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Yahoo Web Analytics Comes To Light

2008-10-09T06:13:34Z

Real-time data, gradual rollout

It's time for data hounds to start drooling. Jerry Yang still isn't ready to toss a Google Analytics competitor to every person who asks, but this afternoon, his company did announce that some people are being given access to the new Yahoo Web Analytics.
Yahoo's work on the product dates back to its acquisition of IndexTools. About 13,000 small business customers, along with an unknown number of advertisers and developers, will be the first to see the fruits of its labor. Then, a rollout is planned to continue through next year.

As for what's on the table, a fresh homepage says that Yahoo Web Analytics "provides real-time insight into visitor behavior on your website. With powerful and flexible tools and dashboards, Yahoo! Web Analytics helps online marketers and website designers enhance the visitor experience, increase sales and reduce marketing costs."

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Book Review: "Website Optimization"

2008-10-08T14:29:29Z

Since my last column nothing dramatic has happened in my life. This is precisely how I would like life to continue. Just me, chained to my desk, head down, getting on with stuff. That said, being based on the 55th floor of the Empire State Building, I have moved my desk away from the window and closer to the door. You don't want to tempt fate, now do you?
Slowly but surely I'm having my reference library shipped over from the U.K. as I continue to scribble away at my new tome. Unfortunately, it means one or two books that I wanted to mention got lost in the transfer.
A month or so back, I received a review copy of a book called "Website Optimization" by Andrew B. King. I was immediately drawn to the title because it specifically describes what SEO (define) practitioners actually do. We optimize Web sites -- not search engines.
I gave it the usual quick scan and decided it was worth more time. The fact that it received praise from Internet pioneer and Google VP Vint Cerf and the forward was written by my pal Jim Sterne certainly helped. The book was then promptly lost in the shift.
There's quite a lot I like about the book. But it also perpetuated quite a few SEO myths, such as the Google sandbox. However, the book's overall composition is excellent. For a start, it's not an SEO book per se. But there's a whole lot of stuff you'll learn about SEO if you're new to the game.
And for those who feel well versed in SEO, you'll find plenty of useful information on PPC (define) optimization, conversion-rate optimization (the book also received praise from fellow ClickZ columnist and conversion guru, Bryan Eisenberg), and Web site success metrics.
The book has a strong technical leaning with plenty of coding examples; part two of the book focuses on Web page, CSS (define), and AJAX (define) optimization.
King has pulled in a talented crew of contributors from the various disciplines, such as Danny Sullivan on search marketing and Eric T. Peterson on the analytics.
As you'd expect, the SEO section begins with best practice information. This chapter offers 10 steps to overcoming the most common barriers to high rankings. Personally, I'd rather that people didn't set expectations by talking about achieving "high rankings." Most best practice advice actually relates to overcoming barriers to crawling. And as I've been heard to say on so many occasions: Getting indexed is one thing. Getting a rank is another.

The PPC section is actually written by the folks at Pure Visibility, a digital marketing agency. This chapter focuses on tips for boosting ROI (define) on paid search campaigns as well as optimizing ad copy and landing pages. This is effectively followed by a case study about Pure Visibility client Body Glove International.

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Google Chrome: One Month Later

2008-10-07T09:28:14Z

Earlier this week, Profy.com’s Svetlana Gladkova sent an email reminding me that Google’s Chrome Browser was one month old. How time flies, and how quickly we forget: or at least I did. After my initial few posts and thoughts, Google Chrome has fallen off my attention radar since it is not available for my preferred computing platform – OSX X. I typically divide my browsing time between Safari and Camino.

I have checked it out occasionally by booting it up on Windows running via Parallels on my MacBook. Apparently, I am part of the median: Svetlana has been tracking the usage using Google Analytics, Clicky and Net Applications has seen a gradual decline in the usage. Gone is the download Chrome link from the Google home page. She points out that there are some fixes the browser needs and as a result Google might be quietly taking a step back. (Related Post: Why Chrome isn’t a killer browser just yet.)

Svetlana is right in being cautious on the chances of the Google browser, though I am not sure how to view the fact that it now accounts for about 5.6% of the traffic to GigaOM and now ranks as the fourth most usage browser. Across our network, here Chrome’s share of total visits by site: 6.13% (jkOnTheRun), 5.78% (OStatic), 5.06% (WebWorkerDaily), 3.09% (NewTeeVee), 2.43% (Earth2Tech) and 2.24% (TheAppleblog). [If you want to share information about your website/service in comments, it would be pretty cool.]

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en tips to improve your search marketing results

2008-10-02T07:34:11Z

No matter what type of products you sell, it’s increasingly important to have your website appear on the pertinent search engine results pages. If you can be found easily, your credibility and your potential for business will increase. A good position on Google can open up whole new markets for you.

There are two types of search marketing that you need to think about: pay per click (PPC) and organic or free traffic. With PPC, your ads appear on the right-hand side of search results or at the top under “sponsored links”; with organic search you appear in the middle of the page, with the other unpaid listings.

Ranking well on organic search can be difficult and take months. So it is hardly surprising that many merchants are drawn to paid search. The model of paying only when someone clicks on your ad not only makes sense but is a welcome change from the world where we know 50 percent of our advertising is wasted, but not which 50 percent.

What’s more, PPC can help you get to grips with the much more difficult world of organic search. Savvy online marketers realise that these two types of search complement each other and as a result are making greater returns on investment by exploiting the synergies between them.

Keys to content

Sending PPC traffic to your home page will produce a poor ROI. Your home page is not specific to the ad that generated the click and so will not convert well. To make PPC really work, you’ve got to have specific content that is designed to have the highest possible chance of turning your prospect into a paying customer. That means providing relevant keyword-rich content with a clear call to action.

