Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 24 of October , 2007 at 11:28 am
The crew at Live Search is getting better at deciphering user intent. Two new features allow the Live Search team to deliver search results more relevant to a searchers actual quest based on the keywords they use in their search query. Let me explain:
AutoSpell Correction is the newest feature implemented at Live Search. Instead of asking you “Did you mean _______” as Google does when you have misspelled a word, Live Search will just deliver the correctly spelled results for you, which puts you one step closer to what you’re looking for. According to the Live Search blog, this only happens when they are absolutely sure that you misspelled a word.
The second new feature of Live Search is called Stemming. This feature allows Live Search to match the root, or stem, of a word to the search results delivered, as opposed to matching the complete word. For example, if you type in “motorcycle Winnipeg” then your search results page will return results that include the word “motorcycles.” Based on user feedback, Live Search figured out that the singular form of the word would not produce as accurate results so they’re making it easier for users to find what they want.
Both of these are useful features and make Live Search a better search tool. So you see, Google doesn’t have a monopoly on all the best search ideas.
Category: Search Engines
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 23 of October , 2007 at 3:27 pm
Reputation management is on the rise. Few people know what it is now, but in a couple of years everyone will need it and everyone will want it. The fact is, you can start right now managing your reputation and all you have to do is what you’re already doing.
Online Reputation Management, or ORM, is a new science and branch of search engine optimization. The key is to improve your reputation by ensuring that you have more positive results for your name or company name online than negative comments. For most of us, that’s pretty simple. Still, sometimes 1,000 to 1 is not good odds. Sometimes, a highly reputable website contains negative comments about us and we have to combat that.
For instance, MySpace is one of the top websites online. What if someone goes online and posts a bunch of comments about you on their MySpace profile. You can’t edit it or delete it. It’s not true. And when some Google’s your name they get this garbage. What do you do?
Well, you could start your own MySpace profile, and you should. But don’t stop there. Set up a Facebook profile, a LinkedIn profile, and other networking profiles as well. Blog under you real name, or company name, and do some article marketing. All of these things, of course, are things you should already be doing. But are you?
SEO is reputation management. The more you do it, the harder you make it for someone else to destroy you. And if you have a lot of high quality, relevant sites with positive things to say about you, the negative will sink like quicksand. Use your own content and get your networks involved too.
Category: Content Development
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 23 of October , 2007 at 9:00 am
Yesterday I talked about the importance of content. I even some got some useful comments. Thanks guys!
I still see these PLR packages being sold for $29.99 or for the reduced $14.95 if you buy it now, or free if you purchase somebody’s brand new gold widget with a kung fu grip and a secret handshake. I always wonder how many of them actually get sold. They must be selling because they wouldn’t be on the market if no one ever bought them.
PLR, if you don’t know, stands for private label rights. Essentially, it means you are buying pre-written content that you have a right to use as you wish after you purchase it. The problem with PLR is that other people are buying it too. If you were to buy PLR content and reprint it in newspapers all across the country, you might actually sell something and few people would notice. If they did, they wouldn’t care and the fact that the reprinted content reads exactly the same 1,000 times in different print publications won’t count against you anywhere. It probably won’t even affect how many copies of your secret handshake that you sell.
Online, however, it’s a different story. Buy PLR and you’re dead - literally. That’s because the search engines penalize - yes, penalize - duplicate content. In fact, if two web pages look the same, with the same exact content on them, then one of them won’t achieve any rankings at all. And the search engines will decide which one. It’s not always “first come, first serve.”
The only way PLR will benefit you is if you rewrite the content completely so that it is unrecognizable. And if you’re going to do that then you might as well just save your money and write your content from scratch. At least then you can create your own secret handshake.
Category: Content Development
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 22 of October , 2007 at 5:24 pm
It’s such a commonly used phrase now it’s nearly cliche: Content Is King. If you’re new to content and web development then you might be wondering what that means. If your an old veteran like myself then you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, no kidding. What’s your point?”
