Steve Hudgik's Internet Marketing Blog - Internet Results

One Link Did It

2011-12-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

There was a comment on the previous posting asking, "What happened?" I apologize for not following up and posting the final results. (We're overloaded with work, as usual.)

To summarize. I brought a web site online but had no links going to it. I left it that way for several months. Google did not find it.

I placed one link in a post on this blog. Google almost immediately "found" the web site and placed it in the SERPs. I used a search for the web site name "Be Big On The Web" to determine if Google had found the site. The ranking of the link to the site home page bounced around for about two months, sometimes even disappearing. But by the end of April it was consistently ranking at #2, just under an MSN Lifestyle show called "Big On The Web." I have not made any changes to the web site, nor added any links since then, and it is maintaining its number two ranking for this highly targeted phrase.

The interior pages of the site are included in Google's index.

The site took about three months to show up in Bing. That could be an indication that since Google owns Blogger they directly feed information from Blogger to their search spider. But Bing finds links from this -- very inactive -- blog based on a normal spidering cycle. My conclusion is that, if you want Google to find a page, put a link to it in a Blogger blog.

Moving Up In Google's Search Results

2011-03-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

We're running a test to watch what Google does with a new web site once a link has been posted on Blogger (see the previous two posts).

It is now 38 hours since the first link was posted in this blog. In a search for the name of the web site (I'm not going to mention it this time), Google now has it ranked at #9. So we're seeing the site appear, disappear, and now reappear in the search results.

What I've concluded based on previous testing is that Google will quickly put a new page of site into the search results. But, it will move the link around. I believe Google is testing to see if there is any interest (clicks) in the new page or web site. For now I'm not going to click on the link. Let's just wait and see what happens.

The site has not reappeared in Bing.

Helping Google Find Your Web Site - The Results

2011-03-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I posted about a new web site we're doing some testing with. This web site had been online for several months, with no links going to it. Google did not find it. Why might Google find it? One possibility arises from Google being a domain registrar. This gives them access to the domain registration database they could use to discover new domains.

Yesterday we added a single link to the web site, coming from yesterday's blog post. Here are the results of a search for the web site's name, Be Big On The Web:

Six hours after the link was added to the blog, the web site appeared at the number three position. It had the page title, but there was no description.

Twelve hours after the link was added the description appeared and the web site was in the number six position.

24 hours after the link was added the site no longer appeared in the Google search results, but a search for the domain showed that it was in Google's index.

We're now at the 30 hour point and I've included a link in this post. So we'll have two links from the same blog. Let's see what happens.

By the way, Bing has also picked up this web site. It is in the Bing index but not showing in a search.

New Web Marketing Services Web Site

2011-03-10T04:02:00.001-08:00

Whew! We've been busy... as you can tell from the dates on the posts in this blog. But I've come back to the blog with a purpose.

Here is a question? You've got a new web site. How do you get Google to notice your web site and begin including it in the Google search results? What you need are web sites that link to your new web site. Google will notice the links on the existing web sites (assuming they are already included in the Google index), follow them and "discover" your web site.

So how do you get links to your web site. It's brand new. No one knows about it. Maybe no one is even interested in your web site. What do you do?

If you want to Be Big On The Web you've got to take things into your own hands. You've got to create the link(s) yourself, just like I did now.

Actually this is an experiment. I've had the Be Big On The Web site online for about three months, just to see what happens. There are no links going to it. And it is not in Google's index. This was a test to see if Google uses information such as the domain registration to identify new web sites.

Now I've put in a single link (above) using a Blogger hosted blog. Blogger is owned by Google. Will Google find it and begin indexing the web site? If so, how long will it take? Let's find out.

Is OOPS A Good Product Name?

2010-09-10T04:11:00.000-07:00

This is a tough one. The acronym for Open Office Productivity Suite is OOPS. Would you want your product called OOPS?

What do you do when you need to deal with negative, unintended consequences? One approach is to embrace it and make it a part of your marketing. Here's a thought for what can be done with the Open Office Productivity Suite.

=========================

Are you using the big name office suite? Oops!

Are you having a problem with your word processing software doing things you don't want it to do? Oops!

Are you spending a lot of money providing an office suite for your employees? Oops!

That's right! OOPS is the answer. The Open Office Productivity Suite (OOPS) is the office suite solution you are looking for. You don't need to pay the heavy cost of the big name office suite and you'll have software you control instead of software that thinks it knows more than you do. Visit www.OpenOffice.org and get your free copy of the Open Office Productivity Suite today. OOPS will finally put a smile on your face.

====================

A Good Product Name... OOPS

2010-08-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite programs is Open Office... although I was just at their web site and I read that we are not supposed to call it that. It is now to be known as the Open Office Productivity Suite which is made by OpenOffice.org.

That's a good name. It describes what the software is and does. But finding the perfect name... the name without blemishes, is the goal of marketing. And OpenOffice.org may have missed that mark. As much as I love the Open Office Productivity Suite, and recommend it to everyone, I still have to point out that the acronym for this name is... OOPS.

When it was known as just Open Office it was just OO. But now it is OOPS. Is that an oops?

Product naming is one of the most difficult aspects of marketing. Getting the right name never is never easy, and you can get blindsided by the unexpected... such as an acronym or the meaning of the name in another language.

So, is there a way to make lemonade from this lemon?

Of course there is. Changing the name at this point may not be an option. So the first step is to embrace what appears to be a negative and turn it into a positive. I'll talk about that in my next post.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Oh My!

2009-11-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

Social media has made it big in the news, and the news is that you can use social media like Facebook and Twitter to built you business and bring in sales. Several time a week I have people asking me to make a Facebook post and bring the business pouring it.

It doesn't quite work like that and I'm finding few people are willing to put in the time required to make it work.

Facebook and Twitter are not marketing silver bullets. They don't magically bring in more business. But, when used with an understanding of how they work, they can make a big difference.

To be effective you must participate. With Facebook you must build your network of friends. With Twitter it is a network of followers. These are people who are listening to what you say. Of course, if you are not saying anything, then no one is going to bother to listen. So building your network requires participating with others, and saying interesting things in your posts... and here's the most important thing: you must say something. Opening a Facebook account and then sitting back waiting for something to happen does not work.

That's what I see people doing. Make two or three posts on Facebook, or in a bog, and expect something to happen. It's not going to happen. That's right. Success takes work, even when you are building your success with the latest tools on the internet. There still is no free ride.

Using YouTube For Marketing

2009-09-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

You've come up with a better product, lower price, or improved service... but how do you tell the world? If only people could find out about your product, they'd be pounding on your door to buy it. That's the purpose of marking. It doesn't matter how good your product is, if no one knows about it, your sales will be zero.

YouTube is one way to let potential customers know about your products. BUT, you need to do it in a creative and interesting way. Otherwise your video will be lost among the ten's of thousands of other videos. We've all heard about the "Will It Blend" videos. They are simple videos that have attracted a lot of attention. Simple ideas are best because they clearly communicate your point. However, coming up with those simple ideas can seem like an impossible task.

What is the basic principle behind making an attention grabbing video?

Here is a new video for a product that can be tough to market, vinyl industrial labeling tape. The point of the video is cutting costs... an important point to make in these tough economic times (or at any time).

The video is about the Brady GlobalMark printer. It takes the unusual approach of making the point that cutting your printer in half is not the way to cut your labeling costs. Does that catch your interest?

The way to make your video interesting is to do the unexpected. The petite young lady in this video seems like the last person you'd expect to keep a shiny double-headed ax at her desk, ready to slice an industrial printer in half.

Do the unexpected and you'll be on your way to having a YouTube video that attracts attention.

Granite Tile Counters - Blogging

2009-05-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

When you have a blog that you are using to help bring traffic to your web site, it is critically important that you make regular posts. A minimum of two posts per week is what I recommend, but that is the minimum. If you want to have people returning to your web site to read your blog, you need to be providing new, informative blog posts. Plus Google loves new, fresh content.

The problem is that writing is hard work. It takes time and a lot of thought to write a good blog post. But if you take the time and put in the effort, it will be worth it.

So what's happening on the granite tile web site?

Orders are coming in and customers are writing back saying how happy they are with their new granite tile counters. The product is outstanding and people really like it. The shipping process is working... which was a big concern because granite tile easily breaks during shipping. Plus the web site has been updated to incorporate various shipping methods in the online granite tile calculator, with the result being that they can charge as little as $49.95 to ship the tile almost anywhere in the U.S. (This may only be good for a limited time, but it makes for incredible savings and a great value for the customer).

So they have everything needed for a great foundation: an outstanding product (with satisfied customers), great delivery, and outstanding value. What else is needed?

For people to know about this. No matter how good your product and the value you offer, if no one hears about it your business will go out of business. That's where regular blogging becomes part of the plan. Provide useful information, about your products or related to your products, making at least two posts per week, will help to bring people back to your web site and build you rankings in Google.

Related Previous Posts
Granite Tile Blog
Granite Tile Web Site
GraniteTile Counters for Kitchens and Bath

Rejecting Blog Comments

2009-03-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

People leave a lot of comments on this blog, and we reject just about all of them. If you have something to say about any of our posts, or even about internet marketing in general. Your comments are welcome and will be posted.

I'd like to give you an example of a comment posted today, that is one to watch out for. Here is what it said:

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Alanna

It was followed by a link to a web site. It sounds like a nice comment from a nice person who really liked the blog. But, do a search for a phrase from this comment and Google will show you that the exact same comment is being left on blogs across the internet. It is nothing more than a technique for getting around comment moderation and adding their link to your blog... even though Blogger marks all comment links as no-follow, meaning they have little SEO value.

There are many varieties of this type of comment spam, but they are all similar. Usually a nice but generic comment from a nice sounding person, with a web site link included.

Granite Tile Blog

2009-02-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple of weeks and it is time for the next step. Adding a blog to the web site. In this case we'll be using Blogger because of its simple user interface that makes it easy for a non-technical person to write posts.

Use this link to go to the Granite Tile Blog.

Posts to a blog actually started about two weeks ago. For a blog to be recognized as legitimate, it needs to have a minimum of at least five to eight posts. By getting a head start the blog is ready to go when it is added to the web site.

A custom template is used so that the Granite Tile Blog has the same look and navigation as the rest of the web site.

Content for the blog comes from questions about granite tile that people have already started to ask. An email response is sent to the person asking a question, and that response servers as the basis for a blog post. That saves time and it results in posts that are about granite related topics people want to know about.

Granite Tile Press Release

2009-02-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've noticed, but the ads at the top of this page are now about granite tile. Google has determined that this blog, although it is about marketing, is more about granite tile.

The next step was completed today. Press releases are powerful tools for building a new business on the internet. Today we came our with the first press release for the Easy Granite Tile web site. It announces that the new web site is now available, and for the first time in history do-it-yourself installation of granite tile counter tops is easy. (This is the link that will bring you to the press release.)

Press releases are also good content for the web site, so I've created a press release section and added the press release. So far there is only one granite tile press release so it is the index page in the press folder. When a second press release is added this page will become an index page to all press releases. I'll tell you more about why I things this way in a future post.

There is another reason why we want to have the Easy Granite Tile press release on the web site. I write several industrial blogs and it is frustrating to find a press release published by a press release service that has it copyrighted. I want to go to the originating web site and get a version of the press release I can copy and paste onto a blog. But they don't have it. Always make it EASY, very easy, for the press (and bloggers) to find versions of your press release they can copy and use. The best place to do that is by putting a copy of your press release on your web site.

That's why Easy Granite Tile has the press release on their web site. Actually there's even more to it than this, but that's for a future blog post. For now let's leave it at using the press release to get more publicity for this new source of granite tile that, for the first time, makes custom edged--with precision machine edging--granite tile available for the home handyman.

Granite Tile Web Site

2009-02-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

The next step was to add a granite tile installation blog to the web site.

Blogs are nice because the provide lot's a fresh, relevant content that Google likes to index. Plus they are easy for experts to use, even though they are not experts in the internet or blogging.

In this case the blog is being written by the Granite Tile Guy and he is loaded with good tips for installing granite tile, as well as anything else related to granite tile. There is only one post as of today, but the goal is to add three granite tile relate posts each week... roughly one post every other day.

Blog posts do not need to be long. I think it is best to have posts that vary in length. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I think Google assumes humans are not consistent and precise. So things with a bit of variability to them look more like they are human created. But I could be way out in left field on this.

By the way, have you noticed what I'm doing in this post? This post is about blogs, but I'm working in the phrases "granite tile" and "granite tile installation." These are the two key phrases that we plan to build traffic going to the Easy Granite Tile web site.

One other thing to notice. I don't use exactly the same tags on all these these granite related posts. For this post I've added a new tag called Granite Installation. Again, variety is important.

Granite Tile Glossary

2009-01-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

We added a couple of new pages to the Easy Granite Tile web site. When you are looking to add keywords, there is nothing better than a glossary. It is almost all keywords! So that was the next step. Here it is:

Granite Tile Glossary

I made the glossary in two pages. Although two pages is slightly inconvenient for the reader, and I generally go for the best experience for the visitor, but this web site has a desperate need for additional pages. The glossary is long enough to realistically divide it into two pages... so we did it. Possibly in the future, when the site is larger, we'll combine the two pages.

If you need to learn about granite tile installation, the first step is to understand the language. The Easy Granite Tile glossary is the place to get started.

Granite Tile Counters For Kitchens And Baths

2009-01-24T08:45:00.000-08:00

Here is a new business that has some very unique to sell. The provide granite tile for do-it-yourself installation. What's so unique about that?

Until now it was not possible for a do-it-yourself installation of granite tile counters. The problem is the edges. Granite tile does not come with finished edges. That's because each installation is custom and that requires custom edging. There have been ways to self-edge granite tile, but getting good quality was difficult... let alone getting the outstanding quality that results in a beautiful, luxurious kitchen.

The new business is called Easy Granite Tile. They have developed a online calculator for ordering custom tile for kitchens and bathrooms. You select your counter layout. Enter the dimensions of your counter, and the online calculator will show you how much tile you'll need, the amount and type of edging, and give you a price. You can then place your order and your granite tile will be delivered by Federal Express Freight.

There is a lot of work to do on this web site so that people will see the value and quality they are getting. But I've seen the product myself, and it is outstanding. Plus what I really like is that the owners of the company have put quality and honesty at the top of their must-do list.

Another thing I like about this new service is that a home handyman can install a granite tile counter and, not only will they enhance the beauty of their home, they'll be able to point to beautiful kitchen counters and say, "I did that."

Search Marking Has Been Good

2009-01-22T04:18:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly a year since my last post. Why? Because business has been good and income has been high. In other words, I've been busy. Even now, while everyone else is slowing down I'm adding more clients and could be working 12-7 (12 hours a day, seven days a week) at $100/hour if I chose to do so. Two things have been happening...

In these slow times people are recognizing the power of the internet to increase sales, and even grow their businesses.

Businesses have been getting web sites online, and upgrading existing web sites--creating some beautiful web sites... that don't perform. There's a lot of web activity, but the results are not so good.

Why?

Because there are a lot of people who know graphics and how to put a web site together, but they don't know marketing. A beautiful web site that no one sees is a waste of money. A web site that tens of thousands see, but which does not convert visitors, is a waste of money.

It's not about having a good looking web site. It's about having a web site that brings in the sales!

So why am I writing a post? I'll be very blunt... because it's an easy way to get a link for my clients. I had forgotten about this blog. But as I was thinking about links last night it occurred to me that I was wasting an easy way to provide a link... my own blog. So, whenever I feel like it I'll make a post about one of my clients. I'll try to post about each web site early in the marketing process. In most cases business come to me with web sites that have been designed by others and they want me to save their web site. So you'll be able see each web site change as I work with it to change it from something that just occupies space on a hosting server, to a web site that builds a business.

7 Customer Service Tips

2008-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

Today's edition of the American Chronicle has an article by Robert Moment called "Customer Service Tips to Keep Your Customers Satisfied". The article opens by stating:

"Customers shop in order to satisfy something: a need or a desire. Therefore, it follows that your goal must be to keep your customers satisfied. However, don´t make the common mistake in assuming that it is only the product or service that you are selling that will provide the satisfaction that the customer is seeking."

