 You know, I have always wondered. With all the filters that Google seems to have that knock directories and article sites off the face of the Google map, what would it be like to place well with some of the less major, certainly not minor, search engines like Yahoo? Here is some insight. After reading an article in one of my favorite newsletters, I have decided to try to optimize for Yahoo and see what shakes out of my little black, I mean white, bag. Yahoo gets 22.1% of the search engine traffic. Google gets 64%. Seems to me like a website should be able to get some pretty decent traffic from a page one placement for a high traffic keyword phrase. Here are the basics: Title tag - The word used here is "blatantly" use the keyword phrase in the title tag. The best example of this that I use "blatantly" is in my Moxie Drive Expressions article directory. After discovering a flaw in the Article Directory Pro software, I patched the title tag so the actual title of the article, name of the author for the author page, and catagory name for the category page, would show up in the title tag. Just this one action caused my Yahoo traffic to go from a numbing zero to hundreds. I think that the title tag is the most important piece of the puzzle when it comes to optimizing for Yahoo as a result. Meta Description - I think this can be done two ways. If the description is available, I would like it to include the keywords and about 15-18 words from the first paragraph. The code to accomplish this in an Article Directory Pro article directory is still a work in progress. So, I have come up with an alternative. Don't use the description meta tag. The title, with the keywords, shows up first on the article page. This along with a "snippet" from the article, usually the first few sentences, is picked up by Yahoo, as well as the other search engines. This is fine with me because the keyword phrases show up a couple of times in the title and the first paragraph. Hey, if it looks good in the search engine why try anything else? If you do use a description meta tag, use 15-18 words. This is enough to fill out the description portion of your Yahoo search engine description. Meta Keywords - Since I use the keywords in the title, it is easier for me to pull in the article title. It is consistant with the title tag and the description. Google seems to be the only search engine that does not use the keyword meta tag, so optimizing for Yahoo would require it. It is recommended not to be over 250 characters, comma delimited and do not repeat a keyword more than 3 times. I have repeated up to 6. Keywords in URL - I have always thought that this is one of the things that you can do to push your pages past the competition. Headings - h1 and h2 tags containing the keywords. I usually make the title the h1 tag because the size of the h1 makes it show up prominently. Sometimes too prominently. Use the "small" tag to get the size under control. Alt Tags - increases the keyword density. Inline links - Improves relevance by linking out to related sites. Site structure - The best way to do this is to use what is called "Themeing". Start out by writing about a broader version of your topic and narrow it to a more specific theme. Links - In all cases, quality before quantity. Site Explorer Settings - Did you even know that Yahoo had this? Go to Yahoo's Site Explorer. You can add your website and your sitemap...what a concept. Other stuff - I keep my robots.txt open so the search engines don't think twice about indexing. I really don't care who is looking as long as they are. If I do not want a link indexed I use the rel=nofollow switch in the html. Also, I think the $299.00 inclusion fee to get into the Yahoo Directory is a waste of money. You can try it if you want, but I do not find it necessary. One really great observation that I discovered about Yahoo, unlike Google, is that fresh content does not seem to matter. Once optimized and on page one, you can stay there based on the attributes of your efforts and not have to tweak the content to stay there. Labels: SEO Don't laugh, this is not as insignificant as you might think at first glance. Not by a long shot.Actually, it is quite significant. Here's why: making any amount of monëy on the web from a free site is quite rare. At least this has been my experience. Others will no doubt disagree and argue otherwise, but I have found very few free sites worth pursuing. Google's Blogspot using Adsense is the only other exception that readily comes to mind. Not that I haven't tried looking for these free sites in the past. When I first started exploring the web around 10 years ago I tried out a lot of foolish 'make-monëy' sites like getting paid to read emails, paid-to-surf... etc. Everybody Loves A Freebie! They tell me people actually make monëy at these kinds of programs but I could nevër get them to work for me. Probably lack of patience on my part or not enough will-power to keep working these sites. Most are a waste of time because you're simply building someone else's VRE. They own this domain and content - not you. I nevër really started earning any significant online income until I created my own domain and web site. You must create your own virtual real estate. Your own content. Your own domains. Your own sites. It is the correct way to proceed unless... Unless... you just don't have the funds or resources to create and build your own sites. The next best thing is using a Web 2.0 program like Squidoo. What Is Squidoo? Squidoo is a free, easy-to-use service or site that lets anyone post or write a lens (web page) on any subject that they have expertise in. Squidoo lets you create your own lenses and pick highly valuable keyword phrases in your Squidoo URL. They are still some very worthwhile URLS to be claimed and more being born as new products come online. Experienced marketers will know to place popular (well searched for) keywords or keyword phrases in their Squidoo URL and then have these keywords in the title of your lens and sprinkled throughout the page. Don't overdo it, but optimize your lens for your chosen keywords. Savvy marketers also know using a long tail keyword phrase often results in more targeted traffíc which converts better. How Is Squidoo Different? Squidoo is a quality site. It offers highly focused content which often rises to the top of the search engine rankings very quickly. The Squidoo site has a PR7 (Page Rank) in Google. According to Alexa, Squidoo is ranked in the top 1000 sites on the whole web. Why Is Squidoo Effective? The main reason Squidoo is effective stems from its vibrant online community constantly creating diverse quality content and links. In the process, this community has made Squidoo a search engine haven. As with Wikipedia, Squidoo can be seen as the ultimate authority site. Besides, it is fun and easy to use because you have all your valuable content and links on one convenient page. It is also community rated so all the cream rises to the top! How You Can Earn By Using Squidoo? Every page on Squidoo carries Google AdSense ads which generate funds for the site and you. Also you can display affilíate links from Amazon, eBay and CafePress... Squidoo is more like a co-op where you share in the revenues generated from your lenses. There is also a charity element where you can donate your earnings to a whole host of charity groups. Keep in mind, Squidoo is completely scalable. As with any marketing venture, once you know how to create that first one dollar profít, all you have to do is scale it up. If you make one dollar with one page, create a hundred pages and you will make... Why You Should Use Squidoo? From a purely SEO angle, Squidoo is worth your time, even if you're a professional marketer making 2 or 300 dollars a day from your sites. Squidoo lets you quickly tap into the whole Web 2.0 social media tagging system. It will help you improve your rankings for your other sites if you closely tie-in your links and content. This is not keyword spamming. You must create unique quality content on Squidoo in order to generate the interest in your lenses. In a community monitored site like Squidoo, quality content does rise to the top. Done properly, Squidoo will easily let you tap into the whole Web 2.0 everyone is talking about. In addition, Squidoo is an excellent hands-on training field for anyone wishing to learn more about Internet Marketing. It is the perfect place to study affilíate marketing and you can discover how SEO really works without even spending a dime. More importantly, Squidoo is just plain easy and a whole lot of fun. Besides, if you give it a try, chances are almost 100% certain that you will make more than 78 cents! About The Author The author is a full-time online marketer. For the most effective internet marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com. One of best free resources on Squidoo is from Bob Jenkins: Squidoo Secrets. 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. Labels: making money on the web, SEO, squidoo secrets Within the e-commerce sphere, the "mind games" between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can't make a sale if visitors aren't reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization — converting site visitors to buyers.Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies. Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there's no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing. Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO. The Google Website Optimizer (GWO) Google owns SEO (sorry Yahoo). It is now moving into eyeball optimization (EBO) to help site owners improve conversion rates. It's got lots of features, it's totally flexible in designing useful tests for human reactions and it provides data using simple to read and understand charts showing what's working and what would work even better. One key point here: after indexing billions and billions of web pages, who is going to know better what works and doesn't work for solid EBO? After all, all the Google gurus have to do is evaluate their top performing sites to develop measurement criteria and tools to improve conversion optimization. Google is going to know what works. One other point worth mentioning — it's frëe. A flexible, user-designed test engine developed by Google and available frëe. It's a must have for any site owner, site designer, webmaster or SEO. What Can Google Website Optimizer Do For Me & How Can It Do It If I Don't Know the Difference Between a Statistical Mean and a Statistical Average? Multi-Variable Testing Got to have it. When quantifying human motivations and the effectiveness of a site page, you must have data to compare - data based on site variables such as a different home page image or revised site text. There are hundreds of variables within any website. Color selections, type font, type color, navigation tools, product images and descriptions — literally an endless líst of variables. Google's Website Optimizer allows you to design tests to compare variables to see which ones work best. Often called A/B split tests, these simply compare a change or two to see which performs best. For example, you might have a picture of your product on test site A and a photo of the product in use by a human on test site B. Simply by comparing visitors' reactions to pages A and B, you can make refinements to your site. Another useful A/B split test to chëck the success of your Adwords placements is to create two identical ads with two different destination URLs. You'll quickly discover which placements pay for themselves and which should be dropped. Easy Analytics The information gathered by Google during testing is delivered in an easy-to-understand format. You'll see, in graphic förm, where visitors go and where they don't go when on site. Taking a good hard look at your bounce rates and possible paths-thru-site are essential parts of your ongoing conversion optimization diet. Usability Testing Real humans navigating your site. Get as many people as you can to site down and clíck around - from your computer-whiz 12-year-old to mom and dad who still use dial-up. These tests provide the reasons why visitors take specific actions — over and over again. Eyeball Optimization GWO shows you what attracts eyeballs but doesn't generate a clíck. It also shows what visitors miss entirely because it's misplaced or mislabeled. Every page should undergo an "EBO" to improve conversion rates. Follow the Leaders You can't copyright an idea so use the same features and techniques employed by higher ranking competitor sites. Then, conduct A/B split tests to see which changes show improvement in conversion optimization. People Are Still the Same There's nothing new about direct response advertising, which is what successful sites use. Infomercials, newspaper ads, TV 30-second spots — these are all examples of direct response advertising and the same motivators that work in other media will also work on your website. Once again, you can't copyright an idea and the principles of direct response marketing haven't changed one iota. Determine and identify the buyer's needs; provide the solution to meet those needs. It's worked for the past few millennia and it'll work for you today. Small Steps or One Giant Leap Do you make incremental improvements or try to fix everything all at once. It depends on where you are right now. If you've optimized your site (or paid to have it optimized) a small step here and there can make a huge difference, and a major revamping of your site may actually set you back in the optimization race. On the other hand, if you're just launching, run a couple of A/B splits and other analytics to see which site pages are hot and which are not. Adjust accordingly. The point here? The more optimized the site, the less optimization is needed so if you've been at it for a while, take small steps and assess improvements. If you're just starting out, launch, track and adjust as needed — whether it be small steps or the proverbial giant leap. Create a Diagram of Your Marketing Funnel Start with placed adverts (Adwords, paid links, etc.) Add your home page, each product page, the checkout, automated order conformation, customer care and order fulfillment. Each one of these is a component of a sale and, from the líst and with the help of GWO, you'll be able to more clearly identify holes in your marketing funnel — those areas most in need of improvement, i.e., optimization. Now, this is just the beginning. Conversion optimization is an on-going process and there are additional steps you can take based on test results delivered by Google's Web Optimizer - steps that we'll look at more closely in part 2 of this series. About The Author Frederick Townes is the CEO of W3 EDGE, a Boston-based web design company specializing in web standards and search engine friendly web design. Whether your needs fall into the Web 2.0 category or if you need an attractive design that will convert your visitors into buyers, W3 fills the need. Labels: google website optimizer, SEO, web2.0 Beginning on April 14th, 2007, a firestorm blew through the Internet community with the search engine optimization (SEO) community burning the hottest. The embers were warm and waiting for a strong wind to blow and kick up the flames, but it took Matt Cutts, the Google engineer extraordinaire to fire the flames with an off-the-cuff comment about "paid links."The flames raged and in most forums, the wind quickly shifted moving the firestorm back towards Cutts and Google. Thread Watch offered the most biting rebuttal to Cutts' comments: http://www.threadwatch.org/node/13925 and http://www.threadwatch.org/node/13941. Aaron Wall at Thread Watch is a respectable fellow, and he tore into Google with a ferociousness that I had not anticipated. Matt Cutts tried to answer some of Aaron's questíons, but it seemed that Cutts' rebuttals only added more fuel to the fire. I would not have wanted to be in Matt Cutts' shoes that week. Oh my, it was brutal! Even on Cutts' own blog where the "paid link" comment originally surfaced , Danny Sullivan posted a question that went unanswered, so Sullivan commented about it on his site. Search Engine Watch even mentioned this issue and linked to additional forums where the debate was raging. What Most Readers Took From Cutts' Comments There were only a few readers who took Matt Cutts' comments to be brotherly-advice. The vast majority of people were screaming that Google intended to exercise their "monopoly control" over the Internet to run all of their competitors out of business. Generally, I am not a "reactionary" type person. But for about an hour, even I had a ball in the pit of my stomach. The ball passed from the pit of my stomach when I read a post that mirrored an opinion I have openly written about numerous times before: How does Google determine the "intent" of a person making a link? They can't! Understanding The Nuances Of Similar Items Some people suggest that I should be ashamed of myself for speculating about the future of Google's algorithms. There is even one clown, who has suggested that I should fear mentioning Matt Cutts' name in an article, because I am bound to draw Cutts' ire against me and my businesses. But, I am not worried. I am simply laying out my "speculative" opinion about what Cutts' comments might mean to my business and yours. You are free to use your own brain to judge the value of my words. Am I playing a double standard when I say that Google cannot determine the intent of the person placing a link, and then I comment on how I interpret the future of the Google search algorithms? I don't think so, and let me tell you why. Google uses algorithms (software programs) to make distinctions about what a web page is about, how they value that page, and to judge the nature of a link. I use my intellect (or as some would suggest, my lack thereof) to make a judgment about what Google has told us we should expect from them in the future. I trust software to a certain extent, but software cannot always read the nuance that separates two very similar items. So, how can the Google algorithm be expected to determine the intent of a person who placed a link? It has always been my contention that humans are "required" in any process that must make an interpretation of nuance. In my businesses, we refuse to trust computers to make judgments of nuance, because they can't. That is the reason we employ human beings to process orders. What Is Google's Intent Behind The Paid Links Issue? The whole of Cutts' argument seems to hinge on nixing "paid links" that are designed to manipulate or "game Google's PageRank" and to a lesser extent, their organic search results. Google seems to be really agitated that webmasters are "selling links based on the PageRank value of a page." The problem is that webmasters are selling an intangible asset that is wholly owned by Google and maintained for "Google's benefit." Webmasters are selling this Google asset, but Google will not receive any of the proceeds from that sale. As a result, Cutts suggested that webmasters should use some method that Google's spider can use to recognize and distinguish "paid links" from "given links." Since Google's algorithm is based on the theory that links are given to websites that deserve those links, the paid links on high PageRank pages can really skew Google's PageRank values and its organic search results. Here Is Where It Gets Ugly Both honest and dishonest people inhabit this Internet. Google wants webmasters who are selling links to distinguish paid links from given links, so that Google can ignore "links purchased to influence PageRank." If honest people distinguish paid links in a way that Google can recognize, then the market demand for those links will dry up. Once the PageRank value of a link is taken away from the buyer, the buyer will be forced to purchase links based only on the traffíc that the specific web page receives. If all paid link decisions were based only on a web page's traffíc, then the market value of a link would be decimated. Once a webmaster tells his link-buying customers that his or her links will no longer carry PageRank value to the buyer's website, then the value of that link will drop in most cases by 80% or more. Why would a webmaster want to reduce the market value of his links by 80%? Although Google's links do not pass PageRank to the websites that are in their index or paid listings, we have to ask ourselves one thing. Would Google be willing to take a step that would reduce the market value of their own links by 80%? They certainly would not do anything that would cut their own bottom line that deeply, yet they are asking webmasters to do just that. This is the reason people are teed off at Google. At least 80% of the market value of a link is driven by the PageRank value of the web page where the link will be placed. Dishonest people don't care to play by the rules; they will continue to sell their PageRank value, as long as they continue to have buyers. Only the honest will suffer. Link Buyers Are Green With Envy Link Buyers are envious of the PageRank value given to other web pages, and they want a bit of that value passed over to their own websites. Link buyers are green with envy, because they can see that little green bar in the top of their browser that tells them how much value Google gives a web page in its algorithms. If Google were to keep PageRank as a private value, known only to them, then "paid links" would not be an issue for them to manage. If the public cannot see what a page's PageRank value is, then link buyers