SEM Voodoo

Change is Inevitable

2009-07-01T14:02:00.001-04:00

You've reached one of MindComet's legacy blogs. We're no longer posting here, but we're definitely still blogging. Visit http://blogs.mindcomet.com to find our current blogs and you can follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mindcomet.

We've Moved!

2007-01-31T00:36:00.000-05:00

Check us out at our new blog Online Advertising Voodoo. Here we will cover behavioral targeting, search engine marketing, seo, media buying and the online advertising industry.

Google Continues to Improve Search

2006-11-03T13:43:00.000-05:00

Google, following in the footsteps of Yahoo and Eurekster, has launched “custom search engines.” Website owners and bloggers can now create search engines of their own. They can decide what sites will be included as well as what sites will not.

Earlier this year Google started a program they are calling Google Co-op which is a program that allows Google users to influence just what pages show up in a search. Some search results are now shown as recommendations of other organizations and include the organization’s name.

Website owners and Bloggers who are experts in certain topics can create search engines tailored to their specific expertise. They can choose to include only websites they have found to be beneficial to their field. The new customized Google searches are just another way for Google to enable users to find the most relevant results.

PayPerPost Bluemonster

2006-10-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

This puzzle piece is part of the promotion by our sister company PayPerPost. This is "payperpostbluemonster" number 46.

Simple Steps for Search Engine Rank Improvement

2006-10-10T14:03:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows that search engines are the starting point for most internet surfers with an objective to complete. With search bars embedded in most browsers or even as stand-alone desktop widgets, perusing these search engines is the only way many people can find the information or service that suits their needs.

By making your web site search engine optimized through some simple steps, presented in an article by iMedia Connection, you can improve the chance that customer prospects will locate your site and, hopefully, convert into actual customers.

1) Brainstorm a list of keywords that you would associate with your business and its service offerings. Survey employees and customers to find what words pop into their mind first when they think about the company. Find news related to your product offerings and pull repeated words from here. Check out competitors' sites and note their headings, titles, etc. Also, make use of keyword services from search engine companies themselves, such as Google Analytics or Wordtracker.
2) Narrow down this list of keywords to find those that will cause conversion for your company. Pay attention to keywords that are heavily searched by many people. Always make sure the keywords you choose are appropriate for your company, relating to content and text actually on your site. Gauge the top sites that a keyword search reveals. If these sites are page-heavy with many incoming links, it may be difficult and expensive to steal the top spots.
3) Next, start planning long-term goals for the keywords most pertinent to your company. In order to optimize your site when competing against established sites for popular keywords, a great dedication of time and effort will be required. Put effort into the less competitive keywords to get a good base presence, and then concentrate on link-building and site expansion for the long road towards gaining rank with the first-rate keywords.
4) It’s important to optimize your web site structure to suit your goals. Use intra-site links that have text matching your keywords. Also pay attention to headings, title bars, and navigation as these all play a key role in ranking. Make sure to build friendly industry contacts to gain reputable incoming links.
5) Now that prospects can find your site, it is important that your site helps them accomplish the objective of their search. Make your site easy to navigate and full of resources and you will be converting prospects to customers in no time.

Local Search and Your Business

2006-09-25T18:10:00.000-04:00

By next year, local paid searches are estimated to reach $1.8 billion dollars. By 2010, geo-targeted advertising in local markets is expected to reach 50 percent of total online advertising, according to MediaPost's SearchInsider. This allows local restaurants, car dealerships and other businesses to spend advertising dollars more wisely and receive a larger return.

Many firms already have search engines in place, such as LocalLaunch, Angie’s List and Yokel. These sites allow the business as well as the consumer to target searches in the most practical way. Local residents are being given the opportunity to see more geographically- practical businesses to meet their needs, which in the end will benefit consumers as well as businesses.

Microsoft is getting in on the explosion, too, creating a local search function that will allow users to partake in an overhead view of local surrounding areas.

Have you used local search to boost your business?

AdWords Go Mobile

2006-09-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

Google and AdWords go mobile in a move designed to increase the number of advertising “inventory” outlets.

As reported on RCRNews.com, Google noted the change to AdWords that allows their clients to place ads on wireless devices using Google's mobile search service. Google launched the offering allowing their customers to place marketing messages-including clickable links-in listings retrieved during the mobile search.