"In actuality, the need or desire that customers are seeking to fill include much more than the product in itself. It also includes a sensation that they will be treated well, that they will be served professionally by a knowledgeable staff, and that if they should run into a problem, it will be managed quickly and effectively. Just as it seems, there is a lot involved in accomplishing this task. However, when it is done correctly, your business will run like a well oiled machine, and will be well worth the effort in its rewards."

It then lists seven tips for keeping your customers satisfied.

1. Keep your promises
2. Set Good Goals
3. Go Above And Beyond
4. Pay Attention to Customer Needs
5. Nurture Long-Term Employees
6. Make Customers Feel Wanted
7. Nitpick About Customers For Life

Over 1 Million Potential Victims of Botnet Cyber Crime

2007-11-30T06:54:00.001-08:00

The Department of Justice and FBI announced the results of an ongoing cyber crime initiative to disrupt and dismantle “botherders” and elevate the public’s cyber security awareness of botnets. OPERATION BOT ROAST is a national initiative and ongoing investigations have identified over 1 million victim computer IP addresses. The FBI is working with our industry partners, including the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, to notify the victim owners of the computers. Through this process the FBI may uncover additional incidents in which botnets have been used to facilitate other criminal activity.

A botnet is a collection of compromised computers under the remote command and control of a criminal “botherder.” Most owners of the compromised computers are unknowing and unwitting victims. They have unintentionally allowed unauthorized access and use of their computers as a vehicle to facilitate other crimes, such as identity theft, denial of service attacks, phishing, click fraud, and the mass distribution of spam and spyware. Because of their widely distributed capabilities, botnets are a growing threat to national security, the national information infrastructure, and the economy.

“The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited,” said FBI Assistant Director for the Cyber Division James Finch. “An attacker gains control by infecting the computer with a virus or other malicious code and the computer continues to operate normally. Citizens can protect themselves from botnets and the associated schemes by practicing strong computer security habits to reduce the risk that your computer will be compromised.”

The FBI also wants to thank our industry partners, such as the Microsoft Corporation and the Botnet Task Force, in referring criminal botnet activity to law enforcement.

Cyber security tips include updating anti‑virus software, installing a firewall, using strong passwords, practicing good email and web security practices. Although this will not necessarily identify or remove a botnet currently on the system, this can help to prevent future botnet attacks. More information on botnets and tips for cyber crime prevention can be found online at www.fbi.gov.

The FBI will not contact you online and request your personal information so be wary of fraud schemes that request this type of information, especially via unsolicited emails. To report fraudulent activity or financial scams, contact the nearest FBI office or police department, and file a complaint online with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, www.ic3.gov.

To date, the following subjects have been charged or arrested in this operation with computer fraud and abuse in violation of Title 18 USC 1030, including:

* James C. Brewer of Arlington, Texas, is alleged to have operated a botnet that infected Chicago area hospitals. This botnet infected tens of thousands of computers worldwide. (FBI Chicago);

* Jason Michael Downey of Covington, Kentucky, is charged with an Information with using botnets to send a high volume of traffic to intended recipients to cause damage by impairing the availability of such systems. (FBI Detroit); and

* Robert Alan Soloway of Seattle, Washington, is alleged to have used a large botnet network and spammed tens of millions of unsolicited email messages to advertise his website from which he offered services and products. (FBI Seattle)

The FBI will continue to aggressively investigate individuals that conduct cyber criminal acts.

How Would You Market MOST The Movie?

2007-11-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

This has been a tough question. Start with an outstanding film no one knows about. Mix in a film producer that knows little about internt marketing. They need to sell copies of the DVD, but...

The film is called "Most the Movie". It is a 33 minute short film that tells about a bridgetender whose son falls into the gears that lower the bridge. The train is coming! What should the bridgetender do? He can only do one thing. Either save his son or save the train.

The site I've linked above is a non-profit that offers the film at a reduced price. They are the ones who would like to make the film more widely known. They even give away copies.

So here are a few suggestions:

Improve your search ranking by making useful comments on blogs that are talking about evangelism. Not all blogs allow links, and services such as Blogger put a "nofollow" on comment links, but this a good way to generate some buzz. Also, some forum posts wouldn't hurt, although links in forums don't provide any search ranking boost.
Increase the content you have about the film on your web site. Surely there is more you can say that will create additional keyword rich spider food.
Look for champions who are willing to use their blog or web site to promote the film. This film is of such high quality, and is so good, it should be possible to find some people who would want to champion it.
How about putting out a press release. In this case I'd guess the press release will rank much higher than the web site. That could pull in additional traffic and generate a few links.
Be creative. MOST the Movie is an outstanding film. Get the publicity going and it may start generating buzz just based on its quality.

Web Site Restored From Google Ban

2007-06-28T18:17:00.001-07:00

In March I wrote about one of my web sites that had been banned from Google (911christ.com) . Last week I noticed that it was showing up at #3 in Google's search results. It had been restored.

I use a service called Google Alerts to monitor important keywords. Last week I received a Google Alert that informed me the banned web site was now showing up in Google's search results.

What did I do to get this site unbanned? Not much. Only what I described in my previous post. Using the information in Google Webmaster Tools I had noticed the site was banned. I was also able to determine the most likely cause. I wrote to Google, using the form provided in Webmaster Tools... and then I applied patience.

For three months I did nothing concerning this issue. I did not write to Google again. I did not change anything on the web site. I mostly forgot about this site, other than doing the things I'd normally do. For example, I added some Russian language graphics.

It appears that it takes Google about three months to review and act on a re-inclusion request.

An Easy Way To Get Banned From Google

2007-03-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

I regularly use the Google Webmaster Tools. The information they provide is invaluable.

Yesterday I was surprised to see that one of the web sites I manage was listed as being banned by Google! What was going on? I never use black hat SEO. Not only that, the banned site is a very simple web site with essentially no SEO. Why did Google ban such an innocent web site?

A deeper look into the information provided by Google Site Maps revealed the problem.

Going to "Page analysis" under the Statistics Tab revealed that the content Google was seeing was all mortgage and travel related. However, all of the links were Bible related (this is a Christian web site.) Google had determined that there was a significant difference between what Googlebot was seeing and what visitors saw. This is a major violation of Google’s rules and had resulted in the site being banned.

The problem was, I had never put mortgage or travel information on this web site. The web site had been online for about eight months, and it had had Christian content from day one… or did it?

When the domain was registered we were not sure what it would be used for, so the domain was parked at SEDO. This is a service that puts ads on parked domains and splits the income with the domain owners. I have no doubt that many of those ads were travel and mortgage related. But why was Google picking up the SEDO content as being the current content of the web site eight months after unique content had been developed for this site?

When the content for this site was ready we uploaded it to our hosting provider and set up their DNS records to point to the new web site. The result is that browsing to www.911christ.com brings you to the correct web site. However, Google does not look up web sites the same way a browser does. Google remembers the IP address. Google had used the IP address for SEDO; found a SEDO DNS reference for the web site (I had neglected to delete this web site from SEDO); and read the SEDO content. The result is that Google was seeing different content than visitors see and the site was banned.

I have submitted a reinclusion request through Google’s Webmaster Tools and, of course, deleted this web site from SEDO. So now we’ll see how the reinclusion process goes.

Google and Duplicate Content

2006-12-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest issues for web designers and SEO professions is that of duplicate content. What is duplicate content? Will it get your web site banned? Will it get your web site penalized?

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog has posted much needed information about duplicate content. Adam Lasnik answers the following questions:

What is duplicate content?

What isn't duplicate content?

Why does Google care about duplicate content?

What does Google do about it?

How can Webmasters proactively address duplicate content issues?

The answers to this last question are particularly useful. Lasnik lists specific things web designers can do to address duplicate content, such as:

+ Use 301s permanent redirects.

+ Keep internal linking consistent, don't link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm.

+ If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.

+ Use the preferred domain feature of Google's webmaster tools. This allows you to tell Google whether they should link to www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com. otherwise Google might link to each individually and see the same page as being a duplicate of itself.

+ Minimize boilerplate repetition. If, for example, you must put a disclaimer at the bottom of each page, just include a short summary with a link to a separate page that has the complete disclaimer.

Plus five other suggestions. This is a blog post all web designers, SEOs, or anyone involved with web design should read, and have bookmarked.

Do It Yourself SEO

2006-12-08T05:53:00.000-08:00

Have you been reading about the importance of the internet and search engine optimization in various trade publications? Do you feel your web site could use some work to improve its position in search results? But you don't have the cash to spend on a search engine expert???

Before you try to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) yourself, I have some suggested reading for you. Ross Dunn has updated his Ten Minute Search optimization white paper. I highly recommend reading it before you attempt to do SEO on your web site. In particular focus on the things not to do, such as item #3. You'll be wasting your time if you spiff up your site, only to make common mistakes that will get it penalized, or worse yet... banned from Google. Once you have the DO NOT things firmly fixed in your mind, then start on making the changes that will improve your search visibility.

You'll find the Ten Minute Optimization paper at: http://www.searchengineguide.com/dunn/2006/1130_rd1.html

Counting Backlinks

2006-12-07T05:58:00.000-08:00

Enter the following in the search box of any search engine to see the backlinks for any web site. Of course, replace "www.yoursite.com" with the appropriate URL.

MSN
link:http://www.yoursite.com

Google:
link:http://www.yoursite.com

Yahoo:
Yahoo now has a separate "search engine" for learning what information they have in their index about a specific site. It is called Site Explorer. Go to Site Explorer at the URL below and enter the URL for the web site in the search box. When the results page appears, click on the "In Links" link.

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Yahoo's help page says this about Site Explorer:

" You can use Site Explorer to track the coverage and freshness of your site in the Yahoo! Search index. You can find out:

Which pages from your site are indexed by Yahoo! .
What links exist to your site's web pages.

If you "authenticate" a site by validating your access to a site, you can access more detailed information like:

What subdomains from your site are known to Yahoo!
What other information Yahoo! detects about your site, such as language."

Google Search For Your Site

2006-10-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

In the past it has been possible to add Google search to your web site, but Google has now made it a much more powerful tool. You'll find information and the signup at: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

Google describes this new search tool as providing:

Specify the sites you want to include in searches.
Place a search box and search results on your website.
Customize the look and feel to match your website.
Invite your community to contribute to the search engine.
Make money from relevant ads in your search results.

Looking For An Image

2006-09-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

Images are expensive to produce. Whether creating art or hiring a photographer, you can expect to send significant dollars for images. But, having quality images for your web site is important.

Stock.XCHNG is a free stock photo web site. Over 200,000 images are available for use without fees. Some of the images have restrictions that, for example, do not allow them to be used on commercial web sites. However, most may be freely used on any web site.

Images are uploaded by people who are willing to share their photography. Quality of the photography varies, but after reviewing over 500 images I can't say that I saw any that were terrible, and I did find about a dozen excellent images for a new web site I was creating.

Give Stock.XCHNG a try. It's worth a visit.

Four Steps Every Business Can Take to Improve Local Search Results

2006-09-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

In the past the greatest value in having a web site was that you were reaching a worldwide market. A business that served a local market might have avoided the web because it brought in inquires from a worldwide market they did not serve, and did not want to spend time dealing with. If this is the way byou are thinking, it's time to change your thinking.

Patricia Hursh has an excellent article on Clickz that discusses "Four Steps Every Business Can Take to Improve Local Search Results". If you are targeting a local market you need to be showing up in the local search results. This article provides the best suggestions I've seen for accomplishing this. Here suggestions are:

"Update your business directory listings. Visit the Amacai, infoUSA, and Acxiom Web sites."

"Submit your site to local search engines. Submit your Web site to local search engines such as Google Local, MSN Local, Yahoo Local, Ask Local, and TrueLocal."

"Update your IYP [Internet Yellow Pages] listings. Likewise, find and update your listings at YellowPages.com, Verizon SuperPages, and SwitchBoard.com."

And don't neglect to "Feature your address on your Web site."

More Free Press Release Services

2006-08-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

Last February I listed some of the better free press release services. Here are three more to add to you list. I've just started using these three, so I can not yet comment on how effective they are. For now I'll just say they exist and their service is functional.

http://i-newswire.com/ - Fast and easy to use. No registration required. Releases are reviewed and put online within 12 hours.

https://www.pr.com/ - Has a somewhat lengthy registration process. Links within the press release are not clickable. There is a $30 fee for each link you want to be a clickable link.

http://www.clickpress.com/ - Requires a quick registration process that includes validation of an email address. Submittng a press release is quick and easy.

http://www.przoom.com/index.php - A free press release distribution service. Does not allow links, or even a non-clickable URL in text form, in the press release. Seems like too much work for not enough return.

News Wire Today - I've not yet had a chance to review this service. However, I'm seeing press releases on their site receiving high placements in search engine results.

Likno AllWebMenu Pro

2006-08-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty good with javascript and CSS, so whenever I've needed a web site menu system I've just written it myself. That was not a very bright thing to do.

Recently my workload has grown such that I needed to find ways to save time--and I had a web site that desperately needed its site navigation to be simplified. I quickly investigated software for automatically creating nested menus, and selected Likno AllWebMenu Pro. That was a very good decision.

It took less than 30 minutes to install AllWebMenu Pro and start creating the menu system I needed. Including the installation time, learning curve (which is very short), and the time it took to create a custom menu system for the web site, I spent about 1/4 of the time I'd have spent creating a menu system myself. This software paid for itself on the first day!

A wide selection of menu themes are included, with more available for purchase. Select the theme that is closest to what you want, then customize it using an easy-to-use style editor. Just fill-in-the-blanks with characteristics such as background color, opacity and the type of border you'd like and you are good to go.

Creating your menu is just as easy. Once again just fill-in-the-blanks with the text and the link and you are building your menu. What's nice about AllWebMenu Pro is that menus can be created by just entering basic information, and it also offers more advanced options such as setting the Z-index and running a javascript when a menu item appears or disappears.

This is a powerful menu building package that is easy to use. No DHTML, javascript or CSS knowlege is required. AllWebMenu Pro will create the files you need and even automatically place the code that is needed in your web pages. All you need to do is follow the instructions AllWebMenu Pro provides that describes which files to upload and where they should be located. It's soooo easy!!

What I particularly like is that adding to or updating menus is so quick and easy. A new menu item can be added (or removed) in less than a minute... and you don't have to worry about the changes introducing bugs into the code (as my fat fingers sometimes do). So not only do you get great menus and save time making them, you get the peace of mind knowing that the code will be clean and bug free.

Every web designer should have a copy of AllWebMenu Pro in their "toolbox". There are all positives and no downsides to owning a copy of this software. For more information about AllWebMenus Pro visit the Likno website.

Google Revealing "Click Fraud" Numbers

2006-07-31T23:06:00.000-07:00

A post on the Google Inside Adwords blog announces that you can now see the number of invalid clicks as a part of an Adwords report. The report can show you both “invalid clicks” and the “invalid clicks rate”.

Most people seem to be jumping on this as a number that shows the level of "click fraud" - people intentionally clicking on ads multiple times for fraudulant reasons. But that is not the complete story. For example, there are times when I've clicked on an ad, read the page, moved on to something else, and then wanted to go back to the ad landing page. Maybe another question has come to mind or I need to clarify some of the information on the landing page. The easiest way to get there is to do the search again and click on the ad again. Google counts this as an invalid click. They only charge for the first visit, they do not charge the advertiser again if that same visitor returns within a reasonable time period.

There are other sources of invalid clicks that are not fraudulent clicks. So, although this new Adwords reporting feature gives you some insight into the potential click fraud your Adwords campaign is experiencing, don't count these numbers as "hard" click fraud numbers without another source of information such as your landing page logs. (Landing pages I create always include a lagging feature that logs each hit on the landing page.)

