, to give you their email and name in exchange for a free gift, do you really think that that person is going to whip out their credit card and give you their credit card number? Of course not.

By getting a 50% conversion rate on visitors to subscribers, I have effectively created a 5000% increase in responsiveness on my index. Now, my current conversion rate on my opt in email list is about 20% - meaning that if we were to convert that to the full 100% of visitors, then my overall conversion rate would be about 10%. Now, if I had not subscribed the visitors, then my conversion rate might be around 1% (about average, from what I hear). So I have created a 1000% increase in revenue by using the squeeze page for my index, or main, page.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Mize

Reverse Engineering Search Engine Algorithms

2008-10-23T01:03:00.000-07:00

How did they do that? He who finds the solution first wins, right?

The Value of a Search Engine

Some people use abstract Mathematical concepts and ideas to describe the core value of a search engine. Although they are highly important, for this article we are going to ignore future implications, as the internet is a highly unpredictable medium. The one thing we will accept as a certainty is change.

At the base level the value of a search engine today is its distribution * frequency * average ad profit * ad clickthrough rate. Entropy is constantly trying to drive these large profit machines into financial horror. Google is the company who has these elements in the best balance right now so I am going to break down their current product.

The Components

None of the above components work independently of one another. With data organization on a mass scale, a small shift in any direction for one attribute can cause massive shifts in the other components.

Distribution is a rough estimate of popularity. Some companies such as MicroSoft have added advantages by incorporating their search within their operating system software bundle. Other companies such as Google aim to offset this with the use of tools such as the Google toolbar. In addition, if all the other components of the formula are favorable, 3rd party websites can play a major role in distribution through syndication.

With most search engines ad frequency is actually rather high. Most common web searches have ads near them. Recent expansion of ads via broad matching has allowed search engines to monetize many more searches. Many people still do not know how to search efficiently and search for extremely general terms which have ads. Broad matching is helping to cover more specific searches.

Average ad profit is a function of many free market components. First, interior company costs are figured into ad cost. Google relies so heavily on math because it allows them to keep a small flexible workforce. Google still has editors for its ads, but math and the natural selection process do most of the work. This is one of the main advantages Google has over other ad networks.

The sales price of the ad is determined by the price advertisers are willing to pay to use the ad space. Many advertisers fail due to misconceptions with the ad mediums. If prices fall then the medium becomes more profitable. More people advertise. It is a constant balancing act.

Ad clickthrough rate is a function of ad relevancy vs non ad relevancy. Recently the shift in Google's algorithm has made its core search product biased to not display as many commercial ads. If a person is looking to make purchases the ads will frequently have a higher relevancy than the free organic search product.

The Problems With Analytical Minds

If you can understand the things above at their basic level you can learn to play within their thresholds and profit. Your value is based upon what others think of you, your ability to adapt to change and your desire to learn.

Another value which can undermine the successfulness of the above balance is a highly analytical mind. For instance, I know that the new Google filter is based on the idea to remove commercial sites. Commercial sites sometimes achieve top web rankings by being over optimized.

How do I lower my optimization levels? If I know how to optimize, then I must also know how to un optimize. Thus I can make my sites appear as non commercial websites in the eyes of Google. How?

get quality inbound links which are not optimized (do not have my keywords in them)
minimized keyword density on the page
target keywords on pages other than the home page
spread keywords out so that the keyword phrase does not trip for your web site

Now with the high search engine optimization trip settings in place a very small investment is required to achieve top listings. If you react quicker than the rest of the web you can extract the profits as these organic web search results are not currently competitive. Many of those pages which were competitive fell flat on their face recently (I being one of them).

Expanding the philosophy beyond yourself

So after I achieve top rankings I think this change is amazing. How can I replicate this to maximize my profits? Well the goal of this process is to cause increased revenues on ads or to sell more products.

If you sell a product of your own that you manufacture, the factory which you own is baggage. I have read many stories of factories having to turn customers away due to unanticipated high demand. Though I have had no formal education or training, I now realize the abilities to learn and adapt to change are the two most important business concepts in the world right now.

Affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, Permormics, and ClickBank offer thousands of revenue opportunities. They have partners to match any and every idea you may have. But using them requires a decent amount of work on your behalf.

What are the odds that you will know what ads exactly match your content and your visitors intent? What ads will have the highest conversion rate? How much time would it take for you to find them? What if your third party shopping cart is broke? Why not let math and the free market find the solution for your!

Recently publisher ad programs have been introduced which allow the free market to determine what ads match your content. The ad programs are still rather new and may have some flaws to iron out, but the fact that all you have to do is write what you are interested in and ad a snippet of code makes them rather appealing, efficient, and effortless. Currently it would be fair to assume the Google AdSense program would be one of the most profitable ad networks to join. I also use and recommend the Amazon affiliate program.

There is nothing stopping you from also placing other affiliate ads within your content, but the Google Ads can do a good job of converting all by themselves.

Targeting Phrases

What phrases do you want to target? Most ad distribution networks are based on similar principals. You want people to find your site for ads which are highly searched for and have many ad clickthroughs.

Simply use the Overture search term suggestion tool (free) or WordTracker (free trial) to determine approximate web traffic for the phrases you wish to target. As you search for a targeted word, you can see what pairs are searched for and sprinkle its partner words throughout your text. This slight sprinkling will make your page seem optimized to the current Google algorithm.

Why This Article Sucks

All the above can be done to extract profits from the current Google algorithm. This algorithm will soon change though. All your work would be in vein if you exclusively focused on extracting profits versus creating long term relationships with your readers.

How to Not Suck

The goal of a search engine is to lead searchers to relevant information. As advances in personalization and local data clustering are incorporated it is important that you can step back and look at the big picture.

If you are making content exclusively for profits then you are likely to exist in the background clutter of the web. From time to time you may find ways to surface, but it will not last.

Without regard to religion, each day that passes is one less you have. If you truly seek out what you are interested in and actively pursue it there is enough chaos that you stand a good chance of rising above the clutter.

When you look at my home page my first search engine marketing tips listed are web design tips which read as follows:

Try to find something that you are an expert on. The internet is still viewed as a knowledge base much more than a commerce platform. Capture a niche and deliver it to the search engines, people will find it.
Intertwine yourself with your subject. Eat, sleep, and breath it!
Understand optimization results are not immediate, and high rankings can take months to be reflected across the web.
Do not change your whole site based on a single marketing recommendation without first understanding its effects. Look to see if there are other important changes that can be implemented at the same time. Evaluate your goals of your website.
It is not in your best interest to try and fool search engines. Even if you can fool search engines today, that does not mean that tomorrows algorithm will not catch you. Recently Google bit many webmasters in the rear.
Have a well thought out site plan prior to site construction. Realize that doing search engine optimization right the first time, while the site is being built is the best way to perform search engine optimization.
There is no magic pill; however, there are few platforms where hard work will pay off better.
Have fun, if you are not, then neither will your customers.

If you are doing something you are not interested in, ask yourself why you can't change the topic. The more you are on topic with what you were intended to do the less you will need to manipulate distribution. Own your domain :) Despite our abilities to reverse engineer, we work better when we work with the forces of nature. May we rise above the clutter!

- by Aaron Wall, owner of Search Marketing Info

services promise but dont deliver

2008-10-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

SEO/SMO services that promise, but don’t deliver

I was browsing a SEO forum and going through my feeds and just saw a bundle of services that, coupled with my reads, got me thinking. There are a lot of BS services out there that guarantee you getting on the first page of Google or getting a storm of visitors on your site. In fact, few deliver what they promised and you might get stood up, a few bucks shorter. Here is a quick breakdown of some services that might not be what they claim to be:

1. Search Engine Submissions - Well, they’re called search engines so what they do is search. Why should you bother submitting your sites when they will index it anyway. In other words, if you built it, they will come! Prices for this top offer range from $5 to even $50, depending on the number of search engines your site gets submitted to (lol). Here’s a random quote from one of these services: When you submit to these 66 search engines, search results will show up in hundreds of other engines. For instance, Google powers the Yahoo search engine. Search listings in Google will show up in Yahoo as well. Why would you pay $299 to Yahoo when you can get listed in their directory by submitting to Google??

