There are many sections in this web site. They all are related to search marketing. While one would believe this site is just about search engine optimization (SEO), it is actually more about everything I know about the web and how to improve your presense on the Internet. While there are many guides or web sites to how to improve your web sites presense online, most of them are laced with bogus recommendations to get $$ from you. The goal of this web site is that it provides what most business putting a site online are wishing for when they first thought of getting online more business through online marketing. I also reference the most useful resources I found in each field so that if you are interested in learning more about those subjects you can see what I recommend.
I think some areas read well, whereas others are sloppy. The reason for this is that I’m not a writter I’m a marketing and engineer professional and I rewrite sections of it frequently to keep it up to date. I try to reread the articles as often as I can without getting burned out from reading it too much. It is a hard to strike the right ballance of keeping pdating everything I have learned and apply the new lessons I have learned to the lessons learned years ago.
I’ve spoke to thousands of customers seeking this information, they may have not known they where looking information as they may have said “I would like more business, and I’m not getting anything from the internet and I’ve tried everything!” or they’ve simply said “I don’t know anything about the Internet but I think there’s some opportunity there”. Ultimately if you’re looking to increase or improve your ROI in marketing the Internet if correctly applied can significantly improve your business model
If you already know a topic covered in a certain section of this book, well then, you may not learn much, or anything from that section. I don’t expect to be able to tell a 20-year professional copywriter how to do her job. The point of the other sections is that SEO and SEM works much better as a marketing mechanism if you use it in conjunction with other ideas and do not do SEO or SEM on an island.
SEO by itself doesn’t work!
Search algorithms are still in very young in their product lifecycle and like a child it will go through many changes both physically (how you use it) and mentally (how it works). Many people will still be able to run successful businesses doing nothing but SEO for at least a few years to come. When I was new to SEO, and only knew a little about it, I did not have a strong brand or understand online marketing that caused some efforts in SEO to fail so while you read articles on this web site it may take some rereading for you to fully understand all the concepts and theories presented.
The goal of your web site should be increase your income or social reach significantly outside your emmidate realm of influence. Only by teaming SEO with other marketing practices or viewing the web through a larger lens will you be able to fully appreciate the value of SEO.
If you do not know what PPC, CSS, SSI, CMS, or many of the acronyms mean, it does not make sense to try to learn all of them in one day. It took me a couple years to learn the value of each hopefully it will take you much less time with this web site.
With that said, in many areas it is important to understand the concept of how or why something works without knowing all the details. On top of being a web site to read, I also wanted this site to act as a reference guide. While some of this site talks about technical information, they may not be that important for the average small business owner to know. For example, latent semantic indexing finds mathematical patterns in language and determines what concepts a page represents using mathematics to represent those words. All web site owners really need to know about latent semantic indexing is that those types of algorithms would favor natural writing over unnatural keyword stuffed nonsense.
There are many other algorithms and theories driving search, but at the end of the day, the end goal of all the algorithms is to favor useful content so the results are relevant, which, in turn, allows the engines to make more money serving ads at the same time they don’t want to show only the most relevant sites so nobody clicks on the advertising they make money on.
As much as this is an exact guide for what you should do to promote your site, some of the ideas in this site are also there to spark your creativity to help you think of ways to gain strong advantages over your competition.
Don’t think their is any magic one way to do SEO any Internet marketing method that is formula-based misses the social aspects of the web and falls into at least one of the following groups:
• Leaves traces or footprints that are easy to detect and discount
• Leaves traces that are easy for competitors to duplicate
• Does not consider your strengths and weaknesses vs. your competitors and thus has you waste time focusing on a formula instead of working off your strengths and shoring up your weaknesses• .Is easily beat in the search results when an open minded creative competitor leverages the social aspects of the web
The goal of this web site is to help you think of unique ideas that help you build real value, social/business relationships, and competitive advantages that are hard to duplicate.
Web Site Basics
Before you can consider how best to create a strong online presense you must start with the basics. The first and most important aspect of creating a great online presense is having a great web site.
Here is what makes up a great web site:
- Content
- Unique content
- Call to action
- Layout
- Usability
- Domain Name
For more information on how to make a great web site check out our article “Web Sites”.
Once you have a web site that will help you achieve your goals then your ready to start learning more about SEO and SEM.
Relationship between SEO and search engines
According to Wikipedia the term “Search Engine Optimization” did not appear until 1997, a few years after search engines emerged. The enginers at some of the search engines that some webmaster community were trying to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating their rankings in the search results. In some early search engines, such as Infoseek, ranking first was as easy as grabbing the source code of the top-ranked page, placing it on your website, and submitting a URL to instantly index and rank that page.
Due to the high value and targeting of search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs.
Some more aggressive site owners and SEOs generate automated sites or employ techniques that eventually get domains banned from the search engines. Many search engine optimization companies, which sell services, employ long-term, low-risk strategies, and most SEO firms that do employ high-risk strategies do so on their own affiliate, lead-generation, or content sites, instead of risking client websites.
Some SEO companies employ aggressive techniques that get their client websites banned from the search results. The Wall Street Journal profiled a company that allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its client Wired reported the same company sued a blogger for mentioning that they were banned. I have confirmed Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. All of the main search engines provide information/guidelines to help with site optimization: Google’s, Yahoo!’s, MSN’s and Ask.com’s. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! has Site Explorer that provides a way to submit your URLs for free (like MSN/Google), determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and drill down on inlinks to deep pages. Yahoo! has an Ambassador Program and Google has a program for qualifying Google Advertising Professionals. I have both certifications. I don’t post them on my web site because the information provided is not secure and people have tried my creditials listed on my web site to mislead customers about their skills.
