Tuesday, February 14, 2006

DMNews.com | News | Article

DMNews.com | News | Article: "How to Build a Search Engine-Friendly Web Site " Search engine optimisation should be part of the Web development process from day one.
More common is the experience of Kent Lewis, a seasoned search engine marketing professional who writes:

"Rarely am I brought in at the ideal time: during the planning phases of a site design or redesign. This oversight typically means higher costs and delays in the development process...

SEO comes into play at all the following levels:
site planning and specification: planning phase usually determines site objectives, functionality and content - code) should be clean and content should be keyword-relevant. For example, Flash, frames and JavaScript are not inherently search friendly and should be used judiciously. Content should consist of HTML text containing keywords relevant to each pages’ theme

site architecture: Ideally, the Web site will have at least one set of HTML-based navigation that can be easily “read” and followed by search engine spiders. From a content perspective, the architecture should include a site map and custom 404-error page

Wireframes to illustrate task flow and information architecture, basic page layout and contents

Design comps: design refinements, including layout, colors and imagery - HTML text for page headers instead of text graphics, impact of keyword density, proximity and relevance on each page

Beta testing; review the site on a page-by-page basis and provide specific recommendations on ALT, META and title tags. In addition, they should review the copy to ensure it is properly optimized

Launch and maintenance.

Google

How to Almost Live on Blogging

Wired News: How to Almost Live on Blogging: "author of two books on Google, operator of a blog called Googleplex and longtime user of Google's keyword advertising program, Davis is among the more hard-core followers of the popular search site.

In his new book, Google Advertising Tools, Davis addresses the company's keyword advertising program, concentrating on how bloggers can manipulate it to their benefit.

In a recent interview with Wired News, Davis shared some tips for aspiring online publishers.

Wired News: Can a blogger realistically expect to make a living from blogging?

Harold Davis: There are people who make a living blogging, but if you're going to do it on your own, you darn well better have a ton of traffic. There are 10 million lonely bloggers and people probably only read a few thousand. If you're going to make serious money off this, it's a serious time commitment.

WN: What amount of time and money are we talking about?

Davis: Well, I spend an hour or two a day, but I have a lot of content already from the books I write.

As for money, people who are really in the business of making a living off content pages say they average about $10 a page per year. That would be a pretty good average. Usually, it's not enough to make a living on, but it's a good supplement.

WN: What do you need to start a profitable blog?

Davis: You should have at least 100 pages of high-quality content in the can. Blogs are good because they keep content fresh, but that's just a small part of it. Good reference material really draws traffic. On a photography site I run, for example, one piece I wrote on how to convert raw digital photos draws more traffic than 99 percent of my other photo pages."

In a related article about Jason Calacanis -- the founder of Weblogs, who subscribes to the theory that more blogs would validate the medium and attract even more ad dollars for everyone.

Wired News: Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?: "Calacanis employs 120 bloggers and publishes 90 blogs -- including Engadget (which covers consumer electronics) and Blog Maverick, typed by billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban -- with his writers making anywhere from $200 to $3,000 a month. (One presumes Cuban doesn't do it for the money.) On average, Weblog salaries are about a quarter to half what a mid-level editorial job would pay, without the daily office commute.
'Not to mention (bloggers) get to write about the topic they are most passionate about,' said Calacanis, who claims to be on track to collect more than $1 million in Google AdSense payments over the next year. 'So, for our folks, it is like they are making money off their hobby. Think a scuba diver or video-game player making $500 to $1,500 a month writing about scuba diving or video games.'..

What do you have to do to earn $500? Publish 125 entries a month, monitor comments, respond to readers and delete offensive comments -- all for about $4 a post. At least, according to a contract leaked to the internet last month...

..Whether you are Calacanis, Denton or Hauslaib, to create a profitable blog requires much more than a keyboard, an internet connection and too much caffeine. You need a talented writer entertaining enough to hold an audience, a consistent publishing schedule, content worth linking to by other bloggers and worthy of press coverage, marketing savvy to sell advertising or enlist third-party networks and, as a culmination of all of this, plenty of traffic..."

How much does Denton pay his bloggers? "The amount floating around the internet is $2,500 a month per blogger plus traffic bonuses, courtesy of a talk Lockhart Steele, Gawker Media managing editor, gave at New York University last spring."

Or go for voluntary contributions instead of advertising to montise your blog......Wired News: Quit Your Job to Blog, Blog, Blog: "Quit Your Job to Blog, Blog, Blog...Ali doesn't believe voluntary contributions will ever come close to surpassing ads as a revenue stream for bloggers as a whole. He estimates that as much as 80 percent of the blogging world's revenues will probably come from advertising. This, he notes, isn't too different from the business model of the modern media industry, which is primarily supported by advertising"

Google

Search - Linking - Eric Ward

Spotlight on Search - Interview with Eric Ward "Optimizing content without implementing a linking campaign is like trying to drive a car without wheels."

"What are the biggest differences in site announcement and promotion now compared to 5 years ago? What advice would you give to new search marketers that are looking for reliable and long term link building strategies?

The amount of noise you have to get past to get your message heard is insane. Spam, fake blogs, link farms, you name it. This has caused people to just try and be louder than everyone else, when in reality they need to take the exact opposite approach. Focus on your content and verticality. The web is self organizing. It's a marketers dream. 3000 people all with the exact same interest in some little known subject all end up finding each other through tools like Yahoo Groups or blogs, etc. The key is understanding - and respecting- the medium. Few marketers respect the medium properly...

Please describe your ideal client.

