Search Engine Optimization Blog

authorize.net down due to fire - ruins ecommerce sales

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:55:00 +0000

This morning tens of thousands of ecommerce retailers awoke to see that their credit card processing company (authorize.net) went down due to a fire in the Seattle office.

Unfortunately, going down means no credit cards can be processed by many merchants who rely on authorize.net for their sales. This shows you that you should always have a back-up plan ready to go, such as PayPal or Google Checkout. This can save you thousands of dollars in headaches.

I personally witnessed a company lose hundreds of orders and receive tons of phone calls from irate customers vowing to never shop at this ecommerce site again.

When will the site be back up? It’s been 10 hours so far and still no word of any expected recovery time. Hopefully, this will be resolved and everyone can process the orders they have been hand writing down for the past ten hours.

Mocrosofts New Bing Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:13:00 +0000

Microsoft has recently released its brand new search engine in hopes f competing with the monster, Google. There has been major TV advertising and marketing in place to get people interested, but will it be enough? Currently there is the new screen interface that is not as simple as Google, but not as cluttered as Yahoo. Bing will be a hybrid of the two dominant search engines in hopes of obtaining a large market share.

Google Admits Page Rank is Inaccurate and Useless

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:06:00 +0000

It is often debated the accuracy and use of Google little green bar, infamously know as Page Rank. People constantly ask me and others the importance of Page Rank. We often give them the answer they do not want to hear, Page Rank is inaccurate and useless. Why would you judge the importance of a website by a four month old ranking? Page Rank is updated every 4 months, when Google updates their algorithm.

Sites that are new, or are down when the update happens will not have a good Page Rank. Sites that have interior pages will sometimes not even have a Page Rank, rather a grey line saying, “This page is not yet ranked by Google”. This just proves the point that people should stop relying on Page Rank for a sites value. Read what Google has to say below.

Google even admits that Page Rank is an old and outdated measurement of a websites performance according to its algorithm. A few years ago Google released a statement, "The Page Rank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for entertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers to access this data, Google updates the Page Rank data very infrequently because is it not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is several months old. If the toolbar is showing a PR of zero, this is because the user is visiting a new URL that hasn't been updated in the last update. The PR that is displayed by the Google Toolbar is not the same PR that is used to rank the web page results so there is no need to be concerned if your PR is displayed as zero. If a site is showing up in the search results, it doesn't not have a real Pr of zero, the Toolbar is just out of date"

Do Follow Blog Comments for Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:01:00 +0000

Changing your blog from nofollow to do follow can have a significant influence on the amount of traffic you receive. I recently switched my Blogger Account from NoFollow comments to Do follow comments.

Wordpress makes a widget you install to change the nofollow to follow. It is as easy as that.

It is easy to do from Blogger as well. Go to settings - layout - edit HTML. From here click "Expand Widget Template" and do a search (control +F) for "nofollow". Change the "nofollow" to "follow" to allow links posted in comments to have link juice. this will increase your readers and comments, but you have to be careful to make sure your spam guard is up and is being constantly moderated.

There are lots of lists that include dofollow blogs, making it easier to build traffic and increase user interaction.

Seems like a win-win situation to me. I hope more bloggers begin to turn off the "nofollow" tag and allow for link juice!

NoDoFollow Ad-on for Mozilla Firefox - Find Do Follow Links

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:48:00 +0000

There is a excellent ad-on for Firefox that allows shows you if links on a web page are "nofollow". To get the extension download the NoDoFollow program. To download this you must have Mozilla Firefox on your computer as an operating system. If you do not have Firefox you can download it here.

Once the ad-on has been downloaded you will need to activate the program. To activate the tool right clicking on the screen and click on DoNoFollow. This will highlight all the links on a page that are nofollow. It can be turned off the same way it was turned on. The blue highlighting means that the link is do follow and the red highlighting means that the link is no follow. Its as easy as that!

This is a huge time saver for webmasters trying to build link popularity through do follow comments in blogs, forums, wikis, social networking sites, article sites, etc. You can easily look to see if adding a link will count towards Google's link juice. Before you had to go to the navigation menu and click on view then select source. Once in the source code you had to search (control + F) to find out if the links are no follow. This is a long and tedious process that is now instantly done for you. The best part is that this is all free!

