Thursday, April 27, 2006

Spotlight on Search Interview with Dan Thies of SEO Research Labs

Spotlight on Search Interview with Dan Thies of SEO Research Labs: interview with Dan Thies - AKA the keyword guy - covers "how he started out, his take on keyword research tools, common misconceptions about search engine optimization, search engines and SEO training..

keyword strategy was the most important part of search engine marketing, just as targeting is really the most important factor in any kind of marketing. This seemed like an obvious point to me, but nobody was really dealing with it in any kind of disciplined way. So I started writing about it, and talking about it, and people again responded.

In fact, the response was amazing. A lot of the folks who had bought my book were asking for help with keyword research, so I took a small sampling of my customer list, and emailed 300 people with an offer to do keyword research reports for something like $129.95. Well, 120 click-throughs and about 30 orders came in the same day, and I realized that there was going to be quite a lot of demand for it, if we could do it well....I found out that the "real market" was web designers, agencies, SEM consultants, and others who wanted to outsource their keyword discovery work.

Which makes sense – most of these folks are bringing on a few clients a month, and that means they only did keyword research occasionally....

The hard part of growing this part of my business is skepticism. If we tripled the price, people would be more willing to believe that real human beings are doing the work...

With either SEO or PPC, keyword discovery is just the first step. You have to take the search terms, all the little "modifier" words that come along with them, and weave them together into a broader search profile.

For SEO, this means mapping search terms to URLs, working search terms and modifiers into the copy, and building internal links to support all that. For PPC, this means coming up with a list of search terms, matching strategies (broad/phrase/exact), and mapping these to ad creatives and landing pages...

Doing PPC gives you a huge advantage over those who don't, because you can find out which search terms work, what offers people respond to, and do so quickly. What you learn from PPC can be applied to copywriting, SEO strategy, etc

list 3 or 4 of the most common misperceptions

that people think they need to pay for links strikes me as sheer madness...For example, in a shopping site, do the product pages within a category link to and support each other? If they don't do this, you're missing a huge opportunity for SEO and conversion, but go look at any shopping site.

people just not understanding how search engines work. Not understanding what they are capable of. Not understanding the logic behind it. A lot of goofy theories arise from this.

The Search Engine Marketing Kit you've written has become an valuable resource for many search marketers. It's particularly useful for anyone that wants to start their own SEO/SEM consulting business.

Resources: Matt Cutts might post something useful, Rand Fishkin might post some interesting links, Aaron Wall might hit me with some news that I didn't have....

Search Engine Guide and SEW are the two that kind of stand out, in terms of collecting all the stuff together so you don't have to dig too much."

Google

Yahoo! Search blog: Yahoo! Search Index Update

Trafficc to my Gambling site from Yahoo is now level with that from Google - before it was maybe 1/3rd max...Yahoo! Search blog: Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update: "Yahoo! Search Index Update
We rolled out an index update last night. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index. Those who follow these weather updates may have noticed that they are occurring more frequently; this is the result of improvements to the indexing system"

Google

Friday, April 14, 2006

Google buys in classified ads expert

Will we soon see improvments to Google base as Google tries to capture the online small ads market?

MediaPost Publications - Google Hires Classified Ventures Vet - 04/14/2006: "GOOGLE HAS TAPPED SAM SEBASTIAN to head Google Local. Sebastian previously worked at Classified Ventures, where he served as senior vice president for sales and marketing at HomeGain"

Google

Yahoo- new "single button search" local vs non local

MediaPost Publications - Yahoo, Helio Target Teen Mobile Market - 04/14/2006: "YAHOO AND THE TEEN-TARGETED MOBILE provider Helio announced a partnership on Thursday to co-market mobile Internet services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the number of Helio users who download Yahoo services to their phones will factor into the equation, a Yahoo spokesman said...

Yahoo is also giving users of Helio phones first crack at its new "single button search" technology, which attempts to differentiate between local search queries and non-local queries. So, for example, if a Helio user searches for "baba ganoush," Yahoo's system should know to return a list of nearby Middle Eastern restaurants. If users search for "Britney Spears," however, Yahoo should recognize the query as geographically neutral....

Notably, the partnership indirectly allies Yahoo with MySpace, because the social networking site recently announced plans to also co-market mobile services with Helio. Thus, any of MySpace's over 70 million members who opt for a Helio/MySpace phone will be corralled into searching the Yahoo.

Yahoo is aggressively preparing its mobile battle plan, having earlier this year established relationships with AT&T, Cingular, Nokia, and Motorola, among other companies. And just last week, Yahoo said it was expanding its relationship with BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion"

Google

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Why you still need Meta Tags:

Although Google may or may not use the tags when compliling the words for your sites search result listing Yahoo & MSN most certainly do use them, especially the description tag - if this answers the searchers needs then more click throughs should come your way. So, do not abandon metatags but do use them wisely to try to optimise the appearance of your site in the search engine results.

SiteProNews: The Importance of Meta Tags: Providing the Human Touch: "site's description in MSN starts off with the first sentence of the description tag. Yahoo operates in a very similar fashion. Many of the results on the SERPs of both search engines will use the content from the meta-tags heavily (as long as the pages have meta-tags at all).