AdWords customers have the ability to design their own advertisements, marketing campaigns, set daily budgets, set up planned marketing communication and pay when the searcher clicks the client’s ad or call the client.

Cellular phones have become so conventional these days that it is unusual to find a person without one. Since they commonly stay close to their owners, cellular phones are a attractive place for Google AdWord advertising.

Website Statistic Counters

2006-09-05T13:23:00.000-04:00

Knowing where your website visitors come from can play a huge role in how you can improve your website. One way of doing so is by finding a reliable statistic counter to place on your website. This would give you the ability to view which search engine was used to find your site as well as what keywords were used to find your site. Here is a short list of stat counters that are either free or paid.

Google Analytics
Stat Counter
Crazy Egg (heat based stats)
Click Tracks
Next Stat
Site Meter
Free Counter
Sane
Shiny Stat
Site Tracker
Rite Counter

The above counters may offer visible or invisible stat counters to where the visitors who find your site may not even know that they are being tracked. However if you use the visible counter then you can allow your visitors to view your traffic stats which is also a good thing if you ever wanted to exchange a link or two with someone with the same site interest.

MySpace and Search Engines

2006-08-28T08:39:00.000-04:00

So how can I utilize myspace for Search Engine results?

How can people find your page on myspace?

What value does this have?

As of right now MySpace is a marketers dream come true. It's a well established networking site with millions of users. You can create multiple accounts. You can find people based off of their profile and much more. So now how can you find my page on myspace? That will be all based off of your content and how many visitors you have to your site.

How Do I Get Visitors?
Depending on what your page is trying to either promote or market, do searches for people based off of keywords you are targeting. You can then find millions of people and do friend requests to build up of your "Friend List."

After gaining friends you need to keep your page constantly updated. Search engines love content and you have the means to do this very easily. Upload videos, media players, images etc. All of which you can place keywords on. Put banners on your page with code for people to copy and paste on their sites.

By putting all these things on your page people will keep coming back to your site and often will tell their friends about it. This is similar to gaining organic traffic to your site and also getting votes. The PR and Value of your site will increase greatly over a shorter period of time. Also with all the customization tools for myspace you can get a look and feel for your site to hit any target demographic.

Ultimately MySpace is a great and FREE tool for marketers/promoters to use. All you have to do is create an account and update it regularly for value. Why not give it a try.

The Advantage of Site Maps

2006-08-22T14:40:00.000-04:00

One of the best ways to submit your sites to search engines is through sitemaps. Recently, Google has added a sophisticated method for site submission. There are plenty of websites out there that will create a sitemap for you, free of charge. Also, Dreamweaver has a sitemap creation function.

One of the advantages of using sitemaps is that you can get more control over the spiders that "crawl" through your site. You can provide specific information such as when the page was created, when the page was last edited, or if an RSS feed is on the page, how often the page is updated.

The best part about sitemaps is that they're completely FREE to use.

JavaScript and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2006-08-14T10:42:00.000-04:00

JavaScript is often used in drop-down and slide-out navigation on websites. These types of navigation are referred to as “JavaScript menus.” The issue with using JavaScript menus is that most search engines cannot read them or follow the links inside the JavaScript code. A few search engines can read a minimal amount of JavaScript. Even-though they may be able to read and identify some links in JavaScript code, they cannot execute the code, and therefore the links cannot be followed. Search engine spiders are designed to read and then follow basic HTML hyperlinks. Because they simply cannot follow most JavaScript links, if a spider cannot find the pages in a site, those pages will never show up in search results.

Search engines have also penalized web sites that use JavaScript redirects. JavaScript redirects can sometimes be used to point a user to a new page when a page file name is changed or the page is moved. It’s never a good idea to use a JavaScript redirect to do this. Google is especially hard on websites that use JavaScript redirects. When their search engine spiders crawl a website and detect the redirect, that site is often banned from Google’s directory. Because Google commands about 50% of all search engine traffic, it’s a good idea to avoid redirecting pages using JavaScript.

Profitable Link Farms...??