2. Directory Submission Service - This might have its purpose, but done carefully and steadily. Firstly, don’t get tricked into PR of the directories - this is only for homepages. Your link will be submitted in an inside page, without any PR, among tens or hundreds of other links. Forget getting PR juice. Secondly, most of directory submissions are done bulk, in a few days. You might trigger some alarm system if you wake up over night with some spammy links. Thirdly, you can avoid this: some submissions require confirmation via email. You can simply confirm these emails once every 2-3 days to ensure your links will be properly distributed. Cheap service, $10-50 for anywhere between 100-500 submission, listings not guaranteed of course. You get the report and over 100 emails asking you to confirm the link.

3. 100 diggs for $x or 100 friends for $x - This is one of my favorite BS service. Ideally, with 100 diggs you get on the frontpage. But these diggs will most likely come from the same IP and will get your submission flagged, burried or even your website banned. 100 friends? Forget it! There are some automated services that add digg users in bulk. But who is gonna add you back? Spam is just one step away! I’ve seen people asking $50 for 100 diggs.

4. Social bookmarking services - Just imagine your story/website submitted to high traffic websites. Ideally, you can get some traffic and inbound links. The real picture is that your bookmark will get submitted by a user with a weak profile, a bad title and in a bad category. Your link will not receive any votes and will probably get lost in the thousands of links submitted daily.

5. SEO service of the Gods - aka frontpage in Google or your money back. Don’t you just love these folks? These guys can guarantee putting your website on Google’s frontpage or in the top 10 for a competitive keyword or your money back. Surprisingly enough (no, not really, I was expecting this) the companies I’ve come across that offer these services are from India. Here’s what some guy got off this kind of service: work to get your ranked, one on one on messenger, guy that works his butt off for you, reports emailed to you on suggestions for onsite changes and of course, no link building budget needed. You only pay the SEO-ers.

Some other services I encountered and I just want to mention since they are just to good to pass:

- Make cash collecting email addresses - that’s how you get spammed
- Custom made sites for $45 that I think come optimized and already ranking
- Traffic sale / 500,000-2,000,000 targeted visitors - this is bound to get your ad platform bursting with cash or Alexa ranking going up

Source: http://www.maxyro.com/web-news/5-seosmo-services-that-promise-but-dont-deliver/

Online Message Boards

2008-10-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

Online Message Boards

Promoting and advertising your network marketing and MLM business online is challenging. There are many different ways to go about it. If you want to promote your business inexpensively and effectively, message boards and forums are a solid and proven way to do it.

Choosing the Right Message Boards

There are lots of message boards and forums online, on just about every topic you can imagine. Since you are promoting your network marketing business, you will want to choose boards related to home business or working from home. This is where people looking for ways to make money will hang out.

Go to Google and do a search for “home business message boards”, “work from home discussions”, and similar keywords. This will bring up a list of boards and forums that you can visit. Look for boards that are active. Most will display the last post date for their various topics, and the total number of posts in the topic. Look for lots of recent posts as a sign that the message board is active and thriving.

Learn About the Community

Once you have chosen some boards to visit, take time to visit them and do some reading. Get a feel for the community and the type of discussions that go on there. Take a look at the board rules and make sure that “signatures” are okay - most forums allow them, but a few don’t. Once you have a good feel for the community, create an account and get ready to start posting.

The First Rule for Using Message Boards

The first rule for using message boards to promote your network marketing business - do not post advertisements, or direct invitations to consider your opportunity unless the board has a specific section set aside for ads. The boards you want to use will have strict rules about advertising. Posting ads in discussion areas will not attract prospects for your business, and you risk getting banned from posting in the future.

