nine livesPr0 To Pr7 For Matt Cutts -> High Rankings� Search Engine Optimization Forum
Pr0 To Pr7 For Matt Cutts -> High Rankings� Search Engine Optimization Forum: "How can a PR0 site like MattCutts.com jump all the way to PR7 in such a short time? A Whois.sc check shows that the domain was created in June of 2003, but the oldest WHOIS record shows June 6, 2004. Assuming it had zero backlinks then, the site now registers over 10,900 links in Altavista and 27,000 in Yahoo. Based on Altavista�s record, that�s like 22 links per day (06/2004 to 10/2005). The number of backlinks created and the period by which they were accumulated rival most overoptimization link building campaigns I�ve seen."
Search Engine Marketing getting harder?
Want to write effective copy for the search engines? Check out Jill's handbook,
The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines
Search Marketing Newsletter Archives - High Rankings Advisor Issue 152 discusses SEO clients often unrealistic expectations, top search rankings do not guarentee sales.
"Even keyword phrases that nobody's searching for can sometimes be difficult to obtain high rankings with unless you really and truly know what you're doing. And even then, those rankings may be here one day, and gone the next. The problem is magnified for new businesses and new websites. If your site isn't at least a few years old, your SEO efforts will be less likely to provide the results you want. This is one reason why your
website optimization should always be seen as a long-term proposition.
As we move forward in this industry, webmasters, site owners, and SEOs need to shift their focus from that of asking how they can get this
keyword to this position in this engine to how they can get more targeted traffic and convert it into customers. Unfortunately, a
large portion of those looking into SEO services are still seeing the small picture. For instance, on the contact form on my site, I ask
people to tell me a little bit about their "business goals." A good portion who fill it out want something like "top-5 rankings in Google
and Yahoo for this keyword." Huh? That's not a business goal! A business goal is more like "Bring more people to my website who are
searching online for the types of products we sell."
Jill Whalen of
High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and host of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor
search engine marketing newsletter.
She specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations and seminars. Jill's handbook,
The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines
Local search growth
Borrell Associates Inc. ::: Reports: "LOCAL ONLINE GROWTH CONTINUES "
New News search tool does the math -
Internet Daily: News tool By Frank Barnako, MarketWatch: "Does the Web need an industrial-strength news search engine? Neal Goldman of Inform Technologies thinks it does and rolled one out Monday morning. Although he concedes Inform.com still needs usability and development work, Goldman said the goal is to help visitors create their own newspaper with stories selected from thousands of news sources...
Goldman expects Inform.com to appeal to news junkies, "people who feel the pain of the problem" of too many sources and too little organization. He expects his initial market will be public relations professionals, journalists, and people in finance and politics.
Eventually, the site will carry advertising, and Goldman expects to offer paid services by the end of the year to watch what people are reading and suggest related stories."
iProspect's Search Engine Marketing Advisor Newsletter: Search Marketer Behavior: Action Items from the Trends
Details what action SEMs should take as a result of the research findings.....
iProspect's Search Engine Marketing Advisor Newsletter: Search Marketer Behavior: Action Items from the Trends: "Within the last 6 weeks there has been a lot of press given to the findings of three research studies that we recently published on the behavior of search engine marketers:
iProspect's Search Marketer Performance Study
iProspect's Outsourced SEO Metrics & ROI Study
iProspect's Natural SEO Outsourcing Study"
Microsoft Grapples With Growing Up
Microsoft Grapples With Growing Up - Forbes.com: "critics reel off a list of complaints that sounds like, well, a Microsoft commercial: stifling bureaucracy, frustrating miscommunication, different units working on overlapping technology without adequate cooperation. In short, the very ills Microsoft promises to cure with its software.....
Microsoft also is tailing its competitors in developing the money-making engine behind Google - paid search.
This month, Microsoft begins U.S. testing of its own system for selling sponsored links next to its regular search results, which are based on a formula that ranks Web pages according to such factors as relevance.
