Forbes CEO Jim Spanfeller claims (without proof) that Google makes $60 million off the Forbes brand and boosting “quality publishers” like Forbes would help Eric Schmidt’s web sewage problem. This is from the publication that sells paid links that helps the sewage rise in Google?
Danny Sullivan has written an insightful piece about this over at Search Engine Land.
Danny Says Google sends Forbes and other publishers millions of visits for free. Usually smaller publishers complain if for some reason they lose that traffic due to a ranking change. Newspapers and magazine publishers seem unique in being upset that getting all those free visitors simply isn’t enough. Perhaps Google itself isn’t being properly compensated?
Danny goes on to say “If they’re going to attack Google, then I want an attack that’s organized, that can’t be so easily shot full of holes and which warrants serious attention. Or I want them to stop attacking Google so it can be attacked, when it deserves it, on far more serious issues without such distraction.”
Google has added a new feature to their personalized home page which clones the core features of Digg and StumbleUpon. These core features are embedded into a Google gadget that is accessible from within the web desktop.
This new feature, which Google is now showcasing in its directory, is called “What’s Popular.” Using this Google gadget folks can submit links either anonymously or publicly and vote other submissions up or down.
According to Google, the What’s Popular gadget “uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader.”
There’s more to it than that though. Clicking on the maximize link causes the gadget to expand into a canvas view which sorts the submissions into different categories - e.g. stories, videos and images.
As recently as March you may have noticed that some Google AdWords ads have longer titles than you’re used to seeing. Google has confirmed that in limited instances, the AdWords title can exceed the 25 character limit. There is a thread over at WebmasterWorld about this.
Exceeding the character limit in your ad title is possible by using dynamic keyword insertion in your ad copy; the ad title may show more than 25 characters.
A Googler has stated that there is no guarantee that your ad title will display characters beyond the limit of 25, but that Google may choose to show a keyword with 26 or 27 characters automatically.
So with this in mind, if your ads are looked after by a PPC management company you should notify them about this and play around with your ad title copy but realize that if your ad title exceeds 25 characters the ad simply might not work all of the time, and the ad title might not always match the ad description text too. It is worth noting though that you should test this to find out if it results in any improvements to your click through rate and your quality score.
If you are serious about your search engine optimization and online marketing strategies; you should definitely be contemplating Mobile SEO. With cell phone technology providing the ability for subscribers to search, visit, view and buy online it is going to be crucial to ensure your site is optimized for mobile phones.
Requirements For Successful Mobile SEO
In order to really optimize your site for mobile users, the first step is to ensure your website is mobile compliant. What does that mean? It means that your pages are formatted for mobile cell phone users.
Mobile users are limited with time and screen space so your pages should be created to cater to these users. If you are unsure of what your site looks like when converted to the mobile web platform, perform a mobile search for your site and check it out. You will notice that much of your graphics, layout, bells and whistles are simply disabled, turned off and unavailable; when looking at your site through the eyes of a mobile platform, ask yourself a few questions:
- Is the information most important to your site at the top?
- Is your navigation still available?
- Are the font sizes correct?
- Does your page visibly look good?
If these answers are no, you are not ready for this newly emerging technology.
Mobile phone web pages are created in WML or XHTML and must be W3C compliant. There are new doc types available to place on your pages specifically for cell phone optimized pages, this doctype looks like this:
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN” “http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd”>
When optimizing your website for cell phones, PDA’s and other mobile devices you must think about the amount of space available on the users screen.
Mobile Search Marketing Tips to Consider:
Keep your content short and relevant
Create short titles
Make sure your pages are able to be scrolled through easily
How Popular Is Mobile Search
Right now the top industries who are benefiting from mobile search are currently travel, business and entertainment industries. Although mobile search is in it’s infancy, major search engines realize the potential of this emerging new venue and revenue stream. Recently Nokia Mobile selected Yahoo! to provide search results to their subscribers. Microsoft is the default browser and search engine for all windows mobile PDA’s and mobile devices.
A recent study conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association cites that of those surveyed, those who used mobile search most had an annual income of $50,000 to $75,000.
Mobile search technology is truly in it’s infancy and optimizing pages now can put your site ahead of your competitors; providing an incredible edge.
MSN’s adCenter is a search advertising engine which states that they can bring your online marketing to a whole new level. With state of the art tools and customized audience research capabilities, it is threatening to be the new AdWords altogether. This is because not only do you have the classic pay per click advertising model made famous by Google, but MSN goes another step further: they offer analytical tools that help an advertiser target potential customers, track ad performance, and much more.