Become a Contributor and Build Your Reputation

Your goal is to establish yourself as an authority and a valuable contributor to the community. There are many more people reading these boards than actually posting, so each time you post, a lot of potential prospects will see it. Will they see you as a leader? This is your objective. Your first thought should be “how can I help or contribute something positive”. You will attract leads for your MLM business over time by doing this.

Creating Your Profile and Signature

Before you get started, be sure to fill out your profile. This is where you can tell more about yourself and create your signature. People can click on your profile at any time and find out more about who you are. Make your profile as complete and meaningful as possible.

Your signature will appear at the bottom of each post you submit. It can contain a link to your site, and usually a line or two you can use for a mini-advertisement. A simple signature might look something like this:

online advertising network

online advertising latest News

Visit http://online-advertising-network.blogspot.com/ for more information

Start Posting and Contributing

Once your profile is set up, start looking for messages where someone is asking for help, or a discussion about a home business or network marketing related topic. If you know something that will help someone or contribute to the discussion, post it! Draw on your past experiences. Take time to provide thoughtful and meaningful replies.

Again, the key to making this work is establishing yourself as a leader and someone who is knowledgeable about network marketing and home business in general. People reading the boards will get to know you and you will begin to receive inquiries and visits to your opportunity site after you’ve been active for a while.

Pick a few boards to work with, and try to post something as often as possible. Daily posting is best, but if time is limited you can contribute 3-4 times a week and do well. You want to be seen as active and involved, and frequent posting is the way to achieve this.

Final Thoughts

Proper use of message boards and forums for promoting your network marketing and MLM business can be very effective. The key is to present yourself as a professional. Set yourself apart.

Make Your Website User Friendly

2008-10-15T04:11:00.000-07:00

Tips for User Friendly Website

The one assumption you need to make to follow along with me in this article is "People Buy People." It can be a hard concept for many people to understand and agree with. However, millions of spent dollars have proven this premise to me, so I consider it more of a law than a theory.

If you understand the rule that people buy people, then your website MUST have a pleasant atmosphere that allows the visitor to connect with you, your company and your products.

By now, you've heard me talk about our Celebrity Branding philosophies, and the fact that you need your picture on your website goes without saying. But, there are some smaller, often overlooked, areas that shouldn't be forgotten.

Here are three simple tip to make your website user-friendly:

1. Navigation

The navigation on your site is probably its most important element. If visitors find your site confusing or cannot successfully navigate through it, they will leave. Make your navigation bar as simple as possible. One of the worst mistakes is using an expanding navigation bar that makes the visitor scroll over it in order for the menu to reveal their options. Most often, this type of navigation bar has too many choices; your visitor doesn't know where to go, so they get flustered and leave.

Navigation on your site is an art, and you should direct your visitors through a logical path to where YOU want them to go (not to where they think they want to go). One way to do this is through call to action buttons or CTAs. We use these buttons on all of our sites; a visitor will go to a main page, and then we can direct them to the parts of that site that we want them to be aware of. We use this method instead of an expanding menu, because we find that it is more logical for visitors. With this method, you can direct visitors to where you want them to go, allowing you to control the buying process.

Quick Tip: most "expanding menus" are created in Macromedia Flash. Search engines cannot read Flash, and therefore they will not pick up these links on your website. If the search engines do not pick up the links on the navigation bar and these links are nowhere else on your site, they cannot accurately crawl or index your site. This is search engine suicide, because without even knowing it, you are stopping search engines from understanding what your site has to offer and from driving traffic to you.

A good rule of thumb is that a visitor should be able to get to every page on your site with two clicks from your home page. Now, this is not realistic for very complex sites. If your website is complex, you can have a sitemap to help visitors navigate. Some sort of search function may also be a good idea for your site.

2. Page Load Speed

It's hard to believe that some people are still stuck using dial up. Even if you have entered the world of high-speed Internet, no matter what you do, some websites will load slowly. (If you're frustrated using high-speed Internet, imagine the frustration of those on good 'ol dial up!)