Deleting Search Engines From Firefox

2006-07-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Firefox is the browser to use, but it does have one thing I find irritating. It is difficult to find out how to remove search engines from the Search Engine Bar. I'm not interested in searching EBay or Creative Commons and I like to simplify my life by removing things I don't need or want. But I could not find a button or menu option to remove search engines.

That's because there isn't one.

Removing search engines is actually very easy, but it involves deleting the search plug ins for the search engines I don't use. This is how it's done:

Go to the folder where Mozilla Firefox is installed and then go to the "searchplugins" subfolder. In most cases you'll be looking a path that looks like this:

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

Then delete the search plug in files associated with the search engines you want to remove from the list. There will be two files for each search engine. A PNG image file and a SRC file. Delete both files. When you restart Firefox those search engines will be gone.

Guaranteed Top Spot in Google

2006-07-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a web site that uses an interesting approach. The web site is: http://www.cablingproducts.com/ . Scroll down toward the bottom of the page where you'll find three links for free guides. But instead of going to a page that offers the free guides, these links go to Google searches. The web page boasts that you'll find links to the free guides offered by this company at the top of the Google rankings... and you do. Isn't that taking a risk that their pages, at some time in the future, might not rank in the #1 position. How do they get Google to always show their pages as #1 in the search results?

It's not that hard.

There is a search phrase built into the link that is specific to a unique phrase found on the web page they want to be in the #1 position. If you check the total number of pages found for these searches, it's a very smal number... 20 or 30 pages. There's no competition for the search phrase and it's so specific that the pages they want are just about guaranteed to top the rsearch results.

There is a risk in doing this. A competitor could put the target search phrase in one of their web pages and possibly take the top spot away.

Exclude DMOZ Descriptions On Google

2006-07-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday Google annouced a new tag that allow web markerters to indicate to Google they do not want DMOZ descriptions used to describe their web site in Google search results. Google calls the descriptions they use "snippets. The post on the Inside Google Sitemaps blog said:

"One source we use to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project, or ODP. Some site owners want to be to able to request not using the ODP for generating snippets, and we're happy to let you all know we've added support for this. All you have to do is add a meta tag to your pages.

To direct all search engines that support the meta tag not to use ODP information for the page's description, use the following:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">

DMOZ, also know as the Open Directory Project, is a volunteer edited directory of web sites. It is probably the most respected web directory, but as a human edited directory it has some characteristics some web marketers do not like. One of those is that it is difficult to get the description you want for your web site. DMOZ has non-commercial guidelines editors follow that result in descriptive, but at time rather dry descriptions.

Having your web site listed in DMOZ is important both because it provides a quality link to your site, and DMOZ provides information to many other directories on the web. Now, with the new Google META tag, if you do not like your DMOZ description, you can have Google find a description elsewhere. This does not mean you'll get the perfect description to promote your products, nor does it mean the description in the description META tag on your page will be used. It just means the DMOZ description will not be used.

Google Adwords' Exclusion Feature

2006-06-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

An important feature of Google's Adwords is the ability to exclude specific web sites from showing your ads. If you ads appear on inappropriate web sites it can hurt you in two ways.

1) People who have no interest in your product will be clicking on your ad. You pay for the ad, but don't get a qualified customer or lead.

For example, I'm managing an Adwords account that promotes an industrial printer used to make posters. This is not the type of machine used at home. Shortly after starting the ad I noticed in the log files that the ad was getting a lot of clicks from a Curt Kobain (Nirvana) web site. The ad offered a free sample poster and the Nirvana fans were clicking on the ad and costing the advertiser $30-$40 per day in worthless clicks. I added the site to the exclusion list and the cost of that ad dropped substantially.

My guess is that the operators of the Curt Kobain web site may have also noticed a drop in their Adsense income. It probably decreased by about $200 a week. I regularly read messages from people using Adsense who are complaining that their Adsense revenue just had a sharp decline. One possibility is that a wrongly targeted ad (or two or three), that had been earning them a lot of money, was no longer being shown on their web site.

2) Your ad will be shown to people who are not interested in your product and they will not click on your ad, this will reduce your click-thru rate if the site is being shown on the Google network. A lower click-through rate may result in your costs for the ad going up. Although Google does not count low click-thru rates against your content ads, it does hurt you for search ads... and non-Google search ads are still shown on the syndicated Google network and thus are included as a part of your search statistics.

How do you exclude web sites from showing your ad? Go to the Campaign Summary screen and click on the "edit" link for "Excluded Sites".

How do you know what sites to exclude? You need to be tracking who comes to your landing pages and where they come from. All the landing pages I use are PHP pages, and they log all the important information for each visitor.

Google Ad Scheduling Brings Automated Day Parting

2006-06-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

Google Adwords has just added a new, very useful feature... Ad Scheduling

Ad scheduling allows you to preset the times when your ads will run on Google. Times are set on the campaign level and can be set in 15 minute incredments. I've already added scheduling to most of the campaigns I manage. The Adwords help page describes the features in ad scheduling:

"Ads are scheduled on the campaign level, from the 'Edit Campaign Settings' page. The unique ad scheduling tool lets you simply click the blocks of time when you want your campaign to run. A bulk edit feature allows you to edit all days, all weekdays, or all weekend days at once if you prefer.

Ad scheduling also includes an advanced setting which lets you adjust pricing for your ads during certain time periods. For example, if you find that your ads get the best results between 8:00 and 11:00 am, you can bid more for impressions or clicks during that period. Learn more about advanced mode."

It appears Google has been prodded by the features introduced by MSN to add this long overdue feature. Now we can automate day parting. The downside is the Ad Scheduling makes day parting so easy that my competition can start using it and I'll lose many of the advantages that day parting offered.

Returned From Russia

2006-06-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from Russia and I see I have a lot of catching up to.

Russia has a lot of very smart and skilled internet people. They are very sharp, innovative and resourceful people! The biggest problem seems to be that there are no jobs. In the U.S. this would mean the unemployed programmers and designers would be starting their own businesses. But one of the results of 70 years of communism seems to be that the knowledge of how to create a money-making business needs to be restored. This is not a lack on the part of individual people. I saw an entrepreneurial spirit all over the place in the form of thousands of small shops. Everyone seems to be trying to make a ruble. That's great! What is missing is the infastructure and body of laws that supports the formation of new businesses. For example, one business owner mentioned that taxes take 90% of a business' profits. There is little incentive to be highly profitable, and a lot of incentive to cheat on your taxes. When I asked my interpretor about the different types of police in Russia, she said there were just two. Regular police and the tax police.

I met a lot of highly skilled (internet skills) people who were unemployed or under-employed. There is a resevour of talent, creativity and desire in Russia that will one day explode on the world market.

Free Press Release Distribution Services

2006-02-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

Press release distribution services are coming and going so fast that I'm finding I need to update the list monthly. The last time I posted a list a free press release distribution services was October 20, 2005 and already half no longer exist and some have switched from free to paid services.

Here is my current list of free press release distribution services:

PR Leap - Free Press Release Distribution to Major Search Engines - this is the premier free press release service. Submitting a press release is straightforward and my releases typically show up in the SERPS.

Press Release Service from PRWeb - another excellent press release service.

The Open Press - I have gotten good results with The Open Press. Be sure to follow the submission guidelines and press release format. They have very specific requirements.

Free Press Release Distribution Service - does not allow links unless you use their paid services. However, it is quick and easy to submit a press release here, so I do use them.

Click2NewsSites - fast and easy to submit a press release. I've just submitted one release through Click2NewsSites so far, so I don't know how well they will do.

PR News Now - This one works a little differently. It more like having a blog for your press releases. I've had a good response from press releases posted here, with many of them showing up in the SERPs. This site requires that you use Internet Explorer. It does not work with Firefox.

The following are specialized free press release services. Even if these are not in your specific area of business, try them, as they may lead you to other topic specific web sites that offer free press release distribution.

Industrial Safety

Sign Industry

Manufacturing Press Releases

Engineering Talk

When sending out press releases, include your local newspaper. Even though your business may not be targeted at your local area, getting information about your business published in your local paper will put another article about you on the web for the world to see.

And, of course, you did include a link to your web site as a part of your press release, didn't you?

Do you need help writing your press release? Try this free tool at Duct Tape Marketing. It will help you to create a professional, correctly formatted press release.

Stealing Your Competitor's Links

2006-01-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

Yahoo offers an interesting free service called Yahoo Site Explorer. Enter a domain and Site Explorer will list all the pages from that domain that are included in the Yahoo index. You can see whether Yahoo has indexed your complete site, and if not, there is a handy link for submitting missing pages.

But that’s not where you’ll get the greatest value from Yahoo Site Explorer.

Yahoo Site Explorer can also show all the pages linking to any web page you specify. For example, you can find everyone who is linking to your home page. A filter allows you to eliminate the links coming from your own web site, so you’ll see just the inbound links (ILBs).

But that’s not where you’ll get the greatest value from Yahoo Site Explorer.

You can enter your competitor’s domain, or even specific pages, into Site Explorer, filter it to show ILBs and get a list of web sites that are good prospects for you to exchange links with. Web sites that have linked to your competitors should also be interested in linking to your site. And if you’ve done a good job of building a web site with lots of unique, useful content, you might even be able to get links that go to pages other than your home page or link exchange page. These deep links are of greater value because they increase your web site’s recognition as an authority.

So get going and start using Yahoo Site Explorer to mine your competitor’s links.

This Will Save You $500

2006-01-24T05:17:00.000-08:00

My normal fee to do a quick evaluation of a web site and provide recommendations to improve search engine rankings and visitor response is $500. I find that I'm making the same recommendations over and over. So I'm going to give you those recommendations here, for FREE. All you need to do is implement them on your web site and you've just saved $500.

By the way, if you read this blog, and you don't make these changes, and then you hire me to evaluate your web site, PLEASE don't complain about paying $500 to get the same recommendations you've read here.

If you find that any of these recommendations apply to your web site, and you'd like to express your gratitude, please go to http://www.mtainfo.com and make a donation to help Russian orphans. (Thank you!)

#1 - Company name in the home page title tag. I find this problem on almost every web site I look at. The title I'm talking about is the title contained within the code in the HEAD section of your home page. It will be located between TITLE tags like these:

You won't see this title on your web site. However, it is a major factor used by the search engines in categorizing the page and it is commonly the source for the text that is displayed as the link text for your home page.

Instead of your company name, use a title that describes the content of the page or web site. If your home page is about engine maintenance for blue cars, then use the title: Engine Maintenance For Blue Cars. It will look like this in your HTML code:

#2 - Using the company name as the title for every page. Not only do most web sites I look at use their company name for the page title, they use the company name as the title for every page. This tells search engines that EVERY page on your web site is about your company name. If I were a search engine spider I'd think I was getting a lot of pages all about the same thing--that's not good spider food. (Spiders like variety.)

Do #1 above for every page on your web site. Each page should have a unique title that specifically describes the content of that page.

#3 - Flash menus. This isn't as common as the two items above, but it is a growing problem. If you are using Flash to create your menus, provide an alternative means of navigation using text links. More and more web sites are using Flash. Yes, you can do some cool things with Flash, but in many cases it's a dead end for search engines. They can't read the information in Flash files, which means they can't follow your menus. They'll get to your home page... and won't go any further.

You can keep your Flash animations and menus, but at the bottom of EVERY page provide text links that duplicate the links within the Flash file for that page. Spiders love text links and will follow them wherever they lead.

#4 - Frames. Frames should have died out years ago, but web designers continue to use them. A common use of frames is to make a page with the menus, and then frame the content. As you go through the menus it looks like the menu remains stationary and the content changes. Some web designers think it looks cool, but it's a dead end for search spiders.

The result most often is that the search spiders index the content within the frame as individual web pages. Visitors may end up at these pages, instead of the framed version, getting stuck on a plain looking page, with no navigation and usually no way out. It's a quick way to lose customers.

#5 - Database driven web sites. I've talked with web site owners who don't know what this means, and didn't know they had a database driven web site. A database driven web site is one in which information displayed on your web site comes from a database, and the web pages are created on the fly. They don't exist until someone wants to look at them. If you see a question mark in the URL for some of your pages (for example http://www.zd85.com/index.php?index=one), then it is probably a database drive web site.

Search spiders have gotten a lot better at indexing pages that come from a database, but there are still many problems. There are a few things you can do to make it easier for them to spider your database pages:

-- Keep the URLs short and with two or fewer parameters.

-- Remove the "?" from the URL and replace it with another character. For example, you can reconfigure Cold Fusion to use a "\" instead of a "?".

-- A must-do is to create a Google Site Map (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login) that lists all the URLs from your web site. Yahoo also accepts site maps. Information about submiting a site map to Yahoo is available at: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request.

-- Plus a good solid way to ensure your most important pages are indexed by search engines is to create static pages.

A static page is one that is not created by the database software, it exists all the time. One approach is to pick your key products and create static "featured product" pages. Link to these pages from your home page, site map and other relevant static pages on your web site. Link from these pages to the associated dynamic pages so your customers have direct access to the features of your database-driven pages such as online ordering.

These are just the top five SEO problems I've been finding on web sites. Fix these and then contact me for a quick evaluation of your web site. There are usually plenty of other things that need fixing. And please don't forget, if you found the above useful, please make a small donation to help Russian orphans. Thanks!!

PPC and SEM - Working Together

2006-01-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email that asked me to discuss the possible synergism between PPC and SEM. A couple of days later I decided to survey the web to see what others had to say on this topic. I wasn’t able to find anything. Almost all the articles I found were addressed the question: PPC vs. SEM, which is better?

It’s not a question of which is better. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. The question is, how can both work together to maximize profits. (Or to best achieve marketing goals.) I see PPC and SEM working together holistically in a relationship in which each fills in where the other is weak. They can also be used such that each builds on the knowledge gained from the other.

A key advantage of PPC is the speed with which your message can be online, and the flexibility it offers in allowing you to change your ad copy and keyword targeting. For example, if you are overstocked on certain items and plan to run a sale, PPC allows you to get your message out the day the sale starts. You can control the specific text of your message, and the position at which it appears on search result pages. With SEM a new page about the sale may show up in the SERPS (search engine results pages) within 24 hours, 24 days or never—and you have little control over the descriptive text or position in the SERPS. In addition, when the sale is over you can immediately remove the PPC ad, while the organic listing may continue to show up for many months.

A key advantage of organic SEM is that once your page is appearing in the SERPS, it can require little effort to keep it there. While you continue to pay for each click on your PPC ad, your pages that show up in organic SERPS will bring a steady stream of qualified leads at no cost to you.

This points out how PPC and organic SEM work together. Let’s say you are releasing a new product. Your web designer has created some fantastic new pages that feature the new product, but it will be awhile before they start showing up in search results. You can use PCC to immediately drive traffic to pages about your new product until the new pages start showing up in organic search results.

If you already have a page showing up in a top spot in organic SERPS for a targeted keyword, do you need to have a PPC ad for the same keyword? Research has shown that having a PPC ad on an organic SERP that includes a link to your web site, can significantly increase results. In this case you need to write the copy for the PPC ad so that it targets a portion of the market not targeted by the description the search engine has chosen to use. That way you pick up people who saw your organic listing, but who were not motivated to click on it by the associated description.

For example, if you sell widgets, the organic description may say that you offer three types of widgets. In your PPC ad you can say that customers get a free widget with the purchase of $100 in widget supplies.

You can also use information gained from your organic SEM to help target and optimize your PPC campaigns. For example, your web log files are one of the best places to find out what keywords are being used to find your web site. You can use this information in putting together your keyword list for your PPC ads.

On the other hand, PPC ads provide immediate feedback on what keywords are working and which are not. You can see how much traffic each keyword gets, and what percentage of that traffic clicks on your ad. You can change your ad copy and measure the effectiveness of different copy, and various offers and calls to action. All of this information can also be used to help you target your SEM efforts.

For example, you may test three variations of ad copy and find that one in particular gets a good response. You can then modify a page your web site to incorporate similar copy. Keep in mind, however, that in PCC the interaction between the ad copy and landing page is very important. However, a PPC landing page may not be well written from an SEM view. Don’t blindly use what works in PPC and expect to get good SEM results.