The one drawback to this ad-on is that most blogs are using an "external nofollow" tag on the page header and the script is still highlighting the links. Other than that drawback this is a great, convenient tool.

100 Free Ways to Increase Website Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:05:00 +0000

There are thousands of ways to increase website traffic. Most of these variables cost money, but there are many other methods that are free. Below is a list of over 100 free ways to increase traffic to your website.

1) Yahoo Answers
2) Myspace.com
3) Yahoo Groups
4) Stumbleupon.com
5) Post in Forums
6) Craigslist.org
7) Submit Site maps
8) Give out E-Books
9) Website Layout and Design
10) Directory Submissions
11) Tell a Friend (word of mouth)
12) Search Engine Optimization
13) Search Engine Marketing
14) Social bookmarking sites
15) Article Writing and Submission
16) Site Explorer
17) Epinion.com
18) Alexa.com
19) Newsletter Box
20) Scribd
21) Back Links from Relevant Sites
22) Add New Pages to your Site
22) Write and Submit Press Releases
23) Place Ads on Online Classified Ad Sites
24) Use SEO for Firefox Toolbar Plugin
25) Add a Forum to Your Site
26) Add a Blog to Your Site
27) Optimize Your Blog for The Search Engines
28) Comment on Other Blogs
29) MySpace News
30) Digg
31) Banner Exchanges
32) Traffic Exchanges
33) Squidoo.com
34) Technorati and ping it when your blog content changes
35) Use a ping service like pingomatic to ping RSS aggregators
36) Submit Blog to RSS Feed Directories
37) Link to other blogs in your posts
38) Use Stumbleupon to stumble your posts
39) Ask your readers to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.)
40) Start a group blog
41) Join SpicyPage and promote your blog
42) Join a webring
43) Sign up for BlogWoods and promote your blog
44) Exchange Ads (not blogroll links) with complementary blogs
45) Trade blog roll links with related blogs
46) Use Twitter
47) Publish Keyword Rich Videos on YouTube with your URL
48) Search and Add Wikis Related to your Site
49) Join Hub pages and post links to your blog from articles you write.
50) Web 2.0 Marketing
51) Create a MySpace Page. Put your blog on it, and get some friends.
52) Tell people you will link back to them if they review your blog
53) Most brands are not well established online, you review related content and it will rank well.
54) Review relevant products on Amazon.com.
55) Create product lists on Amazon.com
56) Review related sites on Alexa
57) Review products and services on shopping search engines.
58) Swap some links.
59) Try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages.
60) Sell items on eBay.
61) Target niche social news sites like DZone, Sphinn or Hugg
62) Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.
63) Do email signature swaps
64) Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites
65) Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords - Google Images generates traffic too.
66) Tag blog photos at Flicker
67) Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.
68) Outsource grunt work.
69) After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product.
70) Participate in Blog Carnivals
71) create a network of blogs in different niches, and then link them together
72) Give away stock images with a wee watermark of your URL
73) Find and discuss memes
74) Create a Yahoo Group in the niche your site sits.
75) Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.
76) Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.
77) Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds.
78) Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites.
79) Don’t worry about PageRank - worrying about PageRank is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.*
80) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.
81) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.
82) Send out a newsletter!
83) Giving away an eBook is an excellent way to generate word-of-mouth about your site.
84) Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.
85) Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site, so people can easily recommend you to their mates.
86) Share your banners on banner exchange sites.
87) Create a “lens” for your site on Squidoo
88) Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.
89) upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when they bookmark your site.
90) Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search
91) Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
92) Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.
93) Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts.
94) Increase the list you ping
95) Use Facebook
96) Social Networking
97) Micro
98) Email Marketing
99) RSS Feeds
100) Get outside links to internal pages
101) Use free hosting and build sites and link them back to your main site.

Mis-Spellings?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:52:00 +0000

I have a spell checking tool for your website here.

Quite often a searcher will mistype the keywords they are searching for. This causes website's to lose money, as they are not getting the traffic they desire. New SEO tactics should include misspellings for popular keywords. It may look sloppy, but if your getting enough sales who cares! The reason you have a website is ultimately to make some source of income or to share your knowledge with the world. More often than not it is for the first reason, to make money.

If you have a small, unknown branded website and would like to compete with the major players go after misspelled keywords. This may sound strange, but actually this opens up a door for smaller websites to compete for competitive keywords. Those tough to get keywords have misspellings that are easy to top the search engine rankings for.