2006-08-07T10:16:00.000-04:00

The internet is full of sites that offer this or offer that. Well for some sites instead of having several hundreds of pages full of revenue generating links people have created sites with a few pages dedicated to one thing displaying a banner or keyword towards a topic of interest. However I have to think to myself if a site contains several hundred links on one page which aren't in directories or categories wouldn't that be considered a "Link Farm". Here are some site that in my opinion would be considered profitable link farms:

Milliondollarhomepage.com
500words.com
Onethousandpaintings.com (similar)

Well when it comes to the function of theses sites people purchase something from them and in return they get to place a static banner or link on the site for as long as the domain is purchased. I think it's a brilliant idea but how long will it last? Granted people find the hype to be a "heat of the moment" purchase but is the traffic to the sites that purchased a banner or link getting banned from search engines because they link to the profitable link farm sites..? And is the traffic that is purchased from the profitable link farm sites is it really relevant? Theses are questions I would ask myself before considering a link farm purchase.

Web 2.0: The Next Generation

2006-08-01T10:36:00.000-04:00

So the big buzz word in the industry is Web 2.0. There was an earlier post about Web 2.0 concerning design elements such as fonts, rounded corners and so on. But Web 2.0 isn't just about design elements, it is so much more. Below is a link to a great article discussing the busines aspects and history of Web 2.0.
O'Reilly -- What Is Web 2.0
So how did Web 2.0 start? Well it began with a brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International and then turned into the Web 2.0 Conference. So you might ask what is the difference between what is considered "Web 1.0" and Web 2.0. The following list is from the above article that spotlights some major differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is on the move and we all need to keep up. When you have a chance definitely do some research to see how Web 2.0 can help you or your company.

The Ins & Outs of Organic SEO

2006-07-24T16:20:00.000-04:00

Organic SEO includes the following:

Content pertaining to the interests of your target audience.

"Content is king"

Content with relevant keywords.

"Good content is king"

Hyperlinks with keywords.
Alt tags and Meta tags which are relevant and unique on each page.
Incoming links from relevant web sites and web directories.

You want to avoid:

Font colors that are the same as the background.
Overuse of keywords.
Using frame-based web sites. When search results are returned, they are often returned without the corresponding navigation frame.
Automated submissions. Some search engines might consider your site as a "link farm" and disregard it.

Create a Blog to Make Money

2006-07-17T14:06:00.000-04:00

Most people start up a blog to give the world their opinions about people, religion, politics, and much more. However now a days since the internet is one of the best marketing tools on the planet blogs have become a way of generating monthly revenue almost as if it were a modern day welfare. There are several dedicated sites on the net gearing poeple up for ways to generate money from their blogs. Here are a few that i've found very useful when it comes to revenue generation via blogs; ProBlogger.net, BloggerJobs.biz, and Merged.ca/monetize. The sites are very useful and provide loads of valuable information to help you generate revenue with your blog. After reviewing not only the sites provided but others I came accross a few good sites that help you generate traffic to your site in order to help boost the popularity of your site. Theses sites will help you get the traffic to your site and help you gain that monthly revenue goal you are looking for; AdJungle.com, Google.com, and Clicksor.com. With the provided information and a simple blog you will be on your way to generating revenue monthly. If you have any other websites that you know of to help others generate revenue with their blogs please feel free to comment them to the post.

Link Exchanges

2006-07-10T10:24:00.000-04:00

Link exchanges are becoming more important these days for SEO value. This allows you to receive SEO value or what I like to call "PAGE RANK JUICE" from another site that is ranked higher in search engines. You can purchase link exchanges online or sometimes you can simply email the site (company) you would like to exchange links with.

One thing that has more value than contacting sites with high PR (Page Rank) is swapping links with more sites with a PR of 3-5. For instance you could get 1000 links with smaller PR's and have the same or better result than getting 100 links with sites that have a PR of 5+. I ran an experiment on this with a spring break site I built back in January. I did link exchanges with some bars that are spring break hot spots and in less that 4 months my site when from a PR of 0 to 5. It works and it didn't cost me anything. Give it a try.

When in Boston at the Webmaster World Conference I got to meet Martini Buster and he spoke on link exchanges and the value they have to search engines. This solidified my theories on link exchanges. Check out his site and his blog profile.

Martini Buster's Blog
Martini Buster's Site

In conclusion link exchanges have a lot of value to search engines and can gain you PR faster and allow you to move up in the search engines.