Some people have even gone so far as to modify the phrase to something like, “Unique content is king,” or “Content is the real SEO.” Truth be told, there is no SEO without content. It really is king.
But if content is king then what’s the crown? Is there one, or does the king just run around naked? We’re not talking about some legendary fairy tale here. This is real web business.
Your website content is the best thing you’ve got going for you. It will either make you or break you. It can be your crowning achievement or just be a mote in a dead guy’s eye - whatever that means. But the cold, hard where-the-rubber-meets-the-road truth is … you can’t live, work, or breathe online without content, be it text content, video content, audio content, advertising content, or any kind of content. Your business needs content.
So where does your content come from and what does it say about your business? In a word, it says a lot. It says who you are, what you stand for, and what your values are. You should spend time really thinking over your content - what image you want it to convey, what you want it to say about your business. Don’t just whitewash it. Really think it through. I mean, how else would you treat a king?
Category: Content Development
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 22 of October , 2007 at 7:15 am
You’ve seen them. They’re usually hosted on one of the free blogging services: Blogspot, WordPress.com, Lifelogger, or one of the thousands of other free blog hosts. You visit the page and there’s nothing more than a couple of sentences of text followed by a hyperlink - a link to a blog post on your blog. The text might read something like this:
“I found an interesting article today on XXXXXX. To read it click here.”
Of course, the “click here” will be the link to your blog post. Does this hurt you?
Aside from the fact that the “click here” being used as anchor text, I see no real SEO benefit from this link. Obviously, if instead of saying “click here,” the blogger used keywords related to your post then that might fare better for you as far as SEO is concerned. But what about coming from a free blog host that shows no indication of being relevant to your website at all?
I’d say it probably doesn’t hurt you. The search engines know there is spam out there and you can’t do anything about someone linking to your site. You can control outbound links, but inbound links you have no control over, so they do consider that. However, I’d imagine that Google, since it owns Blogger, probably doesn’t look at this free blog host the same as it would others, which means that inbound links from a Blogger blog might actually help you in an SEO sense.
The real purpose of these blogs is for the person who manages them to place ads on them and reap some kind of revenue from your content. Sleazy? Perhaps. Lazy? Of course. Unethical? Sure. But since it doesn’t really hurt you then why cry about it? You are getting an attribution link despite the person’s motives.
Most of the free blog services allow you to flag or report their users for spam. You can do that if you wish. But I’d say as long as you’re getting the attribution link then don’t bother. It’s when they don’t link back to you that you need to be worried.
Category: Inbound Links
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 21 of October , 2007 at 4:45 pm
(Source) There are good reasons to use internal links (I think the one I used above is a good one), but overall, it is just a sleazy practice meant to do nothing else but keep people on your property. To me, the idea of a link is to send people away and have them come back for more.
I must admit, I don’t understand this at all. If it can be proven that internal linking keeps people on your website longer and leads to increased revenue (which it does) then why should anyone object? Is it because they aren’t getting the revenue and the traffic? Is this a type of professional jealousy?
The last sentence - about sending people away so they’ll come back for more - is just naive. There’s no reason to believe that if you send people away from your website that they will come back for more. If they’re browsing and just stumble upon your website then it is likely they won’t come back as there is no guarantee that they will ever find you again. It’s not that I’m against external linking. I’m not. But it has been proven that internal linking has SEO benefits, increases traffic to all of your pages, keeps people on your website longer, and leads to increased revenues. My question is, what could be wrong with any of that?
Category: Internal Linking
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 21 of October , 2007 at 8:37 am
I’m honored. TopRank has called me “one of the best blogs on the Internet.” I don’t know what his criteria is for saying that, but it’s an honor worth mentioning and I’d like to thank the Top Rank Blog for giving me the mention. I’ll do my best to continue living up to that expectation.