Page load speed is VERY important. I know that when I am surfing the Internet and I stumble upon a site that loads slowly, I get annoyed, frustrated, and don't browse the site for very long. If your website is loading slowly, you are probably losing out on valuable customers, no matter what business you are in.

In today's web world, we are seeing more and more images, audio files and videos. These things are useful, but you have to be careful that they do not affect the inner workings of your site (in this case, the time it takes for a web page to load). You want to be careful about the size of the images on your website. Both large-sized images and using too many images can cause your website to take too long to load, resulting in visitors leaving. Another tip is to convert videos into a jpeg (image) that only loads and plays the video when a visitor clicks on it. Yes, you may be adding more images to your website, but these are usually small image files; in the hierarchy of the web, a video will slow down your website much more than a small image.

Another factor that can influence the load time of your website is the amount of excess code you have on your site (that is a topic for another day - but ask your webmaster, and they will know what I am talking about).

3. Information

The number one thing that visitors look for is information. They are coming to your site to be educated about your products and/or services and, most of all, how THEY can benefit. With this in mind, it is critical for the information on your website to be accurate, complete and up-to-date. Visitors will leave your site in a split second if the information you are providing is old news.

What's that best way to provide up-to-date information on your website? The best way we suggest is through blogs and articles. By having a section on your website for blogs and articles, you can provide new, relevant and educational information to your visitors. Adding them is not only simple, but it is fast too!

So there are my three simple tips for the month on how to make your website user-friendly. Although this covered just the beginning of what your website should contain, don't worry, I won't leave you stranded-- I'll reveal even more tips in next month's article!

About The Author

Known as the "Online Celebrity Producer," Lindsay Glass helps her clients tell their stories in the online world. Lindsay began freelance writing in 2000 and soon after launched her own PR firm that thrived by offering an in-your-face "Guaranteed PR" that was one of the first of its type in the nation. She is now a founding partner of DNG Media Group, LLC. For more information, please visit http://www.dngmediagroup.com .

Traffic and Link Building Techniques

2008-10-15T02:15:00.001-07:00

Traffic and Link Building Techniques

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your sit

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic, providing you can justify it. Everyone will get annoyed and link to you saying your wrong

6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers - quote your website as the source.

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

11. Write articles and submit them to article directories

12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)

13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)

14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site

15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site

16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site

17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.

18. Submit a blog to a blog directory

19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories

20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)

21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for

22. Buy links to your site

23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site

24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI

25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website

26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!

27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook

28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush

29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)

30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)

31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list

32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.

33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.

34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche

35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates

36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.

37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.

38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them

39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages

40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website

41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site

42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche

43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.

44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.

45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters

46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews

47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.

48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.

49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.

50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.

51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.

52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.

53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you’ll do the same for them – split commissions on sales.

54. When you write a new article on your site – link to as many blogs as possible – they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.

55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.

56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google’s News search.

57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)

58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).

59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).

60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.

61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages – put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.

62. Make posts about sex (don’t have to post anything rude) – and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.

63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche – there’s always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.

64. Write good headlines/titles – good titles get more clicks.

65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say “My Website Yeah, Check it out.”

This originally posted as 65 Website Traffic & Link Building Techniques . It has been reposted with the author’s permission.

SEO Strategic Planning

2008-10-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

SEO Strategic Planning

When it comes to search engine optimization, the importance of having a strategy cannot be denied. The strategy within the strategy is to get results, but without a specific seo marketing plan you’re left with no specific course of action to improve your search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization has much of its roots in advertising and marketing, and thus shares similar planning requirements. In marketing one would never spend thousands of dollars on a campaign without a clear vision of how all the elements of the campaign will fit together. The same goes for Seo. One should only invest in Seo if it is created with a specific strategic plan in mind.