Looking at this from the other side, you may find that a certain web page is drawing an excellent organic response, possibly even from a market you did not know existed. You can take your organic experience and use it to target PPC ads at new keywords and market segments.

Using information gained from PPC to aid your SEM efforts requires information. That means you need to be tracking activity on your PPC landing pages and beyond. I’ll discuss how to do that in a future article.

Unwanted Web Pages

2006-01-18T12:45:00.002-08:00

As web sites change and grow, there will be times when some pages are no longer needed. If you just delete the page, however, search engines may still be sending traffic to it. This will result in visitors getting an error message that will probably cause them to move on to another web site. You lose the visitor and the potential sale.

I’ve previously discussed using a 301 redirect to send visitors to a different page. But, there are other options.

Let’s say a product has been discontinued and you no longer need the page describing that product. But, that page is still getting a significant amount of traffic from search engines. If you put a 301 redirect to the replacement product you might confuse people—they won’t understand why they clicked on a link for one product and they are on a page discussing another product.

What I like to do is replace the old page with a new one at the same URL. The new page explains what has happened. It features the old product in such a way that visitors immediately see they have found what they are looking for. But, it also explains the old product is discontinued and it offers recommendations for alternatives. Never give visitors the unexpected. Meet their expectations and then direct them along the course you’d like them to take.

Another alternative, that is a technique you can use in conjunction with the above, is to use the robots.txt file. It allows you to tell Google, Yahoo and the other search engines that you’d like a page (or entire folder) removed from their index.

To remove a page from Google include the following in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /foldername/page.html

To remove all files of a specific file type (for example, .gif) from Google, put the following in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*.gif$

For Yahoo replace “Googlebot” with “Slurp”.

If you’d like to tell all search engines to remove a page from their index, replace “Googlebot” with an asterick (*). For example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /foldername/filename.html

Or to have them ignore a folder

User-agent: *
Disallow: /foldername/

Web Sites - First Impressions Count

2006-01-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

First impressions count, and with a web site you only have 1/20 of a second to make a good first impression. The latest issue of the Behavior and Information Technology journal reports that's all the time your web site has to make a good impression. And that first impression will last and effect future decisions about returning to your web site.

Read the news story at: Internet users judge Web sites in less than a blink

"It really is just a physiological response," Gitte Lindgaard told Reuters on Tuesday. "So Web designers have to make sure they're not offending users visually."

Using Misspellings

2006-01-03T17:02:00.000-08:00

Misspelled words on your web site do not leave your visitors with a good impression. They can even drive away potential customers. However, misspelled words can be an untapped source of leads/sales as searchers enter typos and misspellings in search engines. So how can you take advantage of searches based on misspellings?

Taking advantage of misspellings is particularly attractive because there is typically little competition for the misspelled terms. It is relatively easy to create a web site featuring misspelled terms, that appears at the the top of the search results.

What I've done for one client is to set up a web site that is dedicated to misspelled brand names. Products are identified and described throughout the website using common misspellings of their names. In addition, the content is all unique, not a cut and paste of the content from this client's main web site. The result has been a web site usually shows up in the #1 position in search results, and it is the client's fourth best source of leads.

Why don't visitors get a negative impression from all the misspelled words?

Because there is a big disclaimer at the top of each page that says (paraphrased), "This web site features misspellings of some of the top brand names. We've created this web site in case you should make a typo when doing search, so that you can still find the brand name product you are looking for."

I just tell the visitor what is going on, so they know they've arrived at a web site on which the brand names have been deliberately misspelled... for their benefit. It works great!

Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2005-12-30T05:07:00.000-08:00

Business owners are starting to notice their company's web site is not in the top ten search results on Google. They are finally starting to recognize the value good search engine rankings provide, and they are wondering why their web sites are not showing up in Google's search results. However, it seems many are looking for free advice on how to get their web site into the top ten.

This article will show you where to get free advice on how to get your web site to the top of the search results.

However, in trying to achieve top search rankings, you should be aware of several hurdles you'll need to overcome. For example:

1) There are only 10 top ten spots, and in many cases hundreds, if not thousands of businesses are trying to occupy those top ten spots. There is no magic formula that will put you ahead of your competition. Getting there, or even coming close, involves creating a viable search engine strategy, and a lot of time and hard work to implement that strategy.

2) Most web sites are poorly designed for achieving a high position in search results. While the web site might look good, have wonderful graphics (maybe even some eye-catching Flash animations), and be driven by powerful database software--it does not have what it takes to attract top search rankings. The point is, someone who is an outstanding web designer, does not necessarily know how to make a web site that will rank well in search results.

So what do you do? I recommend reading The Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization. It is free and available online. It discusses topics such as how to do keyword research, the critical components of search engine optimization, and how to build a web site that will attract traffic.

Flock - The Blogging Browser

2005-12-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

I can't exactly say how I learned about Flock. I think I read about it in a blog this past week, or maybe it was an article in a newsletter. In any case I downloaded it, started using it, and liked it.

Flock is a new browser. It is called a "social browser by its creators, What's a social browser? Flock is designed to facilitate social activities on the web, such as blogging, collaborating and sharing photos. For example, I'm using Flock now to write this, and I like what I see. Using Flock is a lot more convenient and easier than logging into blogger.com. Once Flock has been set up, I just click on the "blog" button and start writing.

Although you can download and use Flock, it is currently only available as a development preview. I'm using version 0.5pre. I have encountered a few glitches, but nothing serious. For example, I've somehow managed to use two fonts in this post and I can not see a way to change fonts so the entire post will have a uniform font.

Overall I think Flock is going to be a big hit, and will be a driving force making blogging even bigger than it now is.

Postscript: Things did not go well when I tried to save this post. Flock reported that it had ecountered a problem and it had saved the post as a draft. My guess is that Blogger's captcha prevented what I wrote from being posted. When I logged into my blogger.com account, I found five copies saved as drafts--with none posted. If the post was stopped by the captcha, I'm all for retaining the captcha. I'll just log onto Blogger later and save the drafts as posts.

Also, now that I can look at the HTML I see that styles were added to create the different fonts I was seeing. However, these fonts are not showing up online when I save this post. I'm wondering if I picked up the styles when I did a copy and paste on a word I needed correctly spelled.

But, in spite of these problems, Flock makes blogging so easy, that--once the bugs are fixed--this is the browser to use in 2006... and I'll be continuing to use it from now on.

Analyzing Your Server Logs - Pt 2

2005-12-12T04:57:00.000-08:00

This is part two in a series of posts that look at the marketing information available in your web site log reports. I am using the terminology used by the Web Trends Log Analyzer software. Other software uses similar terminology.

Unless there is a specific problem I’m researching, when I look at web log reports I go directly to the information that has the highest ROI. This is what I ,ook at:

Top Documents – This is list of the most frequently accessed pages on your web site. Below you see the top three pages listed in a Web Trends report.

The Top Documents listing tells you how many times the page was viewed and how many unique visitors there were. The number of views will always be higher than the number of visits. Someone who visits a page twice will be counter as two views, but just one visitor.

This listing also shows the average amount of time a visitor has the page displayed on their monitor. These times can give you a rough idea of how much of the information on the page is being read. This information is very useful when combined with information from other lists, as I’ll describe shortly.

For my web sites the robots.txt file is usually at the top of the list. This file is used to tell search engine spiders how you want them to interact with your web site.

The other page I always expect to find at the top of the listings is the home page.

Top Entry Pages – This list shows the pages most frequently used to enter your web site. These are the pages that provide the first impression for your web site. These are very likely the most important pages on your web site. I focus a major portion of my efforts on these pages. They need to have a clear, concise, compelling message so that visitors quickly understand what you are selling/offering and why they should read more. You typically have less than ten seconds to capture the visitor’s attention and convince them your web site is worth their time.

Top Exit Pages – These are the most common last pages viewed just before a visitor leaves your web site. You can expect the robots.txt file to be near the top of the list, and it may be ignored. Your home page will also probably be near the top of the list.

The pages on this list are your last chance to make a good impression before someone leaves your web site. While you may want to keep people on your web site forever, the reality is that everyone has to leave sometime. Look at these pages to determine whether it makes sense for someone to leave through the page, or are they leaving at the beginning or in the middle of a series of pages. If your “thank you for making a purchase” page is near the top of the list, you have an incredible web site. That is a very appropriate exit page. However, in most cases the “thank you” page will not even make the list.

Single Access Pages – These are pages people use to enter your web site, however, they only look at this one page and then leave. Compare this list with the “Top Documents” list to find out how long people are looking at these pages. If the times are very short, people are most likely looking for something other than what the page offers. You should investigate why people are coming to the page and where they are coming from. If the times are longer (ten seconds or greater), there are three options:

1) The page may be offering what they want in general, but they are not finding the specific information they want, or they don’t know what to do next. You may need to look at improving navigation or your call to action.

2) The page is offering exactly what they wanted, their question was answered so they left. If your goal is to answer visitor’s questions, you can then classify this page as effective. For example, if this is a page with contact information about your company, most likely the visitor got the phone number or address they needed and then they left.
3) The page is poorly written, or the information is presented in a confusing fashion. You may need to look at your page design and copywriting.

Top Paths Through Site – This provides a list of the most common series of pages people viewed while visiting your web site. A path may have a single page, or multiple pages. This gives you an idea of what people did during their visit.

Each of the lists also includes a percentage that gives the percentage of total visitors each page represents. This is significant information that helps you judge the relative importance of the rankings. A page at the top of the Single Access list, that has 1% of your traffic is much less important than a Single Access page that has 10% of the visitors.

These five lists provide a wealth of information about what is happening on your web site. Combine the information from several lists, looking at pages that appear on more thanone list, to get a better understanding of how visitors are reacting to your web pages. For example, if some of your Top Documents are also the top Single Access pages, then you have a lot of wasted traffic visiting your web site--people are visiting and then leaving.

Keep in mind that as you make changes to you web site the pages on these list will change. The pages that appear on these lists will also change as a result of compeditive changes and changes in the market. You need to be reviewing you web logs regularly and taking action on the information the provide.

Analyzing Your Server Logs

2005-12-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

Your web logs are an important source of marketing information.

Looking at raw log data is meaningless unless you are a technical geek. However, most hosting companies provide free online log analysis using software such as Webalizer or Analog. Check your hosting provider’s help pages for information describing how you can access your log information.

Web site logs provide a lot of information about what’s happening on your web site. Let’s take a look at a few of the more important items:

The first thing you’ll see is an overview of the activity on your web site. The following is typical:

Monthly Statistics for November 2005
Total Hits	1283748
Total Files	995728
Total Pages	182778
Total Visits	59002
Total KBytes	11670808
Total Unique Visitors	34098
Total Unique Referrers	4149
	Avg	Max
Hits per Hour	1776	13453
Hits per Day	42791	68512
Files per Day	33190	55594
Pages per Day	6092	8173
Unique Visits per Day	1137	2438
KBytes per Day	389026	942717

Here is what each line means:

Total Hits: A “hit” is recorded any time a file of any type is requested. For example, if a web page includes three images, a hit will be counted when the web page is requested. An additional three hits will be counted as the three images are requested. Thus when a visitor looks at that page, four hits are counted.

Total Files: This records the number of files that are successfully downloaded. If everythere were perfect, the “Total Files” would equal the “Total Hits”—every file that was requested would be successfully downloaded. But in reality everything does not work perfectly and the “Total Files” will always be less than the “Total Hits”.

Total Pages: This shows the total number of complete web pages that were accessed.

Total Visits: A visitor will typically look at several pages on the web site. The web server keeps track of visitors and only counts them once, even if they leave the web site and return a few minutes later. However, if they leave and do not return for a day or two, that second visitor will typically be counted as a new visit. An interesting metric is to track the number of pages per visit (Total Pages/Total Visits). The larger this number, the better, because it means visitors are staying on your site and looking at more pages.

Total Kbytes: The total number of kilobytes downloaded from the web site.

Total Unique Visitors: The web server attempts to identify people who visit the web site, leave and then return again, so that each person is counted only once. Although not entirely accurate, this is probably one of the more important data points. It gives you a rough idea of home many people visit your web site.

Total Unique Referrers: This number shows you the number of pages that could be identified as having a link to your web site which people clicked on to go to a page on your web site. This number includes pages within the web site itself, so looking at what’s behind this number is important. We’ll talk about that in a future post.

Per Day Data: The “Per Day” day breaks down the above information so you can see both the average and maximum numbers. You usually can see the specific daily numbers, if you wish to see daily trends.

Search Engine Saturation

2005-12-08T05:05:00.000-08:00

Search engine saturation is a metric that shows how many of the pages in your web site a search engine has found. There are free online tools that will measure web site saturation. My favorite is MarketLeap

Another site that offers a free tool to measure saturation is PageRank.net

There are many web sites that offer a tool similar to what you’ll find on PageRank.net. I prefer the MarketLeap tool because it maintains a saturation history allowing you to see trends. Each time you measure saturation it stores another data point. Checking your saturation once a month is a good way to build up a useful trend report.

Monitoring your search engine saturation helps identify problems that may be preventing a search engine from seeing your complete site, such as poor navigation, poor page design or even possible banning of the site.

Low Page Counts

For example, I’ve just starting working on a web site that has over 50,000 pages. The MarketLeap saturation report shows this site as having 234 pages in the Google index. There appears to be a problem, or actually several problems. Here are three:

a) About 35,000 of the pages require the visitor to enter a password. This prevents Google from indexing those pages. The password requirement is just ensure the visitor has read the terms of use. The site owner would like Google to index the complete web site.

b) The web site is set up like a directory. There is a manual navigation system that provides “index” pages, each with 600 links. Although these are all internal links, this is rather unusual and Google may be seeing this as a link farm.

c) The link text is not meaningful. Links are labeled with just an alphabetical range (a-ad, ad-ah, ah-am, etc.) or with page numbers (page 1, page 2, page 3, etc.).

High Page Counts

The page count reported by a tool for measuring saturation will often exceed the total number of pages on your web site. For example, I have a web site that has about 3,000 pages, but saturation tools report that Google has over 10,000 pages in its index. What is going on?

You can search for the pages in Google by using the following in the Google search box (with no spaces):

site:www.website.com/

The problem is, although it will tell you how many pages are in the index, you can only see the listing for a limited number of those pages.

Part of the reason for the high number of pages is that search engines will list the same page multiple times using different URLs. For example, here are for URLs for the same page:

www.yoursite.com/
www.yoursite.com/index.htm
yoursite.com
yoursite.com/index.html

Because you have no way to know how many duplicate pages are in the search engine’s index, you can not take saturation numbers as being absolute. If there is a big discrepancy, such as in my first example, you know there is a problem. However, in most cases saturation numbers should be considered as relative numbers that serve as a guide to tell you whether your saturation is improving or not improving. For example, if you’ve been adding pages to your web site, but your saturation is decreasing, there is a problem.

Search Engine Visibility

2005-12-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

What is search engine visibility?

I frequently see the terms “saturation” and “visibility” used interchangeably. However, I feel there is a significant difference. Visibility is a measure of how visible your _______ (fill in the blank) is in the search results. In its simplest form, the higher you rank in the search results, the more visible you are. Taking a defintion of internet visibility to a higher level, internet visibility has to do with where people first look when a page of search results are displayed. This is measured using eye tracking studies and is typically found to be the upper left of the page—which is where the top ranked search results are usually located.

I intentionally left a "fill in the blank" space in the above paragraph. When visibility is measured, it is important we be aware of what we are measuring and what we need to be measuring. In a moment we’ll take a look at some of the possibilities we can use to fill in that blank, but first, how do we measure visibility?

Traditionally visibility measurements are based on the first three pages of search results. I base my visibility metrics on the first two pages (top 20) search results. Although it gives a lower visibility rating, I feel this is more realistic as few people go beyond the second page of search results.

