When you're scoping out a Web site design project, you expect prices to fluctuate from provider to provider. You expect one company's talents to be greater than another's. You expect to pay for added functionality.
When pricing SEO (define) services, many companies have a hard time getting a handle on what they should pay. Why? It's not easy to understant the numerous tactics and strategies that go into an SEO project.
If you're shopping around for SEO services, compare companies. That's just common sense. You'd be surprised, though, how few companies do it. Comparing companies ensures you're not just getting the best price, but the best value. That's what you do with most big ticket purchases.
Scope Out the SEO Project
When shopping for Web site redesign, you'll likely set up an internal discovery meeting to determine the scope of the site redesign project. This process usually involves countless hours with those responsible for the brand -- designers, the marketing team, and many other "decision makers" within the organization.
Unfortunately, most SEO projects don't receive near the time and attention afforded to Web design projects. In many cases, that's a colossal mistake.
Without the due diligence on your Web site's SEO challenges, it's almost impossible to understand the scope of work necessary to launch a successful SEO campaign. Do you have JavaScript navigation? Does your site content reside within images or frames? Do you lack for content? Will you need to write many pages of copy, add them to the site architecture, and build out pages? Does your site have others linking to yours? Is your internal link structure sufficient?
Once you answer some of these questions, ask yourself if you have the resources -- internally -- to do this work. Or will you need an SEO company to handle these tasks?
What's the Competitive Landscape?
With SEO, the competitive landscape is everything. You have to look at not only who your known competition is (those companies you compete with on a daily basis), but also who your keyword competitors are. In other words, what companies are ranking for the keywords you want your company to rank for?
You also must take into account the degree of competitiveness for the keywords you want to rank for. Are you trying to rank for "home loans" or "Dallas home loans"? Big difference.
For those trying to be found for highly competitive keywords, the timeline to rankings and/or significant traffic increases can be a daunting and time-consuming task. As with any service-oriented company, time is money. So, if the scope of the work determines the highly competitive keywords are the goal, then you can expect to pay more money.
The more competitive the keywords, the more content you may need to write. That means more pages to add to your Web site and more assistance with link generation.
What Are You Spending on PPC?
Funny thing. So many companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on PPC (define), because they know they only pay when someone clicks. Well, that's great, but there's no doubt that a well developed SEO campaign can do better, even if you measure it on a PPC basis.
For example, at Vizion Interactive, we have a client that spends less than $10,000 per month on SEO and also spends approximately $100,000 per month on PPC. The traffic they receive from SEO is valued at approximately $2 million per month. If they'd acquired this traffic on a PPC basis, that's what they'd be paying. For the $100,000 they spend on PPC, they get $100,000 worth of traffic.
sorce:http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627562
Friday, December 7, 2007
Quick SEO Tips
One of the features on my blog, The Web Optimist, is a tip box that shows a different random search engine optimization tip each time a page is loaded. As I come across little pearls of wisdom, I add it to the collection.
For the first time published anywhere, here are the first twenty of my Quick SEO Tips in no particular order and with on-site and off-site tips all together. More to come in Part Two.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don't want the link.
4. Don't be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is "blue widgets" then link to "blue widgets" instead of a "Click here" link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don't design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won't cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can't link to a single page. It's either all or nothing. Don't use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
12. Your URL file extension doesn't matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won't make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
13. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google's regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
14. If your site content doesn't change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
15. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
16. Search engines want natural language content. Don't try to stuff your text with keywords. It won't work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
17. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
18. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you're not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
Whew. OK, try to digest these first 20 tips for a while. I'll be following up with the rest in 40 Quick S E O Tips, Part 2 once you've had a chance to absorb these thoroughly.
Source:http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/12/06/quick-seo-tips
For the first time published anywhere, here are the first twenty of my Quick SEO Tips in no particular order and with on-site and off-site tips all together. More to come in Part Two.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don't want the link.
4. Don't be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is "blue widgets" then link to "blue widgets" instead of a "Click here" link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don't design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won't cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can't link to a single page. It's either all or nothing. Don't use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
12. Your URL file extension doesn't matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won't make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
13. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google's regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
14. If your site content doesn't change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
15. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
16. Search engines want natural language content. Don't try to stuff your text with keywords. It won't work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
17. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
18. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you're not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
Whew. OK, try to digest these first 20 tips for a while. I'll be following up with the rest in 40 Quick S E O Tips, Part 2 once you've had a chance to absorb these thoroughly.