So far, according to a study done earlier this year, adCenter ads converts clicks to customers at a rate that is 57% higher than Google and 48% higher than Yahoo! Search Marketing. Further, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, MSN supports 94 million visitors a month, which is a highly qualified audience, with 81% making online purchases in the past six months.
One of the major complaints advertisers have with pay-per-click programs is the inability to choose to whom they are advertising, resulting in unqualified traffic. This will make all the difference in being able to make the sale or not. With tools available like demographic predictions, MSN hopes to be able to bring more targeted ads overall than either of the other competing engines can. Can they succeed?
MSN’s adCenter information page states, “For instance, if you sell running shoes, you want an audience who is interested in running shoes to see your ad and take action, which may result in the audience clicking on your search ad, visiting your web site, and buying a pair of running shoes. Conversely, you would not want someone who is interested in buying horseshoes to see your ad and take a similar course of action because that likely not result in a sale, but the click on your ad by this person would still cost you.”
There have been multiple complaints however; some have said that the MSN’s adCenter bids on keywords can reach much higher levels than Google’s, without seeing much improvement upon ranking in the sponsored listings. Further, MSN utilizes about 5 results per search engine results page (SERP) on the right hand side, with one or two results at the top, compared to Google’s 8 ads on the side, and up to 3 ads at the top. Customers are complaining that it is too difficult to reach a top position for their ad, which doesn’t do them much good if they cannot save money over Google’s program.
Others have abandoned the program due to lack of relevant contextual advertising that MSN’s press releases claimed was far superior to AdWords. There have been many updates and upgrades since the beta program went live after MSN’s contractual obligations with Overture/Yahoo! Search Marketing ended in June, and results have improved much more overall. But there may still be many more bugs.
When doing a search in MSN for “discount apple desktop pcs” there is an ad for Alienware and one for plasma TVs, which hold little relevance for me in regards to my search. Another search with keywords “natural herbal supplements” show two almost identical ads, one for dealtime.com and one for shopping.com, that are titled “Save Time and Money”. The sad part is that so far, I had only done searches on four keyword phrases, and two out of the four searches provided multiple irrelevant results in advertising. That doesn’t look so great for MSN so far.
What about click fraud? According to several reports, click fraud was absolutely no better for adCenter than for either Google or Yahoo, even with the rumored addition of DeepMetrix, which is a web analytics firm that competes with WebTrends and other firms.
Still, the program is fairly new, and there are bound to be glitches. You may just want to sign up and see what happens for yourself. Currently, MSN is offering a $30 American Express brand rewards gift card when you spend $30 in the adCenter program, and it only takes five bucks to activate an account, then it is very similar to what Google’s AdWords program has to offer. Fortunately, the analytics part of the MSN program is extremely simple to use, and in my opinion, far easier to track with conversion tools than Google’s. This month I will be running multiple tests with adCenter, and I’ll let you in on all of the results.
Why don’t most link popularity schemes work? Simple. Because they break the rules. Here’s how it usually goes: a) Webmasters scour the net to find quick and dirty ways to build link popularity, b) They discover a method that works causing everyone to jump on the bandwagon, which c) forces Google to come up with new ways to curtail the outrageous amount of link spam, so d) Webmasters start looking for another quick and dirty scheme, etc.
Ignoring common sense and Google’s rules is an exercise in futility. Why? Because the search engines hold all the cards. It’s their game. That’s why the above method only works for a very short while if at all.
But there are strategies you can use to get genuine, legal links that will rock your rankings for a long time. I’ll explain in a moment.
The Old Way
First let’s look at how most webmasters and SEOs still approach link popularity and why these methods are so five minutes ago:
- Reciprocal linking: Not bad in and of itself IF you are linking to sites you would truly do business with or refer people to. However in today’s frenzied linking environment, the majority of sites that offer reciprocal links have an automated process void of any sort of human decision-making:
First you add their link to your site. Then you fill out their form. Their software runs a check to see if you are linking to them and if you are, well maybe they will link to you. And then you have to remember to check their site in a week or so to ensure they added your link. And if they didn’t, you send them a polite reminder, and then another and another. And when they don’t, you have to go back to your site, find their link and remove it.
All that to secure one link. Now repeat the process 500 times. No wonder SEOs and site owners get frustrated. This is NOT what Google had in mind when it factored link popularity into its algorithm.
- Text Link Ads: Why not just take five minutes and a few dollars to purchase 5,000 text link ads? Instant link pop, right? Actually it’s instant link spam, according to Google. Instead of getting top rankings, you’ll risk getting booted from the index. Ouch! Better get approval from finance to kick up more cash on your already over-budget PPC campaign.