With organic search, the approach is different. You’ll want to start with keywords that you know are popular, create content around those keywords and optimise your copy. It can be a time-consuming and expensive business. Your content then needs to be indexed by the search engines, and only after a number of weeks will you see results. Once you do, however, you should continue to reap traffic from your efforts for years afterward.

When determining which keywords to focus your optimisation efforts on, look to those that have performed well for your PPC campaigns. They have the best potential to rank well on organic search, which means you can then reduce your paid search costs on those particular words. Furthermore, people trust organic results about twice as much as they do paid results, so your conversion rates should also increase.

Top five tips for PPC

1) Get started today. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll learn how to make money from PPC. So go to AdWords.Google.com and set up an account. Then set yourself a daily test budget, be it £20 a day or £100. Don’t expect to make money at the start, but you should build up your understanding and experience over a month or so.

2) Test everything. The great thing about PPC is that you can see the results almost immediately. Try various keywords, headlines, body copy, price points and offers, then see how the changes and variations increase or decrease revenue. You must always be inquisitive: The quickest route to failure with PPC is to set it up, then leave it alone.

3) Don’t always look for the immediate sale, rewarding as that might be. Offer your prospects something in return for their email address and permission for you to send them product information. Think about a free catalogue, an informative guide or a special offer to persuade people to sign up. The list you build as a result can be a source of revenue for years to come.

4) Always look to expand your list of money-making keywords. That means not assuming you know the words that people use when they search. You must conduct methodical research in order to be sure. Your potential customers will always surprise you.

5) Obsess about the results of your campaigns. PPC provides great tools for analysing data. These have been built to help businesses make money, so use them. Your knowledge and the effectiveness of your promotions will grow.

Top five tips for organic search

1) Don’t get seduced by good looks. Just because a website looks good doesn’t mean that it is good or that it will perform well on search engines. Most web designers are not search engine experts, and it is unfair to think of them as such. Some of the things designers love doing may be really cool but can hurt your search engine performance. Likewise, some of the stuff search engine experts suggest may get you up the results page but turn off the people who arrive at your site. You’ve got to take the responsibility yourself, understand what is going on and get these two elements working together.

2) Create content around your most popular keywords. A search engine takes the phrases that people enter into a search box and scours its indexes for the best matching pages. So if you don’t use the words that your potential customers use, you will have no chance of coming up in their search results. So find out your most popular keywords and use them in your website copy.

3) Get into the habit of publishing web content regularly. You can’t have a successful website without written content. Good content will be of interest to your potential customers, give search bots material they can index and send traffic to and attract links and media attention. Make sure that your web designers create a content management system for you that allows you to create web pages yourself without getting a designer to create everything. Set yourself a deadline for writing content—say, one article of 300-600 words every fortnight, or every week, or even every day—and stick to it. Whatever frequency you decide, be consistent and determined. Treat every piece of content as an investment in your business, an investment that will continue to bring you new customers and revenue in the future.

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Boost Sales with Google SEO Tools

2008-09-30T07:52:45Z

As search engines have gotten better at discovering web content in many forms, manually submitting to them has become less of a focus. But content and distribution platforms continue to expand, and as they do so, the need for manual search engine submission remains an important, if changing, option.

Of course, Google is still the king of search engines (some would even say the whole game, but I’m not one of them), and making sure that the search king sees all the attributes of an ecommerce website is important. To that end, it's a good idea for ecommerce web masters and website owners to understand—and hopefully take advantage of—the changes Google recently made to its content submission webpage.

Google already offered many submission options, some more easy to understand than others—the specific purpose of each tool wasn’t always clear. Now Google has decided to reorganize those submission interfaces. Not only does this make it easier to understand these submission processes, for many it may also bring to light Google submission services that were previously undiscovered.

A review of what the updated Google site submission page offers now may be helpful. As represented by the graphic above, the new organization offers four entry options into Google; web, local, media, and items for sale. Let’s review each of them:

Web—This contains two of the basic tools every ecommerce site should be using to “increase your visibility by submitting and optimizing your website for Google search." These are "Add Your URL," which is the most basic submission tools, and Webmaster Tools, which is itself a set of extremely useful tools, including traffic and search optimization aids. I occasionally get new clients who are not aware of Google Webmaster Tools, and on day one, I focus on getting them to sign up and start using it. You won’t feel like you wasted time.

Local—If your ecommerce site has brick-and-mortar entities associated with it, the Local Business Center and Mapplet will be helpful in submitting information for local results in Google. Results in Google maps are more important than ever with the advent of blended search results (results that include, among other things, map results).

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'I'm Google's Third Founder'

2008-09-25T07:03:20Z

Who is Hubert Chang and what does he have to do with Google? Chang has emerged from obscurity this week with the audacious claim that he helped launch the search giant in 1997 along with acknowledged co-founders Sergy Brin and Larry Page.

Huang posted his story on the video sharing site Vimeo and it was picked up by the Web site Weberence. It spread virally from there, even to YouTube, a Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) property.

But far from adding another legitimate chapter to Google's storied history, the video leaves many questions unanswered.

In the video, Chang said he met Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani in the summer of 1996 while studying for a PhD at New York University. Motwani, later introduced him to Brin and Page who were students at Stanford.

Huang claims he helped Brin and Page come up with the PageRank algorithm which was the basis for Google's search engine. He also said they all agreed on the kind of corporate culture the company should have.

InternetNews.com asked Google for a statement on Chang's claims and if Brin and Page acknowledge knowing him. The company's e-mail response is as follows:

"Though many people were involved with Google in its early days, it has been well documented over the past decade that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in September 1998."