would not be able to use PageRank to influence their link buying decisions, and webmasters would not be able to market their PageRank value to other websites. How Simple Is That? All Google has to do to solve this problem of theirs, is to take away the indicator people use to buy and sell PageRank. Someone suggested to me that Google would nevër do away with the PageRank indicator in their toolbar, because Google feels that it is the only thing that ensures that people will keep the Google toolbar in their browser. Personally, I will continue to use the Google toolbar for my searches, even if the PageRank indicator was not there, because I like the search results Google gives to me. But that is just my opinion, and I am only one person out of millíons of Google toolbar users. What it boils down to is this. If Google is serious about nixing schemes to buy and sell PageRank, then they should simply take their PageRank indicator away from us. But will they take it away? Only time will tell. About The Author Bill Platt offers article ghost writing and article distribution services through thePhantomWriters. He also offers a guaranteed ?link building service, utilizing article marketing as its foundation, through LinksAndTraffic. If you have any questíons about Bill's services, you can reach him by telephone from 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday at 405-780-7745. Technorati Tags: search engine optimization SEO paid links Matt Cutts Labels: Matt Cutts, paid links, search engine optimization, SEO From SitePro News 4/13/2007One of the fun things about publishing a newsletter like SiteProNews is the research that goes into each issue. For more than 6 years, we have been finding and highlighting freeware tools and applications that can make the DIY (do-it-yourself) webmaster's job a little easier. If you've been fixated on the articles in SPN and missed our App of the Day selections, you can find the 900+, mostly freeware programs, filed in 12 major categories at our WebMaster Tools Directory. The focus of this article, however, will be on some of the freeware tools that are available to you to use for SEO purposes. There are a fairly large number of these type of tools out there so Part 1 of this article will líst keyword, sitemap and ranking tools and Part 2 will look at meta tag generators, link popularity apps, link checkers and general SEO tools. Keyword Tools 1. Good Keywords v2.01 (595 KB) finds the best keywords for your web pages. Features include Keyword Suggestions, Phrase Builder, Keyword Organizer, Misspelled Words, and Site and Link Popularity Finder. For Windows 95/ 98/ 2000/ NT/ XP. 2. Golden Phrases 1.0.3 (391 KB) is a analyzing utility that scans specified log files to retrieve all search phrases used by your visitors to find your website through search engines. It gathers search phrase statistics and determines the position of your site on search engines for every phrase. Its unique "Perspectivity rating" technology also allows you to find which keyphrases were not used. For Windows Windows 95/ 98/ Me/ NT/ 2000/ XP/ 2003. 3. PPC Keyword Generator (1.1 MB) is a powerful keyphrase permutator/generator. Generate 100s of keyphrases in seconds, remove duplicate keyphrases automatically, define per-keyphrase custom CPC/URLs and import/export. For Windows 98 and above. 4. Hixus Keyword Inventor 1.0 (679 KB) is a SEO and keyword popularity analysis front-end for the the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool. Speeds up the process of finding popular keywords. For Windows 98/ ME/ NT4.x/ XP/ 2000. 5. e3KWDCheck 2.5b (920 KB) is a lightweight and fast SEO tool for analyzing keyword density within text documents. It can also retrieve and analyze online web documents using the built-in address bar. For Windows 95/ 98/ 2000/ NT/ ME/ XP. 6. Get Keywords 1.0 (289 KB) is a small program that finds keywords in files and then creates an optimized web page using selected keywords. Features include automatic words search, add/remove keywords options, web page creation and preview, etc. For Windows 98 and above. 7. Keyword Digger 1.0 (50 KB) is a simple tool designed to search Overture for all keywords people entered during the previous month. Provides the number of times a keyword was searched and up to 100 different variations for that term. For Windows 9x/ Me/ NT/ 2000/ XP. 8. AnalogX Keyword Extractor v1.03 (214 KB) extracts keywords from a webpage, and then sorts and indexes them based on their usage and position. Once indexed, you can adjust search-engine specific weighting factors and keyword criteria to get the best possible view of how a search engine sees your site. An older program but still useful. For Windows 95/ 98/ 2000/ NT/ XP. SiteMap Generators 1. eXactMapper Lite 1.2 (1.1 MB) automates the process of creating professional site maps. It offers three different customizable html/dhtml site map styles, including a UL líst, static tree and an index page. For Windows 95/ 98/ ME/ NT/ 2000. 2. SiteMapBuilder.NET 1.5 (1.4 MB) allows you to create a Google XML SiteMap or text based sitemap. It also checks for URL errors. For Windows XP/ 2000/ 2003. Also requires .NET Framework. 3. Sitemap Creator (783 KB) is a sitemap creator that exports a directory structure to an html file. Does not read websites online. For all Windows versions. 4. Sitemap 4 traffíc (360 KB) can build a Google or html sitemap. It also checks for broken links and backs up website files. For Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. Requires .Net Framework 1.1 or higher and Internet Explorer 6+. Nice program but might have some bugs. Ranking Tools 1. Rank Tracker 1.4.2 (5.0 MB) is a useful tool for checking the keyword rank of websites, using search engine results from Google, Yahoo and MSN. You can create multiple projects with unlimited keywords and track changes and progress over time. Supports Google and Yahoo API login, if needed. For Windows 98/ Me/ NT/ 2000/ XP/ Mac/ Linux. Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Version 1.4. 2. WebCEO 6.5 (22 MB) is a comprehensive SEO program that provides much more than search engine rankings. This is the freeware edition. Requires a learning curve but is worth the effort. For Windows NT4/ 2000/ XP. 3. PaRaMeter 1.2 (1.0 MB) is a bulk Google PageRank™ checking and monitoring tool. Easily find the page rank of many pages with one clíck. For Windows 9X/ 2000/ XP. 4. M6.net PageRank Checker (515 KB) is another simple, bulk Google PageRank™ checker. For Windows 98/ ME/ NT/ XP/ 2000. The various freeware tools listed above are the best that we have come across in the last 6 years. If you are aware of similar tools that are as good or better, let us know and we'll do a follow-up article with your recommendations. About The Author Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites and founder of the Independent Search Engine & Directory Network. The Jayde network is comprised of more than 20 websites, including ExactSeek.com, SiteProNews.com, SEO-News.com,and GoArticles.com. Technorati Tags: publishing newsletter freeware SEO keyword tool search engine results rank Labels: freeware, keyword, keyword rank, newsletter, publishing, search engine results, SEO, tools There's no getting around it. Keyword research is a vitally important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, the search engines and your customers may nevër find you, resulting in lost dollars and meaningless rankings. By targeting the wrong keywords, you not only put valuable advertising dollars at risk, you are also throwing away all the time and energy you put into getting your site to rank for those terms to begin with. If you want to stay competitive, you can't afford to do that.The keyword research process can be broken down into the following phases: Phase 0 - Demolishing Misconceptions Phase 1 – Creating the líst and checking it twice Phase 2 – Befriending the keyword research tool Phase 3 – Finalizing your líst Phase 4 – Plan your Attack Phase 5 - Rinse, Wash Repeat Phase 0 - Demolishing Misconceptions Over the years, we've had the opportuníty to work with a wide array of wonderful clients. And as different and diverse as their sites and the individuals running them may have been, many had one thing in common: they were self-proclaimed keyword research mavens right out of the gate. Or so they thought. One of the most common misconceptions about conducting keyword research for a search engine optimization campaign is the belief that you already know which terms a customer would use to find your site. You don't. Not without first doing some research anyway. You may know what your site is about and how you, the site owner, would find it, but it's difficult to predict how a paying customer would go about looking for it. This is due to site owners evaluating their site through too narrow of a lens, causing them to come up with words that read like industry jargon, not viable keywords. Remember, your customer probably doesn't work in the same industry that you do. If they did, they wouldn't need you. When describing your site or product, break away from industry speak. Your customers aren't searching that way and if you center your site on these terms, they'll nevër find you. Another misconception is that generic or "big dollar" terms are the most important for rankings, even if the term you're going after has nothing to do with your site. Imagine a women's clothing store trying to rank for the term "google". Sure, thousands of searchers probably type that word into their search bar daily, but they're not doing it looking for you. They're looking for Google. Being ranked number one for a term no one would associate with your site is a waste of time and monëy (and it may get you in trouble!). Your site may see a lot of traffíc, but customers won't stick around. Phase 1 – Creating the líst and checking it twice The initial idea of keyword research can be daunting. Trying to come up with the perfect combination of words to drive customers to your site, rev up your conversion rate and allow the engines to see you as an expert would easily give anyone a tension headache. The trick is to start slowly. The first step in this process is to create a líst of potential keywords. Brainstorm all the words you think a customer would type into their search box when trying to find you. This includes thinking of phrases that are broad and targeted, buying and research-oriented, and single and multi-word. What is your site hoping to do or promote? Come up with enough words to cover all the services your site offers. Avoid overly generic terms like 'shoes' or 'clothes'. These words are incredibly difficult to rank for and won't drive qualified traffíc to your site. Focus on words that are relevant, but not overly used. If you need help brainstorming