For me it's about the content. Can I help the content get known or not? I don't care if it's a FORTUNE 500 company or a mom and pop site. If the content is about a specific topic and well done, then it deserves to be known and linked. If the content is crap, even if it's produced by a large corporation, then why bother? It's not me that gets the links for the content; it's the content itself that earns the link. I'm just a conduit....

What are some of the resources you rely on for information on SEO/SEM? Best practices, news, industry information.

I read and scan hundreds of online pubs. Subscribe to everything I can find. I'm really a sponge for it because I still like it so much. SearchEngineWatch.com is indispensable. But there are lesser known pubs with awesome info, like WDFM.com"

Google

Search - Linking - Eric Ward

Spotlight on Search - Interview with Eric Ward "Optimizing content without implementing a linking campaign is like trying to drive a car without wheels."

"What are the biggest differences in site announcement and promotion now compared to 5 years ago? What advice would you give to new search marketers that are looking for reliable and long term link building strategies?

The amount of noise you have to get past to get your message heard is insane. Spam, fake blogs, link farms, you name it. This has caused people to just try and be louder than everyone else, when in reality they need to take the exact opposite approach. Focus on your content and verticality. The web is self organizing. It's a marketers dream. 3000 people all with the exact same interest in some little known subject all end up finding each other through tools like Yahoo Groups or blogs, etc. The key is understanding - and respecting- the medium. Few marketers respect the medium properly...

Please describe your ideal client.

For me it's about the content. Can I help the content get known or not? I don't care if it's a FORTUNE 500 company or a mom and pop site. If the content is about a specific topic and well done, then it deserves to be known and linked. If the content is crap, even if it's produced by a large corporation, then why bother? It's not me that gets the links for the content; it's the content itself that earns the link. I'm just a conduit....

What are some of the resources you rely on for information on SEO/SEM? Best practices, news, industry information.

I read and scan hundreds of online pubs. Subscribe to everything I can find. I'm really a sponge for it because I still like it so much. SearchEngineWatch.com is indispensable. But there are lesser known pubs with awesome info, like WDFM.com"

Google

Traffic Power update - officially banned from Google

Matt Cutts on Traffic Power: "the great Traffic Power debacle, the SEO firm that ended up getting many of its client sites dropped from Google for violating the Google Webmaster guidelines is back in the news this week.

Part of what has kept Traffic Power on the radar is their ongoing legal battle against popular search marketing blogger Aaron Wall. Traffic Power's lawsuit is partly based on their claim that Aaron improperly stated that both Traffic Power and client sites had been banned from Google. Interestingly enough, Google's king of web spam, Matt Cutts, has seen fit to point out in his official capacity that Traffic Power HAS actually been banned from Google, thus making Aaron's claims 100% accurate. "

Google

Friday, February 03, 2006

Search Engine Contact Details List

Search Engine Contact List -> High Rankings� Search Engine Optimization Forum: Lists the different ways to contact the search engines for different things all in one place....has blogs, submit, webmaster info, spam report urls etc for

Ask/Teoma
Google
Yahoo
MSN

Google

Thursday, February 02, 2006

The Real Cost of SEO: It�s not Budget, It�s Believers!

Some familiar ground covered re the problems in converting others to the benefits of organic search optimisation....

The Real Cost of SEO: It�s not Budget, It�s Believers!:
"If organic optimization is so effective, why isn't it a more common strategy?" Great question. Unfortunately, the answer isn't an easy one.

Requirements:

One: Corporate Understanding

The problem with organic optimization is that it can't be owned by any one department in a larger organization. While a sponsored campaign can be launched by a single department, or individual for that matter, with no impact on any other department, organic optimization needs buy in throughout an organization...we generally see the best optimization on sites where C-level executives are close to the front lines, believers in optimization, and can give a single go ahead that will open the required doors for organic optimization to happen. The bigger the organization, the more unlikely it is that this will happen.

Two: A Friendly IT Department
Three: No Sacred Cows
Four: Champions with Perseverance and Thick Skins


If you still need convincing re the payoff from organic SEO he states the following:

- What's good for a search engine is good for humans. The changes that make your site easier to index are almost always changes your visitors will appreciate as well. More content, less unnecessary Flash, standard navigation options and cleaner code will bring you in line with long standing usability guidelines.

- Organic traffic is not dependant on budget. This traffic base goes on, day after day, whether you're topping up your AdWords account or not.

- Organic optimization gets less painful the longer you go. Once you make the commitment, the painful part can be over relatively soon, but you'll be reaping the benefits for years to come.

- You'll reach a whole new market segment. People tend to look at organic listings when they're in the research phase, higher in the buying funnel. This gives you the chance to intercept them earlier and build a relationship that can last a long time.

Ends with "a painful real world example to prove my point. We had the CEO of a company bring us on to help with organic optimization. But rather than pave the way for success, he threw us to the lions and quickly exited the scene. We identified the issues keeping them from higher visibility on the search engines, outlined our recommendations and handed them over to the IT team for implementation. And there they sat, and sat, and sat. Meanwhile, the IT team pursued their own agenda, spinning their wheels on minutia while ignoring the fundamental issues that had already been identified. Our frustration level rose, as did the CEO's, who was wondering why he wasn't going anywhere. Guess who the internal IT team pointed the finger at? Eventually, we and the client parted ways. We couldn't win, and the client was getting no value from recommendations that no one would follow.
We usually monitor activity for a period of time following the termination of a contract. Eventually, this client did get around to doing one or two of the things we recommended. These were relatively easy fixes, but the results were dramatic. The result: a 448% increase in visibility in the organic listings. Of course, at this point, no one will remember who made the original recommendation. All they'll remember is that they only saw improvement after they got rid of their SEO company."

Google
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