According to Top Rank, I write about SEO specifically. I don’t dispute that. But I also have blogs on other topics. Maybe he doesn’t know that. Here are links to some of my other blogs and perhaps one of them could win a similar honor (our hopes):
If you want an easy way to remember that, just think B-SLOPE.
And more are on the way!
Once again, thanks to Top Rank Blog for the mention.
Category: SEOJ
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 20 of October , 2007 at 1:05 pm
First, let’s define the difference between a page title and a headline. Your page title is not actually on your web page anywhere. If you look at the top of your browser, in the left top corner, you’ll see a string of words. That’s your page title. It is generated in the meta tags section of your page code, which is visible to search engines and browsers but invisible to humans (unless they View Source).
Your web page headline, on the other hand, is visible on your web page. There are two types of headlines - main headlines and subheadlines, or subheads for short. Some people call subheads “section headings.” It matters not what you call it as long as you know what you are talking about.
Page Title Optimization
To optimize your page title, you need to do two things. The first thing is you need to make sure that you use your keyword in the title. You also need to make sure that your keyword is placed as close to the beginning of your title as possible. In other words, of the two page titles below, Page Title A is better than Page Title B:
Page Title A
Page Titles: How To Optimize Them
Page Title B
You Can Optimize Your Page Titles
Headline Optimization
Optimizing your headline is a little more tricky than optimizing your page title. All you really have to do for your page title is stick it between the TITLE and /TITLE brackets. But for headlines you have to know and use some HTML.
There are various tags that you can use to change the size of your headlines. Use the larger font sizes for main headlines and get smaller as you go down the page. The biggest headline tag is h1. The smallest is h6. I would only use h1, h2, h3, and sometimes h4 for headlines, but h1 is the one I would use for main headlines most of the time.
Font size matters a lot in optimization. Main body text is usually around a 4 so any number less than that is a bigger font. Font color can also make a difference. It will stand out more. And you can even bold or italicize your text for even greater effect. But the h tags are the most important for optimizing those headlines.
Just like in page titles, you also want to use keywords. This is even more important than font sizes and color, which act as supporting optimizing elements. Put your keyword in the headline and just as you would in a page title, make sure the keyword is as close to the front of the headline as possible.
Category: SEO
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 20 of October , 2007 at 8:12 am
When you sign up with me for search engine optimization services, I start with a heavy dose of analysis of your website to determine your SEO strengths and weaknesses. From there, I develop a plan that will get you results.
My methodical approach to search engine optimization involves staying on top of industry changes and developments and using the latest information available to assist you with your organic rankings in the search engines. Me and my team go through tremendous pains to ensure that every website is unique in terms of content and search engine optimization because your business is not like every other business and we know that. You deserve a customized approach and that’s what you get.
We do not use unethical or “blackhat” SEO techniques. Never have, never will. We use totally acceptable search engine optimization strategies that have been proven to work and we’re confident they will work for you too. Every web page of your web site will get its own unique keywords and they will be used to give you every advantage in the search engines. Every search engine optimization package we offer includes the following benefits:
- SEO Analysis and Professional Recommendations
- Keyword Research
- New Meta Tag Copywriting
- Recommendations On Your Existing SEO Content
- Link Building Strategy
- Keyword Position Ranking Reports
- Sitemap Creation
- And A Personal Review By Phone
Head on over to my website to see all the search engine optimization packages I offer. Don’t wait. Every minute counts.
Category: SEO
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 19 of October , 2007 at 1:20 pm
Just because you have an affiliate marketing page on your website to recruit affiliates so that they can do your sales work for you doesn’t mean you should toss SEO out the window. How are you going to get those affiliates if they don’t find your affiliate page?
The best way to optimize an affiliate marketing page for your niche is to optimize it for the words “affiliate marketing” in addition to your most profitable keyword. So if your most profitable keyword is “birds that sing” and you have an affiliate program you want to promote then SEO your affiliate program page around “birds that sing” and “affiliate program.” You will likely get traffic to that page for people looking for an affiliate program related to that keyword.