A good way to find misspellings is using a dictionary or thesaurus to look at words and see how they are spelled and pronounced. You can also use the Google Ad Words Tool to see how many search results and how many times searchers misspelled words.

Unfortunately Google has the problem resolved using the "Did you mean......" phrase. Some searchers are not aware of this or do not care enough and will click through the misspellings. These misspellings are not competitive, yet and can easily be optimized for the top page and for much lower costs.

Different Website Landing Pages

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:41:00 +0000

The landing page is where visitors arrive when clicking on a link that leads to your web page. Landing pages need to be maintained and adjusted to suit your clients needs. You want to make sure the landing page is easy to read and has a clear message for your audience. If you have a website that is properly optimized and getting a lot of traffic, yet not receiving adequate conversions then you should consider redesigning your land page (home page).

First, you want to look at who is landing on this page and where they are coming from. Are they coming from search engines or referring sites? If they are coming from search engines then look at they keywords and make sure they are suitable for that page. If the traffic is from referring sites, look at the sites content and see if it coincides with your content. This will make sure your traffic is the correct traffic that is ready and willing to make a purchase.

Your website should not appeal to everyone as this is too general. You want your site targeted to a specific niche within your field of interest. This will make it easier to target those keywords and get the traffic you seek.

Don't forget that you can always try different landing pages to see what gets the best results. Try having landing pages in different colors or with a different navigation layout. Also, try different content on each landing page. Take all this research and decide on an optimal site layout.

Meta Title and Meta Description Tags for SEO

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:52:00 +0000

As of lately the search engines have been placing less emphasis on the Meta title tag, Meta description tag, and Meta keyword tag. It has become too easy to manipulate these attributes into misleading searchers to your site. It is not to say that these fields have no impact in regards to SEO and SEM. They title and description tags are great places to have keywords that comprise complete sentences. No longer must you only focus on the search engines (SEO), but now you must make it readable and compelling to searchers (SEM).

The Meta title and Meta description tags are very important aspects to help increase click through rates. If the Meta tags are missing keywords or are unreadable to humans, then they will ultimately fail. Using Google’s AdWords Tool can help target specific keywords that are receiving large volumes of searches with limited competition. Once the keywords are chosen you must manipulate them to flow into sentences that can sell your product or service. The Meta title tag should not exceed 70 characters. The Meta description tag should not exceed 150 characters. Anymore characters will not show up in the search engine results, rendering them useless in terms of SEM. They still are valuable for SEO purposes as the Meta title will still show up on the blue bar on the top left of your website. The Meta keywords tag has no more relevance for SEO purposes. All the emphasis has been moved to links and content. Just remember that the Meta keywords are losing value in the algorithms as we speak.

Hyphens vs. Underscores

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:17:00 +0000

There has been the question as to whether or not hyphens or underscores are better for search engine optimization. Hyphens are easier for human eyes to read.

When doing a search in Google for the keyword “starting business” with hyphens and underscores the results varied. With the hyphen the two words were treated as separate terms. On the other hand, the underscore came back with a message asking, “Did you mean: starting _business”.

In effect, the underscore is parsed from the query so, whether searching with an underscore or a hyphen, the results are identical. The same holds true in other search engines (MSN.com, Ask.com) as well. Yahoo! still views the variations differently. That can be an advantage if you have low rankings for phrases using hyphens, as you can still have high rankings using underscores.

New President Elect

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:26:00 +0000

Today is the big day when Mr. Obama becomes president of The United States. The world has been awaiting this day for two months and is ready to see some changes in the White House. Hopefully, the president can begin working to fix the economy and get jobs to those who really need them. The loss in jobs has taken its toll on search engine optimization, as SEO and SEM requires small and large business as clients. When companies continuously shut down for good, there are less potential clients for SEO work. I hope that we can stimulate the economy in a way the benefits the masses and does not harm anyone.

The election and SEO

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:56:00 +0000

We have arrived with a new presidential elect after Tuesdays election. Barak Obama will be the upcoming president in January! This resulted from extensive campaigning both online and offline. We cannot forget the online marketing, which help raise awareness and win the presidential campaign for Barak Obama.