ideas, ask friends, colleagues or past customers for help. Sometimes they are able to see your site differently than the way you yourself see it. Also, don't be afraid to take a peek at your competitor's Meta Keyword tag. What words are they targeting? How can you expand on their keyword líst to make yours better? It's okay to get a little sneaky here. All's fair in love and search engine rankings. Phase 2 – Befriend the keyword research tool Now that you have your líst, your next step is to determine the activity for each of your proposed keywords. You want to narrow your líst to only include highly attainable, sought-after phrases that will bring the most qualified traffíc to your site. In the early days of SEO, measuring the "popularity" of your search terms was done by performing a search for that phrase in one of the various engines and seeing how many results it turned up. As you can imagine, this was a tedious and ineffective method of keyword research. Luckily, times have changed and we now have tools to do the hard part for us. By inputting your proposed keywords into a keyword research tool, you can quickly learn how many users are conducting searches for that term every day, how many of those searches actually converted, and other important analytical information. It may also tune you in to words you had previously forgotten or synonyms you weren't aware of. There are lots of great tools out there to help you determine how much activity your keywords are receiving. Here's a few of our personal favorites: Overture Keyword Selector Tool: Overture's Keyword Selector tools shows you how many searches have been conducted over the last month for a particular phrase and lísts alternative search terms you may have forgotten about. Our only complaint with Overture is that they lump singular and plural word forms into one phrase. For example, "boots" and "boot" would appear under one category of "boot". This can sometimes cause problems. Wordtracker: Wordtracker is a paid-use tool that lets you look up popular keyword phrases to determine their activity and popularity among competitors. Their top 1000 report lísts the most frequently searched for terms, while their Competition Search option provides valuable information to determine the competitiveness of each phrase. This is very useful for figuring out how difficult it will be to rank for a given term. It may also highlight hidden gems that have low competition-rates, but high relevancy. Trellian Keyword Discovery tool: This is a fee-based tool where users can ascertain the market share value for a given search term, see how many users search for it daily, identify common spellings and misspellings, and discover which terms are impacted by seasonal trends (mostly useful for PPC). Google AdWords Keyword Tool: Google's keyword PPC tool doesn't provide actual search numbers for keywords. Instead, it displays a colored bar, giving users only an approximation. Still, it may be useful. Google Suggest: Google Suggest is a great way to find synonyms and related word suggestions that may help you expand your original líst. Thesaurus.com: Again, another way to locate synonyms you may have forgotten. If those don't tickle your fancy, we'd also suggest Bruce Clay's Chëck Traffíc tool, which estimates the number of queries per day for that search term across the major search engines. Keep in mind that you're not only checking to see if enough people are searching for a particular word, you're also trying to determine how competitive that phrase is in terms of rankings. Understanding the competition tells you how much effort you will need to invest in order to rank well for that term. There are two things to pay attention to when making this decision: how many other sites are competing for the same word and how strong are those sites' rankings (i.e. how many other sites link to them, how many pages do they have indexed)? Basically, is that word or phrase even worth your time? If it's not, move on. While you're testing your new terms, you may want to do a little housekeeping and test the activity for keywords your site is already targeting. Keep the ones that are converting and drop the losers. Phase 3 – Finalizing your líst Now that you have your initial líst of words and have tested their activity, it's time to narrow down the field and decide which terms will make it into your coveted final keyword líst. We recommend creating a spreadsheet or some other visual that will allow you to easily see each word's conversion rate, search volume and competition rate (as given to you by the tools mentioned above). These three figures will allow you to calculate how viable that term is for your site and will be a great aid as you try and narrow down your focus. The first step in narrowing down your líst is to go through and highlight the terms that most closely target the subject and theme of your web site. These are the terms you want to hold on to. Kill all words that are not relevant to your site or that you don't have sufficient content to support (unless you're willing to write some). You can't optimize for words that you don't have content for. Create a mix of both broad and targeted keywords. You'll need both to rank well. Broad terms are important because they describe what your web site does; however, they won't íncrease the level of qualified traffíc coming into your site. For example, say you are a company that specializes in cowboy boots. It may be natural for your site to focus on the broad search terms "boots" and "cowboy boots". These words are important because they tell the search engines what you do and may íncrease your visitors, but the traffíc you receive will be largely unqualified. Customers will arrive on your site still unsure of what kind of boots you sell. Do you offër traditional cowboy boots, stiletto cowboy boots, toddler cowboy boots, suede cowboy boots or women's cowboy boots? By only targeting broad terms, customers won't know what you offër until they land on your site. Targeted terms are often easier to rank for and help bring qualified traffíc. They also make you a subject matter expert to the search engines, since the targeted terms strengthen the theme created with the broader phrases. Sticking with our example, targeted terms for your cowboy boots site may be "men's cowboy boots", "blue suede cowboy boots", "extra-wide women's cowboy boots", etc. Broad search terms may bring you the higher levels of traffíc, but it's targeted, buying-oriented terms like these that will maximize conversions. Phase 4 – Plan your attack So you made your líst of about 10-20 highly focused keywords, now what do you do with them? You prepare them for launch! Chances are, if you did your keyword research right, at least some of the words on your líst already appear in your site content, but some of them may not. Start thinking about how many pages you'll need to create to support these new words, and how and where your keyword phrases will be used. We typically recommend only going after three or four related keywords per page (five if you can balance them properly). Any more than that and you run the risk of diluting your page to the point where you rank for nothing. Make sure to naturally work the keywords into your content and avoid over-repetition that may be interpreted as sp@mming. Your content should nevër sound forced. Your on-page content isn't the only place where you can insert keywords. Keywords should also be used in several other elements on your site: Title Tag Meta Description Tags Meta Keywords Tag Headings Alt text Anchor Text/ Navigational Links You've spent a lot of time molding your keywords; make sure you use them in all the appropriate fields to get the maximum benefit. Phase 5 - Rinse, Wash Repeat Congratulations. Your initial keyword research process is behind you. You've created your líst, checked it twice, made friends with the keyword research tools and are now off to go plan your attack. You're done, right? Unfortunately, no. As your customer's and your site's needs change over time, so will your keywords. It's important to keep monitoring your keywords and make tweaks as necessary. Doing so will allow you to stay ahead of your competition and keep moving forward. Good luck! About The Author Lisa Barone lbarone@bruceclay.com is a senior writer at Bruce Clay, Inc. Technorati Tags: keyword research toolpay per clicksearch enginequalified trafficseokeyword research tool Labels: effective keyword, keyword research, list, pay per click, qualified traffic, research tool, search engine, SEO, targeted Ask Google, search engines love links. Of course, they love some links more than others. For example, a simple link exchange (reciprocal link) doesn't have as much value to search engines and so, it doesn't receive the same weíght as a non-reciprocal (one-way) link – the theory being that a one-way, in-bound link is a recommendation from a site owner to visit this linked site. The link, itself, is testament to the quality of the site being referred.Article Syndication In recent years, many sites have employed article syndication to develop links. These site owners write (or have written) articles of interest to a particular audience. The site owners then offër these articles to other relevant sites free in exchange for a link back to the originator of the content in the "about the author" section of the article. In this way, a single site owner can submit dozens of articles for syndication receiving an inbound link from each article in return for the frëe use of content. They can also watch other sites post the content virally to keep their sites fresh, as well. Sites need fresh content so many will happily display your article and provide a link to your site. It's a tried and true link building tactic. However, search engines are programmed to seek out the most natural, and therefore valuable, links they can find. The way articles are syndicated is through sites like goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com. The standard format for the display of the article is: headline, article body followed by a small blurb about the author with a link back to the author's site. Since those links appear in the body of the page, they appear to be more valuable in comparison to most purchased or reciprocal links which often appear at the bottom of a page column, or in the footer surrounded by lots of other links – somewhat effective, but not necessarily the best way to acquire inbound links. In addition, syndication leads to duplication when a single article appears on 10 sites all at the same time. This diminishes the quality of the text and the back link to the author's site. It's still more valuable than a plain link exchange, but search engines are placing less emphasis on syndicated content. So, what's a site owner to