Microsoft currently outsources that job to Yahoo, which has a contract with Microsoft through June 2006
Microsoft's reorganization appears to be an attempt to tackle the size problem - to teach the elephant to dance, said Garrity, alluding to a popular corporate problem-solving book by James Belasco.
"I don't know if we can teach the elephant to dance, but they certainly look as if they are getting their tutu on."..."
Yahoo New Search Tools for Podcasts
Yahoo to Introduce Tools for Podcasts - Forbes.com: "Yahoo Inc. is introducing tools for finding, organizing and rating 'podcasts' - the audio programs designed to be played on Apple Inc.'s iPod and many other portable music players.
the free service focuses on making it easier for people to sift through the tens of thousands of podcasts currently available on the Web to find the programming best suited to their personal interests."
SEO recommendations ignored... SEOs under-appreciated
64 of Search Advertisers Failing to Follow SEO Recommendations: "a recent survey commissioned by Boston-based SEO firm iProspect that showed approximately 64% of businesses outsourcing search marketing,'... encounter obstacles that prevent them from implementing their vendor's SEO recommendations.' (click here for an Adobe Acrobat version of the study)
Conducted by JupiterResearch in August 2005, the study surveyed 626 people involved in search marketing and 224 search marketing firms. Its findings attach tangible numbers to experiences shared by several professional SEOs. In short, SEOs have reason to feel a trifle under-appreciated. Their informed and often pre-paid advice is overlooked or neglected more often than not....
the reasons most cited by search advertisers for not implementing outsourced SEO advice are;
a lack of human resources
no budget set aside for outsourced IT services
timing issues surrounding site or document updates ...
In order to maintain strong rankings, one of the tasks SEOs recommend is updating documents and generally adding fresh content to the site. For many search advertising clients, the added time commitment falls low on the list of daily tasks for the staff member charged with making those updates.
The results of this survey fall in line with stories heard by webmasters and SEOs in forums and from clients. The knowledge and skill gap between the professional SEO sector and advertising clients has not shrunk as much as SEOs might have previously expected. Though basic search engine optimization can be described as common sense web design, a number of critical knowledge factors remain that set SEOs aside from other webmasters, at least in relation to proficiency with search engines."
Lessons From Search Engines for Rich Media Advertisers
Paid search may have immediate sales as prime goal but paid search ads...adwords etc....bring benefits in the form of branding, comsumer research and decision making processes....Organic listings alone do not have the breadth and depth of influence as a combined paid search and organic search optimisation campaign. Concentrate on one only at your peril, your competitors will probably not.
What Rich Media Advertisers Can Learn From Search Engines: "Paid search is expected to outpace display advertising by 2010, according to Jupiter Research. The lead analyst on the report says, 'While immediate sales is the top goal for a majority of the marketers who use paid search, the benefits of paid search in branding and purchase decision or research processes will become more evident as well.'
One main reason why search marketing is so effective for advertisers is its locked-in efficiencies. The other, often overlooked (yet painfully obvious) reason for its effectiveness is that search yields an answer to a consumer's question. In other words, it gives people what they're looking for in a purely informational, practical manner.
Creativity is king when it comes to getting noticed, but when it comes to getting heard, it always helps to deliver a message your audience is receptive to. The best way to ensure you're doing that is to look at what your audience is doing. They're searching. Learn from that behavior, and use rich media give them the experience, information, and interactivity that they're looking for -- even if they don't realize it yet."
Jawfish RSS to JavaScript Conversion Service
Jawfish RSS to JavaScript Conversion Service
Hiring an SEO Company or Consultant
� Hiring an SEO Company or Consultant - Stuntdubl - SEO ConsultantTodd Malicoat writes : "If you are looking to sign a deal with someone to do your SEO, I hope you have your BS meter set to high, and are willing to call people out for stuff you don’t think is accurate. Don’t fall for the smooth salesguy pitches from people that don’t actually DO any of the search optimization work (especially if they don’t even understand it). I can only imagine what it must be like for SEO’s who have a sales staff selling for them that are not highly familiar with the work itself. It just seems like a pretty big logical disconnect to me. As the consumer you need to be armed with the ability to ask intelligent questions about how a company manages their SEO campaigns.