Source:http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/12/06/quick-seo-tips
Thursday, December 6, 2007
SEO Design and Organic Site Structure
I will cover getting your site to do well and traffic – not the end of the game; you need to convert and be successful on all browsers. I will cover keyword research, creating a SE friendly architecture. I won’t get into details, just highlights, and content.
Keyword research – you may use your tool and build strategy around most searched for keyword. At this phase you need to talk to your target audience, don’t just go for the most popular, go for the tail end. Make sure the keywords didn’t come from the CEO, talk to the target audience.
Assign relevancy to words to get a good targeted list. At vision, we put together a spreadsheet and assign relevancy – up to 100%.
Once you’ve done research, find out who is ranking for those words and why. Know who you are; carve out your niche, try to determine factors necessary to compete with those words, then develop your content.
We look at indexed pages for competitive sites and your own, Yahoo does the best here.
Creating the IA: incorporate the keyword research, incorporate comp analysis, then lay out your site. Use keywords when you can in the names of the pages, assign tags, metas, etc.
A lot of people say SEO sites are ugly – not true. Avoid java script, image based navigation, flash navigation, flash intros to site. Allow space for content – a lot of ecommerce site get carried away with images. Use alt text. Try to write static urls in the development stage. Design should follow the IA – design should be the 3rd phase of the process, try to have a reason why the site is being designed that way.
Trip Advisor is good for usability. Usability is important. What’s below the fold on their home page is a lot of links using great anchor text.
Read Searchenginewatch.com this Tuesday for article on spam.
Building content:
Once you have your keywords, your site is only as good as the copy you put on the pages write engaging content. Don’t stuff. Make it engaging for visitors and search engines. Once you have content, go back through it and try to link between one page to another, this is great for spiders. Use good anchor texts. People get so caught up with external links but forget about linking within site.
Make sure you avoid marketing fluff. Blogs are great for getting out quick content. Pages will rank quickly.
Summary: do research before design, use research smartly to develop IA. Deign for usability and SEO, in that order. Make sure you have good content.
Speaker 2: Alan K’necht, K’nechtology, Inc:
Linear approach: spiders read from top to bottom, left to right, and go straight through. Search engines care about words, words and words! Not pictures. Also care about positions of words. Then why show graphic first? Good for usability, not search engines. Use 2-tier design architecture. Separate content from presentation. Doesn’t necessarily mean design will be ugly. Organize content logically, i.e. don’t use privacy policy first – use H1 tag first! Use CSS to position.
Newspaper philosophy – they get readers engaged. Why? Linear info – easy to read! Headlines first! Main story first! Important stuff up front! That’s what search engines are trying to do, be easy for the human. Newspaper puts links to inner pages at the end (i.e. continued on page 22). So linear approach is that the important elements must come first! H1 first, H2 second, target words in H1 – first and foremost, this is what page is about! Stick graphic at the bottom!
One of the ways to see if coders did a good job is to turn off CSS using the Firefox Webmaster Toolbar. You can see what the site looks like. You can remove lots of the fluff. If the logo is relevant or well known keep it in towards the top. Get content up front though. Usability for search engines.
Speaker 3: Lyndsay Walker – WestJet – Canadian Airline
Design for your visitors! You want to have a clear navigation not only for visitors but also for search engines.
Avoid flash, there is no advantage whatever. There is so much you can do with CSS and Java that can simulate what Flash can do.
Fresh content is the best.
Use DIVs – more reliable than a table structure.
Use your stats – what browsers are people using? Where are they going on your site?
Test everything in Firefox – it’s a compliant browser. If you design for Internet Explorer, you will test in Firefox and it will be broken. Design for Firefox and tweak for IE. You will save yourself a lot of headaches. Especially since Firefox has great tools and plug-ins. If you watch your stats over time, you will notice an increase in Firefox users as well as mobile device users to surf the net.
Must-haves recap:
Title tag – unique to every page.
Meta description tag – the yes or no if someone will click on our site. Very important.
Header tags – place prominently at the top, H1, H2 etc.
Strong code-to-content ratio – CSS is so important, you really don’t need a lot of code these days.
DIVs instead of tables.
Don’t forget your keywords.
Links – so important – internal linking structure just as important as external.
Side note - Inadvertent SEO – If you are testing out new pages, the search engines will find it whether you are ready or not. If you are not ready for it to be live, use a testing environment or watch your linking structure.
Speaker 4: Paul Bruemmer – Red Door Interactive
Organic Site Structure:
- Server configuration: robot.txt, redirect codes, 404 error codes, internal broken links, canonical duplicate content, dedicated IP address, alias URLs, transfer of keyword page rankings, etc.