- Splogs: Never heard of a splog? It’s short for spam blog. Ever since free blogs became popular, they have been used to create pages and pages of useless (or zero) information with the sole purpose of hosting links pointing to other sites. Why doesn’t this help your link popularity? Because in order to work, the blog linking to your site has to have high quality links pointing to it. Without that indicator of a blog’s popularity, search engines consider any link from the blog to your website as all but useless. And how many webmasters are going to link to your blog if you don’t have anything useful to say on it?
Of course if you actually have tons of valuable information that other sites in your industry want to link to, that’s great. But that takes time. And energy. And ideas. It doesn’t meet the criteria for “overnight SEO success” that most site owners demand from their web designer or SEO.
The New Way
Clearly, the way we conducted link building last year or the year before is no longer viable. So what are the new success guidelines that you and your webmaster or SEO should follow?
The answer is twofold:
- Learn exactly what Google considers quality link popularity.
- And learn how to create it.
1. What Google Considers Quality Linking
No big mystery here. Google’s webmaster guidelines tell you to:
- Have other relevant sites link to yours.
- Make sure all the sites that should know about you are aware of your site.
- Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to industry-specific expert sites.
2. How To Give Google What It Wants
- Have other relevant sites link to yours. The keyword here is “relevant”, which means: “Having a bearing on or connection with the matter at hand.” This is different from being “related”. Many sites are related to yours… they are your competitors! Who wants to give them a free plug!? What you want to do is make logical connections. For example, if you are a reseller/affiliate, the manufacturer of the product you sell may have a webpage for links to their authorized sellers. That link could actually generate a clickthrough from an interested buyer, which is what Googlebot wants to see: targeted link popularity.
- Make sure all the sites that should know about you are aware of your site. This means contacting sites such as non-profits, training sites, and information-based sites with a connection to your type of business. This can be time consuming but the results over the long haul will far exceed any of the current link popularity schemes being used.
- Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo! as well as to industry-specific expert sites. This is probably the easiest method (thank goodness) of all. Research a list of directories or have your SEO compile and submit them to you for review. Some directories may charge an annual fee for inclusion. Don’t be stingy about investing the money. If the directory is perceived as an expert site by Google, it will be money well spent.
In Conclusion
It all boils down to one question: “What sites should know about mine but don’t yet?” A bit of legwork to determine the answer to that question is a great way to launch a link popularity campaign that delivers lasting results.
In other words, rocking the rankings without breaking the rules.
Sometimes it may seem that natural search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search marketing are two entirely different animals. There is a technical aspect of SEO that does not translate to paid search and a “media” aspect to paid search that doesn’t often sit well with SEOs.
So where do the two meet?
It may be surprising to some, but SEOs possess some key skills that translate very well in the paid search arena. Whether the focus is technical SEO (e.g., coding, automated feeds, dynamic URL solutions, etc.) or nontechnical SEO (e.g., wordsmithing), it’s generally not a huge leap to move from SEO to paid search (and back again).
Here are a few skills that both paid and organic search marketers can leverage.
Keyword list development: Nearly every search marketing campaign (regardless of whether its PPC or SEO) starts off with a keyword list. We all have our various tools and tecniques for developing this list, but the bottom line is we know how to pull a list together - whether we’re paying for ads or optimizing someone’s web site for their most desirable keywords.
Optimized titles and descriptions: A core component of natural search engine optimization is optimizing page titles and description tags. In fact, SEOs may have an advantage over traditional copywriters when it comes to developing paid search ads because we are accustomed to building the title and description around the relevancy of the keyword in question. Google and Yahoo both evaluate paid search ads for relevancy (e.g., to encourage advertisers to bid on terms that are actually relevant to their product, rather than bid on terms simply because they get a lot of search queries.)
Competitive analysis: Part of an SEO’s job is to analyze the positioning of their clients’ competitors in the search results of the top engines for a given keyword. Putting a competitive positioning report together for paid search results is not that different from putting the same type of report together for organic listings. SEOs may even have a head start over more traditional marketers in that they are accustomed to running queries in various ways based on search popularity, plus they likely have some tools or tricks up their sleeve to help with an overall competitive review.
A thorough understanding of search: SEOs inherently understand what is important to search engines and (at least most of us) possess a deep empathy for the search engines’ desire to provide relevant results even for paid search results. Traditional media buyers may be baffled when ads are rejected by editorial teams due to lack of relevance (after all, they are PAYING for the ad), but SEOs understand how important it is to keep relevancy consistent from the keyword to the ad copy to the landing page.