To calculate a visibility score, assign points to each position in the search results. If you are looking at the top 20 search results, the #1 result is worth 20 points. The #2 position is worth 19 points. The third ranked result is 18 points… and so on.

Conduct a search, in each search engine you are monitoring, for the same key word or phrase. The visibility metric is based on just one web page. Find your highest ranked web page in the search results, and record the number of points based on the position of that page. If it is in the #21 position or higher, it gets no points. Here’s an example:

Let’s say the search phrase is "wall clocks" and these are the search results:

Search Engine	Top Ranked Page	Points
Google	9	12
Yahoo	none	0
MSN	4	17
Ask	15	6
TOTAL Points		35
Visibility Ranking		43.8%

The visibility ranking (the percentage) is calculated by dividing the total points by the total number of possible points, which is 80 (4 times 20) in this case.

This gives the visibility for a specific key word or phrase. You can then check a number of key words and phrases, and average them to get an overall visibility score.

There are a variety of ways to measure visibility.

Web Site Visibility: This is visibility in it’s simplest form. The objective is to measure the visibility of a specific web site. When you check the search results you only give points to the top ranked page from the specific web site that is being evaluated. This type of visibility can be measured manually or using automated tools.

Web Visibility: If you have more than one web site (see previous post discussing mini-sites) you may want to measure your web visibility based on all of your web sites. In this measurement you give points to your highest ranked page from any of your web sites for each key word/phrase. This type of visibility can be measured manually or using custom automated tools.

Organization Visibility: This measure of visibility looks at how well your organization shows up in search results. It takes into account any page that benefits your organization. This includes pages from your web site(s), as well as press releases, blog posts, articles, pages from dealer web sites, trade show pages and any other web pages you judge are of significant benefit to you. For pages that are not on your web site(s), these should be pages that are exclusively about your organization and that lead visitors directly to your web site. In other words, they must directly contribute to achieving your internet objectives, not just be pages that mention your company name. This type of visibility can only be measured by manually by having someone look at search results.

Product Visibility: This measure of visibility looks for pages that are about a specific product or service. The top ranked page that is about the targeted product or service, and which provides significant benefit, is the page that is counted. This could be a page from the company web site(s), a press release, an advertisement, blog post or a dealer’s page.

Internet visibility is a valuable metric. You should be measuring, and tracking historical data for search engine visibility for various types of visibility, depending on your internet marketing goals. The purpose of these metrics is to ensure that you have pages in the locations in search results that where the greatest number of people will see the links. Use these metrics to ensure you have good internet visibility based on your targeted internet marketing goals, and to spot visibility problems as early as possible.

Mini-Sites Effect Main Web Site Rankings

2005-12-02T05:31:00.000-08:00

I was going to talk about visibility of key phrases today, but I thought I should cover another topic first, mini-sites.

A mini web site is a small web site that is targeted at a specific subject. For example, a manufacturer might have a main web site that covers all their products and services, and then a series of small web sites for each product. I have a client who does exactly that. The mini-sites are easy for the sales staff to refer customers to for information on specific products. For example, if the customer is interested in product XYZ, the sales person can refer them to XYZ.COM.

The mini-sites also make it easy for the customer to find information about a product without getting distracted by information that may only apply to an unrelated product.

In addition, because this client does not want to miss out on cross-selling opportunities, there is some cross linking between the mini-sites, and all the mini-sites link to the main web site.

Since the Google Jagger update I’ve noticed that it is becoming common for the client’s mini-sites to replace the main site in Google search results. It appears that the overall theme of the web site is playing a larger role in determining relevance. This makes sense because the targeted content of the mini-site is highly relevant to the search. While the similar content on the main web site is buried among 25 other types of products. The downside is that for some key phrases the mini-site typically ranks lower than the main web site did for the same key phrase. This is probably because it does not have the abundance of inbound links that the main web site has.

In my next post I’ll talk about why this is important when measuring key phrase visibility.

Montitoring Search Results

2005-12-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

This begins a series of postings on methods for monitoring how well you are doing in the search engine results pages (SERPS). I’ll first be looking at direct measurement of search engine results, then I’ll discuss measuring how well marketing objectives are being achieved. I’ll be focusing on methods that can be used by anyone, large companies, small firms or individuals, and which require a minimal number of software tools.

DATA COLLECTION

I manually collect data about my client’s web sites every month. This means I perform a series of searches using the targeted keywords, and record the results in a spreadsheet. By collecting data manually I do not abuse the search engine’s limits on data mining, but more importantly it gives me an opportunity to get an overall view of the search results for each key phrase. I find that I notice things about my web sites, and about competitors web sites, that are not necessarily revealed by the data.

In the past I would collect data on ten search engines. Since the consolidation of search engine ownership, I now usually monitor just five search engines:

Yahoo
Google
MSN
Teoma
Ask (B to B) or AOL (consumer)

In some cases I add one or two other search engines, including some meta search engines, based on the client’s target market, and their customers search behavior.

The number of key phrases I use varies by client from five, up to seventeen.

As I search for each key phrase I record each instance of a web site that benefits the client in a program I've created. You can also use a spreadsheet as shown below. The standard practice is to look at the top 30 search results, but since most searchers don't even go past the first page, I only look at the top 20 search results for each key phrase. I record the position of the web page in the search results and the root URL of the web site.

What is a web site that benefits the client?

Any web site that benefits the client. This, of course, includes their web site. But it also includes web sites that have one of their press releases or an article about the client or one of their products. It may include dealers who carry the client’s products, if the dealer site does not steer customers to a competitive product. It could include blog posts, discussion forms, trade show sites and supplier web sites. Any web page that truly delivers value to my client is counted.

What about ads?

Whether or not to include ads as a part of the search results is a judgment call. If I think the search result page is designed such that a typical visitor is likely to consider the ads as a part of the search results, I count the ads. Thus if a search result page that has five paid ads at the top and ten organic search results, I may count it as having 15 search results. When I go to the next page I’ll only look at the top five “search” results on that page—which may all be paid ads.

Next – Determining Keyword Visibility

Using Articles To Increase Your IBLs

2005-11-28T05:43:00.000-08:00

I previously wrote about Free Content For Four Web Site and provided a list of some of the services that offer free articles you can reprint on your web site. There are two aspects to this marketing technique:

1) As I discussed in the first article, you can get content you can quickly add to your web site.

2) You can provide articles others can use on their web sites, which will then provide links to your web site. Each time an article you wrote is published, a short biography of the author (that's you) is included along with a link back to your web site.

Both of these benefits can be particularly helpful to a new web site that is working to both build content and build IBLs (In Bound Links).

Here are a three more web sites that offer free articles:

Idea Marketers - This is one of my favorites because they make publishing articles easy. You start by setting up a profile that includes your links and author biography. That information is then automatically attached to each article you submit, eliminating the need to enter this information over and over, if you submit multiple articles.

Article Warehouse - Requires you to register before articles can be submitted, but registration is quick and easy. Articles are reviewed before they are placed online.

Ezine Articles - Allows you to submit up to ten articles free. If your articles are of a good enough quality you will be upgraded to a Basic account, which allows 25 article submissions, or a Platinum account which allows unlimited submissions.

SEO For Blogger.com

2005-11-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

Blogger.com provides an easy way for even the non-computer literate to create a web site. However, it is not very flexible as far as optimizing for good search results. For example, it does not provide a way to have a good description for your blog, that changes as you add new posts. You can add a descriptrion meta tag to the template, but it will be a static description that may not always accurately reflect the content of your blog.

There is way to include a dynamically generated description.

Add the following code to the "head" section of your Blogger template:

This will create a description meta tag that includes the titles of your most recent posts, separated by a slash (/). In addition, I usually include generic text, that include keywords describing the blog, as the first part of the description.

Learning About Web Spam

2005-11-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

I've just read two excellent papers that discuss search engine spam, what it is and how it can be detected. They were facinating reading. I learned about then from Gary Price's post on the Search Engine Watch blog.

The two papers are:

Web Spam Taxonomy (PDF)
By: Zoltán Gyöngyi, Hector Garcia-Molina.

Abstract: Web spamming refers to actions intended to mislead search engines into ranking some pages higher than they deserve. Recently, the amount of web spam has increased dramatically, leading to a degradation of search results. This paper presents a comprehensive taxonomy of current spamming techniques, which we believe can help in developing appropriate countermeasures.

Web Spam, Propaganda and Trust (PDF)
By: Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Joe DeStefano

Abstract: Web spamming, the practice of introducing artificial text and links into web pages to affect the results of searches, has been recognized as a major problem for search engines. It is also a serious problem for users because they are not aware of it and they tend to confuse trusting the search engine with trusting the results of a search.

I recommend reading both of these papers.

Does Google Personal Search Eliminate The Need For SEO?

2005-11-11T04:11:00.000-08:00

No.

Google has announced that they are moving personal search out of the labs and into beta. Personal search allows anyone with a Google account, and the Google toolbar, to have their search behavior tracked. The web sites listed in future searches will depend, in part, on past search behavior. The objective is to deliver more relevent search results to each individual.

This means that potentially everyone will see different search results, even when searching for the same key word or phrase. How does this effect SEO?

As far as I can see, not at all. You still need to create good web stes, that have compelling content that is of interest to your target markets. The site still needs to be easy to navigate and quality IBLs (in-bound links) are still valuable. And you still need to avoid the pitfalls that result in lower search result rankings, or that might even get your site banned.

Although search results will be personalized, not everyone is going to want personalized search results. So for some of your target market nothing has changed.

For those using personalized search you still want your web sites to be at the top of those listings. These will be better targeted search results, so having your site near the top should result in a much better response rate than with untargeted search results. Personalization of search results may even result in your showing up in search results you couldn't get into before.

In addition, reading the Google patent reveals that, with personalized search some web sites that don't match the personalization will be mixed in with the personalized results. Four or five of the top ten personalized search results may be from outside the personalization criteria. Thus, SEO is even more important--to get your sites into these unpersonalized results, they'll need to be in the top 4 or 5 generic results. It will be twice as difficult to appear on the first page of search results.

But the biggest problem for SEO resulting from personalized search results is in getting feedback. You'll no longer know what searchers are seeing because their search results are personalized. Instead of testing to see how you are doing on search results pages you'll now need to put on your SEM hat on and test against conversion rates--which after all has always been the true objective.

Visual Variety

2005-11-10T10:13:00.000-08:00

Which of these two pages is more inviting to read?

Facility Safety Management

Modify Workplace Safety for Older Labor Force

Each of the above web sites has reprinted the same press release. Which has the more professional apprearance? Which gives a better impression of a solid company that will be around for a long time? Which one are you more likely to read?

The first is displayed without formating and with the magazine's standard header across the top. This may have been easy to do, and possibly even automated, but what advantage does the web site gain from carrying this press release? Yes, they have an additional page of content, but is that page truly accomplishing anything for the magazine?

The second web site has added formatting to the press release. It is divided into sections by bold headings and quotes are in blue text. This makes the press release easier to read and makes it more likely visitors will read the entire press release.

Why do they want visitors to read the entire press release? After all, this press release is not promoting anything this web site sells.

The press release has information of interest to industrial and manufacturing companies. This web site targets people who work for those types of companies. The objective of this page is to get visitors to respond to one of the offers along the right side of the page, or at least to visit other parts of the web site using the menu on the left. The more of the press release they read, the more offers they'll see--and one of the offers lower on the page might fill a need they have, resulting in a response.

The point is, don't throw away opportunities to encourage visitors to your web site to respond to your web site.

SEO or SEM?

2005-11-10T04:14:00.000-08:00

Which should you focus on, SEO or SEM?

SEO is Search Engine Optimization. This is what helps your web site to show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

SEM is Search Engine Marketing. This is leads visitors to act in the desired way in response to your search listings, advertising and web pages.

SEO uses search engines to let people know your web site exists. If they can't find you, your web site is wasted. SEM gets the desired response. If they come to your web site, but don't respond, your SEO effort is wasted. You need both SEO and SEM. You can't do one without the other.

For many web sites neither SEO nor SEM is done at all. The site is created by a very talented web designer who produces a beautiful web site. The business owner is in awe over how impressive looking their web site is. However, it is only by chance, not design, that it shows up in search engine results or brings in additional sales.

Here is where I can hear all the SEO experts jumping up and yelling that the web site needs some key word research, pages rewritten to focus on specific key words and phrases, link building and submission to directories like DMOZ.

And the SEM experts are all screaming that page titles need to be written using compelling text, landing pages need to be optimized, and there must be a call to action on every page.

But to listen to either of these would be skipping a very important step. We must always first ask, what is the purpose of the web site? What does the business owner want to accomplish with this web site?

I've created web sites for some high-end, exclusive local businesses. They don't want the international visibility that a highly SEO'd web site brings. They don't want phone calls from people who are not going to become customers. What they want is a classy, expensive looking web site to which they can refer customers who need to look at product or design options. This is a web site that needs SEM (focused on site design), but not SEO.

Although the answer to the question: SEO or SEM? is most often, "Both", the first step is always to understand the needs of the web site owner and their customers.

Your Web Site Just Became More Valuable

2005-11-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

As a result of the recent Google "Jagger" update, you existing web site(s) has just become more valuable. It appears that Google is giving more weight to the age of a web site, and even to the age of individual pages within a web site, when determining how high it will rank in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

How can this help you?

Make sure your older web sites and pages are effective. Often when I click on a link in a search results page I'm taken to a web site, and I have no idea what that web site is about. Are they selling something? Are they just providing information? Where are they located? The text I'm seeing may be relevant to my search, but why am I here?

With Google's emphasis on older web sites and pages, it is important you use them effectively. Always tell your visitors the purpose of the page, and tell them what you want them to do. Are you selling product? Tell your visitors what the product is and how they can buy it, and put this information above the fold so it can be readily seen when the page loads. Be sure your phone numbers are on every page, above the fold, and easy to find.

Don't leave your visitors wondering about what you are offering and how they can get it.

What pages should you focus on? Start by looking at your log files. Identify the pages that are most frequently used to enter your web site, and make sure they are effectively communicating your message. Check your logs on a regular basis, because the top entry pages will change over time.

Also look for ways to improve your established pages to take advantage of the age bonus Google gives them. You may have some older pages that have never done well in the SERPs, but with a little SEO and SEM they can become very effective marketing tools.

The Fountain of SEO Knowledge

2005-11-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

If you follow the postings in any of the SEO/SEM forums, you’ll find that almost everyone has an opinion on how to achieve top search engine rankings based on their personal experience. The problem is that while some of the various opinions agree, most of them don’t. It can become a confusing, sometimes impossible, quest to separate fact from fiction.

How can you tell what will truly help your web site? You need facts not anecdotes and myths. The place to get those facts is the web site of Dr. Edel Garcia. This past April I had a short posting that mentioned an article on keyword density by Dr. Garcia. However, if you visit his web site you'll find a lot more; and it is all worth reading.

Don't be put off by the technical sounding titles. Dr. Garcia writes in a style that can be understood even by those of us who do not have a technical background. So take a look around. Read the articles and you'll improve your ability to get your web sites to the top of the search results.

Free Content For Your Web Site

2005-10-31T05:23:00.000-08:00

Are you looking to add some quick, quality content to your web sites? A number a web sites provide articles you can freely add to your web site, as long as you follow a few rules. The most common rule is to provide a link to the author’s web site. You get a free article. The author gets a free link to their web site.

Here are links to four web sites that provide free content you can use:

GoArticles.com is a part of the Jayde Online Network. It is an article search engine and directory that is updated daily.

Valuable Content provides free content for your newsletter, ezine, or website. Use articles or poems from the Valuable Content web site with the requirement being that you include the author resource box associated with the article and a link to Valuable Content

Article City articles may be used. in whole or in part, provided that author by-lines and links are kept intact, unchanged and functional.

Articles 4 Content I could not find the terms of use for articles from this site. Submitting articles is quick and easy with no sign up required.

Article Beam allows you to freely copy and publish any of the articles in their directory, so long as they are published exactly as they appear. RSS feeds also available.