- Site architecture gone bad: messed up situation. To prevent, 6 essential components to implement:
Inclusion ratio – it pays to know and track the number of pages indexed to gauge how you are doing in the index.
Directory structure and naming conventions.
Internal linking structure – very often neglected and annoying to correct.
Dynamic and persistent URLs.
Site Map.
Privacy statement.
Content Generation:
Look at competitive landscape and be equal to or greater than.
Textual content types: articles, industry news, etc.
Think about content promotion, RSS feeds, blogs etc.
Content Optimization comes down to 6 on-page factors, Lyndsay summed them up. If you work them into your design you will do really well.
Natural Link Profile: think ahead about creating a neighborhood of links around you which will have a huge impact on your site. Give some thought to your link profile.
Deep Link Profile – ratios of links to subpages in comparison to links to homepages.
Additional considerations are feeds, paid search, local search (map locations, XHTML for mobile), development and administrative staff etc.
Source:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015577.html
Keyword research – you may use your tool and build strategy around most searched for keyword. At this phase you need to talk to your target audience, don’t just go for the most popular, go for the tail end. Make sure the keywords didn’t come from the CEO, talk to the target audience.
Assign relevancy to words to get a good targeted list. At vision, we put together a spreadsheet and assign relevancy – up to 100%.
Once you’ve done research, find out who is ranking for those words and why. Know who you are; carve out your niche, try to determine factors necessary to compete with those words, then develop your content.
We look at indexed pages for competitive sites and your own, Yahoo does the best here.
Creating the IA: incorporate the keyword research, incorporate comp analysis, then lay out your site. Use keywords when you can in the names of the pages, assign tags, metas, etc.
A lot of people say SEO sites are ugly – not true. Avoid java script, image based navigation, flash navigation, flash intros to site. Allow space for content – a lot of ecommerce site get carried away with images. Use alt text. Try to write static urls in the development stage. Design should follow the IA – design should be the 3rd phase of the process, try to have a reason why the site is being designed that way.
Trip Advisor is good for usability. Usability is important. What’s below the fold on their home page is a lot of links using great anchor text.
Read Searchenginewatch.com this Tuesday for article on spam.
Building content:
Once you have your keywords, your site is only as good as the copy you put on the pages write engaging content. Don’t stuff. Make it engaging for visitors and search engines. Once you have content, go back through it and try to link between one page to another, this is great for spiders. Use good anchor texts. People get so caught up with external links but forget about linking within site.
Make sure you avoid marketing fluff. Blogs are great for getting out quick content. Pages will rank quickly.
Summary: do research before design, use research smartly to develop IA. Deign for usability and SEO, in that order. Make sure you have good content.
Speaker 2: Alan K’necht, K’nechtology, Inc:
Linear approach: spiders read from top to bottom, left to right, and go straight through. Search engines care about words, words and words! Not pictures. Also care about positions of words. Then why show graphic first? Good for usability, not search engines. Use 2-tier design architecture. Separate content from presentation. Doesn’t necessarily mean design will be ugly. Organize content logically, i.e. don’t use privacy policy first – use H1 tag first! Use CSS to position.
Newspaper philosophy – they get readers engaged. Why? Linear info – easy to read! Headlines first! Main story first! Important stuff up front! That’s what search engines are trying to do, be easy for the human. Newspaper puts links to inner pages at the end (i.e. continued on page 22). So linear approach is that the important elements must come first! H1 first, H2 second, target words in H1 – first and foremost, this is what page is about! Stick graphic at the bottom!
One of the ways to see if coders did a good job is to turn off CSS using the Firefox Webmaster Toolbar. You can see what the site looks like. You can remove lots of the fluff. If the logo is relevant or well known keep it in towards the top. Get content up front though. Usability for search engines.
Speaker 3: Lyndsay Walker – WestJet – Canadian Airline
Design for your visitors! You want to have a clear navigation not only for visitors but also for search engines.
Avoid flash, there is no advantage whatever. There is so much you can do with CSS and Java that can simulate what Flash can do.
Fresh content is the best.
Use DIVs – more reliable than a table structure.
Use your stats – what browsers are people using? Where are they going on your site?
Test everything in Firefox – it’s a compliant browser. If you design for Internet Explorer, you will test in Firefox and it will be broken. Design for Firefox and tweak for IE. You will save yourself a lot of headaches. Especially since Firefox has great tools and plug-ins. If you watch your stats over time, you will notice an increase in Firefox users as well as mobile device users to surf the net.