In its ongoing drive towards more honest, accurate search engine results, Google is now making it harder than ever to gain rankings by using linking tactics that it considers manipulative. And its definition of “manipulative” is getting wider, too.
Remember when link farms, link-sharing schemes and free-for-all programs used to be in vogue? Then Google wised up to that one and SEO’s and webmasters had to scramble to find another way to fool the engines into dishing out higher rankings.
Remember being advised to buy paid link ads all over the place, just to trick the engines into giving you higher PageRank? That one fell into disfavor, too.
Now Google is telling errant website owners that, “Certain actions such as buying links to increase a site’s PageRank can result in penalization.”
Google Crawls Inside Your Head
In other words, Google is now telling us that, with the help of its clever algorithms, it can deduce our motivations and determine whether we purchased an ad solely for PageRank purposes or if we bought the ad seeking to attract legitimate, targeted traffic to our web page.
How does it know the difference? A dead giveaway are site-wide (or run-of-site) ad placements. If your text ad appears on every page of a linking site, and if the content of your ad does not relate to the content of the page on which it appears, the relevance factor is nil and that ad loses big points in the new and improved Google PageRank sweepstakes.
The direction of this trend is becoming very clear: What Google really wants to see is incoming links from relevant sites that are linking to you of their own free will, not via paid site-wide ad placements or any other SEO tricks.
So, how to compete in this new climate of distaste for paid links?
I have come up with three effective and legal ways to increase your incoming links. The bonus is that they will also attract the right kind of traffic to your site, which just happens to tap into Google’s growing appetite for customer-centric search engine marketing.
1. Optimized press releases
A perfect example of Google-friendly self promotion. A well-written press release that appeals to the media’s hunger for a good story and that is properly optimized with your best-performing keyword phrases can earn you not only valuable media attention and new prospects, but also increase your legitimate incoming links. Ergo, better search placement and a triple source of new traffic - traffic coming from the search engines, traffic coming from the press release itself, and traffic from the publicity generated by the press release.
2. Industry-specific articles
Website owners have been using article distribution to promote their businesses online for ages. It’s only in the last few years that they’ve really begun to take advantage of the fact that articles are also a safe and effective way to:
-Attract higher search rankings with keyword-optimized article content.
-Amass more true, natural link votes for greater PageRank.
-Direct targeted traffic to their site.
But remember, the content of the articles must be relevant to your industry and valuable to your readers - not just a glorified ad - in order to deliver those benefits.
3. Blogs and RSS Feeds
The search engine value of blogs and RSS feeds is that you can update them both with fresh content on a regular basis… and the more you post, the more frequently your pages will be visited by search engine spiders, and the faster the updates will appear in search results. Blogs and RSS feeds provide relevant information about the “goings-on” in your industry and are a great way to build relevant link popularity by including keyword-rich copy and links in your entries.
Adjusting to a Slower Pace
I can hear you moaning: “But it will take forever to get those strategies in place. I want results NOW!” But just look where the obsession with speed has gotten us so far: many sites being banned or penalized by search engines for using quick and dirty tactics, and site owners wasting money on SEO schemes that have no staying power.
This time, take the time to do it right. Yes, it may take five or six months to get the kind of rankings you hope for. But consider it a sound investment in a long and fruitful relationship with some very important business partners: the search engines AND your customers-to-be.
When it comes to generating link popularity, you’ve likely heard web marketers say, “Build it and they will come”. In other words, create an excellent website marketing strategy with loads of quality content displayed on a site that’s well designed and properly optimized. This, they say, will inspire other sites to link to yours.
Oh, is that all?
Unfortunately, it isn’t.
Having a quality site with hundreds of pages of well-written, unique content is great. But for most websites, even that isn’t enough to attract the quality and quantity of links needed to boost Google rankings these days.
So what do you have to do to get quality links that will actually count for something with the search engines? Here’s Google’s answer to the question:
“Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.” (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769)
That means don’t wait for them to find you. Put your paws to the pavement and seek out organizations, associations, and specialty industry groups… any and all sites representing groups that are considered credible and respected resources for your industry. Then get them to link to you (more on that coming up.)
Becoming affiliated with groups like these will not only shift your link popularity efforts into high gear, it will also help build your brand and expose your business to consumers in your precise target market.
How to Start Getting Popular:
- Search for organizations that are already established within your industry. Most have a directory that lists companies like yours (you’ll probably see some of your top ranking competitors already listed there!). Many associations allow you to join them, either for free or a fee. Select the ones that you think will benefit you the most and sign up.
- Scour your competitors’ sites and see if they are affiliated with any associations you should be connected with but aren’t yet.