Web 2.0: An Experience not just a Site

2006-07-05T09:38:00.000-04:00

Web 2.0 is the future of online websites. Back in the day everything was box designs, no rounded corners for sites, just tables. With CSS becoming more of a standard, designers have now been given the chance to have a piece of art on the web and not just a site. Gradients, big fonts, rounded corners are all now becoming a standard on the web today. So you still might want to know what WEB 2.0 is?

Defined by Wikipedia
"The term Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass publishing (web-based social software). The concept may include blogs and wikis."

So with Web 2.0 we as web designers/developers have a lot more options to work with. Such as pop up boxes on images in our sites utilized for more information. Another big thing is definitely utilizing CSS to it's full potential which will give us a more Keywords to Code ratio in the HTML. In short that means our sites are very SEO friendly prior to any keyword research/implementation.

The main points to remember about WEB 2.0 is our options: Colors, Gradients, Font Sizes and rounded corners. To learn more about these options check out some of the following links.

Rounded Corners
A List Apart

Gradients
Photoshop Lab

Colors
Icon Buffet

Big Text
Cork'd

The End of Meta Tags As We Know It?

2006-06-26T17:40:00.000-04:00

In the past, meta tags have been the most basic way to optimize your site. But as the algorithms of most search engines become more and more complex, meta tags serve little to no purpose in SEO. The only benefit of meta tags is for SERP (search engine result pages) output.

As it stands now, meta tags are virtually obsolete when it comes to page ranking. But they're still useful for keeping your keywords organized and relevant in relation to the various pages on your site.

Marketing with Blogs / Bookmark Sites

2006-06-21T13:39:00.000-04:00

With blogs being the latest way for people to express their skills, opinions, and views why not use blogs to market your company. There are alot of companies on the net that allow you to bookmark sites as well as feed them to an RSS file for others to gain your latest likes and information. Here is a list of blog / bookmark sites.
Del.icio.us
Technorati.com
Wists.com
Feedburner.com
Kinja.com
Rojo.com
Newsburst.com
Bloglines.com
Furl.net
Stumbleupon.com

By using the blog / bookmark sites you can share your RSS feeds with others. Think of it as a free way to market your site because the only real thing you invest is your time. However if you are looking to advertise your site or blog on other blogs there is the other way of doing it which is to pay for advertising through BlogAds.com. If you happen to know of any others similar to this topic please feel free to add a comment.

META tags, Description tags and Search Engines

2006-06-12T11:46:00.000-04:00

For many months there have been rumors surrounding the effectiveness of Meta tags, Description tags and how the current Search Engine spiders treat them. Here’s the big question; Are Meta and Description tags relevant to spiders anymore?

After doing some initial research on the subject, the answer is; sometimes.

My research found that when used properly Meta keyword and Description tags do not help your site gain any positive results in the rank or SERPS pages. Yes, you heard me right, 70% of the time if you use Meta tags and Description tags properly for Search Engine Optimization, they will not help you get better results. However, if you are in the habit of, or were told to “stuff” your Meta tags, you should be aware that the spiders do considered that abuse and spam. You can leave the Meta and Description tags completely blank and it doesn’t seem to matter to the search engines spiders at all. They will simply substitute the page’s Title tags and the page content - unless your site has been deemed as spamming the Search Engine.

Although it appears that Meta tags are nearly ignored in the search engines, there is one bright spot; MSN. They still seem to use Meta tags and Description tags to determine where a site will rank on the SERPS. So there actually IS a use for Meta and Description tags for about 30% of all searches made.

The moral of the story is two fold; 1) you still need Meta and Description tags for comprehensive Search Engine Optimization, but if you try to spam them, you could and probably will be banned from at least 70% of all search results and 2) a page’s Title and content are king for SEO.