Must-haves recap:
Title tag – unique to every page.
Meta description tag – the yes or no if someone will click on our site. Very important.
Header tags – place prominently at the top, H1, H2 etc.
Strong code-to-content ratio – CSS is so important, you really don’t need a lot of code these days.
DIVs instead of tables.
Don’t forget your keywords.
Links – so important – internal linking structure just as important as external.
Side note - Inadvertent SEO – If you are testing out new pages, the search engines will find it whether you are ready or not. If you are not ready for it to be live, use a testing environment or watch your linking structure.
Speaker 4: Paul Bruemmer – Red Door Interactive
Organic Site Structure:
- Server configuration: robot.txt, redirect codes, 404 error codes, internal broken links, canonical duplicate content, dedicated IP address, alias URLs, transfer of keyword page rankings, etc.
- Site architecture gone bad: messed up situation. To prevent, 6 essential components to implement:
Inclusion ratio – it pays to know and track the number of pages indexed to gauge how you are doing in the index.
Directory structure and naming conventions.
Internal linking structure – very often neglected and annoying to correct.
Dynamic and persistent URLs.
Site Map.
Privacy statement.
Content Generation:
Look at competitive landscape and be equal to or greater than.
Textual content types: articles, industry news, etc.
Think about content promotion, RSS feeds, blogs etc.
Content Optimization comes down to 6 on-page factors, Lyndsay summed them up. If you work them into your design you will do really well.
Natural Link Profile: think ahead about creating a neighborhood of links around you which will have a huge impact on your site. Give some thought to your link profile.
Deep Link Profile – ratios of links to subpages in comparison to links to homepages.
Additional considerations are feeds, paid search, local search (map locations, XHTML for mobile), development and administrative staff etc.
Source:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015577.html
Saturday, December 1, 2007
AML Launches New SEM Tool – Integrating SEO Within A Web Page Generator
Associated Marketers has launched a new website designed to help businesses become visible on the web. Page Author provides a simple to use tool, to build, optimize, and submit WebPages to a search engine.
The tool may be used to promote an existing website, or create new search engine friendly sites.
Ed Shea a founding partner stated that, AML will apply techniques learned from years of experience in automating Computer Aided Manufacturing processes to simplify web publishing. Tools are designed for use by those without Web Design or SEO (search engine optimization) technical skills.
The idea for LeadsLander is based on the premise that the SEO process can be applied to any content, using an automated process. I know that that would be considered blaspheme in the SEO forums. However the majority of business web pages are written with no consideration for search. They are highly specialized with narrow topics making search optimization straightforward.
Businesses have ample content available that would be suited for publication on the web, the problem lies on the lack of technical skills related to publishing material optimized for search. LeadsLander product is our attempt to offer a tool where in-house textual content can be published by “cut and paste” skill levels.
The integrated SEO scoring method provides for fine tuning by the page author.
The HTML Tags important for effective indexing by search engines are automatically generated for each page. The visible scoring system assures that the page content supports the keywords and phrases chosen.
Building Link Popularity for a site through paid links or from unrelated sites has been discounted by search engines for some time. LeadsLander pages are dependant on content related to the business topic and will only post when they score well enough.
Publishing of pages to the integrated hosting is allowed once a minimum score is achieved. The page is viewed in a pre-viewer once saved, then automatically published to the AML server. Pages are submitted to search engines through XML sitemaps generated as pages are added.
Source:http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/26869/
The tool may be used to promote an existing website, or create new search engine friendly sites.
Ed Shea a founding partner stated that, AML will apply techniques learned from years of experience in automating Computer Aided Manufacturing processes to simplify web publishing. Tools are designed for use by those without Web Design or SEO (search engine optimization) technical skills.
The idea for LeadsLander is based on the premise that the SEO process can be applied to any content, using an automated process. I know that that would be considered blaspheme in the SEO forums. However the majority of business web pages are written with no consideration for search. They are highly specialized with narrow topics making search optimization straightforward.
Businesses have ample content available that would be suited for publication on the web, the problem lies on the lack of technical skills related to publishing material optimized for search. LeadsLander product is our attempt to offer a tool where in-house textual content can be published by “cut and paste” skill levels.
The integrated SEO scoring method provides for fine tuning by the page author.
The HTML Tags important for effective indexing by search engines are automatically generated for each page. The visible scoring system assures that the page content supports the keywords and phrases chosen.