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SEO ethics & what not to do! - “Black Hat SEO”

2008-09-23T07:21:10Z

Proper SEO and SEM techniques are often things that marketing managers have to learn themselves. They certainly weren’t teaching it when I graduated college back in 2005. No matter how much we research or how hard we try, it’s all too easy to find ourselves in some sticky situations by doing things we never knew were wrong. I’m talking of course, about Black Hat SEO practices. Here’s a list of things (in alphabetical order) everyone should avoid in order to keep their website from being banned from every major search engine out there. You’ll notice that a lot of ideas listed below are simply a matter of good ethics or common sense, but just in case you didn’t get the memo…

Astro-Turfing
Don’t launch a fake PR campaign or create a social networking upheaval based on false information just to generate traffic to your website.

Celebrity Look-A-Likes
When someone posts blogs, or creates blogs and forums under the name of someone significant. By “significant” I mean either a celebrity or someone who is well recognized in their industry. This celebrity impersonator will usually post comments or blogs that are damaging to a competitor. A less illegal, but certainly just as immoral act would be if an industry guru posted discouraging comments on their competitor’s site anonymously to ultimately drive traffic back to their own website.

Cloaking
Another form of misrepresentation. It’s when you are Showing one set of keywords and content to spiders and bots and a separate set of content to visitors.

Code Swapping
Other wise known as the “old switcharoo.” This is when companies take a top ranking page URL (usually one they’ve purchased) and swap it around so that it shows a different page that benefits their business. This is almost always a temporary fix, so it doesn’t make much sense to swap code if you don’t need to. Most companies have legitimate reasons to swap around their code if they are changing their business model or even owners. However, swapping code for the purposes of duping search engines is against the rules.

Doorway Site
Similar to gateway sites, but instead of having a link or redirection tool that the user follows, the user actually never even sees the doorway site. It’s just a fake page used to trick spiders into indexing the main page higher up on the SE.

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5 Web Lessons From Google's Analytics Guru

2008-09-19T03:27:15Z

Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s Avinash Kaushik offered a series of tips -- squeezed in between an impressive series of one-liners -- for how Web analytics professionals and those driving Web businesses must evolve in a Web 2.0 world. Kaushik, who describes himself as an author, blogger, and analytics evangelist -- delivered his insights at a Web 2.0 expo New York session.

Here's a rundown:

1. The critical importance of competitive intelligence and the Web's role in helping companies assemble it. "The Web is the best competitive intelligence tool in the world," Kaushik says. He likens the failure to use such data to driving a car at 90 miles an hour with the windshield painted black, then scraping off the paint and realizing "you're going 90 but everyone else is going 220 and you're going to die." He urges Web managers to leverage some of the wide array of tools on the market, most of which are free. That was a not-very-subtle plug for Google's own analytics tools, probably the only downside to a very engaging presentation.

2. Use English, not data dumps, when trying to get top-level backing for Web initiatives and in reporting on whether they worked or they didn't. A clearer way to describe the "bounce rate" at your site? "I came, I puked, I left." Reports can best be understood -- and leave the least room for interpretation -- when individual items are coded in green (good) and red (sucks). Yes, Kaushik likes the words "sucks" and "puke."

3. Move away from page-view oriented analyses of performance to event logging. A few examples: analyze the top 20 pages on your site and their bounce rate (a.k.a., something people are puking on instantly). Look at keywords that have delivered 20% higher traffic over the last 7 days, as well as keywords that have delivered 20% lower traffic over the last 7 days. Focus on business goals, not data points. His key message: most top 10 lists rarely change, and offer little real insights into the "events" that are actually driving your business.

4. Listen to the voice of the customer. Kaushik recommends simple three-question surveys that ask: Why are you here? Were you able to complete your desired task? And if you weren't able to complete your task, why not? Respondents' write-in answers can be incredibly helpful.

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How To Drastically Increase Your Traffic Volume Through Traffic Exchanges

2008-09-16T08:48:25Z

Essentially, traffic exchange websites allow you and thousands of others to earn credits (and sometimes cash) by having your website advertised in a pool with everyone else in the exchange. By having your website in the rotation, it is required that you surf through the rotation and look at other people’s websites. In doing so, everyone else is required to view others' sites as well, meaning you will be getting a whole new traffic base.

As these websites have modified and upgraded in recent years, there are more benefits to you than ever before. Many upholstery cleaning charlotte newer traffic exchanges allow you to purchase hundreds of thousands of hits for a minute price. This allows you to forego the internet surfing process and focus on reeling in traffic from other routes.

Depending on the exchange website you go through, there are various perks within each website. For instance, some allow you to sell or trade your credits for cash, which is beneficial if you want to invest in paid advertising amp; upholstery cleaners Another benefit to some websites is that there are games to keep you entertained if you do decide to surf through the websites.

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25 Outdated SEO Terms & Tactics vs Their Modern Alternatives

2008-09-15T07:43:30Z

Many webmasters and website owners fail to notice the fundamental changes the web has taken in recent years. People still waste time with meta keywords tags, obsessing about PageRank and measuring keyword density for highly artificial sounding page copy.

Get real, most of the old school website optimization tactics are completely useless, sometimes even harming your website. Many SEO tactics have changed, others have been replaced. Some new methods have sprung up in places where obsolete ways of tweaking websites or building links have left a void.

Some terms are even meaningless by now so that you have to change your mindset completely.

keyword density/stuffing - killer content creation
Back in the days the more you mentioned a keyword (keyword density) the better you performed in the search results. It was long ago. For years it’s the other way around. You create highly contentious and linkable killer content to get popular with users and the links push you in the search results, even if your keyword is mentioned just a few times.