do? Hosted Web Content It goes by many different names: content swapping, advertorials, pre-sell pages and hosted content – all basically the same idea. The way hosted content works is that you, the author, pay a site owner to display your article. However, now, instead of the back links to your site coming at the end of the article, you embed those links in the body of the text surrounded by your target keywords and actually useful content for the reader. In the "eyes" of a search engine, this is among the highest valued back link. Hosted content is basically renting a page on another site with links to your site embedded in the main body of the article. The web site that hosts the content receives payment from the author plus fresh content, the author gets a valuable back link and visitors to the hostíng site get useful content. This strategy isn't new. It's simply doing what search engines want us to do – produce content that's useful, beneficial and appears on quality sites. Not only does a quality piece of content receive more visibility when hosted on an authoritative site, it also delivers increased benefit to the author, and the page may even rank itself for target key phrases. When a major site hosts your content, you gain from its page rank in strong testimonials and referrals. Whether or not the site owners want to monetize their site by allowing approved authors to post content is the same debate as whether or not links should be bought and sold. However, publishing high quality, unique and useful content, rather than just creating inflated link popularity with diminishing returns, is, in comparison, a tested SEO tactic. Designing a Hosted Content Page You're paying for the placement of this content so you want it to be good. In the eternal quest for successful link bait, you also want the content to be ranked by search engines because it provides real value to the reader and is hosted on an authoritative site. Design the hosted content page using standard SEO conventions: a keyword savvy title, header (h1), subheads (h2) and a keyword density of less than 5%. Any higher and search engines may consider the content to be "spamish" regardless of where the content appears. Now comes the most important part. As you write the article, carefully place links to topically relevant pages on your own site within the body of the article's text. These are high value links that will improve your SEO. However, it's also important to place your articles on sites that are topically related to your piece (and probably already rank for related topics). The authority of the site hostíng your content, the relevance of the site (topically speaking) and that back link make your site look stronger as far as search engines are concerned. Also, remember that the quality of the content to which you link also matters. Link to strong pages (those with quality back links) on your site, as well. Your article should reference other authoritative, relevant articles so that search engines see that your piece was written to offër real value to readers. It's Not Quantity, It's Quality It's no longer simply a matter of how many links point to a site. There are many cases of sites in which 50 quality links outrank sites with hundreds of links. It's not quantity, it's the quality of the links that improve ranking in the SERPs. Editorial links (links in hosted content) are more "natural" from a search engine's perspective and, therefore, more valuable because the article has, at most, two or three targeted links pointing to your site's pages. Just like quality link bait, which is unique, original and useful content, quality hosted content on respected sites will also naturally develop its own back links - the ultimate validation and the desired outcome of placing quality content. Finally, because these links are found on pages optimized with your keywords, search engines will consider them extremely relevant to the subject at hand. Start Your Hosted Content Campaign Today It's being done everyday, successfully building small sites into largër sites, providing frëe advertising for the thought-leader/author, delivering less duplicate content to search engines and more new content (plus revenue) to the hostíng site and, perhaps most importantly, hosted content actually delivers useful, relevant information to readers – exactly what search engines rank in the first place. As with any link-building technique, hosted content can be abused, but topically authoritative sites are not going to accept content that does not meet their high standards – so everyone wins when the goals are white hat. Start searching for websites that might be interested in hostíng your next article, or start looking for a site owner interested in content swapping. Create content that's unique, useful and well-written and you may find that you won't even have to pay a site owner to share your content with their readers – exactly how it should be. About The Author Frederick Townes in the owner of W3-EDGE. W3-EDGE is a Boston-based web design company specializing in W3C compliant and search engine friendly web design. Whether your needs fall into the Web 2.0 category or if you just need an attractive design that will convert your visitors into buyer, we have the solution for you. Technorati Tags: web2.0 web 2.0 search, engine article content hosting syndication search engines reciprocal link, link exchange SEO Labels: article, article syndication, content, engine, hosting, link exchange, reciprocal link, search, search engines, SEO, web, web2.0 By Susan Esparza, Bruce Clay, Inc.With the release of Webmaster Central from beta, Google has made a strong statement that serious Web site owners need to be concerned with, and aware of, a range of data regarding their sites. Crawl errors, backlinks and page load times are all available for a webmaster to study and parse through in order to refine and integrate with their search engine optimization strategy. Along with Yahoo and MSN, Google provides information at Sitemaps.org regarding how to create an XML file that will feed information to the search engines about a site. Google is committed to assisting webmasters with their sites, even going so far as to enable comments on the official Webmaster Central blog, the only official Google blog that has done so. Statistics for Unverified Sites There are two ways to take advantage of the Webmaster tools – site owners can remain unverified and be given a limited look at their site through Google eyes, or verify and receive a more complete look. For sites that are not verified, there are three tools to learn to love: Site information regarding Sitemap details and errors, basic indexing information about your site, and a page for robots.txt analysis and correction where site owners can test their robots.txt file against several user-agents to ensure search engine comprehension. Upon adding a site to your Google account, you are given a look at the My Sites page, which shows all the sites represented under your Google account. If you only have one site added, you will be immediately taken to the Diagnostic Tab for that site where you can get information about the last crawl date and the site's index status (whether it is included in the index or not). From this page, you can also test your robots.txt file and discover if Googlebot is able to spider your site without encountering problems. Improperly written robots.txt files can block the search engines from indexing relevant content. From the Sitemaps tab on the My Sites page, you can view information about the Sitemaps you have uploaded to Google and view any errors that the spiders have encountered. Information includes the date that the sitemap was last submitted, as well as the date it was last downloaded by Google. You have the ability to delete any Sitemap and resubmit an updated version of a current Sitemap. Pay attention to the section that lists error codes, some of these could hinder the indexing of your site. Remember the goal of the Sitemaps protocol is to get your site indexed--errors in the document will get in the way of that. When presented with these powerful tools and data sets, many webmasters are simply overwhelmed and don't know where to begin or how to leverage the information to their advantage. The most asked questíons are about the XML feed. What is it? Do you have to have it? Will your site be indexed without it? As with most things Google, the answer is multipart. The Sitemaps protocol, which is supported by all three major engines, is merely an XML feed designed to help the engines discover and index all the pages of your Web site. The feed gives information about page creation, updates, and importance. If a page is very important to your site and is not indexed, the feed can help in getting that page spidered. The XML feed will not make your rankings better, except in that it might help the search engine find pages supporting your theme that it didn't previously know about. The Sitemap isn't a requirement for being indexed, it just makes it easier. Google states: A Sitemap provides an additional view into your site (just as your home page and HTML site map do). This program does not replace our normal methods of crawling the web. Google still searches and indexes your sites the same way it has done in the past whether or not you use this program. Sites are nevër penalized for using this service. If your site is already being crawled and included in the index, you probably don't need a Sitemap, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't still be using the webmaster tools to get a better idea of what Google sees when it crawls your site. Each tool is targeted to a different area. It should be emphasized that even if you do have a Sitemaps file, it does not replace the need for a physical site map on your Web site. Despite the similarity of names, each serves a distinctly different purpose. Google's Webmaster Guidelines suggest that you include a site map on your page for both users and search engine spiders. Statistics for Verified Sites To get the most value out of these tools, your site must be verified. Viewing your site the way Google sees it is often an enlightening experience and will alert you to errors Google has encountered while crawling your site. The problems most commonly found are often also easy to fix, such as 404 errors that redirect to return 200 Okay pages and confuse the search engine. Using the webmaster console can help you identify these problem areas and facilitate the spidering and indexing of your site. Query information and site analysis is available, giving you a brief snapshot of what Google finds your site relevant for, as well as how (and if) visitors are finding you. The entire console is very user–friendly, even for the most novice of site