Building Link Popularity for a site through paid links or from unrelated sites has been discounted by search engines for some time. LeadsLander pages are dependant on content related to the business topic and will only post when they score well enough.
Publishing of pages to the integrated hosting is allowed once a minimum score is achieved. The page is viewed in a pre-viewer once saved, then automatically published to the AML server. Pages are submitted to search engines through XML sitemaps generated as pages are added.
Source:http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/26869/
Friday, November 30, 2007
The biggest SEO keyword searches for November
Lycos today announced its results from its excellent blog report The Lycos 50, the 50 most popular Internet search results for the week ending Nov. 24, 2007.
Biggest Search Engine movers for the week ending Nov. 24, 2007:
1. Rachael Ray - 871%
2. Nelly Furtado - 220%
3. Amy Adams - 150%
4. Anna Nicole Smith -100%
5. Stephen Colbert- 100%
6. Emma Watson- 86%
7. Johnny Depp- 73%
8. Xbox- 72%
9. Thanksgiving - 55%
10. Poker- 40%
As to be expected a distinct Christmas theme is around this week with terms like Xbox (Natural Search #45) re-enters this week’s Lycos 50, jumping 72% in online interest.
A report recently issued its list of Top Toys and Video Games of 2007, based on web search activity, and while the gaming consoles fail to make the Top 10 Toys list this year, both Nintendo (Natural Search #36) and Xbox score the biggest points with web users over the past week, generating 64% more search interest than PlayStation.
Meanwhile, the unstablity in Iran (Natural Search #28) continues its climb up the Lycos search logs, rising from number 35 last week.
While shy of making this week’s Lycos 50 list of top search terms, celebrity chef Rachael Ray sees the biggest jump in search activity, up 871% over the past week.
The star of the popular US TV show “Rachael Ray” show, Ray is also a best-selling author, and for the past year, has locked in the sweet gig of Dunkin Donuts’ spokeswoman.
Her CBS talk show won a 2007 Daytime Emmy Award, while Forbes named her the number two “Most Trusted Celebrity.” The most popular Rachael Ray-related search queries this week include Rachael Ray biography; Rachael Ray party food recipe; Rachael Ray photos; and Rachel Ray Show.
The Lycos 50 Top 10 Search Terms for the Week Ending Nov. 24, 2007:
1) Poker
2) Thanksgiving
3) Golf
4) Fashion
5) Disney
6) Christmas
7) World Series
8) YouTube
9) South Beach Diet
10) Britney Spears
Source:http://www.hitsearchlimited.com/news/999186/
Biggest Search Engine movers for the week ending Nov. 24, 2007:
1. Rachael Ray - 871%
2. Nelly Furtado - 220%
3. Amy Adams - 150%
4. Anna Nicole Smith -100%
5. Stephen Colbert- 100%
6. Emma Watson- 86%
7. Johnny Depp- 73%
8. Xbox- 72%
9. Thanksgiving - 55%
10. Poker- 40%
As to be expected a distinct Christmas theme is around this week with terms like Xbox (Natural Search #45) re-enters this week’s Lycos 50, jumping 72% in online interest.
A report recently issued its list of Top Toys and Video Games of 2007, based on web search activity, and while the gaming consoles fail to make the Top 10 Toys list this year, both Nintendo (Natural Search #36) and Xbox score the biggest points with web users over the past week, generating 64% more search interest than PlayStation.
Meanwhile, the unstablity in Iran (Natural Search #28) continues its climb up the Lycos search logs, rising from number 35 last week.
While shy of making this week’s Lycos 50 list of top search terms, celebrity chef Rachael Ray sees the biggest jump in search activity, up 871% over the past week.
The star of the popular US TV show “Rachael Ray” show, Ray is also a best-selling author, and for the past year, has locked in the sweet gig of Dunkin Donuts’ spokeswoman.
Her CBS talk show won a 2007 Daytime Emmy Award, while Forbes named her the number two “Most Trusted Celebrity.” The most popular Rachael Ray-related search queries this week include Rachael Ray biography; Rachael Ray party food recipe; Rachael Ray photos; and Rachel Ray Show.
The Lycos 50 Top 10 Search Terms for the Week Ending Nov. 24, 2007:
1) Poker
2) Thanksgiving
3) Golf
4) Fashion
5) Disney
6) Christmas
7) World Series
8) YouTube
9) South Beach Diet
10) Britney Spears
Source:http://www.hitsearchlimited.com/news/999186/
Google Experimental Offers Vote Up Search Listing: End of SEO
Yesterday I covered the news at Search Engine Land of a new Google experimental search feature that lets you move search results up and remove results from the Google search results page.