PageRank optimization - authority links
Some people really say “PageRank optimization”. PageRank optimization is like Pen** enlargement. Bigger does not mean better performance. Recommendations by respectable websites still count but the simple fact that you are linked there often is worth more that the PageRank that gets passed.

metatag optimization - tagging/folksonomy
Like in the above example this is a term that was always disproportionally focusing on one aspect. This aspect is nowadays almost meaningless. The meta keywords tag can be dropped altogether. If you want to add keywords to your page, try tags or even better folksonomy (tagging by many people collectively) to enrich your content in the visible content area.

SEO copywriting for spiders - SEO copywriting for users
Are you interested in “SEO Services SEO Company India Search Engine Optimization (SEO) India”? Probably not, that’s why you are reading a “SEO blog” offering “Internet Marketing News” from the “UK”.

article marketing - business blogging
Article marketing was big when it was important to get many links from different websites and IPs. Duplicate content issues, low quality and other disadvantages made it less of an viable option. At the same time business blogging has really taken shape. It works far better for generating links than article marketing. Of course it’s a lot more reputable.

search engine submission - xml sitemaps, pinging
It’s amazing how some services still offer search engine submission (to hundreds of search engines sometimes). While in most countries Google is basically a monopoly, rarely more than 5 search engines matter at all. Three of them enable you to use XML sitemaps to “submit”. While this is a viable way of submitting to search engines, it’s still better to ping Google at it’s BlogSearch with a blog post instead to get instantly indexed.

checking rankings - checking 33 other metrics
Some people obsess about ranking as much as about PageRank (some even mix up both terms). Rankings differ though depending on the place you search from and your personal search history among others. So in short two people in most cases won’t see the same search results. You should consider measuring some of these above linked 33 website success metrics instead.

reciprocal linking - linking out
No, the modern version of reciprocal linking are not three way links schemes or something. As long as the link swapping works artificially on the premise of barter it’s outdated. It takes much more time and effort to attempt to find suitable link partners than just linking out to the blogs in your niche you favor. While not everybody will link back some will if your content is a king and not just a peasant. Some people even will link you even more than you linked them in many instances. These links will be perfectly natural too so they will count more than artificial exchanged links.

paid links/text link ads - sponsoring, charity
Some people just can’t get sex for free. It’s the same with webmasters. They want it now without the hassle, they still want to pay. Link love that is paid seldom works out in the long run, but there are ways to get valid links with a monetary investment. It’s indirect though. Sponsoring and charity done right will be great for both the artists, activist or non-profits receiving the funds and the company supporting them financially.

forum signature - homepage link on active social media profiles
Many people still use forums, especially forums that allow signatures that “pass PageRank”. Sometimes the signature is longer than the forum post itself and Google has taken this “SEO tactic” into account years ago. On the other hand there are lots of social media sites who let you add a link to your homepage in the profile. When you are contributing consistently to these your profile page gains more and more authority, also for Google.

footer links - content links
Just a few years ago people used to stuff their page footers with useless links to their link exchange partners. Bad news if you still do that: Google discounts those in most cases. What you need are content links. So make people write about you in their blogs by providing exceptional resources, up to the minute news or a unique analysis and opinion not repeating what everybody else said.

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Google: Chrome browser no Trojan horse

2008-09-04T09:21:53Z

Google this week surprised the Web world by releasing a new browser dubbed Chrome, with speculation quickly hitting a fever pitch as to what the search giant was “really” after with its ploy.

The most obvious goal – a head-on attack on Microsoft’s still almost 80% browser share – may be the most straightforward guess. But more insidious goals – such as secretly piping user data back into the Googleplex to aid in its searches and ad targeting – quickly gained steam in the blogosphere as well.
To address the “Google conspiracy-theorist demographic,” Google’s Matt Cutts, a popular blogger and well-known expert on search engine optimization (SEO) issues, took it up on himself to answer the “tough questions about privacy and how/when Google Chrome communicates with google.com.”

It’s an important issue because, as Google grows, information *about* users is just as important as access to those users themselves for the search and advertising giant. Negotiations over access to customer data are reportedly at the center of ongoing talk of a mobile search deal between Google and Verizon.

According to Cutts, if a user is just surfing around, that information does not go back to Google.com. However, if a user types in a search in the browser address bar – built to simultaneously handle URL requests and search requests from the same box – the browser will talk to the search service to return the best results. This feature is optional, however; users can even set it up to query other search engines, such as those from rivals Yahoo or Microsoft, Cutts noted.

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The future of search may be personalized, but what about your privacy?

2008-09-03T07:44:17Z

Pandia takes a look at how the search engines may use your web surfing habits and other data to fine tune your search results.

Let’s admit it: Even though the search engine companies do a lot to improve their offerings, there has not been any radical innovations in the search engine field for a long time.

The basic presentation of results remains for all practical purposes the same (one long list of links) and the search algorithm that produces the results relies on a mix of on page and inbound link analysis.

That means that the selection and ordering of sites is based on the content of the page (whether the page contains words relevant to the query) and the number and quality of links pointing to the relevant page.

For several years now the search industry has discussed the possibility of making use of personal search habits for producing better search results. What are the results?

Google personalized search

If you, for instance, make use of Google’s various services (mail, newsreader, docs, bookmarks, search history, search result clicks, personalized home pages), Google should be able to use that information to develop a personal profile of your interests.

Using that profile, the company may — for instance — be able to determine whether you are looking for big cats or cars when searching for “jaguar”, or whether you are more likely to look for shopping sites rather than informational sites.

Google has been experimenting with this for a while.