- Once you’ve joined these groups and have a link on their sites, issue a press release telling the world that you are now an official member of “XYZ”. Make sure to include a link from the press release to the “XYZ” webpage that your site is displayed on as well as a link to your own site.
- Commit to writing an article (or having one written) at least once a month. Then:
- Upload it to your site,
- Get it crawled by adding it to your Google and Yahoo! sitemaps,
- Make a blog post about it and link to it (waddaya mean you don’t have a blog yet?!)
- A few weeks after it is live on your site and is cached, submit it to some of the organizations you contacted earlier. In the “about the author” section at the end of each article, add the link to that specific article on your site and on your blog. This will help establish your business as the authoritative source of the article. It will also build link popularity to that specific page and allow readers to post comments about it on your blog. If you have a forum on your site, mention it there too and point users to it with a link.
- It wouldn’t hurt to issue a press release about the article you wrote either. Make sure you link to the exact page where your article resides on your site as well as to your home page.
Paying For Popularity?
Since Google is so adverse to paid run-of-site links, it would be natural to assume that any sort of paid link popularity method would also be frowned upon. But luckily that’s not the case when it comes to association membership fees.
Some of the organizations you research will charge a membership fee, anywhere from $10 for a lifetime to $5,000 or more per year. Don’t let that scare you off. If your funds are limited, consider signing up for a few at a time and adding more as your budget allows.
Anyway, a few links added judiciously over time are much more credible than a flood of sudden links that appear all at once. That will get you the kind of attention you don’t want from search engines… red flags over possible link spamming.
In conclusion, nobody said link popularity was a contest you could win overnight. But if you steadfastly use the ideas outlined above, it will pay off in a gradual – and very satisfying – improvement in your link popularity, targeted traffic, and rankings.
Hit counters are very popular with novice web developers, but they lose favor as the developers gain skills. What is a hit, and why are hit counters not for serious developers?
Just about every web developer, it seems, has tinkered with one of those free personal websites offered by an ISP. The ISPs try to make it easy and attractive for anyone without a crumb of development knowledge to build their own personal website; it is the desire to make these personal sites better that often leads a fledgling developer on the path to professionalism.
In any case, the ISP will give the personal site developer some tools to build the site with, and one of those tools is a rudimentary way to learn how popular a personal site is: the hit counter. The hit counter is perhaps the simplest form of website analytics. It works by counting the number of times it has been loaded by a visiting browser, and then displaying that number. Very simple, and for its simplicity, very popular. It can take on just about any appearance that suits the programmer who creates it, and they run a full range of appearances.
Hit counters as analytics tools
As an analytic tool, the hit counter may serve its purpose for the owner of a personal website, but when the owner of the site gets serious, the flaws of a hit counter start to become noticeable. The first is in what is being counted. The owner of the site has been using the hit counter to count visitors, but remember, all it really counts is the number of times it’s been loaded. A hit is the term used to count the loading of a file from a website. This is an important definition, as it can put the popularity of a website in perspective. It can, and should, cause you to question how the number was attained, as well.
Since the hit counter counts the number of times its been loaded, what happens when a visitor arrives, then refreshes his browser? The hit counter is loaded once on arrival, then loaded again with the screen refresh. The hit counter would display 2 hits. Next, the visitor browses to an adjacent page, then returns. The hit counter is reloaded on the return, and the visitor has caused the counter to display 3 hits. Finally, what if he starts a refresh, but moves to another page before the screen is fully loaded? Depending on where the hit counter is on the screen, it may or may not be loaded, and may or may not be incremented.
Getting an impression
So, you see, hit counters are not all that accurate at counting visitors. Why, then, do we bother counting hits at all? Aside from the fact its simple, which is why the counters are so popular, hits do provide a count of something very valuable: impressions. An impression occurs when a graphic is displayed to the viewer. Impressions differ from hits in that hits don’t require graphics, while impressions do. A text page, when loaded, can record a hit. Hidden counters, little more than code that relates execution to a tracking program, can record hits. But impressions must be displayed to the visitor to count. Who cares about impressions? Advertisers, particularly banner advertisers, who may be paying the site owner an amount per impression to display the ad. Often these ads have their own form of hit counter buried within.
One last thing about hit counters. Ever see one running on a major website? No, for many reasons, but one really practical reason is this: while a hit counter can tell you how many hits your site has recorded, it also tells the visitors the same information. How confident will the visitor be in your product or service if the visitor sees what he perceives is a low hit count on your page? If you aren’t popular, why should he do business with you?
Hit counters can be a lot of fun when we are learning to build our own websites, but when we turn to serious business uses for a website, we need to start using serious analytic approaches.
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