What is a strategic plan you might be wondering? An Seo strategic plan is simply a plot or plan of action as to the course your search engine optimization campaign will take. This plan helps you to stay the course when measurable results may not be easily attained on the first try. Often people look for a magic solution. While Oxy clean solution might make a stain disappear, it takes much longer to create results on the web than to clean up a stain on the carpet. The more of the right steps you take, the better results you achieve. In other words a strategic plan is necessary to keep impatience in line and demonstrate the bigger picture.

How does a strategic plan come about? It’s usually created with the accepted methods of SEO in mind, as a roadmap of the steps your Seo provider plans to implement on your behalf and what each of those steps will do for your search engine positioning.

While this plan is often not easy to read for the average person, it is incredibly important to understand for those investing their money into an Seo campaign. A good Seo company will be the one that creates an Seo strategic plan that is not only easy to understand for the client, but chock full of the latest technology and techniques. Technology is similar to the universe in that it is forever changing, and always in motion. Your Seo team must understand this and make the necessary adjustments to help you with your SEO strategic plan by keeping it as up to date as possible as technology changes.

Finally it’s important to look at the Seo strategic plan as something that will help you accomplish your Internet goals in the long run. If you want your website to receive higher natural rankings for your keyword terms, it’s time to get serious about Seo and set the Seo process in motion as soon as possible.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Herb_Firestone

Google Yahoo fight with feds

2008-10-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

Google and Yahoo fight with the feds

Yahoo’s ad alliance with Google seems like a great deal to Messrs. Brin, Page, and Yang. Now they just have to win over the Justice Department.

Google and Yahoo had hoped to have it all up and running by now. As you may recall, the two Internet giants announced an alliance last June in which Google would supply Yahoo with search ads to supplement Yahoo’s own. Google would get a big new customer for its ad-delivery service, while Yahoo would get a new source of revenue - and best of all, they’d keep Microsoft from swallowing Yahoo.

Then Washington got in the way. Due to pushback from antitrust regulators, in early October, Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) put off the launch to give the Justice Department more time to chew on it. In September, Justice reportedly hired veteran antitrust litigator (and former Walt Disney vice chairman) Sandy Litvack to help review the deal, and soon thereafter Canadian authorities hired an outside lawyer too. The European Union is also taking a hard look.

What’s the hang-up? Well, there are three basic concerns about just what this alliance really amounts to. First, if it had been a merger between Google, with 70% share in the paid-search market, and Yahoo, with the next 20%, it would clearly violate antitrust laws by creating a monopoly. (Paid-search ads are the ones that show up near the top of a search-result screen or off to the side, under the rubric “sponsored links.”) Second, if Google were paying Yahoo to exit the paid-search arena, that would be an illegal agreement between competitors to allocate markets. Third, if Google and Yahoo were agreeing to set a price floor for the two companies’ paid-search offerings, that would be illegal price-fixing.

The actual deal being proposed looks something like a slow-motion version of the first two scenarios, and it might constitute an immediate realization of the third.

Google and Yahoo have tried to placate skeptics with a raft of reassurances: They’re not merging; Yahoo will continue to compete in paid searches; ad prices will continue to be set by auction, with each company’s auctions operating independently; Yahoo will only run Google ads to the extent it chooses; and Yahoo is still free to display ads from other paid-search providers, including third-place Microsoft (MSFT).

Not everyone is convinced, though - notably advertisers. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Association of Canadian Advertisers, and the World Federation of Advertisers have all written regulators to voice opposition. In the letter from the ANA - a 375-company association with a board that includes members from Wal-Mart, Sears, and McDonald’s - CEO Bob Liodice writes that his group “is aware of only one advertiser/marketer that does not object to the Google-Yahoo collaboration.” (Liodice wouldn’t identify the exception.)

MICROSOFT GETS SUSPICIOUS

One big problem for Yahoo may be an astounding comment allegedly made by its own CEO, Jerry Yang, during negotiations with Microsoft in a San Jose airplane hangar on June 8, just three days before the Google-Yahoo pact was unveiled. (Google offered Yahoo the ad deal in an apparent effort to keep it out of the hands of Microsoft, which had offered to buy Yahoo at a 75% stock premium.)