The changes you make only impact you - your login and does not influence the overall scope of the search results. But can they? Who knows. We have been seeing Google test remove results features before and then drop the feature.
Google says:
This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.
A Cre8asite Forums thread is talking about how this may or may not impact SEOs. Well, this is nothing new. We have had whole conference panels on the topic, such as Personalized Search: Fear or Not?. Plus we have shown how much the personalized results today can differ from non-personalized results. In fact, why not try turning off Google personalized results yourself and do some tests.
Is this new Google experimental test the end of SEO? Not at all. This does not add much more than what we have today with Google Personalized results. All it does it make it more visible to all of us.
Source:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015496.html
The changes you make only impact you - your login and does not influence the overall scope of the search results. But can they? Who knows. We have been seeing Google test remove results features before and then drop the feature.
Google says:
This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.
A Cre8asite Forums thread is talking about how this may or may not impact SEOs. Well, this is nothing new. We have had whole conference panels on the topic, such as Personalized Search: Fear or Not?. Plus we have shown how much the personalized results today can differ from non-personalized results. In fact, why not try turning off Google personalized results yourself and do some tests.
Is this new Google experimental test the end of SEO? Not at all. This does not add much more than what we have today with Google Personalized results. All it does it make it more visible to all of us.
Source:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015496.html
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Google Spam Patent Explorer: "Identifying Manipulated Articles
What SEO doesn't like talking about spam? Now add a newly granted Google patent that talks about spam and an SEO is in heaven!
Bill at created a Cre8asite Forums thread about a new granted patent named Methods and systems for identifying manipulated articles. Here is the abstract:
"" Systems and methods that identify manipulated articles are described. In one embodiment, a search engine implements a method comprising determining at least one cluster comprising a plurality of articles, analyzing signals to determine an overall signal for the cluster, and determining if the articles are manipulated articles based at least in part on the overall signal.""
Bill goes into more detail at the Cre8asite Forums thread and in his blog post at SEO By The Sea. I will not recap what he wrote, since he did an excellent job explaining the patent.
In short, Google has come up with an formula for analyzing articles, placing them in a cluster and determining based on the linkage pattern between those articles if they are manipulating the web with spamming tactics.
Here is how Bill explains it:
"" A patent granted to Google today explores Web spam and the manipulation of documents and links on the Web. It describes how the rankings of pages may be influenced if they are identified as “manipulative.”
The identification of manipulative documents, how they might be grouped together, and how they could be treated by the search engine is described in some detail. That treatment might include removal of pages from the search index, reductions in rankings for pages, and possibly a change in how quality scores (PageRank) are calculated for links from manipulative pages.""
The patent application was filed about 4 years ago. So Google may or may not be using all or some of these concepts within their current day algorithm. The fun part is the discussion and application of the patent to current day SEO trends.
Bill ends his thread with a teaser, "Anyone want to talk about spam? Paid links?"
Source:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015480.html
Bill at created a Cre8asite Forums thread about a new granted patent named Methods and systems for identifying manipulated articles. Here is the abstract:
"" Systems and methods that identify manipulated articles are described. In one embodiment, a search engine implements a method comprising determining at least one cluster comprising a plurality of articles, analyzing signals to determine an overall signal for the cluster, and determining if the articles are manipulated articles based at least in part on the overall signal.""
Bill goes into more detail at the Cre8asite Forums thread and in his blog post at SEO By The Sea. I will not recap what he wrote, since he did an excellent job explaining the patent.
In short, Google has come up with an formula for analyzing articles, placing them in a cluster and determining based on the linkage pattern between those articles if they are manipulating the web with spamming tactics.
Here is how Bill explains it:
"" A patent granted to Google today explores Web spam and the manipulation of documents and links on the Web. It describes how the rankings of pages may be influenced if they are identified as “manipulative.”
The identification of manipulative documents, how they might be grouped together, and how they could be treated by the search engine is described in some detail. That treatment might include removal of pages from the search index, reductions in rankings for pages, and possibly a change in how quality scores (PageRank) are calculated for links from manipulative pages.""
The patent application was filed about 4 years ago. So Google may or may not be using all or some of these concepts within their current day algorithm. The fun part is the discussion and application of the patent to current day SEO trends.
Bill ends his thread with a teaser, "Anyone want to talk about spam? Paid links?"
Source:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015480.html
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