Another way you can optimize your site for your affiliate program is to optimize it for “affiliate program” and your parent keyword. In other words, if your site is about cockatiels then use “cockatiels affiliate program.” You’ll get traffic for people looking for affiliate programs related to cockatiels.
Of course, you don’t want to rely solely on organic traffic for your affiliate program. The best place to recruit affiliates is from your current customers. Advertise your affiliate program in your newsletter and in a prominent location on your website. Also promote it on your blog and through your other online marketing avenues. You might even run a pay per click campaign based on your affiliate program. How much is one good affiliate worth to you?
Category: Affiliate Marketing
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 19 of October , 2007 at 1:18 pm
Looking for search engine optimization tips that guarantee results? Well, there aren’t any. But there are principles that will help local businesses rank better for local search. Here are a few for you to keep in mind:
1. Put your physical address on every page of your website.
2. If your mailing address is different than your physical address, put it on every page of your website as well.
3. Include your phone number and zip code on every page of your website.
4. Mention specific neighborhoods that you service on at least one page of your website.
5. Name drop local landmarks and historical places of significance.
6. Somewhere in your content, use your city or county and state as keywords.
7. In your link building strategy, use local place names as keyword anchor text.
These are just a few of the ways you can ensure that your local business website ranks well for your keywords in your local area. Now put them into practice.
Category: Local Search Marketing, SEO
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 19 of October , 2007 at 8:47 am
(Source) As you know, the queries used to find your website in search results can change over time. Your website content changes, as do the needs of all the busy searchers out there. Whether the queries associated with your site change subtly or dramatically, it’s pretty useful to see how they transform over time.
This is a useful feature. If you want to know how queries that led to increased traffic to your site have changed over time, now you can get this information at Google’s Webmaster Central. This has been a useful tool for webmasters all along, but now it’s even better.
Google is now letting webmasters see this information as far back as 6 months. If certain search queries that found your site six months ago aren’t leading to results for you now, you can go back and analyze that and find out why. Maybe you’ve watered down your SEO or maybe people aren’t using certain queries as much as they were six months ago. People do change their search habits based on past search experiences and they do get better at it.
In all, I’d say this feature is long overdue. I’m glad they’ve come up with it.
Category: Webmaster Tools
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 18 of October , 2007 at 1:56 pm
You’ve likely heard that you need to add meta tags to every page of your website. There are some things you need to know about meta tags before you write them (and they are very important).
First, DO NOT - I repeat, DO NOT - create the same meta tags for every single page on your website. That will not fair well for you at the search enignes. Some CMS systems (Joomla comes to mind) will automatically generate your meta tags for you, but most of the time these automatically generated meta tags will be the same meta tags on every page. If that’s the case, you’d be better off without meta tags.
When I speak of meta tags in this manner, I am specifically talking about title, description, and keywords meta tags. Let’s discuss these one at a time:
Title Meta Tag
The title meta tag is the tag that generates what visitors will see in the top left corner of their browser when they are on your page. You want that title meta tag to use your important keyword - that’s the most important keywords for that particular web page - not the website. Make sure it uses the most important keyword for that page (i.e. the most often used keyword). Do not leave this meta tag field blank. It is also the verbiage that searchers will see in the search engines whenever the SERP comes up for the search they make. It is quite possible that if you do not have a title meta tag then you will never come up in a SERP.
Description Meta Tag
The description meta tag is what appears below the title tag in the SERPs when searchers find your website in the search engines. A carefully worded description can encourage the click through. Keep that in mind. Use your keyword at least once but not more than twice. If you want to optimize your description for more than one keyword then do so for each keyword only once and do not use more than two keywords. You only have a limited amount of space (about 50 words) to write a dynamic, click-encouraging description meta tag.