Large List of Free Directories

2006-06-05T16:36:00.000-04:00

When it comes to linking to sites online for traffic the best way to gain easy traffic is to link to directory sites. Which are designed to help with page rank, search engine placement, and it let you spread your site out over lots of different topics. Below is a large list of directory sites:

www.worldsiteindex.com
www.4-fun.biz
www.add-link.info
www.a-free-directory.info
www.directory-global.com
www.directory4free.com
www.searchsight.com
www.buzzle.com
www.illumirate.com
www.webworldindex.com
www.tygo.com
www.directory-active.info
www.dmscs.co.uk
www.spheri.com
www.a-web-directory.info
www.dollarfriend.com
www.directory-business.info
www.exchange-station.com
www.exoode.com
www.businessseek.biz
www.directory-internet.info
www.dirone.com

The above sites are very useful if you happen to come across more reliable directory sites please feel free to post them as a comment.

SEO Tools For All To Use

2006-05-30T11:30:00.000-04:00

Today everyone claims to have all the tools you need when checking the value of a website. As of right now I have three different toolbars on my web browser that show me page rank, indexed pages and so on. The biggest problem is figuring out the one that has everything that you need. Ultimately you need to choose what is best for you. So I am going to discuss a toolbar called RankQuest.

RankQuest is a dedicated Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) resource that aims to make SEO Optimization easy for you with a host of offerings. Some of the amenities are Keyword Finder, Keyword Density, Meta Tag Analyzer, Links Explorer. Also you get Google, Yahoo and MSN back links, indexed pages, etc. There are a lot more features to utilize from RankQuest. So if you are new to SEO and need to find out what to look for or a seasoned veteran looking for a great tool to assist you, check out RankQuest.

Click Here To Get RankQuest.

Now I know this is a great plug for a toolbar but it's that good. Download it and see your research time speed up. When optimizing sites you need something that will speed up productivity and help you cut down research time.

The Art of Spinning Content

2006-05-23T09:33:00.000-04:00

One of the most complicated tasks for web developers today is to create content that search engines will see -- which is becoming more and more difficult as our industry continues to grow. Nowadays, content is key. And not just any content but well-written, relevant, and unique content. Hiring a copywriter can be time-consuming and very expensive. One way around paying for original content is to implement the use of content-generating software, such as Webspinner.

Webspinner is a program that can “spin” documents to create seemingly endless amounts unique content. The true power of this program lies in its “Multiple Iteration” feature, which allows you to “synonymize” single words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. You can then go a level deeper and select the “synomyzed” phrases and spin those too. Then spin those. Get the idea? The possibilities are infinite. If you’re trying to create content that is readable and totally believable, then Webspinner can help you accomplish that task. In order for your content to be seen by search engines, it needs to be rich with keywords pertaining to the website's topic. Hopefully in the future, Webspinner will incorporate a feature that disperses keywords throughout the content.

Since the program is in it’s infancy stages, it tends to crash often. So if you do decide to use it, make sure you save your work.

Specialty Search Engines

2006-05-16T11:42:00.000-04:00

If you want to find more than just web pages and web sites, some of the "specialty search engines" below will prove useful. Also called topical search engines, "vertical" search engines or "vortals," they'll help you search through specific types of listings in different areas.

* Answers Searching (Ex: AllExperts.com, Answers.com)
* Computer Search Engines (Ex: www.download.cnet.com, www.jumbo.com, www.tucows.com)
* Domain Searching (Ex: Checkdomain.com, www.easywhois.com)
* Financial Search Engines (Ex: www.business.com, www.hoovers.com)
* Government Search (Ex: www.firstgov.gov)
* Legal Search Engines (www.findlaw.com)
* Mailing Lists (Ex: www.e-zinez.com)
* Medical Search Engines (Ex: www.medicinenet.com)
* Shopping Search (Ex: www.froogle.com, shopping.yahoo.com, www.dealtime.com)
* Travel Search Engines (Ex: www.expedia.com)
* Other Specialty Services

Text Link Advertising Calculator

2006-05-08T15:53:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wanted to sell ad space on your site but, you've never known what to charge them? Well while doing research on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising I stumbled accross this very useful link known as the SEO Tool - Link Calculator. It's a great tool and it's very simple to use. You start out by just filling in your URL and it will give you an avergage of what other people in your field are charging. After you've found the price you want to charge people the next step would be to review some of these sites that allow you to sell space on all types of sites with your approval:
Expoactive.com
Adster.com
Bidvertiser.com
Text-link-ads.com
Adbrite.com
The links provided are another great way of generating revenue from your website. If you happen to find anymore sites that allow you to sell space on your site please feel free to comment them on this post.