When you’re signed in to your Google Account, Google will try to get you more relevant, useful search results, recommendations and other personalized features.

Google says: “For example, if you use Google Bookmarks or Google Web History, you’ll get more targeted search results and recommendations for videos or gadgets.”

You no longer have to sign up for personalized results at Google. You will get them automatically. All that is required is that you are logged into your Google account.

However, so far the personalized results are not significantly different from the non-personalized ones. The improvement of search engine results is negligible.

The fact that Google is now testing a search engine result voting system may indicate that the info gathered from search history etc. is not enough to help Google determine what are your likes and dislikes.

Using the computer platform as input

In a comment to the printed version the Norwegian Computerworld Technology Director Mikael Svenson of the Norwegian enterprise search company Intellisearch argues that search tools will take the applications into considerations when determining what a search query is about.

To give one example: If you are searching on a Mac, a search for “Leopard” is more likely to mean Apple’s operating system than if you are searching on a PC.

Semantic search

Harald Botnevik, the leader of Yahoo’s research unit in Norway, says:

“We are facing many challenges. The amount of information available online is increasing rapidly, at the same time as traffic and the number of users is going up rapidly. It is therefore important to find the documents that are most important for the searcher. This is one of the aspects we are trying to improve.”

This is why Yahoo! is working on so-called semantic search.

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5 Tools to Visualize Page Outlinking Tactics

2008-08-28T14:48:00Z

I love playing with visualizing tools because they allow to see what you might have missed exploring a table or a graph. This time I have compiled the list of tools that show various outlinking tactics and characteristics.

1. SearchStatus or SEOquake FireFox extensions both visualize on-page nofollow attribute usage by highlighting (or striking through) links that use rel=”nofollow”:

2. Iwebtool Visual PageRank (as the name suggests) visualizes on-page internal toolbar PageRank distribution plus it shows external links and links using rel=”nofollow”:

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Three Tips for Making Your Site Sell

2008-08-27T06:43:59Z

So you've got your site up. Now what? You need to drive traffic, grow your opt-in list, make sales and work on your search-engine optimization. The list seems endless.

Step back for a minute and realize it's not possible to do everything at once. Once you've built your Web site, the first thing you should do is make your sales process watertight.

There's no point spending a ton of cash on pay-per-click ads to drive targeted traffic to your site if none of those visitors buys anything.

Follow this three-point sales action plan before you spend a bundle on attracting visitors.

1. Get your sales copy in top shape

You've got less than five seconds to persuade people to stay on your Web site, so your headline has to grab them and compel them to read on. The best headlines tell visitors they've found exactly what they're searching for and make them curious enough to keep reading.

But don't let your readers slip through your fingers once you've grabbed their attention with a hot headline.

Sales copy is what turns visitors into customers. So make sure it guides people through a streamlined process that:

identifies with their problem and builds your credibility;
engages them -- and explains why you can help;
tells them how they'll benefit from your product;
overcomes any objections they may have;
compels them to take action -- and tells them exactly what to do.

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Effective Contextual Search Management

2008-08-22T09:00:02Z

This session looks at the way publishers can generate revenue by carrying contextual ads offered by major networks and effective tactics for managing paid search in the contextual advertising arena. You'll hear from publishers delivering ads and those who manage contextual campaigns.
Moderator:

Gregg Stewart, SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing
Speakers:

David Szetela, CEO, Clix Marketing
Cynthia Tillo, Senior Product Manager of Advertising Services, Adobe Systems
Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com

Gregg Stewart: First up we have David Szetela, he's SEW's expert in content advertising.

David: Thanks Gregg. I write a column called profitable PPC that hopes to teach you everything about PPC. The contextual column I write is based on a lot of research and interviews at the bar with a lot of Google and Yahoo people. The available click inventory in the content network is growing at a much faster pace than in search. There is a lot less competition in the content network so if you are faced with rising click costs in search you should definitely switch to content advertising.
So the subtitle of this presentation is "content network doesn't really suck as much as people think it does". So why do content advertisers lose money?

1. The ads appear on irrelevant pages and they get bad clicks (low conversions rates). But my theory is that people will click on anything regardless of relevancy. So they get clicks, but no conversions.

2. The ads don't distract attention from site content – people are not looking for your ad so the ads need to distract attention from the content.

3. By default when you create a Google Adwords campaign, search and content are blended (shows image of Adwords campaign settings set up screen). Always uncheck the content network box for search campaigns and vice versa.

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7 Proven Ways to get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & then Convert

2008-08-21T04:40:19Z

Learn the seven proven ways to get your website on page one organically and how to dramatically increase your conversion once you get there. Join Internet marketing guru Shawn Moore as he explains the secrets that he has discovered over his 11 years in the industry. Have your website generate comments like this: "Since we re-wrote our website in 2006, our sales have continued to grow at an alarming rate. Our lead count was up by 137% on the same period last year. Our contract signings grew by 608% and our conversion rate increased 40% on the same period last year."

Speakers:
Shawn Moore, President & CEO, ThinkProfits.com
Note: This is a sponsored session.

During this session, you will learn the powerful strategies to give you an edge, and learn the seven ways it worked for Thinkprofits over the past 12 years, for hundreds of websites. Disclaimer: These tactics are by no means the only ways to achieve these results, and just represent the strategies used by Thinkprofits.

Google's business model: We're starting with the basics. Business is generated from keyword sales from Google and buying positioning. Explains the difference between paid and organic results. Rankings are based on quality of content, links, and overall development of the project.

Page one results are priceless. 91.63% of AOL users clicked on the first result page. Based on AOL's results - and shows page one is priceless.
4.49% clicked to the second results page. 2.19% clicked to the third page. Almost half of people click on the first position on the SERPs. This came from an SES market trends report from last year.