owners. Using the Webmaster tools can help your search engine optimization campaign by enabling you to make the most out of the vast information Google stores about your site. One of the reasons that webmasters love the console is that Google shows link data. Digging through the internal links that Google knows about can assist you in strengthening your site's architecture, ensuring that every page can be reached by a spiderable text link. Even more exciting is the external link data the tools provide. Want to know how many links to your site Google actually knows about? The tools allow you to get a much better look at your backlinks, though Google Engineer Matt Cutts warns that you shouldn't assume that every link you see reported counts for your site. Before this feature was included in the console, the only way to get a glimpse at known links was to use Google's link: search operator but that query was notorious for returning just a sampling of links and no one could say how large or small that sample might be. It's now possible to be much more accurate about back links and that kind of knowledge is vital to the success of your SEO project. If you haven't already incorporated Google's Webmaster Tools into your search engine optimization strategy, now is the time to do so. Google has made it clear that they want webmasters to pay attention to these metrics and there has nevër been a better time for you to get involved. For more information, tips, tricks and developments, chëck out the Official Google Webmaster Central blog . About The Author Susan Esparza sesparza@bruceclay.com is a senior writer at Bruce Clay, Inc.. Technorati Tags: Matt Cutts search engine optimization SEO sitemap webmaster central Labels: Matt Cutts, search engine optimization, SEO, sitemap, webmaster central Do you want to get the traffíc you deserve flooding into your website? Code optimization is an essential component of the search engine optimization process and if you aren't technically minded then it can be difficult to get your head round. This guide is meant for beginners and more advanced webmasters alike.A shallow knowledge of HTML coding is useful, however, it is not necessary. Optimizing your code can be done by simply opening your html document in a text editor and changing different parts as shown below. Follow these steps carefully and your code will become 100% search engine optimized and ready for promotion and link-building campaigns. The steps below assume you have chosen the keywords which you want to optimize the page code for. If you have not done that, go and do that now and return to this guide later. HTML Code Optimization The optimization of your HTML code for search engines is vital. It is the base of your SEO campaign. It must be optimized in a number of ways in order to improve the relevance of a chosen keyword. Follow the advice below as closely as possible. The closer the better and the higher your rank will be. Remember: Keywords are the words people will use in search engines. Including a keyword in your site content (and optimizing your site) will cause your site to be returned as a search result. You can choose to optimize your page for a keyword or a keyphrase (a number of related words, eg: 'free red hats'). Using a keyphrase is more advantageous (as discussed later) but for simplicity, I will refer to keywords AND keyphrases as just keywords. TIP: Try to optimize each page for just one keyword. This will stop each keyword competing against each other for weightings and you will rank higher for the chosen keyword. The TITLE Tag Location: just below the head tag TITLEWeb Promotion, Affilíate Marketing, SEO/TITLE, for example 1. The title tag should not contain any of the words Google disregards. These are words like 'and', 'not', 'a', 'the', 'about' etc which are too common for Google to take any notice of. Using these words will dilute the importance that your keyword is given in your title (if you put it in your title). These words are known as 'stop' words. 2. Include your keyword in the title of your page. Including other words in your title that are not your chosen keyword/s will be detrimental to your ranking. This is because it makes your keyword seem less relevant to the title of the page. This relevance is known as 'weíght'. The more weíght your keyword has in a certain criteria the better. 3. Don't include the name of your website in the title of your page: for example 'Share The Wealth – affilíate marketing'. This is because it will dilute the prominence of your keyword (in this example 'affilíate marketing'). It is tempting to include your site's name as it may look better, however it is not that important as people don't pay much attention to the title. The Meta tags Location: just below the title tag. Meta data appears as follows: meta name="Description" content="Free articles and guides on affilíate marketing and SEO" meta name="Keywords" content="Affilíate Marketing,SEO" 1. This is where you specify your keywords: meta name="Keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3" Also, weíght is given to how near your keyword is to the beginning of your keywords líst. So you should try to have your most important keyword in the place of 'keyword1' in the above example. meta name="Description" content="Free articles and guides on affilíate marketing and SEO" 1. The above line is where the description, shown in google results, is written. It goes after content=". Do not worry about keyword weighting in here as search engines do not take this into consideration anymore. The BODY of your HTML Once you have written the content of your page, you can begin SEO on it. Complete the page ready for publishing and then apply the following rules to it to ensure its optimized 100% for the top search engines. 1. Your keyword should appear in bold at least once on your page. This will show the search engines that the word, your keyword, is important to the subject of your page and so must be relevant to the keyword search performed by the search engine user. 2. Your keyword should have a weíght of 2% on your page. This is the ideal percentage as if it is too high a search engine may penalize your page for sp@mming. Sp@mming is a term used to describe the action of webmasters that trick search engine page ranking systems (SEPRS) into thinking they are relevant in order to get a high ranking. These pages will not usually be relevant at all and simply "cäsh in" selling advertising space with the high traffíc they receive. Sp@mming is increasingly becoming a thing of the past as the search engine page ranking algorithms become more sophisticated. To work out the percentage weíght your keyword has, visit www.live-keyword-analysis.com . 3. Use heading tags ( headingetc) and put your keyword into the heading. Again the usual weighting rules exist. Have your keyword as close to the beginning of the heading and have as few other words in the heading as possible. Position this heading as close to the top of your page as you can for increased relevance.4. Put your keyword in up to three of the alt attributes for images and include it in one of the first three alt image attributes in your code. Alt image attributes are the alt tags given to images in your code which can be seen if the image fails to load. These are great for hostíng your keyword as users cannot usually see them. Don't sp@m though, stick to three alt tags. Alt tags are used as follows: img src="imagename.gif" alt="alt-text-here" width="image-width" height="image-height" 5. Keep your page content between 100 and 1400 words. This is for a number of reasons, including the size of Google's page cache (amount of data from a page Google stores). If you have too much content, you could try splitting the page into two separate pages and perhaps having a 'page 2' link at the bottom of the content. 6. Your keyword should appear at the beginning of your content and at the end (The first and last 50 words) Code Optimization Checklist No stop words in your title tag Keyword included in title Website name not included in title Keyword in meta keywords líst Keyword placed as close to the beginning of the meta keywords líst as possible Keyword appears in bold at least once in the content Keyword has a 2% weíght Keyword is in the first heading tag and is at the top of the page content Keyword is in the first 50 words and last 50 words of the page Page content is between 100 and 1400 words Keyword is in one of the first three alt image attributes and is in three of them in total Tips and Advice Try to optimize each page for just one keyword. This will stop each keyword competing against each other for weightings and prominence and you will rank higher for the chosen keyword. Not every page of your site will be able to be optimized for every criterion. Don't worry; just try to hit each criteria as best you can. Sometimes you won't be able to achieve a content size of above 100 words: on a contacts page for example. Issues like this are of little importance as not every page will have a particular need for perfect optimization, because surfers will find contact information from a link shown on the home page. Constantly check your competition. You may not feel it is possible to get onto the first page on Google for a certain keyword/phrase. Choose a less contested keyword. About The Author Article by James Kinsley search engine optimization expert and web promotion specialist. Technorati Tags: SEO Labels: search engine optimization, SEO Good search engine optimization experts perform extensive keyword research and analysis prior to starting any SEO campaign. Much like PPC marketing, obtaining a large líst of related keywords gives a search marketer the opportuníty to select the most profitable and high traffíc terms. Without a large líst of keyword phrases, choices for optimization are slim and probabilities for success decline along with it.Armed with a good research tool (which is usually a paid version), a SEO collects a large subset of related terms in a líst and analyzes the competition levels for the ones with higher search traffíc first. It is important for web marketers to understand that keyword research tools are not perfect in their data by any means. This is because many of the search tools available gather data from meta search engines. Unless the search tool is directly linked to the actual search engine database and outputs data in it's entirety, there is always room for possible error since the data collection method is not perfect in itself. For search engines to provide direct access to this data without limitations would be any SEO's dream come true. This, however, is unlikely to happen because the potential for abuse is just too high. There are two ways keyword research tools may not report completely accurate data. First, your