According to testimony that Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith later gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Yang peered across a conference table and said, “Look, the search market today is basically a bipolar market…. On one pole, there’s Google, and on the other pole, there are Yahoo and Microsoft…. If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google’s pole.” Smith and his Microsoft colleagues were dumbstruck. Smith testified that during a break a few minutes after Yang’s comment, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cracked, “[Yang] said there’s only going to be one pole in the market. I guess that would be a ‘mono-pole,’ wouldn’t it?”

When stunned Senators demanded that Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan, who had also been present at the June 8 meeting, give his account of what Yang had said, Callahan repeatedly refused until, when pressed, he finally said, “I don’t recall that comment.”

Even putting aside the disputed remark, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about those reassurances from Yahoo and Google. For example, consider Yahoo’s claim that the deal will enable it to compete harder in the search business. The company has told shareholders that it hopes to make $800 million a year from its pact with Google - money that, as Yahoo president Sue Decker has written on a company blog, will be plowed back into R&D “to help us become a stronger competitor in all aspects of online advertising,” including paid searches. Yahoo has an incentive to do so, the company says, because it keeps all the revenue from its own ads but only a portion from Google’s.

Hmm. What portion will Yahoo keep when it uses a Google ad? That’s not public. But according to a lawyer close to the Google-Yahoo camp, Google’s ad deals with web publishers large and small-from the New York Times website to GPSworld.com -typically leave the publisher with “the lion’s share” of the revenue. Accordingly, when Yahoo runs an ad delivered by Google, we’re probably not talking about a 50-50 split; it’s more like 90-10, with 90% staying with Yahoo. So if Yahoo can make 90% of what Google’s superior mousetrap currently yields while incurring no research expenditures, how great is its incentive to keep dumping hundreds of millions into R&D for its own clunkier mousetrap? Plus, if Google really thought the deal would help Yahoo build a more competitive paid-search program, would Google be doing the deal? Concern about the deal’s sapping Yahoo’s long-term incentive to compete is presumably a key factor spurring EU regulators to nose around, notwithstanding its ostensible geographical limitation to the U.S. and Canada.

THE PRICE PROBLEM

Then there’s the price-fixing issue. Nobody’s price fixing, Google and Yahoo insist, because ad prices will continue to be set by separate auctions. That’s true. But part of the idea with this alliance is to replace some Yahoo ads on Yahoo search screens with Google ads, when the Google ads will fetch more revenue. Here is an oversimplified hypothetical example: Suppose you’re an auto parts dealer trying to drum up some business with search ads. You bid for the query “spark plugs Dallas Texas” on both the Yahoo auction and the Google auction-and learn that the going rates on Yahoo and Google, respectively, are $0.80 per click and $1.20 per click. Google reaches more users - hence the higher bids - but you decide to go for the $0.80 ad on Yahoo.

Guess what? You’ll need to pay the $1.20 anyway. Why? Remember that with the Google alliance, Yahoo now has the choice of going with ads delivered through its own system or through Google’s. Yahoo, of course, is going to run the ad that makes the most money - the ad from Google. In fact, Yahoo would never run its own ads if they were priced more cheaply than an available, comparable Google ad. In that sense the Google ad prices, though set by auction, would effectively set a floor for the prices of comparable ads displayed on Yahoo. Price floors constitute illegal price fixing.

Yahoo and Google respond that Yahoo won’t have the real-time pricing information about Google’s ads it would need to make instantaneous price comparisons to Yahoo ads. Still, Yahoo obviously thinks it has some way to compare the relative prices of Google and Yahoo ads - how else will it know when to replace a Yahoo ad with a Google ad?

Which is not to say that the search giants’ formidable teams of lawyers won’t eventually win Justice’s blessing for the deal. Clearly, though, those lawyers still have some serious work to do.

Source: http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/10/10/google-and-yahoo-fight-with-the-feds/