Tons of publicity has been cycled through the internet in various forms, such as video and text, promoting the 2008 presidential campaign. Anyone can go to their candidate's website and learn more about their politics and anything else they can imagine. Even searches bring up millions of results specific to each campaign. This was due to the extensive search engine optimization that was performed for each candidate.

Old-school advertising techniques were brought to the 21st century through the internet. Now every ad placed on TV, magazines, and radio are available for viewing on the internet. This makes learning about candidates much easier and faster. The new age is amazing!

Google Recognizes Varieties in Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:11:00 +0000

Recently when I was performing a search for a few of my keywords I noticed that Google picks up different forms of word varieties. For example, when searching for "website optimizers" Google picked up both "optimizers" and "optimization" as a keyword for optimizers. This is something that must be taken into consideration when editing your search engine optimization.

What this ultimately means is that you or you SEO expert can eliminate duplicate words in your title and description tags, leaving more room for new keywords. This allows you to add more keywords to your site, ultimately increasing your web presence.

Ranking on 4 Major Search Engines..Err 3 - Google, Yahoo, Bing

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Everyone wants to have top rankings on the for big search engines; Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. This is obtainable, but requires a lot of work and effort to ensure that every aspect of all the different algorithms are met. Since the algorithms are

One of the most frequently asked questions readers and clients ask, revolves around how websites can be best optimized to meet the algorithmic needs of each of the major 4 search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask jeeves. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though there have been wide sweeping changes in the organic search engine landscape over the past six months, the fundamental ways search engines operate remains the same.

UPDATE:
Big three souunds more like it! In 2009 the major search engines are Yahoo, Google, and Soon to be Bing. Each has similar algorithms and ranking systems, with slight variations. For example Google looks at content and links, whereas Bing looks more at the links not the content. Having a set strategy for ranking in each search engine is the best way to go about your internet marketing endevors.

Linking Pages to get Top Search Engine Ranking Positions

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:21:00 +0000

There is an interesting topic that I have been debating as to whether or not linking a top ranking site to a new site will give the new site top search engine rankings as well. There are too many variables in the Google algorithm to exactly find the answer to this question. For example back links, domain age, keyword placement, and many other factors can increase or decrease sites rankings on the search engines. From my observations and my experience it seems that Google and the other search engines are coming to light about this trick to increase rankings. I believe that Google has taken this into consideration when they wrote their latest algorithm. It still plays are part in rankings, but it does not have such a large impact as before. As the search engines change and become keen to the SEO and SEM tricks, we must find other ethical ways to beat the competitors. We all must remember that black hat SEO methods should be avoided at all times.

Building Links Strategy and Implementation

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:10:00 +0000

As we all know links are a valuable asset to gaining top search engine rankings. There are a few techniques that work best for gaining these invaluable links which are listed below. Note: These are tips for gaining reciprocal two way links, which are not as good as one way links.

1. Find link partners by searching in your keywords in the major search engines. Contact the webmasters of these sites to see if they are willing to exchange links

2. Create a page on your site set up specifically for adding reciprocal links. This page should not be deeper than two pages. Categorize the list if it becomes too long to make it easy to scroll through.

3. Remember to have a "link to us: field on your site to gain other linking partners.

4. Email your link partners informing them that you have added their link to your site at this URL. Make sure to tell them the benefits of exchanging links.

5: Make an excel file listing all your link partners as to keep track and not have duplicates.

6: After three unanswered emails remove the websites link from your site.

7. Repeat the steps above and never stop doing so. You need patience and must follow up with the webmasters to ensure that your site remains there and is not removed.

Web Remodeling

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:05:00 +0000

Now at SEO Optimizers we offer web redevelopment making it easier for the end user to get to what they are looking for. We help remove the unnecessary clutter that is found in nearly every website. We look at the layout and start with that, then moving on to remove all repetitive words or clutter that may distract the user. To learn more about our services visit our site to get a quote.

Are RSS Feeds Replacing Email?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:46:00 +0000

There are hardly any internet users that understand what the orange box that is at the top of their browser. This is for Really Simple Syndication (RSS) which allows people to publish content and expose it to subscribers of your RSS feed. Currently over 80% of internet users do not know about or use RSS Feeds, but that is soon to change. There is no denying that RSS Feeds are soon to be replacing email and for good reasoning.