Article Hang Out Uses the same software as Article Beam. They do appear to have different libraries of articles available. I don't know if they are related, but submission of articles both Article Beam and Article Hang Out is uncomplicated and easy.

Speaking of submitting articles: While adding freely available articles to your web site is nice, it is even better if others put articles you’ve written on their web sites. The result will be that other web sites will be promoting your products and services, and they will be providing valuable links back to your web site. So write a few articles yourself, submit them to the above services, and let other people promote your web site.

Blogger.com and Sblogs

2005-10-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Up until recently blogger.com was wide open to those who used sblogging as a marketing tool.

What is a sblog?

It is a blog that was created for spamming purposes. Automated software can easily create hundreds, even thousands of blogs whose purpose is to promote and provide links to some web site. These blogs have no value to anyone who might read one, their only purpose is to spam the search engines for promotional purposes. That's why they are called sblogs -- spam blogs.

A simple solution, that stops the automated software, is to require that a code, displayed in a distorted image, be typed in before a new blog entry is published. Blogger.com has instituted such a system and I cheer on this change with a big HURRAY!!

Free Press Release Distribution Services - Part 2

2005-10-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

In May I posted an article about Free Press Release Distribution Services and provided links to several services. Here are links to additional free press release distrubution services:

The Open Press - Be sure to follow the submission guidelines and press release format. They have very specific requirements.

PR Free - Easy to use, easy to understand press release submission.

Press Method - I can't say that I've ever seen any evidence a press release I've submitted through this service has ever been seen by anyone. If you make a contribution, your press release will get better exposure. (This is true of several of the free press release distribution services.)

I-Newswire.com - Quick and easy to submit a press release.

PR News Now - I see press releases from PR News Now show up in search results, but I'm not sure how this site works. Much of the site, including the HELP section, seems to be nonfunctional.

ADPr.com - ADPr.com only accepts a limited number of free press releases, but it does not hurt to give them a try.

Google Jagger Update

2005-10-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

Google is going through a major update in their index. This update is being called Jagger by the SEO industry.

If you need information about this update, information about how to report spam to Google, information about how to ask that your web site be reincluded in Google, or just general information about what's happening at Google, the place to go is Matt Cutts' blog: Gadgets, Google and SEO. Matt is a Google employee who has been posting some excellent, and very useful information.

The robots.txt File

2005-10-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

Take a look at your log files for 404 errors and you may see that the robots.txt file tops the list. This is one of the most frequently accessed files on a web site and, if you don't have one, it will top the list of files generating 404 (page not found) errors.

The robots.txt file is accessed so frequently because search engine spiders check the robots.txt file for rules you use to tell spiders where they can and can not go on your web site. It's an important file because you can use it to keep spiders out of folders you don't want indexed, such as your images or stats folders.

The robots.txt file is a plain text file that goes in the root folder of your web site.

If you just want to stop the 404 errors, you can use an empty robots.txt file. There does not need to be any content in the file.

Here is an example of what might be included in a robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /setup.php
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/

The "User-agent" variable identifies the specific spider. In this case the asterisk means that the rules apply to all spiders.

The variable "Disallow:" identifies files or folders that the User-agent may not visit. In this case spiders may not index the setup.php file, nor may the index any of the files in the "cgi-bin" and "images" folders.

Here's another example:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /images/

In the above the Google spider, GoogleBot, is being excluded from the images folder.

These two examples can be combined:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /setup.php
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/

In the above nothing is disallowed for GoogleBot, so it may index all files and folders on the web site. All other spiders may not index the setup.php file, nor the "cgi-bin" and "images" folders.

One of the best places to go for information about the robots.txt file is http://www.robotstxt.org/. It is an all inclusive source for information on the robots.txt file and Robot Exclusion Standards, and it provides articles about writing well-behaved web spiders. Topics covered include:

The Web Robots FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions about Web Robots, from Web users, Web authors, and Robot implementers.

Robots Exclusion - Find out what you can do to direct robots that visit your Web site.

A List of Robots - A database of currently known robots, with descriptions and contact details.

The Robots Mailing List - An archived mailing list for discussion of technical aspects of designing, building, and operating Web Robots.

Articles and Papers - Background reading for people interested in Web Robots

Related Sites - Some references to other sites that concern Web Robots.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

2005-10-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

I recently posted a link to a page with questions and answers about MSN search. So what about Google?

Google has recently updated their webmaster information pages. They provide an outstanding resource to help you understand what Google does with web sites. While they don't give away any inner secrets, it well worth reading the Google Information for Webmasters pages.

MSN Responds To Questions

2005-10-08T07:19:00.000-07:00

Here's some interesting information. MSN responds to questions submitted by SEO Chat in the following areas:

A) Growth, Relevancy & Technology
B) Code & Crawling
C) Spam, Penalties & Ranking Questions
D) Webmaster Recommendations
E) MSN News and Future Offerings

Read the questions and answers at SEOmoz.

More On 301 Permanent Redirects

2005-09-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

About six months ago I wrote about 301 permanent redirects. (See 301 Permanent Redirects)

A number of people have been asking questions about this topic, in particular looking for ways to deal with large numbers of pages that have been renamed or deleted.

The following applies to web sites hosted on UNIX (or similar) systems. Web sites hosted on Windows servers will require the assistance of the System Administrator to set up redirects.

If all the files in a folder have been deleted you can use a single line in your .htaccess file to redirect all attempts to reach a page in that folder to a different page. This .htaccess file must be placed in the folder from which all files were deleted. The line to put in the .htaccess file is:

redirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.website.com/newpage.html

Using the above, anyone who attempts to reach any page in the folder containing this .htaccess file will be sent to http://www.website.com/newpage.html

If you have renamed all the files in a folder, then you will still need to put a separate line in the .htaccess file for each page that was renamed. This follows the format:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.website.com/newpage.html

Google Tracking Clicks

2005-08-22T05:21:00.000-07:00

I noticed something interesting this morning. Google is tracking how people respond to their search results.

Try this: Do a Google search. It does not matter what you search for. Pick one of the search results, put your mouse on the link, and hold down the left mouse button. You'll see a Google link shown at the bottom of your browser. When you release the mouse button you'll be taken to the web site you've selected.

The links in Google search results have been set up to activate a link to Google when you push down on your mouse button and then take you to the web site you selected when you release the mouse button.

What does this mean?

This allows Google to measure which links people are actually clicking on. Using cookies they can tell when you arrive at Google, and how long you are away looking at a web site you found in a Google search. This information allows Google to identify relevent web sites based on which are getting clicked on and whether people stay at the site or return to the Google SERPs to try another web site.

Buyer Be Wary

2005-08-09T05:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a company offering to sell me a domain they said ranked very high for my name. When I checked the search results it had the top two positions in Google. If I accepted their offer I could buy this #1 ranked domain for just $75.00!

Does this sound like a bargain?

I was suspicious from the start because I had never seen this domain before. It had come out of nowhere and just showed up in the #1 position in Google. That’s unusual. I regularly monitor about 100 keywords for various clients and web sites typically don’t just pop into the #1 spot.

I was also suspicious because the domain name was a generic word, unrelated to me or anything I do. And the content on the site was just one sentence about a marketing book I had written 12 years ago. That’s not much content.

So I waited and watched.

Two weeks later the domain disappeared completely from Google.

What they had done was to set up a redirect that “stole” the top spot in Google from one of my own sites. When I checked the Google cache it showed one of my web sites, but the link in the search results went to the domain this company was trying to sell me. When Google re-spidered the site they picked up the correct content and dropped the listing from the search results. My guess is that the owner of this domain has set up a new redirect and is now stealing someone else’s search position in Google, which they will then attempt to sell back to that person.

So buyer be wary. If a deal sounds too good, walk away. And if someone is telling you that you need to buy now, take your time.

Be Consistent With Link URLs

2005-06-29T05:12:00.000-07:00

When setting up links always use the same URL.

What does that mean? I can hear some of you say, "Of course I'm not going to use different URLs for the same link."

There are a number of different ways the same URL can be written. Let's look at the URL for a home page, for example the page at: http://www.zd85.com/index.html

The above is an absolute link. Links from other pages in the root directory can be relative, such as:

index.html

And a link from a subfolder can be: ../index.html

These are relative links, meaning that they are relative to the page on which they are located.

Absolute links for a home page also have a number of valid variations:

http://zd85.com/
http://zd85.com/index.html
http://www.zd85.com/
http://www.zd85.com/index.html

Google has suggested that all links to a page should have the exact same URL. Even internal links should be written as absolute links, using the exact same URL as you use for links from external sources. That way their spider will not classify ../index.html, http://zd85.com/index.html and http://www.zd85.com/index.html/ as three different pages.

Site Navigation and Consistency

2005-06-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

This past week I started working on a client’s BtoB web site that was slowly disappearing from Google. About a year ago they had upgraded the site to a new design, including a new navigation system. One of the key objectives of the new navigation system was that it be consistent throughout the web site. One of the major problems with this site was that consistency.

The top level navigation is a series of tabs. The tabs are in a single graphic with an image map providing the links. I’m not particularly fond of using image maps, but they have their place when used correctly. The problem in this case was that there was no ALT text. Each link in an image map should have ALT text describing the destination of the link. The ALT text is useful to both the visitor and search engine spiders

To be consistent, the links under each tab used the same link text for all products. The result is link text with generic words such as: description, benefits, supplies and support. It is exactly the same for every product. While a visitor will read the page title and understand what description the link leads to, a search spider just sees the word “description”. This does not help achieve the objective of having the product page (the description page) rank high in the search results. To help acvhieve high rankings the product name should be a part of the link text, such as:

Widget Description
Widget Supplies
Widget Support
…etc.

The web site sells a variety of products. As a result, the amount and type of information for each product varies. The “Overview” tab had four subcategories: Description, Supplies, Specifications and Ordering. For many products there were important pages that did not fit one of these categories such as: cost comparisons, testimonials and information about options. Links to these pages were buried under a Miscellaneous tab.

When there is information that is important in helping the customer make a purchasing decision, that information needs to be up front, visible and easy to access. In this case, having the flexibility to add a fifth and six link under the “Overview” tab will make information that is a part of the purchasing decision noticeable and easy to access.

Summary: Having consistency in a web site navigation system is important, but don’t let the goal of constancy override the main objective of the page--that of generating leads or bringing in sales.

Some Links Are Bad Links

2005-06-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

Links are touted as the way to higher search rankings. But not all links are good links.

Broken Links: Whenever I look at a web site, one of the first things I do is to check for broken links--and I always find them. Broken links on your web site drive away visitors. They need to be found and fixed. My current favorite utility for identifying broken links is Xenu Link Sleuth.

What about broken links that used to go to your web site from other web sites? These are links that other webmasters felt were valuable to have, but which are doing nothing to help you. How do you find links on other web sites? Use search commands such as "link:www.yoursite.com" and "allinanchor:yourbusinessname". When you find a broken link contact the webmaster for the site with the broken link. Let them know about the broken link, and provide the correct link and link text.

Even when a link to your web site is not broken, it still may not be of value. The link text is critial. Search engines use link text to determine relevancy of the page the link points to. Link text such as "Click Here" is very common, and essentially useless. Also link text unrelated to the topic of the page is generally not helpful. Politely contact the webmaster of the site with the link text you'd like to see changed and ask them to change the link text to wording that will be more usedful to you and their visitors. You should, of course, provide some suggested text.

Free Press Release Distribution Services

2005-05-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

One tool to help your web site get noticed are press releases published by the various press release services on the internet. Many services charge a fee to distribute your press release, however there are some free distribution services. The following will distribute your press release on the internet free:

Free Press Release Distribution Service

PR Leap - Free Press Release Distribution to Major Search Engines

Press Release Service from PRWeb

Press World - Free Press Release Distribution Service

The following are specialized free press release services. Even if these are not in your specific area of business, try them, as they may lead you to other topic specific web sites that offer free press release distribution.

Industrial Safety

Sign Industry

Manufacturing Press Releases

Engineering Talk

When sending out press releases, include your local newspaper. Even though your business may not be targeted at your local area, getting information about your business published in your local paper will put another article about you on the web for the world to see.

And, of course, you did include a link to your web site as a part of your press release, didn't you?

Do you need help writing your press release? Try this free tool at Duct Tape Marketing. It will help you to create a professional, correctly formatted press release.

Solving A SEO Problem

2005-05-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

This is the most common question I'm asked.

You have a web site, but it’s not showing up in the top results in searches on Google. What do you do?

Jump right in, start going through the pages on the site changing the titles and meta tags, and packing more keywords into the text on the pages. The sooner you get it done, the sooner Google will see your changes and rank the web site higher. Right?

NOT!

Before making any changes or additions, know what you want to do and WHY you are doing it. In other words, do some planning first.

The first question is always, “What is the purpose of this web site?” Having a high search engine ranking isn’t important for about 80% of the web sites I manage. Some are intended for internal use; some are customer service related, some provide landing pages for adverting, and others are used to support a sales force.

Next ask, “Why isn’t this site showing up in search results? What are the possible problems?”

Here are a few things to look for:

1) Does the site use frames or Flash? If so, this is the place to start. First, get rid of the frames. Search engines will not read the content in the frames, so it won't get indexed. Besides, no web site needs to use frames.

Here's a web site that was originally designed using frames: http://web.archive.org/web/20040918074756/http://bvlawfirm.com/

The site was redesigned to eliminate the frames. It not only looks better, but now the search engines can spider it: Blair & Vestigo Law Firm

There are some legitimate uses for Flash, but this is the only file format Google says they can not read. So information in Flash movies will not be seen by Google, which means your site won't show up in Google search results. If no one can find your site, then no one will see your beautiful Flash animations.

2) Is the site database driven? Pages built from a database will generally not be indexed by search engines. You’ll need to build some static content that will form a framework around your pages created from the database.

3) How much text is on each page, in particular your home page? Although this is not a firm rule, you should have at least 250 words of text on pages you want to show up in search results. A better rule of thumb is to create pages that have a variety of text, ranging from 100 words on some to 750 words on others.

4) What is your site navigation like? Does it use Javascript or image links? If so, consider changing to text links, or at least put text links at the bottom of each page, that duplicate the Javascript or image links.

If your site doesn’t have one, create a “site map” for search engines that has a link to every page you want the search engines to find. Put in a link from your home page to the site map page. This page makes it easy for spiders to find the pages you want them to find.

5) Is anyone linking to your web site (try link harvester)? What is your deep link ratio? These two tools will give you some perspective on the links coming into your site.

6) How are people currently finding your site? Check your web logs to find out how much traffic the site has and where it is coming from.

You web logs are packed with useful information. You can find the pages most frequently used to enter and exit your site. You can see what search terms and phrases have led visitors to your site. You can find out if you have a problem with 404 errors (page not found).

Once you have this basic information, identify the key problem areas and make a plan to change your web site to address those problem areas.

Google Descriptions

2005-05-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

In the old days the meta tags on a web page ruled. Search engines read the meta tags and ranked pages based on that information. It was easy to get a high ranking just by stuffing our meta tags with key words. But people stuffed their meta tags with keywords that were not related to the content of the page. That’s called search engine spam, and as a result most search engines stopped using the meta tags for ranking web pages in search results. Meta tags still have little influence on ranking, but they are rising in importance in your marketing plan.

Under certain circumstances Google now displays the meta description, or part of the meta description, as the description in their search results.

Previously Google displayed snippets of text, containing the search terms, taken from the web page. This gave a description that was disjoined and most often not very descriptive. Google now looks to three sources for a page description: the description meta tag, the DMOZ description, and snippets from the web page. You may now find one of these, or a combination of these used as your description.

In the example below, the text in the red boxes are page snippets. The balance of the descriptions are taken from the page meta description.

This means that you must pay attention to what is in each page description. This is the only part of the Google description you can control. Include the keywords for the page in the description, but don’t stuff it with key words. Remember, the page also needs a compelling description that gives the searcher a reason to want to go to your page. It’s like writing a short classified ad. You need to grab the reader’s attention, and give them a reason to go to your page. Every word is important, and must be included only if there that word has a specific purpose.