You don’t necessarily NEED a description meta tag, however. Still, I would not leave it blank. If you don’t have a description meta tag then Google will likely take the description that is used for your DMOZ listing. If you don’t have a DMOZ listing and you don’t write a description meta tag then you may be SOL - appearing in a SERP with nothing that says “click me” below your title link. That would be quite sad.
On another note, DMOZ editors may write your DMOZ description for you (assuming they approve your listing). You really don’t want your site at being described by someone else at the search engines, do you? Thought not. Write your own description meta tag and make sure it is written with the click-through in mind.
Keywords Meta Tag
The keyword meta tag is the easiest to screw up. Do it wrong and it will hurt you. Do it right and it has more potential to help you than the other two meta tags. It’s not the most important meta tag, but it is the most vital. I say it’s not the most important because you can get by without entering any keywords into that meta tag and the search engines will likely rank your pages according to the content on your page (which they consider more important any way). So you won’t lose anything at all by not entering keywords into the keyword meta tag.
Oh, but enter the wrong keywords and you could be considered a spammer and get penalized. For instance, if you enter a keyword that is important for your site overall, but that particular word doesn’t appear on this particular web page even one single time then that could count against you. Don’t let that happen.
The easiest and safest way to generate a keyword list for each page is to write the content then check the keyword density of the page. Use a keyword density analyzer and select only the most used keywords that actually appear in the content of that page. If a keyword doesn’t appear on a page at least four times or at a minimum of 2% keyword density then don’t add it to your keyword list in the meta tag.
Are Meta Tags Important?
Yes, meta tags are vitally important. Each one is important in a different way and with different intensities. I’d say the keyword meta tag is least important while the title and description tags are equally the most important, but for different reasons. Don’t use the right keyword in your title meta tag and you won’t get the targeted traffic you’re looking for. Don’t write the description meta tag just write and no one will click on your SERP listings. Put too many keywords in your keyword meta tag (or the wrong ones) and you’ll be a spammer. The dangers are real, but the benefits are just as real. Keep that in mind.
Category: Meta Tags
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 18 of October , 2007 at 11:02 am
You know that link building is one of the best ways to improve your trust factor with the search engines. Well, don’t overlook press releases when it comes to helping you build your links.
If you write a press release and submit it to an online press release directory then that will serve as a valuable inbound link to your website, but you’ll also get an inbound link every time a news agency uses the press release on their website. There are two ways this can work for you.
First, news agencies could pick up your press release and publish it as is. If they do, that’s another inbound link for you. Another way this could work in your favor is if the news agency takes your press release and writes a completely different story. The press release is written to draw media attention to your business. When you get that attention, many news agencies will have a reporter call you for an interview. That is a great opportunity for you to do some PR for your business AND get the inbound link from the news agency.
Link building is an essential part of SEO in today’s Internet marketing climate. Don’t overlook press releases. For more information, visit Online Publicity Journal.
Category: Link Building
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 18 of October , 2007 at 7:50 am
(Source) The message to all those getting started with online marketing. Don’t get overwhelmed, it really isn’t as hard as it may look at times. Bite size the process. Start small, work on a few things, just get online. Then we can work on keywords, links and content, then we can analyze the online competitive market you will function within, then, little by little, we can make good progress. We must remember that we have business to run, which have done well all this time without being online, and they must continue to do well.
This is sage advice. Don’t try to do everything at once. If you are just starting out online, start slowly. You can’t learn it all in one day.
There is much to learn about SEO. Way too much for most of us to even try. But if you are going to do it yourself then you’ll have to learn as much as you can. Just don’t try to do it all at once. Take it slowly and do a little here and there. As you progress then you can take on bigger and bigger projects.
The most important thing to learn about search engine optimization is that it is a long-term process. There is no short cut. There are no ways to trim it down to a one-size-fits-all formula or to take a cookie-cutter plan and make it fit every occasion. Your business is unique. Treat it as unique and don’t try to shove a square peg into a round hole. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on the SEO game and get discouraged. I’d hate for that to happen to you.
Category: Link Building, SEO
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