tool of choice may output incorrect daily or monthly search traffíc. Second, it may not líst other keywords that are actually being searched for. Just because the data isn't perfect doesn't mean it isn't useful. We can still deduce relative search traffíc strengths from the numbers given so you can feel reasonably safe, in general, when viewing traffíc potential on relative terms. Great SEOs, though, are not only looking for the most targeted and relevant search terms but are also seeking keywords and search phrases that have a decent chance of getting ranked in the search engines. Like any marketplace, there are gaps and opportunities which competent SEOs will seek out before expending a large amount of resources on optimizing similar good search phrases. This is because similar, yet relevant, search terms have varying levels of difficulty and competition levels. After collecting a large subset of related terms in a líst, a SEO analyzes the keyword competition levels for the ones with higher search traffíc first. For websites starting their optimization, it is highly recommended the internet marketer goes after the low-hanging fruit. Why? This simply means to quickly rank for terms with the least competition levels and reasonable traffíc volume. Many inexperienced to the SEO game, naturally lean towards the highest search traffíc terms first. This is the single biggest mistake newbies make and sets them up for failure before the SEO campaign even gets started. Let's say you sell diamond jewelry. An amateur would go for "diamond jewelry" as their first target since this keyword yields a higher number of searches. In most cases, however, the keyword which is the most intuitive is not the one to go after because it is the most generic term for that product. Rather than going after "diamond jewelry", you have a choice of related terms such as "black diamond jewelry", "blue diamond jewelry", "discount diamond jewelry", "blue diamond wedding jewelry" and so on. Of course, you'd generally only optimize for products you actually sell so as to íncrease salës conversion and not mislead your visitors. Thus, if you don't offër "blue diamond jewelry", you don't want to go after it unless your expertise as a diamond retailer tells you that black diamonds are far superior to blue diamonds and you are attempting to sway potential buyers of blue diamonds to black diamonds as a strategy. With a more straightforward approach to optimization, these search terms "black diamond jewelry", "blue diamond jewelry", and "discount diamond jewelry" show significantly lower search numbers relative to "diamond jewelry". These keyword phrases are considered tier two search terms. Jewelry and diamond jewelry are considered tier one search terms. For most niche markets, optimizing for more specific terms and directing the visitor to the related subpage of the website converts a whole lot better than general terms. Therefore, it is a great strategy to go ahead and optimize for these tier two keywords (after you've confirmed the competitiveness of the keyword search phrase). By building up traffíc for the a bígger basket of lesser competitive terms, you will be able to have the equivalent traffíc levels as if you were going after one or two difficult search terms. You'll reach your goal of getting higher search rankings faster and with less resources. There is also another benefit many fail to realize. Notice also that the terms above have the base term "diamond jewelry" in them. As an experienced SEO company, we have found that you are getting credít for the base term even though you aren't specifically going after it in your inbound anchor link text. Furthermore, in terms of business cashflow, it is going to be much easier to rank the lower search traffíc terms first and therefore start getting some sales to generate more profít that can be channeled into the tougher key phrases. Rather than hoping to rank a tougher search term which usually takes longer and costs more, it makes sense to generate profits that can be applied towards further aggressive Internet marketing and ensure that your pool of marketing funds don't dry up before getting higher search engine rankings. Once you reach the top ten rankings for the tier two or tier three search terms, your attempt to rank your website for tier one terms, jewelry and diamond jewelry or even gold jewelry, will be an easier climb to the top. We'll cover how to perform detailed keyword and competition analysis in part two of this article. In the meantime, here are some useful frëe online keyword tools for starters (search for these terms specifically and the top result will be what you're looking for): WordTracker Free Keyword Tool Google Adwords External Keyword Tool Overture Search Suggestion Tool More search engine optimization resources are available on our SEO tools page. About The Author Anthony Yap is the Phoenix SEO for http://www.SearchMarketingROI.com . They provide customized programs for online business. For local marketing,go to http://www.searchmarketingroi.com/Local_ Marketing.html To learn practical, up-to-date SEO tips, read his blog at http://www.anthony-yap.com . Technorati Tags: search engine optimization keyword research SEO PPC marketing opportunity success targeted relevant competition website internet Labels: SEO Transferring traffíc and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company.The Wall Street Journal wrote this article explaining how damaging a seemingly simple process of switching from .net to .com could be for Topix LLC. The author goes on to explain such a switch is usually fraught with ranking drops while the major search engines notice and respond to the changeover. The fact that switching addresses will cause problems is not news in the SEO world; however, I thought Topix.net's situation was a great opportuníty to review what one might expect when switching domains. Switching Shingles Switching a domain is tantamount to changing physical locations and it should be treated just as seriously. The following are the steps to take and consider when switching domains: 1. You must install a site wide 301 (permanent redirect) on your old domain to forward all human traffíc to the new domain and inform search engine spiders that your website has permanently moved to a new location. For information on how to implement a 301 redirect here is a great tutorial. 2. Google is the biggest player and likely the most significant driver of traffíc to your website. Keeping that in mind you will want to notify Google of your switchover as soon as possible by registering the new website within Google Webmaster Central and then submitting a fresh XML sitemap. Google representatives are very clear the only way to minimize the impact of a domain changeover is to give Google's automated system as much warning as possible to limit downtime. 3. Find the most significant inbound links that point to the old domain and selectively contact the site owners requesting a link update to the new domain. TIP: Discovering which sites to contact first can be done using a combination of top referrer statistics, and search engine backlink reports. I don't recommend taking this step unless you find a few sites that stand out as massive traffíc drivers as this process can be frustrating due to lack of response; after all, changing a backlink to your site is likely low on a webmaster's priority list. 4. Send out a press release far and wide explaining the move to the new domain. Feature the domain prominently in the release to begin the task of re-branding. 5. All email addresses will need to be forwarded to their respective addresses on the new domain. Ensure that anyone emailing the old address is forwarded to the new one BUT they should also receive an automated notice to change their contact records to reflect the new email. Leave these email forwards active for a short time to catch the most important emails and then turn them off and delete the old address accounts to avoid encouraging sp@mmers. 6. On the new domain don't forget to implement a 301 redirect for the "non-www" traffíc so they get forwarded to the preferred "www" version of the domain. For more information and background on this topic please visit the following tutorial "301 Redirect of Non-WWW to WWW URLs". 7. If you expect a severe drop in traffíc you can expect a drop in salës. In this regard you may want to ramp up or start pay per clíck marketing to minimize the damage to your bottom line. How Long Does a Domain Transition Take? Generally a popular website will experience the least amount of downtime because Google will take notice faster due to the many entry points (inbound links from news articles, etc.) this type of site usually has. It is also more to Google's benefit to ensure that a credible and well-trafficked website is kept high in Google's results to ensure users receive the best results possible. Using a popular website such as Topix.Net as an example, I would expect a 2-week to 1-month turn around at which time traffíc would be back to approximately 85% of what it was. Sites that are less popular will really need to do their homework and ensure they have informed Google in every way possible of the transition. The transition back to normal traffíc for sites that carefully transition their website should be in the realm of 2 to 6 months. "What If?" The Worst Case Scenario What should you do if your traffíc drops dramatically and after a few weeks or months it still has not measurably restored itself? Google actually recommends you post your issue on their online user support forum. Apparently Google engineers occasionally take pity and help out; maybe you will get lucky. I also recommend visiting the more authoritative search engine forums (such as Search Engine Watch, iHelpYou, etc.) and requesting help. There are a lot of incredibly talented SEOs on these forums that are happy to provide assistance. WARNING! If you must conduct a domain transition be sure to plan it during a historically slow time of year to minimize damages. For example, it would be a mistake for a B2C to switch domains before the Holiday Season rush. In Conclusion Do not switch your domain unless you have no other choice because no matter how popular your website is domain switchovers are far from enjoyable. After all, even losing a single week of significant traffíc for a popular site could cost many thousands or even millíons of dollars. On the flip side of the coin, less trafficked websites (i.e. Mom and Pop sites, small B2C websites, etc.) usually experience a longer wait time so they experience a different type of pain. Fortunately, you now know there are ways to mitigate the potential harm to your bottom line, just don't forget to follow the rules and your switchover will be a lot more effective and