Including key words and phrases gets the discription you wrote displayed.

A compelling description gets people to click on the link to your page.

The Google description may display up to 200 characters. Make sure you use them wisely.

Yahoo Travel Submit

2005-04-25T05:07:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has announced their new Travel Submit service. This is a pay per click (PPC) travel advertising services that Yahoo says will provide you: "Detailed listings of your travel offers and deals featured in highly relevant areas across Yahoo! Travel, giving you access to a vast audience of motivated travelers and targeted leads."

"Your offers will be displayed in Yahoo!'s popular travel research and planning areas, including:

Yahoo! Travel Deals, a new marketplace featured prominently on Yahoo! Travel
Yahoo! Travel Guides, destination and category-specific pages highlighting travel information, resources, ratings, and reviews for over 20,000 destinations and more than 100,000 hotel properties."

The cost per click is set by Yahoo and ranges from 20 cents/click for destinations to 57 cents/click for cruises, vacation packages and vacation rentals. However, it pays to sign up early because clicks are free through June 15, 2005.

The order in which the ads will be sure is based on "matching the consumer's search criteria with the location, category, listing date, availability, and any other offer features you specify in your feed."

Yahoo Local

2005-04-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

Similar to the Google Local directory I described yesterday, Yahoo also has a local business directory. With Yahoo, however, you have several options.

Visit Yahoo Local

As with Google Local you can set up a free business listing. The process is similar to Google's except that Yahoo does not mail a confirmation to you. They will review your submission and either reject or approve it within three business days.

In addition to the business listing, Yahoo Local also includes a free five page web site. By answering a series of questions Yahoo will automatically create a web site for your business. The only significant drawback I saw is that there were only two options for graphics, and neither image was suitable for a business such as auto repair, pizza restaurant or most local stores. If you want a greater selection of templates and images, you'll need to sign up for the Yahoo Local Enhanced service.

In addition to the free listings, Yahoo offers "Enhanced" listing for $9.95/month. This provides you with more room for descriptive text in your business listing and greater options for building a web site. Of course, the Yahoo websites are limited in their design because they are based on templates, and the generic nature of the templates is reflected in the way the web site looks. However, $9.95/month isn't a bad price for a web site, if it shows up in the search results. Yahoo local free web sites have just been introduced, so they have not been around long enough for us to see whether searchers--in particular searchers on Google and MSN--will find them.

Google Local

2005-04-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

It's starting to look like the Yellow Pages are an advertising media of the past. Local search on the internet is becoming the way people find local businesses and services. But the problem has been that most local businesses do not have web sites, And most of those who do have web sites, have sites that do not show up well in local searches.

The problem search engines faced was how to get the information they need to present comprehensive, useful, local search results. The answer? Google local.

Even if your business does not have a web site, you can set up a listing in the Google Local directory, free. Now people can find you on the internet, even if you don't have a web site.

Go to Google Local For Businesses

Once you provide Google Local with information about your business, they will mail a confirmation letter (that's postal mail, not email) to your business address. This allows them to ensure you have entered information for a real business that exists, and to control spamming.

By the way, Google is spidering the web and adding local businesses on its own. If you have a web site your business may already have been added. If so, you'll be given the opportunity to correct and update the information for your business, instead of creating a listing from scratch.

Keyword Density

2005-04-05T05:20:00.000-07:00

Chasing after on optimal keyword density (KD), as some search engine optimizers do, never made sense. Forcing keywords into the text of a web page results in text that does not effectively deliver the message to the reader. What's the point of getting people to your web page, if that page does not support the objectives of your web site?

A recent article by Dr. E. Garcia shows that search engines do not use keyword density as part of their ranking calculations.

The Keyword Density of Non-Sense

While it is important to include relevant keywords in your text, trying to obtain on optimal keyword density accomplishes nothing. Instead concentrate on writing compelling text, that delivers your message in a concise and clear manner.

Marketleap Link Popularity Check

2005-04-02T13:01:00.000-08:00

MarketLeap provides a tool that automates checking search engines for links to your web site(s). You can check your web site, along with any three other sites, giving you a side-by-side comparison of your link status vs. some of your competitors.

Link Popularity Check

The MarketLeap Link Popularity tool simultaneously checks for backlinks in MSN, Google Yahoo and Hotbot. It reports exactly what each search engine reports, so it is dependent on the accuracy of the search engine’s link count. It also provides links at the bottom of the report page allowing you to quickly check your link popularity in DMOZ, Excite, Iwon, Lycos, Overture and WiseNut.

Two reports are available:

The Industry Benchmark Report divides the web sites you selected into one of six categories, based on the number of incoming links each has. In addition to the four sites you specified, this report also shows the link popularity results for 34 sites other web sites, allowing you to get a feel for your web site’s comparative link popularity.

The Tend/History Report shows the current, minimum, maximum, and average link popularity for each of the four web sites you designated. It also graphs the trend over time, shows number of sample points and gives the time period over which the sampling occurred. Each time you request a link popularity report from MarketLeap, a data point is established. These data points are saved by MarketLeap and used to produce the trend report.

MarketLeap lists some of the benefits of their Link Popularity tool as:

• Get a count of the number of pages each search engine reports as containing a link to you, including the links on your web sites.

• Check out the sites that are linking to you to find out why, and where they are linking to your web site. This will help you understand who is finding your web site valuable, and what parts of it are considered valuable.

• At the same time you get a report on your link popularity, you can also see how your competitors are doing. If they are performing well, take a look at the sites linking to them so you can discover ways to improve your link popularity.

Measure Google Rankings

2005-04-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

This tool provides a quick way to check the Google search result ranking of your web site, or a competitor’s web site, for any keyword or phrase.

Google Rankings

Enter the keyword you want to check and the URL of the web site, and the Google Ranking tool will give you the current ranking of the web site for that keyword. You may also get the ranking for multiple keywords for a single web site, or multiple web sites for a single keyword or phrase. There is even an option in which the Google Ranking tool will automatically find the most frequently used words on a page, and then get the Google ranking for each of those words.

This is a handy tool for establishing benchmarks, and tracking improvements in a web site’s Google ranking as you work to improve the web site.

Blog Search Engine

2005-03-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

This week we’re featuring web resources you can use to improve your internet marketing. I assume you have a blog (you do, don’t you) and you’d like to increase the web visibility of your blog. One way to do that is by submitting it for inclusion in as many blog directories as possible. A good one to start with is the Blog Search Engine.

Blog Search Engine

Go to the bottom of the page and click on “Submit Your Blog”. Complete a short form, select the correct category for your blog, and that’s it.

Google Tracking U

2005-03-29T16:37:00.000-08:00

I noticed today that Google is keeping track of which links I click on. This has happened in the past. Google has said it is something they do in order to monitor the quality of their search results.

You can tell when Google is tracking clicks in the search results if, when you put your mouse on a link you see a URL similar to the following.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=
2&q=http://internetresults.blogspot.com/&e=7317

Normally the URL is: http://internetresults.blogspot.com/

I tried doing Google searches using other internet connections and the tracking URL did not appear. This is normal behavior. Google does not track everyone who does a search. What I found interesting is that even after I cleared my cookies, Google continued to track my clicks on search results anytime I used my main internet connection.

Keyword Suggestion Tool

2005-03-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

A key component of web authoring and optimization is determining the keywords you want to target. You need to find keywords that are relevant to the topic discussed on the web page, and which people are actually using in searches. You'll probably think of a few good keywords yourself. But, how do you determine whether searchers are actually using those keywords?. And what about words that never occurred to you?

The Digital Point Solutions Keyword Suggestion Tool can help.

Enter a keyword and this free online tool will provide alternative suggestions, based on actually historical search data, from Overture and Wordtracker. You’ll get a list of keywords and phrases ranked by their popularity. You’ll see how frequently people are searching for the terms that came to your mind, and get suggestions for addition terms that might be appropriate.

Digital Point Solutions also provides a free keyword position tracking tool .This utility will automatically check Google, Yahoo and MSN for search engine ranking and track those rankings for you. Although this tool is free, you will need to register before you can use it.

Google Snipets - A Google Secret

2005-03-25T05:47:00.000-08:00

One of the most frustrating features of Google search results is how the web site descriptions are composed. Google takes snippets of text from the body of the page, selecting phrases that include the keywords used in the search. As a searcher I find the resulting Google descriptions to be useless. They don't have enough information and tell me little about the actual content of the page. As a web designer I see the Google snippets as presenting information that is unrelated to the message of the page. I'd prefer the description from my meta tags be used, as that would allow me to deliver a targeted message that is accurate and specific for the page.

Here's the "secret". You can get Google to display the page meta description in some circumstances.

If Google finds the search phrase in the meta description, it will display the meta description instead of snippets from the page. So, start checking your logs to find out what phrases searches use to find your pages. Or even better yet, set up your landing pages so they log the referrer. You can then incorporate the most common search phrases into your meta description--returning control of your Google description to you.

Font Trading Cards

2005-03-24T06:17:00.000-08:00

Something a little off the wall today...

When designing a web site we can not go wild with fonts, if for no other reason than we can not be assured the visitor will have the appropriate font installed on their computer. Thus for on-screen text it is best to stick with the common fonts such as ariel, verdana and times roman.

However, at times we may wish to use different fonts in graphics. An excellent resource for information about fonts is the www.fonts.com web site. And if you really want to learn about fonts, you could start collecting their font trading cards--available online free.

Problems With Being Dynamic

2005-03-23T17:05:00.000-08:00

While we’re on the topic of things to avoid, let’s talk about dynamic content.

Dynamic content in this case refers to pages that don’t exist until the information for the page is pulled from a database. Dynamic content pages usually include a question mark in the URL, such as:

http://www.zd85.com/dynamicpage.php?product=55

In the above example the dynamicpage.php can display information about a variety of products. The “?product=55” code tells the web page to get the information for product “55” from the database and display that information.

The URLs for dynamic pages can be very long. For example, Google search result pages are dynamic pages. Here is the Google URL for the search results for “dynamic pages”:

http://www.google.com/search?q=dynamic+pages&sourceid=mozilla-search&
start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&
rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

The problem with dynamic pages is that the search engines may not know how to handle the information to the right of the question mark. Some dynamic pages may get indexed, others may not. Some may be seen as duplicate content and dropped from the search listings, others may not be seen at all. Search engines, and in particular Google, have been improving how they handle dynamic pages, but there are still problems.

If you do have a database driven web site, and you want information from your dynamic pages to show up in organic search results, there are several things you can do.

• Create static pages that present the information from your most important dynamic pages. I’ve done this using custom software I wrote to automatically create static pages directly from the database. It has given excellent results.

• Instead of creating pages based on the database, create unique static pages that serve to “introduce” the content in the database. For example, if you are selling dog collars and the dynamic pages show the specific information about 10 dog collars—create a static page about dog collars in general. Discuss topics such as how to find the right size collar, safety, and the importance of dog licenses. All of this excellent dog collar related information will help this page rank high. Dog owners can then follow the links into your dynamic pages.

• Avoid the use of the variable name “ID” in your dynamic pages. Google is able to index some dynamic pages, but the variable name “ID” seems to give Google problems.

• Limit the number of variables in the URL. The fewer the number of variables, the easier it is for search engines to understand.

• Submit your dynamic pages to services such as Froogle. With Froogle you create a feed that provides Froogle with the information about the page, including the dynamic URL. (Froogle is Google’s online shopping comparison service. Froogle search results are shown at the top of many Google search results.)

• Purchase Google Adwords and Overture PPC ads that directly link to the pages with products you want to promote.

• Have a good site map that will lead people, and search engines, directly to your dynamic pages. Don’t rely on search spiders following URLs created by on-page code. The spiders will never see those URLs. Provide hard-coded URLs in a location that is easy to find, preferable on a page (site map) in the root folder.

Don't Do The Wrong Things

2005-03-18T19:07:00.000-08:00

I've just taken on a new client and realized there is something important I should say here.

In a couple of past posts I've mentioned that the way to have a successful web site is to have quality content, easy navigation and a good site map. But, there is a problem with this. I forgot to mention that you must avoid doing the wrong things.

I was reminded of this because my new client's web site, although a good site, is packed with things that prevent it from doing well in search results. For example...

It uses frames. Google has indexed the home page, which consists of four frames. The Google search results have four pages--one from each frame. So Google has a link to the header graphic, the navigation menu, the footer information, and the main body. It's great that they have the text from the main body indexed, but it's a dead end. There are no links and no contact information.

Don't use frames.

Even getting past the problem of frames, every content page on the site has the same page title, the name of the company. The page title is one of the most important factors used to determine the topic of the page. It needs to provide a good description of the content, and it must include the important key words for the page.

This is a company that provides services to the local market. But, there is no way for search engines to tell where they are located. In this case each page that describes a service offered, should also include the address of the company. This could be a part of another key feature this web site lacks--a call to action.

Don't forget to include your phone number on EVERY page!

Don't forget to tell visitors to your web site what you want them to do. Do you want them to call you? Do you want them to request a white paper, literature or a price quote? Make it easy to do.

The Truly Open Directory

2005-03-15T20:47:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting new directory:

Truly Open Directory
www.trulyopendirectory.com

This is a Wiki based directory. Anyone can add to, delete from or change it. It's an interesting approach to creating a directory that I hope works.

A big advantage is that it allows web site owners to have listings using the descriptions they want, provided no one else edits them that is.

A big disadvantage is that I'd expect a Wiki directory to be full of spam--and it was on my first visit. However, as I was cruising through various categories, whenever I came across obvious spam I deleted it. With enough legitimate web site owners visiting the Truly Open Directory, the spam problem should be keep under control.

Another big advantage is that listings appear immediately. There is no delay for editorial review or a system update.

Another big disadvantage is that your listings are subject to editing by your compeditors. This may require frequent visits to ensure your titles and descriptions remain accurate and focused on the market you intend to target.

A big advantage is that you can edit your compeditor's listings, to ensure they are accurate and fair. Oh--do I see an editing "war" developing here?

Another advantage is that as I've added web sites I've seen those links quickly appear in various search engines. Apparently the Truly Open Directory is being spidered frequently.

The bottom line - list your web sites in the Truly Open Diretory. It's quick and easy to do, and well worth the effort.

Google Still Has Not Settled Down

2005-03-14T05:45:00.000-08:00

Apparently I was wrong last week when I said Google search results had finally settled down. This weekend I was doing research on the Bible. On Saturday Google was returning useful results. Assuming I could easily redo searches, I did not make note of all the web sites I found. Returning to my research Sunday evening I found Google was returning a completely different set of results for the same search terms I had used Saturday. Not only were the search results not repeatable, but Sunday's results were not nearly as relevent and useful as Saturday's Google search results had been.

This morning I've run my normal key word tests and found that once again Google's search results have completely changed. This time, although my sites continue to do well, the search results are much less relevent than they were last week.

From a web user perspective I find this type of instability on Google's part makes my web research using Google more difficult. It is continuing to push me towards using MSN.

But, as web marketers how are you to respond to this? The answer continues to be the same. There is nothing you can do to change what Google is doing. Stop worrying about it and work make the best web sites possible for your visitors.

Have unique content that is useful to visitors and which is valuable for others to link to.

Have an easy-to-use navigation system.

Include a site map.

And apply Kaizen techniques to your web sites. This means continually improve. Always be searching for ways to make your web site better.

Google Bans Itself

2005-03-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

After my last post the question has come up: If Google can do it [keyword stuff and cloak pages] why can't I?

Today the news came out that Google has banned itself from it's own search results.

The Google pages that used keyword stuffing and "cloaking" were informational pages about Google Adwords. They were created/updated by an automated system in a way that was optimized for internal use within Google. But what they were doing for internal use is banned by Google when someone on the outside does it. Google has announced that the pages have been remove from Google search results and the group responsible for the pages will fix them and apply to Google for re-admitance just like anyone else would have to.

It's good to see Google taking this approach. There is no problem with designing/optimizing pages any way you wish for internal use. But if they are accessible on the web in genera,l you need to expect to have to follow all the rules, no matter who you are. Google did that.