RSS feeds allow for embedded video and audio files, something email is not capable of doing. Email providers usually strip away the video or block it from getting into the recipients inbox. RSS Feeds allow subscribers to view video and audio within the RSS Feed without opening a web browser. RSS Feeds make it simple and easy to view and send video and audio content to other users.

Another great and compelling reason that RSS Feeds are replacing Email is because RSS Feeds always reach their destination, unlike Emails which have less than 60% delivery rate. This is a huge advantage that Email has been lacking in. Unlike Email there is no SPAM folder in RSS Feeds because everyone that subscribed to a RSS Feed want to get the information and hold onto it. Due to the fact that RSS Feeds have no SPAM makes it hard for Email to compete. Everyone hates SPAM because it is a waste of time and extremely annoying.

Don’t worry for those of you running to Google to learn more about RSS Feeds because this will take a while before it becomes common practice to use RSS Feeds. Right now to get an RSS Feed you need to subscribe to someone’s blog or other content management system. Soon though, it will be as easy to work with as regular email is. There will be RSS Outlook soon allowing you to create a message, add video or sound, format it, and then send it to one person or a group of subscribers via the RSS without publishing your content anywhere else.

A great appeal right now for RSS is that it is anonymous and you do not need to give out any personal information to subscribe to a Feed. This needs to and will change soon to allow for customized RSS Feeds that matches their users specific desires and interests. Also it will allow private RSS communication between individuals and groups of people SPAM free, with audio and video capabilities, and one hundred percent deliverability!

Watch out for the future of RSS Feeds! You can subscribe to my blogs RSS Feed and start receiving all the latest blogs and SEO information.

Adding a FAQ's Page for SEO Purposes

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:48:00 +0000

It is true that Search Engines like Frequently Asked Question's pages as they will lead to new anchor text and cached information. This will boost search engine rankings as this will be regarded as highly relevant, fresh, new content. This will give a good boost to SERP and to your company's traffic. I highly recommend this to all my clients sites, especially is the site has been static for a while, with no new content of information

Google PageRank Discrepancy

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:49:00 +0000

Recently it has been observed that Google is using inaccurate information regarding PagePank. When the Google PR is shown on our toolbar the PR is significantly lower than on Google's Directory. This affects everyone using the Google toolbar, as Google needs to address this problem immediately. This causes a lot of trouble for people performing Search Engine Optimization and looking to find good advertising space.

Hopefully this will be resolved soon so nobody gets to confused and loses some valuable advertising space and money. It is still unclear which PR to follow, but for now I recommend using Google's Directory PageRank.

Welcome to the New Year

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:58:00 +0000

Welcome back to work everyone! I hope you had a great holiday season and great new Years. I look forward to talking more in depth about search engine optimization and Google's new updates it has in store for us this upcoming year. To get thing started I would like to talk about my findings as of recently. When a new site has achieved top rankings in search engines, this is only the beginning of your work. Constant upkeep and updates must be partaken in to maintain and even grow that ranking. If you leave your website untouched for a week then your rankings will substantially fall. That way to pick them back up is to add new content to your site and make sure people are clicking through your link. This will slowly, but surely grow your listing back to the top of search engines. I hope this helps those who like to slack of during the holiday season, being me, as I as away from my computer for an entire week. When I arrived back I was stunned to see my listings dropped from 1st position t 90Th position in a mere week. Now my rankings are moving back up, but this will take a few weeks to obtain my original rankings.

Paid Links No Good?

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:27:00 +0000

There has been a lot of discussion as to allow paid links to continue building up website presence or to put a stop to paid links. Google has been looking to eliminate the value of paid links to increase search engine rankings. This means hundreds of thousands of website devoted to paid links will go out of business. There is a great deal of debate over the issue, but it seems as though Google is going to stop allowing paid links to increase search engine placement. Websites will no longer inflate their image and value buying links. This seems fair, but puts a lot of websites out of business.

This is a topic that will likely take some time to fully resolve and we will have to wait to see what the future has in store....

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (SEO Optimizers) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:34:00 +0000

Here it is...I finally added a blog to accompany my website SEO Optimizers. I am glad that you are here to learn more about Search Engine Optimization. I will constantly be updating and adding to my site additional information and news regarding SEO. I look forward to your responses and feedback.

Come back for SEO news and information!!

Have a great day