Getting into search engines’ databases
Just because you have a web site doesn’t mean your going to get listed in Google or Yahoo. You will need to submit your site to Google and Yahoo.
Google and Yahoo offer submission programs, such as Google Sitemaps, for which an XML type feed can be created and submitted. Generally, however, that alone will not get you listed well in the search engines.
The best way to show up on the search engines is to have other pages link to your site that are already spidered by Google and the other search engines. It can take a few days or even weeks from the acquisition of a link from such a site for all the main search engine spiders to begin indexing a new site, and there is usually not much that can be done to speed up this process.
Link building
How Do Text Links Help My Site Rank Higher in The Search Engines?
Link popularity is the most significant factor the search engines use for determining how well a site should rank for its keywords. Link popularity is the measure of the quantity and the quality of the sites that link to yours. Getting text links from popular sites will increase your link popularity and boost your sites rankings.
Not all links are the same, over the past couple of years, the search engines have started placing additional value on links coming from relevant sites. It is important to obtain links from sites that are in a related category. For example, a mortgage site should try and get links from other mortgage brokers, or any type of site that would normally link to a mortgage site.
It can take several weeks for the search engines to spider the pages where your links are placed. It can then take several months before they recalculate your link popularity in order to affect your rankings. It is possible to see some minor changes within a couple weeks but for the most part, you should not expect any major shifts in rankings for at least 90 days.
One of the biggest changes the search engines have made recently is to introduce “Age” as a factor when determining how much value a link has. Links that go up and then go down quickly are a sign of unnatural link practices. Natural links tend to stay up permanently.
What makes a link good for SEO?
#1 Relevancy of the Site the Link is on
Google loves links on relevant sites. It is possible to outrank someone who has many more links then you by purchasing just a few very powerful relevant ones.
It is not necessary that all of your backlinks come from relevant sites, but the general rule is “the more the better”.
#2 Link Popularity and Pagerank of the Site
Obtaining links on sites that are popular is very important. When important, or popular, sites link to yours, it tells the search engines that you worthy of ranking well for your keywords. Link Popularity is the #1 ranking factor in Google and is a major ranking factor in both Yahoo and MSN.
#3 Number of Outbound Links on the Page
The total number of outbound links on a page is an important factor to consider when purchasing a link. A site that has too many outbound links is not going to pass much link popularity. They are also at risk of being penalized in the search engines if the outbound links are thought to be “paid links” or are all pointing to “un-relevant” sites. On the other hand, if a site is authoritative in a particular field and naturally links to other sites in its industry, that is much different. Authoritative sites that link out to other sites are considered hubs and will provide a lot of benefit. This includes sites such as Wikipedia.org, Directory.Yahoo.com, DMOZ.com, and others.
#4 Age of the Site the Link is On
Older sites are trusted more in the search engines and have more power for ranking other sites. Google places a lot of weight on links from older sites. This is the reason that we have the “Whois creation date” listed for all the sites in our inventory. If a site is older then 2 years, it’s value goes way up. If it is greater then 5 years it is even more powerful.
#5 Placement of Link on the Page (Zone)
Where the link is located on a page is also very important. The search engines have developed block level analysis techniques that basically allow them to break down a webpage into blocks. Certain blocks, or sections of the site carry more weight since they are more likely to be seen by visitors. Links that are hidden at the very bottom of a site carry less value then links embedded in text at the top of the site.
There is also the additional value of traffic. Links placed at the top of a site will get more clicks. While we do not sell links for direct traffic, we love direct traffic as a side-benefit.
Improve your Search Results will be providing links to companies and services that allow you to purchase links in the near future.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword “red widgets”, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.
While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2007. In the spring of 2006, MSN started beta testing their own PPC service, MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, are up to $50.00 per click. Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.
Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not.
Use of a computer to commit this type of Internet fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions, for example as covered by Penal code 502 in California. There have been arrests relating to click fraud with regard to malicious clicking in order to deplete a competitor’s advertising budget.
A secondary source of click fraud is non-contracting parties, who are not part of any pay-per-click agreement. This type of fraud is even harder to police because perpetrators generally cannot be sued for breach of contract or charged criminally with fraud. Examples of non-contracting parties are:
- Competitors of advertisers: These parties may wish to harm a competitor who advertises in the same market by clicking on their ads. The perpetrators don’t profit directly, but force advertiser to pay for irrelevant clicks thus weakening or eliminating a source of competition.
- Competitors of publishers: These persons may wish to frame a publisher. It is made to look like the publisher is clicking on its own ads. The advertising network may then terminate the relationship. Many publishers rely exclusively on revenue from advertising and can be put out of business by such an attack.
- Other malicious intent: There’s an array of motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is hard to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them.
- Unwanted “friends” of the publisher: Sometimes upon learning a publisher profits from ads being clicked, a supporter of the publisher (like a fan, family member, or personal friend), will click on the ads to “help”. However, this can backfire when the publisher (not the “friend”) is accused of click fraud.
Advertising networks try to stop fraud by all parties, but often do not know which clicks are legitimate. Unlike fraud committed by the publisher, it is hard to know who should pay when past click fraud is found. Publishers resent having to pay refunds for something that is not their fault. However, advertisers are adamant that they should not have to pay for phony clicks.
Disclaimer: Since search engines are constantly changing and keeping their search resultes algorithms highly guarded secrets, there is no way to know the exact algorithms at any given time. This information was compiled from my observations and the observations of other industry experts of search engines over the past dozen years. Hopefully, this web site educates you how to educate yourself as things continue to change. While following this web site should help improve your rankings, the author of this web site shall not be held responsible for damages because of the use (or misuse) of this information.