Google is less predictable with regard to the use of meta-tags. Google often uses the title tag to determine the clickable link on it's results pages, but only occasionally uses the description tag content in the page summary that it displays....

The point that I'm driving at is that although the search engines probably have devalued the SEO value of the meta-tag to a great extent, that doesn't mean that it isn't important.

When people search for keywords in your industry it isn't enough to be #1 on the list of results. You still need to convince those humans to click on your link. The way to do that is to design the most effective page description that can possibly appear in the SERPs....Yahoo uses the first 25-30 words of your Meta Description tag in the site description it displays on your SERPs; MSN uses the first 15 or so.

Write out a 30-word description of each page of your website that is broken up into two parts. The first 15 words need to get across what the page is about - this is all the MSN searchers will see. The second 15 words should support the first - this will be visible to Yahoo searchers...

If you don't put meta-tags on your website's pages, then Yahoo and MSN (with a combined market share of around 45%) will just guess at what to put in the description of your website. They will pull phrases out of context (much the way Google does) from your site and slap them in there.."

Google

SiteProNews: The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic - Part 1

Pretty sound article outlining 26 search optimisation techniques to build solid traffic from organic search - as long as you ignore some glaring contradictions ...The article announces in the first paragraph that submission to search engines is no longer necessary then in just the third paragraph - C) Avoid the Sandbox - states "Make sure it gets crawled by Google and Yahoo (either submit it or link to it from another site)".. I reckon submitting a Google sitemap is essential given their huge share of the search market.

SiteProNews: The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic - Part 1: " new 26-step plan that meets the current needs of webmasters in 2006. Some of the old ones still apply (writing new content everyday, for example), and some don't (submitting to the search engines is no longer necessary), and we're here to tell you which is which! As you probably already know, bringing in traffic is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you're ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one year you will generate enough traffic to keep you busy for a long, long time!"

I particularly appreciate this paragraph
"Site Design
Use the "Keep It Simple" principle. Employ an external CSS file, clean up any Java Scripts by referring to them off the page in an external file, don't use frames, use flash the way you would an image, and no matter what, do not create a flash site. Do not offer a busy site with lots of bells and whistles to your visitors. Keep things nice and simple. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for and they'll have no reason to look anywhere else."

Google

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Tasty spam example....

Diamond Taxi & Minibus Firm Newquay Cornwall (Airport Transfers) similar to some other sites which keyword stuff the page below the fold....url broken by me for obvious reasons...

Google

Monday, April 10, 2006

This Boring Headline Is Written for Google - New York Times

This Boring Headline Is Written for Google - New York Times: "How far can a news organization go without undercutting its editorial judgment concerning the presentation, tone and content of news?

So far, the news media are gingerly stepping into the field of 'search engine optimization.' It is a booming business, estimated at $1.25 billion in revenue worldwide last year, and projected to more than double this year...

News organizations, by contrast, have moved cautiously. Mostly, they are making titles and headlines easier for search engines to find and fathom. About a year ago, The Sacramento Bee changed online section titles. "Real Estate" became "Homes," "Scene" turned into "Lifestyle," and dining information found in newsprint under "Taste," is online under "Taste/Food."

Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more quotidian, factual headline appears with the article itself. The popular BBC News Web site does this routinely on longer articles.

"The search engine has to get a straightforward, factual headline, so it can understand it," Mr. Newman said. With a little programming sleight-of-hand, the search engine can be steered first to the straightforward, somewhat duller headline, according to some search optimizers...

Whether search engines will influence journalism below the headline is uncertain. The natural-language processing algorithms, search experts say, scan the title, headline and at least the first hundred words or so of news articles.

Journalists, they say, would be wise to do a little keyword research to determine the two or three most-searched words that relate to their subject — and then include them in the first few sentences. "That's not something they teach in journalism schools," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch, an online newsletter. "But in the future, they should.""

Google

Saturday, April 01, 2006

- IT Week

SEO is far more than offering "to list a customer�s web site on the top few hundred search engines every month" but I agree that it is an invaluable service if carried out correctly...the survey quoted shows the sixe of the market for optimising existing sites for better search results - half of all small business websites! Captured by the web hosting market - IT Week: "The variety of basic web offerings is huge and differs in complexity and price. Some are cheap at about �100 a year, while others boast more features as standard, and can range from �20 to �50 per month...

There are a number of simple add-on services related directly to the web site that can be easily sold on top. These include statistics monitoring, visitor tracking, additional database support and search engine optimisation. The latter lets you offer to list a customer�s web site on the top few hundred search engines every month. But it is one that many SMEs miss out on when they first set up a web site.

According to a survey by Fasthosts earlier this year, almost half of all SMEs do not submit their web sites to search engines, which can mean they are rarely found online. In addition, two-thirds of surfers admitted that they rarely look beyond two pages of search engine results, indicating that being online alone does not mean people will actually know you are there.

Michael says: �Search engine optimisation is a simple service to sell, and it is an important one. In 2006, no business can afford to be invisible online, yet many SMEs are. If you are not listed on Google, your web site might as well not be online.�

Google
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