Shows case studies of clientele dominating position 1 on page 1. People assume you are the reference if you hold that position. The branding opportunity is quite remarkable. People not knowing who you are or your brand think you are the "player". Will only continue to go that way.

Everyone has heard that content is king. It's really all about the text, video, images in a keyword rich environment.

Tip 1: Get good copy to support the keyword research. If it's an appliance part - find images and text to support it. Video too.

Tip 2: Navigation and architecture. Ability to choose structure that the engines can index. Be careful of certain types of Javascript and other non-indexable navigation.

Tip 3: Blogs. Another form of content. Pictures, text, images served in a slightly different manner. It's a strategy. Don't need to use all these strategies to dominate, but in a competitive arena, you need to deploy more and more to compete.

Tip 4: Quality and keyword rich inbound links. Utilize keywords in link text - avoid using your company name. Helpful resources at Google Webmaster Central, and on the Thinkprofits website. Yahoo! Site Explorer is a great tool to measure inbound links. Bottom line is you want links from other websites to your own.

Tip 5: The database you install is important. Make sure the engines can index the content in your database. Well worth the investment to get the right database in place.

Tip 6: Electronic press releases. So much we can do with PR to get sites on Google often within 24 hours.

Tip 7: Domain name strategy. We find many people are missing out on this. When the opportunity arises to purchase a keyword rich domain, although not always possible, if the opportunity is there - set it as primary domain. Get extra points for that. In a case study, LuxuryYachtCharters.com helped rank. Register your domain for a long term, because it may show give you more points. Another idea is to register your keyword rich domain, and forward it to your primary site. Also assist in getting more traffic by address bar navigators.

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Cuil Search No Google but Getting Better

2008-08-20T06:06:11Z

Cuil's search engine launched July 28 with designs on eating the lunches of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Cuil crashed back to earth when too many users tried to access it and angered Web site proprietors by showing competitors photos next to their search results. Cuil headed back into application development to tweak the search algorithm and the results have improved somewhat.

Over a couple days starting with its launch July 28, Cuil gained unprecedented media attention for a startup, crashed when too many people tried to access its search engine and angered people by not putting the correct pictures with some search results.

Three weeks later it is clear that the company, which aims to one-up established search providers Google, Yahoo and Microsoft by indexing more than 120 billion Web pages and providing meaningful pictures next to search results, has made some considerable improvements with regard to the pictures it places with results.

For example, Trenton Baker, a marketing manager for network storage vendor Aberdeen LLC, told me July 29 that several of his company's industry-specific search results ended up with misused Web site photos and misleading content results.

At that time, a search for "Storage Servers" returned a news release about a product from Aberdeen rival SMC Networks. Yet the product picture Cuil gives for this result is lifted from an array on Aberdeen's front page. When you clicked on the picture link, instead of going to www.aberdeeninc.com, you were taken to the SMC press release.

Baker felt this discrepancy dinged his company's brand. Do a search on Storage Servers today and the picture next to the Aberdeen search result for networked attached storage is Aberdeen's logo for its rack-mount five-year guarantee.

The result and picture are appropriate, signaling that perhaps Cuil's context-based algorithm for providing relevant pictures alongside search results has been finer tuned.

"This is not an easy thing to do, to provide a relevant image next to as many result links as possible. Which is why this feature isn't being offered elsewhere," Cuil Vice President of Communications Vince Sollitto told me recently. "There are plenty of search engines one can use that do not attempt to provide this feature if one prefers."

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2 Ways To Put Internet Marketing On Steroids

2008-08-13T07:17:48Z

Gone are the days when a person could put a simple website up with some black hat tricks and drive hordes of traffic to their websites. Okay, perhaps those days aren’t gone all together, but wouldn’t it be easier to learn how to do Internet Marketing the right way from the start instead of risking being banned by the Google search engines?

We at Search Engine Optimization And Beyond think so.

Here are two approaches to successful Internet Marketing

First participate in niche related forums and blogs. Which means going to all the forums and blogs in your given niche and blatantly selling them all your wares, right? WRONG! You do that and you will find that you have successfully alienated yourself from your niche industry. Keep it up long enough and you’ll be flat out banned from many of the niche sites you are attempting to reach out to.

So what can you do on forums and blogs when talking to your niche audience? Easy. Participate in meaningful discussions about matters important to that given industry. Provide valuable content with a simple link at the bottom and you will find that you have successfully done two things.

You have positioned yourself as an authority in your given niche. When people recognize that, and they will, how likely do you think they will be to want to frequent your website?
You have created backlinks for yourself from important areas in your niche industry. If these forums or blogs you are participating in have a PR of 4 or greater that’s all the better for you.

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The New Age of Accountability

2008-08-11T10:36:54Z

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

This quote (attributed to English entrepreneur William Lever) used to be dragged out and dusted off to illustrate the imprecise nature of traditional advertising. And guess what; those famous words were pretty right!

Well planned and executed, main media advertising definitely gets results, but in lots of ways it is as much art as science.

Let’s say you are a small to mid-size retailer creating an advertising campaign to drive customers into store for a particular promotion. You put together a radio commercial, a press ad and posters at point of sale. Because you know that to “turn the sales on, you have to turn the salespeople on”, you do a good job of “selling in” the campaign to your people. And you offer a prize for the store that performs best during the campaign period.

So the campaign kicks off and you experience a sales lift. Good for you. But exactly which elements have worked? Would a different message have been more successful? And how much of the results are due to the fact that your stores were briefed, focused and incentivised?