So I thought I’d put together a little of the best information I’ve seen and heard on hiring an SEO company from some of the saavy consumers that I’ve spoke with"....
Some of his Best Techniques for Hiring an SEO Company or Consultant include:
Call lots of companies and have good questions about SEO strategy to ask them
Ask each company who they would recommend if they were too busy
Ask each company who they would choose between a few of your top choices…throw in a lousy SEO company to see if they’re being honest.
Do some searches for some medium level competition searches (2 word phrases not HIGHLY sought after). Call up the companies in the top spot and ask them about their SEO company.
Test the waters with smaller services
Do searches for the names of the SEO company or the main folks in the company - this will show you their reputation within the industry
Choosing a company can be a very important decision, and not one that should be jumped to quickly. Afterall, SEO is about LONG TERM strategy.."
Beyond the click - increase sales from search traffic
Accelerate Online Sales: "Driving prospects to a website is only the first step in a successful search-engine-optimization program. Unfortunately, 90 percent of businesses only focus on this first step, while a successful online campaign actually has three critical components:
Drive prospects to your website.
Keep them there by creating a compelling benefit-based message.
Generate sales leads, ensuring the site turns visitors into customers
Getting a prospect to click on your listing in a search engine is only the first step in an effective online lead generation program. What happens after they arrive on your website is just as important as how they get there"
Small busineses profit from search engine optimisation
Are Your Competitors Making Better Use of the Web Than You?
By Jennifer Laycock" new research (Interland's Summer 2005 Small and Medium-sized Business Barometer) shows small businesses are starting to understand the importance of online marketing and get results for the time and effort put into their sites mainly to drives leads for their business.
The results vary significantly from previous online marketing surveys...which generally found pay-per-click advertising the most common form of search engine marketing. The new Interland data shows search engine optimization (SEO) ahead of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising by a widemargin. Interland's survey shows 54% of small businesses use search engine optimization and 20% run pay-per-click campaigns.
Laycock concludes from the data that:
"small businesses are understanding what the big firms are missing...that
while it takes more time to implement, organic search engine optimization will outperform pay-per-click when it comes to drawing long-term leads at reasonable costs."
She also comments that:
"while many companies are moving online and working to build solid web sites, a great deal of those companies still seem to be confused about the purpose of a web site. 53% of surveyed business owners feel that their site's primary purpose is to provide credibility for the company. This number is pretty close to the 54% that evaluate the success of their site by the feedback they receive from customers on it. That means that over half of small business owners are still missing the boat when it comes to understanding the purpose of their site.
A web site lending credibility to your firm should be something that goes without saying. It shouldn't be a goal, it should be something that is expected. Your web site should serve first and foremost as a sales and lead generation tool for your business. It's great if your site can also serve to help you with customer service issues and other secondary purposes, but sales and leads should be the primary goal and the online marketing efforts of your site should reflect that.
Businesses are embracing search engine and other online marketing at an ever growing rate and those that fail to jump on the bandwagon soon will likely find themselves having a hard time playing catch-up."
301 and 302 redirect problems with Google MSN!
301 redirect and 302 redirect discussion, a good introduction.....
Google Hijacks Batman Room Decor Listing At MSN!: "Listings Hijacked At MSN, With A Little Help From Google. Short story? Google doing temporary redirections which is causing MSN to let it hijack the listings of other sites."
Google still tops the search stats August 2005 Search
August 2005 Search: "latest search stats from comScore Networks are pretty much as always for the main search engines players. Google and MSN were up a point and Yahoo! and Time Warner Networks lost a little while overall search numbers were up amost 5%.
Actual shares per major search engine:
Google sites - 36%
Yahoo! sites - 30.6%
MSN - Microsoft sites - 14.4%
Time Warner Network - 10.6%
Ask Jeeves - 5.9% "