ultimately less painful. About The Author Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. Ross is a search engine optimization and placement expert with over 9 years of marketing experience and is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS). Blending his experience in the art of web design and search engine optimization, Ross offers a unique and informed perspective on obtaining top search engine placements. Ross can be reached at ross@stepforth.com. Labels: domain, marketing, pay per click, search engines, SEO, traffic, website inWhen we talk about the relationship between SEO and web design, it's usually the technical part of the website design art that's relevant, not the visual part (though certain aspects of visual design have their impact on SEO/SEM, as will be shown below).One of the latest trends in the SEO industry is to put more and more emphasis on quality web design in the overall SEO process. If you aim at a long term success online, you need to know exactly how design and SEO integrate. Make Your Design Work For You Good website design is like a foundation for the building of your future SEO success. The more aspects you think about before you start working on your site, the fewer obstacles you will meet later when you start looking into SEO, web promotion, ROI and other important aspects of your web presence. Good website design includes such things as internal linking structure (i.e. navigation), folder structure, URL generation and naming conventions, coding, page download time, Usability and a lot more. If your website is interactive and uses additional dynamic functionality and tools (e.g. a newsletter subscription förm with built-in verification and unsubscribe features, or e-commerce functionality), you will need to make sure that all of your client-side and server-side scripts work flawlessly and are not open to abuse of any sort. And of course, the back-end of the website (content management) should be well thought out prior to starting. If You Are Going To Redesign Your Site If you need to redesign an existing site (as opposed to building a new one from scratch), you will encounter even more problems and you will need to take these into account to ensure success. One of the most important decisions you will have to make is whether to keep the old URLs or to restructure the site and move to new, more SE-friendly, URLs. Of course, if the URLs in your old site are already SE-friendly, the decision is simple: you need to preserve them. This way, you won't waste the fruits of your previous achievements; indeed, the improvements you make to your site during the redesign will eventually help you to enhance them. But what do you do if your old URLs are dynamic with a lot of parameters in the query strings and are unreadable and confusing from a usability point of view, adding nothing to your SEO? Your pages may still have rankings in the SEs, which you would certainly like to preserve. If you reproduce the same ugly URLs in the new version of the site, you'll achieve this, but make further progress impossible. If you move to better URLs (and then 301-redirect old pages to new ones on a per-page basis), you will probably löse your rankings for a short period of time, but benefit in the long run. The answer, in this case, is no longer so obvious. It will require a lot of statistical analysis, followed by brainstorming sessions involving your company and, if relevant, your client. All interested parties should be well informed of the existing options, as well as the benefits and the complications (risks) each of those options involves. Notice though that if most of your search engine traffíc is directed to your home page, then you have nothing to löse and should stick to the second option. Another question that arises when a website is about to be redesigned is the choice of a content management system (CMS). Of course, if the site is relatively small (with less than, say, 1,000 pages), and you are ready to support it using manual coding and an FTP client, you won't need a CMS at all. The only automation necessary in this case is either PHP (ASP, JSP) includes or SSI (if supported). They will save you a lot of time when you need to edit a repeated block of code (like a navigation menu bar). A change made once will be reflected on all pages automatically. But if the site is large and requires complicated dynamic functionality (like newsletters, an automatically updated RSS feed, a shopping cart or customised data tracking), or if your client doesn't have any HTML knowledge but needs to update the content regularly, then a CMS is the only way to go. What is a SE-friendly CMS? In order to be SE-friendly, a CMS should at the very least comply with the following criteria. URL-generation flexibility. You need to be able to choose how your URLs will look, including file and folder names, file name extensions and conventions. A CMS that forces you to use dynamic URLs is definitely a bad one. Also, a good CMS won't generate session IDs for guest users and search engine spiders. Title and meta information management. You should be able to assign a unique title tag and unique description and keyword meta tags to every single page, or set up a pattern that will generate this information dynamically. HTML management. The code generated by the CMS should be valid, or the software should at least provide opportunities to make it valid, if you have the necessary knowledge. For example, if the HTML editor used in the CMS converts all HTML tags into capital letters or removes quotation marks in attributes, you will nevër be able to validate your code for XHTML 1.0 or XHTML 1.1, which are now preferred coding standards. CSS management. The CMS should provide a CSS editor to professional web designers who know how to write CSS styles, and a smart CSS generator to those who can't handle the task manually. Robots.txt management. You should be able to edit your robots.txt file without an FTP client. If there is a default text for the robots.txt, it should be a valid default robots.txt, not some gibberish. The best choice for the valid default robots.txt should be this: User-agent: * Disallow: This file defines what the bots are allowed to crawl and what they should stay away from, and provides yet another reason to use static URLs rather than dynamic. When your URLs don't contain dynamic parameters in the query string, it is much easier to control them in the robots.txt file on a per-page basis. If your site has dynamic URLs, you might want to look into mod_rewrite to make them static. Things to Avoid Yet another important consideration is knowing what to avoid. If you keep the following rules in mind when you design your site from scratch or redesign it, life will be much easier for you, but if you ignore them, your web presence will be affected detrimentally. Over-bloated code. The more HTML tags and other stuff you have in your code, the longer it will take for each page to load up in the browser - and the harder it will be for a search engine to extract the useful (content) part of it. JavaScrípt redirects and JavaScrípt-based navigation. JavaScrípt is not parsed by most search engines. There are rumours around that Google is starting to follow JavaScrípt links, but that's probably just one of their newest experiments that will nevër turn into anything serious (like their earlier attempts at reading text embedded in Flash). If you want your navigation links to be spiderable, use plain text links with "href" attributes. JavaScrípt redirects is a technique loved by doorway creators, so if you use it you can inadvertently get yourself banned, or at best make your site utterly SE-unfriendly, especially if you redirect the home page. Incidentally, your home page's URL should always end with a "/"; for other purposes, the only option is the 301 redirect. Disallowing the whole site via an incorrect robots.txt or using an invalid robots.txt file. Remember: User-agent: * Disallow: is the correct code if you wish to allow all pages to be crawled by all spiders and bots, but using User-agent: * Disallow: / means they will ignore your whole site. When your whole site is dropped, re-indexing can give you a headache, as the engines sometimes have problems with crawling sites quickly. The Net grows daily, and even Google (which used to be the fastest at crawling websites) has seemed to behave oddly since the start of the Bigdaddy update. Google is also very sensitive to invalid robots.txt files. If your robots.txt is incorrectly written, it can get your site partially or even completely de-listed. We recommend that you read the Web Robots FAQ and validate your robots.txt file to avoid unnecessary complications. Too much graphical content. Graphics (especially when animated) and Flash slow down the page's download significantly. That's more of a usability issue than an SEO issue, but usability is a part of SEM, as it affects ROI and conversions. So do test your pages on a slow dial-up connection, and if it takes too much time to download, lighten it. Believe it or not, a lot of people around the world still have no option but to use a slow dial-up connection. Making your site worse than it was. This of course only applies if you are redesigning a site. If your previous version successfully validated for W3C standards, don't break it; better still, try moving from HTML 4.01 to XHTML, or from table-based coding to CSS-based positioning (if you feel able, of course, otherwise it can be a frustrating experience). If your navigation was handy and intuitive, don't make it more confusing in the new version; better still, add more navigation options that the previous version lacked. In other words, let your redesign be a step forwards, not a step backwards. Visual Design and SEO As stated above, SEO is more than a technical discipline; the visual design has its implications, too. Too often, visual design and SEO are perceived as a mutual sacrifice. Graphic designers often think websites exist to demonstrate their artistic abilities, and don't care much about content. SEOs, on the contrary, would prefer to keep graphics to a minimum, thus increasing the SE-friendliness of the pages and minimising the code bloat. Visual designers prefer to create menus in images, so they can use some fashionable "blurred" font or whatever; it won't be long before an SEO then comes along and yells: "What have you done? I need text here!" "Your content spoils the look of my design" seems to be an unwinnable argument in our industry. Sooner or later, the parties usually find a solution that suits them both, but too often the compromise leaves everyone unhappy. And yet there is no need for any sacrifice at all if the designer and the SEO are ready to cooperate from |
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