(Note: there are tools you can put in place to help better measure campaign effectiveness – eg coupons, research – but to keep things simple I’ll leave those for another discussion.)

Now let’s say you are the same retailer doing a campaign on the internet to drive customers to your website for a promotion.

You can analyse your site’s performance pre, during and post the campaign – what traffic goes there, how many visitors are coming, where they come from, how long they stay on the site, what pages they visit.

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RankPay Introduces Pay Per Rank Search Engine Optimization Pricing Philosophy

2008-08-07T07:14:23Z

In a world where standard yellow phone books are becoming an archaic afterthought (why look something up, when one can just Google it and have all of the information in a few seconds?), company executives are vying for a place at the top of the search engine rankings. The closer they are to the top, the more traffic will be driven to their websites and the more money they can potentially make from new clients. This is where the search engine optimization (SEO) companies come to the rescue.

As more and more companies come around to the idea of using the Internet as a marketing tool, an entire industry is being created to meet the demand. Unlike traditional advertising vehicles, such as TV, radio and billboards, Internet advertising is an extremely affordable an effective way to draw new customers to your business.

For example, a Google search for "NYC Pizza Shop" netted around 456,000 results. At 10 results per page, there are 45,600 pages of search query matches. Since Internet users are unlikely to look through them all, usually the pizza shops on the first page will get called the most. To be sure, the difference between being on the first page and the second page can be staggering.

However, most search engines do not allow companies to buy a spot at the top of the list. Instead, individual businesses have to earn their spots in a natural way. This is where the search engine optimization (SEO) companies come to the rescue. By utilizing certain SEO techniques, SEO marketing companies can help clients to land on the first page of a search engine query. The demand for these kinds of services are so high, SEO companies are struggling to keep up.

"Our customer base is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month," said Shawn Bishop, CEO of RankPay. Bishop cited word of mouth and referrals as the main sources of new RankPay clients.

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Silly SEO, Guarantee Your Work

2008-08-04T12:25:29Z

Recently I read an article that yet again says there is no such thing as guaranteed search engine optimization. I feel this is an SEO argument that will last as long as the “content is king” and “links are where it’s at” war.

The truth is, there are two types of guaranteed search engine optimization companies, liars and experts that take calculated risks. So its true, nobody can say with absolute certainty that you will be on the first page. But they can certainly put their money where their proposal is. Thank about it, somebody is coming up to you saying “I know how to get your web site ranked on the first page of Google. Hire me and maybe you’ll get there, maybe you won’t.”

A White Hat SEO (a search engine optimization company that uses ethical practices) that guarantees their clients first page placement with a money back promise is simply taking a risk. They are looking at their history to see how long it takes to get a client on the first page using ethical SEO methods. Then, they are basically saying “based on our past performance we are confident that we can get your site on the first page within our twelve month term.”

What happens if they fail? If you’re working with a good company, you should get a peace of your investment back. Maybe the non guaranteeing SEO doesn’t want to let go of your hard earned money after he proved himself to not be the expert he originally claimed.

As with anything, you have to know what to avoid. First, take a trip down to Google’s guidelines for SEO’s. This is a page that most SEO companies (both White Hat and Black Hat) don’t want you to see. The easiest way to find it is by Googleing “Search engine optimization” its usually ranked number one or two.

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Google’s search dominance

2008-07-31T02:19:48Z

Google stamps its dominance on local search market

Google was founded ten years ago by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University students who believed that their search algorithm and the speed of its service were good enough to compete in the growing Internet search market.

After its launch the search engine quickly gained favour among Internet users and grew to become the most popular search portal around. The company also grew very fast financially – from its initial investment of a mere US$1.1 million in 1998 to a current market cap in the region of $150 billion.

Google currently employs around 20 000 full time staff members and has offices around the globe. Google recently also established an office in South Africa, headed up by ex-Novell MD, Stafford Masie.

Google.co.za has shown very strong growth in the South African market, dwarfing other local search engines such as Ananzi and Aardvark. According to the latest Online Publishers Association (OPA) statistics, Ananzi currently attracts 221 436 unique monthly visitors, down from 314 132 a year ago.

Aardvark also shows a decline in unique monthly visitors. In June 2008 the Telkom-owned search engine received 88 774 unique monthly visitors, down from 106 102 during the same period in 2007.

Google on the other hand is gaining momentum in South Africa, capitalising from the strong broadband growth and the fact that more South Africans are using their mobile phones to surf the Internet.

Despite the strong broadband growth in South Africa, mobile remains the leading telecommunications medium in the country. South Africa’s current broadband penetration rate is sitting at around 2%, multiple times lower than the country’s mobile penetration rate. Masie says that 78% of all people with mobile phones in South Africa don’t have personal computers, and that 85% of this “no-PC” group will never own a PC.

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Microsoft: With No Yahoo, What's the Web Strategy?

2008-07-29T02:52:21Z

Microsoft has all but shut the door on the prospect of resuming talks to buy all or part of Yahoo. Speaking at the company's annual meeting for analysts on July 24, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said a Yahoo deal at this point "essentially makes no sense."

If Yahoo is no longer the remedy for Microsoft's ailing online operations, what is? The software giant spent part of the day trying to persuade analysts that it's got something better in mind. Yet with Wall Street growing increasingly impatient to see results from its online operations, Microsoft gave only a glimpse into what to expect in terms of ongoing spending and returns. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the company plans to continue spending 5 percent to 10 percent of operating income, a modest amount relative to the potential returns, he argued. And those returns could hit 20 percent to 40 percent if Microsoft is successful, Liddell said, though he didn't disclose a time frame for when that might happen.