The Six Key Words To Success

2005-03-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

February was a tough month for many web site owners. Changes in Google once again resulted in numerous web sites dropping out of the Google search results. Then yesterday it was discovered that Google is boosting the search ranking of their own pages using methods they ban everyone else from using. When your business depends on ranking well in Google, and in other search engines, what should you be doing?

Here are six key words:

Useful Content

Easy Navigation

Site Map

Useful content means that your website has information visitors will find useful. This means it has to be unique, well written and have substance.

Easy navigation means that visitors can quickly and easily find the useful content. Your navigation system should be well organized, consistent and informative.

A site map is an index to your web site. It serves two purposes.

1) It aids visitors in finding useful content on your web site.

2) It identifies the important pages for search engines to index, giving search engine spiders a single page that has links to every page of importance.

At a minimum there should be a link from your home page to your site map, making it easy for visitors and search spiders to find it.

Yes, there are other things you need to pay attention to in order to climb to the top of the search results. Things such as the page title, meta tag description, links, keywords on the page, and good marketing optimization. But, the foundation on which your web site is built is: Useful Content, Easy Navigation and a Site Map.

Measuring The Value of PPC Traffic

2005-03-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

When it comes to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, you should know as much as possible about the people who click on your ads. What day, and what time of day did they click on the ad? What search terms did they use? For contextual ads, what web site (and page) did they come from? Information such as this is available to you in a variety of ways.

1) If you do not have many landing pages, you can find this information in the logs of the machine hosting your web site. However, reading logs directly is not practical, so you will need software, such as Web Trends, that reads and organizes the log information.

2) There is also software that will collect, organize and neatly present to you visitor and tracking information about your PPC visitors.

3) This article is about a third option. The do-it-yourself option.

No matter what method you use to compile information about your PPC visitors, each PPC ad should have its own landing page. This allows you to individually track the performance of each ad.

My adding a little bit of PHP code to each landing page, and renaming the web page so that it has a filename extension of .PHP instead of .HTML, you’ll have a text file listing the key information about each visitor.

In the above example the filename that will be used to store the information is "google-landing-page.txt". Change this name to be unique for each landing page.

The above will save the date and time the person arrived at the landing page; their hosting company; and the URL they came from. This URL will include the search terms they used, if they are coming from a search results page.

You’ll probably also want to know which clicks resulted in a sale or other desired action on the part of the visitor. Including the following code on the thank you page that appears when the visitor buys something, will log that information. (In this case the thank you page is in the same folder as the landing page.)

The above will show in the text file as a "SALE". It will give the date, time and identify the visitor’s hosting company. This will allow you to link them with the log information recorded when they arrived on the landing page. Thus you’ll be able see which search terms and contextual ads are generating the most sales.

Getting IBLs

2005-03-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

One-way in bound links (IBL) are a major contributing factor to boosting your site to the top of the search results.

What is an IBL? This is a link to your web site for which you have not put in a reciprocal return link. Search engines like these links because they are obviously not part of an artificial reciprocal link exchange. They are closer to a true reflection of the topic and value of your web site content.

How do you get IBLs?

1) Create unique, outstanding content on your web site. Give people useful and interesting content and they’ll link to it. The content does not have to be specifically about your products or services, but it should be of interest to people in your target market. For example, a web site I work on sells tools used by maintenance workers in industrial facilities. I added a page giving wire gauge sizes—information part of the target market has some interest in. That page has attracted links and has become the 15th most popular landing page bringing traffic into the web site. A double benefit.

2) Get your web site listed in every possible directory you can find. This includes the major directories such as DMOZ, JoeAnt, and others. A god starting point is the list of directories available in DMOZ:

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/

Don’t forget local and regional directories in your area. If you are a member of a trade associations, be sure your web site is included in their online directory. If you exhibit at a trade show, be sure to get your web site included in their directory. Ask your suppliers to include you in their online listings of dealers. Don’t pass up an opportunity to get a one-way link.

3) Write articles about your products and services and offer them to industry publications with the provision that the include the URL to your web site. Don’t forget local newspapers and publications. They almost always have a web site and typically welcome articles. If you’d like wider distribution, offer your articles through the many online article distribution services (search for “free articles” in Google).

4) Learn how to write a good press release, then use press releases to tell the world what you are doing. Have you taken on a new product? Send out a press release. Did you hire a new salesperson? Send out a press release. Who should you send your press release to? Any local, industry, or national publication that might be interested in what you are doing. I ran a small software publishing business out of my home for ten years. Through the use of press releases my small company received coverage in national publications such as Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and INC. Magazine.

Also use the free press release distribution services available on the internet. (Search Google for "free press release distribution"). They'll put your press release on the web and include a link to your web site.

The Phone Call

2005-02-25T14:46:00.000-08:00

Every other month my phone rings and the voice on the other end tells me one of my web sites is not showing up in the search results. They tell me they can fix the problem. In fact, they will guarantee that my page will jump into the top ten search results within 30 days. They promise that through the use of optimized landing pages (doorway pages) and proprietary techniques, I will quickly see my page in the top ten.

When you hear someone promising a guaranteed top spot in search results, it’s time to say goodbye, gently hang up the phone and get back to work—which I did. And they called right back. So I ask to be put on their no call list, and that seemed to work for about 60 days—then they call back again using the same script.

It does not matter how many times they call back, NEVER hire a search engine optimization (SEO) firm that guarantees a top position. No one can offer such a guarantee. There are too many variables they can not control, ranging from the search engine's algorithm to your competition.

What will you get if you hire a firm like this? There are a couple of possibilities:

• At the best you might get a web page optimized for obscure key words that no one uses. It’s easy to get top ten positioning for keywords that are targeted by only a couple hundred web pages—and it’s of no value. The reason why no one’s targeting these keywords is because no one is searching for them.

• At worst your page will appear in the top ten search results on Google for your targeted keyword. Through the use of doorways pages, text hidden in JavaScript and CSS, redirects, hijacked web sites and other techniques that Google has banned it is fairly simple to get any web page into the top ten—for a month or so. But then Google catches on and not only does your page drop out of sight, but your entire web site gets banned by Google. The result is your business setting new records for low sales.

The best way to get to the top of the search results, and pull qualified customers into your business, is to create a web site with:

Lots of useful, unique, quality content (text) that uses your targeted keywords

Targeted page titles and descriptions

Plenty of incoming links (because of your high quality content)

Well designed pages that address the user’s needs

Good offers and calls to action

…and don’t use frames or Flash pages, unless you know wxactly how the search engines will deal with them (just don't use them).

Power Title Tags

2005-02-15T17:06:00.000-08:00

Effective Title Tags

The title tag is located in the HEAD section of every web page. For example:

The title tag is the most important part of a web page. Search engines typically use the text from the title tag as the link text in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). So this is the text people will use to determine whether they will click on the link to your web site. However, search engines use this text in another way. It is one of the key indicators, for a search engine, of the content of the web page. This means you'll want to include your most significant key word(s) and/or phrase in the title of the page.

How much space do you have to work with? Somewhere in the range of 50 to 100 characters.

To give you an idea of how much space that is, the above two sentences have a total of 88 characters. So even 50-60 characters should be plenty of room.

Create the web page first, then add the title tag. This allows you to use the page content as a guide to what you say in the title tag. Each page should have a unique title that is directly associated with the content of that page. A major mistake new web designers make is to use the same title on all of pages in a web site, or they use generic titles that are not associated with the page content. This is an important part of each web page, so it is worth the time to write unique titles for each page.

When writing a title tag use the key phrase on the page, then write descriptive text around that phrase.

Is it alright if the page title duplicates the headline on the page? Yes, it is. Although the page title can be longer than a headline, so take advantage of the additional room in the title.

Is it alright to include my company name in the page title? Yes, it is. However, you would generally only do that for pages you've designed to be found when people search for your company name. For example, it might be appropriate to include your company name in the page title on your home page, contact information page, physical location/map page, your site map, and your about me page.

How many times should a keyword be repeated in a page title? A key word should not show up more than two or maybe three times in the title. And a word should not be placed next to itself, even if separated by dashes. The search engines see a dash as a blank space. For example, the following is a good page title that includes the word "DVD" twice:

Red Hot DVDs At Discount Prices! Huge DVD Inventory!

The title below also includes "DVD" twice, but the two occurances are separated by a dash. Some of the search engines might see this as spam and lower the rank of this page.

Red Hot DVDs -- DVDs Discounted to Low Low Prices!

The first title could even be expanded to include the word "discount" a second time and "DVD" a third time:

Red Hot DVDs At Discount Prices! Huge DVD Inventory! Fred's Discount DVDs.

When writing titles, use a variety of formats. Put long titles on some pages and shorter ones on other pages. That way, if a search engine's preference for the length of the title changes, you'll have a page already online that suits that preference.

Don't Forget the 301 Permanent Redirect

2005-02-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

I was once involved with upgrading a web site that have a very deep structure and I wanted to flatten it out and organize it better. For example, in the old structure a product might have a URL such as:

http://www.zd85.com/products/electronics/computers
/accessories/monitors/lubricants/zd85.html

In the new structure the URL was similar to:

http://www.zd85.com/computers/accessories/zd85.html

This involved relocating several hundred pages and finding a way to let the search engines know the page had moved.

When the new site was ready to be uploaded, I put it online all at one time and changed the old pages to have a meta tag redirect. Thus if anyone went to an old page, they'd immediately be transferred to the new page.

A meta tag redirect uses HTTP-EQUIV to cause a different page to be loaded. It looks like:

meta equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=/computers/accessories/zd85.html"

You can set the URL to any URL you wish, including pages on different web sites.

This was great, and it was working fine. Visitors were ending up on the correct pages. But, I had forgotten something.

Search engines handle the HTTP-EQUIV with varying degrees of success. In most cases they go to the new page, cache the content of the new page, but assign the old URL to it. Thus the old URLs continue to show up in the search results. That's not what I wanted. Part of the reason for the change was to make the URLs more relevant and easier to read in search results.

What I had forgotten was to put in permanent redirects. A permanent redirect is done differently on UNIX and Windows systems. If your web site is hosted on a UNIX system, the permanent redirect goes in the .htaccess file and is called a 301 redirect. What's that, you ask?

The .htaccess file is a plain text file, located in the root directory. It can also be located in other folders, but I'll leave that for another article. To add a permanent redirect, a line of text such as the following is included:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.htm http://www.zd85.com/newpage.html

There are three parts to the above:

"Redirect 301" - this tells any computer that reads this file, such as the Google spider, that this file has been permanently moved. It also tells the hosting computer that anyone who tries to access the specified page should be sent directly to a different page.

"/oldpage.html" - this specifies the page that has been relocated. The identification of this page always starts in the root folder, thus it always starts with a backslash, followed by the appropriate folder and file names.

"http://www.zd85.com/newpage.html" - this specifies the full URL of the new page. It always starts with "http:" and includes the full path to where the new page is located.

For web sites hosted on Windows you'll need to have the system administrator set up the permanent redirect through IIS.

Getting Sales From An Error 404 Page - Pt II

2005-02-08T16:45:00.000-08:00

404 Not Found - Part II

A custom 404 error page is the same as any other web page. It does not require special coding, ASP, PHP or Javascript. It's just an ordinary web page that displays the information you want to display.

What should be on your custom 404 error page?

+Tell people what happened and give some possible reasons why it happen -- and do so in plain English.

Tell them that the page they were trying to get to is not available. Apologize for the problem and give some possible reasons. It could be they typed in the wrong URL. Possibly there was a typo in the URL. Or maybe there is a broken link on the web site.

+ Give people some options for correcting the problem.

For example, ask them to check the URL they typed to be sure there are no typos. But, if they clicked on a link that brought them to this page, there's nothing they can do to correct the problem, so...

+ Provide options that help the visitor find what they were looking for.

Provide links to the most popular pages on your web site. Provide a search box for searching your web site. You can even tell visitors, on the 404 error page, what is on your web site. Be as helpful as you can in getting people to where they wanted to go.

+ Promote some of your best offers. After all, this page will have people reading it, so why not make effective use of the space?

Don't miss out on the opportunity to let visitors learn about new things. Are you having a special 10% off sale this month? Put an announcement on your 404 error page. Are you giving away a free white paper? Put an announcement on your 404 error page. People are going to be visiting this page, so make use of it to promote your business, product or service.

The final step is set up your site so your custom page displays instead of the default 404 error message. How this is accomplished varies depending on the operating system.

If your web site is hosted on a UNIX system, then you'll need to add a line to the .htaccess file. The .htaccess file is a plain text file in the root folder. It provides instructions to the host system. In this case the instruction will tell the host what page to display when a 404 error is encountered. Use a text editor, such as Notepad, to open the .htaccess file and add the following line:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yoursite.com/404-error-page.html

Replace "yoursite.com" with the URL of your web site and "404-error-page.html" with the name of your custom 404 error page. Save the file and upload it to your server.

For web sites hosted on Windows Systems, the error page needs to be changed in IIS. This is something usually done by the system adminstrator.

Getting Sales From An Error 404 Page - Pt I

2005-02-07T16:59:00.000-08:00

What happens when a visitor to your web site types in a URL that does not exists? Or maybe there's a broken link you missed fixing? If you have not set up a custom error message, they'll see a plain "404 Not Found" message, with no explanations or options. It's a dead end.

But this does not have to be so, if you set up a custom 404 error page.

One of the first things I do when I start working on an existing web site is to check the web logs for 404 errors. On some sites I've seen as much as 30% of the traffic going to the 404 error page. Eliminating most of those errors, and making effective use of those that can not be eliminated, will have some of the highest ROI you'll see.

Identifying and fixing broken links will eliminate a large portion of the 404 errors. Be even after all of the coding problems are fixed, there will still be some people getting 404 errors. They may be typing the name of the page wrong. For example, people commonly type http://www.yoursite.com/page.htm, when they intended to type http://www.yoursite.com/page.html. Leaving the "l" off the end of the URL results in a 404 error. Another common typo would be: http://www.yoursite.com/pgae.html

The default 404 error page is of no value. It tells the visitor there has been a "404 Not Found" error. Most visitors don't know what that means and leave in frustration.

Error messages should:

+ Tell people what happened and give some possible reasons why it happen -- and do so in plain English.
+ Give people some options for correcting the problem.
+ Provide options that help the visitor find what they were looking for.
+ And you can promote some of your best offers. After all, this page will have people reading it, so my not make effective use of the space.

Let's take a look at how the top three search engines handle 404 errors, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

I've set up a web site at http://www.zd85.com that I'll be using to illustrate things I talk about in this blog. I've set up a custom 404 error page that also displays screen captures from the Google, Yahoo and MSN 404 error pages. All you need to do is to go to a page on that web site that does not exist, such as:

http://www.zd85.com/sahghd.html

You'll see that Google's error page just displays a 404 error notice. That's not very helpful.

Yahoo does a little better. They display the 404 error notice, provide a search box, plus include a couple of links to key pages on their web site. Having a search box makes a lot of sense, after all, this is a search engine.

MSN does an excellent job with their 404 error page. They include everything Yahoo does, plus they promote some of their major services.

Tomorrow I'll look at how to set up a custom 404 error page.

What's ZD85?

2005-02-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Announcing ZD85, the ALL NEW computer accessory that lubricates the inside surface of your computer monitor!! (oops, we're not ready to announce that yet.)

Sound a little far fetched? It's a yet to be invented product that my new web site will be promoting. The http://www.zd85.com/ web site is designed to be the worst web site possible. As I discuss various topics here I'll use ZD85 to provide real-life examples. And over time it should (hopefully) get better.

For now there's not much on the ZD85.com web site, not even a product. All I've managed to do is identify a problem and ask my web designer, Wally Krumple, to get it online. But I've put our vast staff of PhD's to work and I expect that we'll soon have a product to release as a beta version. So stay tuned. I'm sure you don't want to miss out on the next great innovation for personal computers! Coming SOON ZD85! The revolutionary... something or other.