Microsoft also pulled back the curtain on plans to provide Web search tools to users of Facebook, and to place search-related ads on pages of the social network by the end of 2008. The Redmond [Wash.] company last year paid $240 million for a tiny, 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, a swiftly growing Web site that boasts some 90 million registered users. Deepening ties with Facebook is probably a smart move.

The Google Gap Widens

Still, some Wall Street analysts came away from the meeting wishing Microsoft had said more. "My expectations were low and they exceeded my expectations, but they didn't give me everything I wanted," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Charles Di Bona said. "It would have been nice to have been more concrete about what was game-changing."

That's important because now Microsoft is losing the game, despite spending billions over more than a decade only to rack up huge losses. The operating loss in Microsoft's online-services business more than doubled, to $1.23 billion, in fiscal 2008, from $617 million a year earlier. Meantime, Google has taken the lion's share of revenue in the business and continues to lengthen its lead.

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Tips to Improve Your Web Life Why Business Should Invest in Communicating Online

2008-07-28T09:21:30Z

Recent research into the accountancy profession appears to bear this out. In a survey conducted in June 2007 amongst practising members (sole practitioners and partners in practice) from a range of Chartered Accountancy Institutes', 41% of respondents either said that they never had a website or that they have let it lapse. Some 19% of firms with a website said they had developed it internally, and of the 59% of firms with active websites, most did not offer a facility to subscribe to client newsletters, dedicated client-only sections, or a facility for accepting online payments. Interestingly, most firms without a current website claimed that they didn't see value in keeping it, or that it was too much effort to maintain. The majority of these respondents had no immediate plans to invest in a website for their organisations within the coming year.

Why be online?

There are many attractive reasons for investing in communicating with your clients online. For one, prospective clients under 30 are your clients of the future. These people have never even looked at the Golden Pages! It's estimated that half of your prospective clients are looking for you online. Soon it will be 75%.

Unlike more traditional forms of marketing such as print or advertising, the winners at the technology business aren't necessarily those that spend the most. It's about a creative and compelling message, being clever with technology and marketing know- how. This is good news for tight budgets and financial controllers!

Search engines

We started with a definition of what is meant by SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): simply put, the process of improving your profile on the Internet to increase traffic to your website. It involves targeting key word phrases which, when entered into a search engine, will result in your website being listed high up on the search results.

Why is business so caught up with search engines, where every second word is either Google or Yahoo? PraxisNow estimates that in 2008, 81% of Internet traffic arrives at its destination via a search engine, the rest coming from click-throughs like from web advertising, word of mouth etc. (Statistic: www.jupe.com). A recent statistic states that Google has registered more searches in the past year than the entire population of the world. Therefore, a focus on getting as many clients through use of search engines (SEO) is a necessary strategic component for any on-line campaign.

John Coburn, PraxisNow.

How many CEOs or financial controllers have actually googled their company name recently? If it's been a while, you may be in for a surprise. The Internet age has produced a whole raft of competitors that you may not even know you had. Start-up companies are increasingly doing business only on-line, thereby cutting costs. Equally, overseas companies may have targeted your sector as a lucrative lead. In many cases, a customer will not care if a product is sourced overseas if it meets their exact need at a satisfactory price.

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Ten Ways to Waste Your PPC Budget

2008-07-25T07:06:29Z

Wasting your PPC (define) search budget may be acceptable if you have a virtually unlimited budget. But few, if any, marketers have an unlimited search budget, buying top position for every word all the time, regardless of cost. Most of us, whether agency side or client side, manage simultaneously to budget and achieve ROI (define), net search profit, click per action (CPA), or return on advertising spend (ROAS).

There are lots of ways to waste your coveted, hard-won budget. Some may seem obvious, while others may have slipped by you. In any case, 'tis the season to tighten belts. So it's a good time to review your account to identify any budget-wasting settings or structures.

Don't measure and manage to your measured objectives. If you have been reading my column and aren't yet spending your PPC search with clear objectives, shame on you. Survey after survey shows a large percentage of marketers don't measure post-click behaviors or measure them without managing to them.

Make sure you've established an automated or manual system to manage to your basket of success metrics. Consider broadening your definition of success to include more than just shopping cart abandonment or completed lead-gen forms. Visits to contact pages or other indicators of site stickiness (particularly visits to high-value pages in a B2B (define) or service business) can round out your basket of success metrics. Even Google Analytics can help here, but my personal preference is to use third-party tracking and campaign management systems.
Set and forget the campaign. Even when using automated campaign management systems, reject the idea of "set it and forget it." In real-time auctions run by engines, formulas change all the time, and you must be proactive, especially because you often have to change more than just the bid price. For example, the creative and offer landscape may be changing, even as you sit still.
Let search engines pick your clicks based on a set budget. Each search engine has the ability to set campaign budget caps. Even with the recent addition of automated bidding to a CPA target, taking control of your campaign in some engines still yields higher profit and better overall results, particularly if you're spending enough to build a good-sized data set.

If you let the search engine set budgets, even when they're broken down at the campaign level, you'll be spending when you shouldn't and missing opportunities when you should be buying specific clicks or by more accurately bidding high enough to get the impressions for the clicks you really want.
Ignore elasticity and never do a tradeoff analysis. It's great when you have a higher reserve price on a listing (keyword, engine, time of day, geography, etc.) and an average position of two or more, enabling you to be more aggressive on that listing. However, unless you (or your technology) have a good idea of the competitive reactions to loss of position or loss of average position, you have a potentially budget-wasting scenario on your hands. And that scenario involves deploying more budget with bid escalation, not position improvement. This is called testing a market's elasticity. Ignore elasticity, and you may be throwing additional money at a bid that will result in price escalation without any positive positional changes.

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