One of the first steps in the long and arduous search engine optimization plan is the research of keywords. Keywords are center of all SEO programs, your content is written around keywords, your titles should be keyword optimized and your link building program relies on keywords as anchor text.

Here are ten keyword research tips to help you get started:

Misspellings and Typos: use common misspellings or typos such as double strikes, letters close to each other on the keyboard for example yahpp instead of yahoo. The classic example has been John Cow for John Chow.

US spelling and UK spellings: labour/labor, colour/color, cheque/check - there are plenty to choose from. The ‘or’ and ‘our’ are common as is the use of a ‘z’ in place of an ’s’ - optimization/optimisation/

Plural and single: don’t forget the plurals - and I don’t necessarily mean the adding of an ’s’. alumnus/alumni.

Acronyms and abbreviations: our society is full of acronyms especially when it comes to the online and IT world. PC, PDA, MSN - there are a lot to choose from. Abbreviations are just as common. 1st/first, Dec/December.

Verbs: play with verbs. If you are selling shoes your options could include walk/walking, run/running, jog/jogging

Adjectives: descriptive words are often used by searchers. These could include new; used; old; free; cheap.

Hyphenated and merged words: the most common one these days is email/e-mail, pay per click/pay-per-click/PPC/payperclick.

Geographic: geographic data is particularly important if you want to rank well in local search. Town names, suburbs, states, counties. It may be useful to include local terminology as well.

Domain names: you would be surprised at how often users do a search on a domain name or part of it. Use variations including the www.

People’s names: people’s names are often used in search queries. Again, look at misspellings. My name is often used in a search engine with a variety of misspellings.

Once you have developed a set a keywords, go through the above list and see if any of these tips help to add variations. Keywords are the central key to any search engine optimization program. Don’t just concentrate on the obvious - everyone else is so they will be highly competitive.

Google is the dominant search engine and has been for many years. There has been a lot of hype surrounding the recent release of Cuil. The founders certainly have the credentials to develop a top search engine. There are two former employees of Google along with Tom Costello from IBM and Louis Monier, a founder of Altavista. Will they challenge Google and if so, will we need to rethink our search engine optimization strategies?

Cuil is different in four areas; web index, algorithm, results display and privacy. Privacy is possibly the one big selling point for Cuil given Google’s appetite for knowing what everyone is doing, where they are spending their money and how long they stay on various sites.

The results display is different. Three columns by three rows, a total of nine results per page. Each result has more information than most of the major search engines. Cuil boast that they have more pages indexed than any other search engine, a big claim given their brief existence.

Where SEO may be affected long term is the algorithms used to rank pages and return search results. Cuil is trying to rank pages based on content rather than popularity. It has been tried before with little success. Perhaps Cuil will be different. However, with the brief tests I ran today the results returned where less than favorable. Even searches based on website names tended to deliver sites that link in rather than the website itself.

If Cuil does take off then we may need to rethink some aspects of our search engine optimization strategies. At present, I am not rushing in to any changes. There are too many issues that will need to be addressed if Cuil is going to make any sort of impact on the search wars.

A question on WebmasterWorld has brought up a few interesting comments. As part of a search engine optimization program you may decide to include your own business blog - an activity I highly recommend. The question was, “What are the problems associated with getting
loads of blog links?”.

There were a wide range of views presented during the discussion. The general feeling was almost one of placing blogs as the second or perhaps even third class citizens of the online world. This can be an error in the thought processes as well constructed blogs can significantly improve the search engine positioning outcomes for any web site.

Links are an important component of any SEO program so a discussion such as this can be important to clarify some of the issues surrounding the topic. This discussion has not really addressed any of the real issues surrounding links from blogs. On the contrary, the general consensus was that blog links are fairly worthless, particularly once they ‘fall of the front page’.

Spam links can come from anywhere and blogs are certainly not the only source. A well constructed blog with good content and a sensible linking strategy adds just as much value to a sites search engine optimization program as does any other strategy.

Links from blogs certainly add authority to a website. They may not add as much value as .gov or .edu link, however is has long been assumed that they add more value than any other link.

Blogs are now part of the online world and they represent a good pathway for businesses to connect to their customers and interact with them. If your search engine optimization program is well prepared and conducted properly, blogs will not be only the only source of links. What is important is to develop a variety of authority links from a range of online entities. Having a balanced link building strategy will enhance your authority and search engine rankings so blogs, as just one of those entities, should not be seen as harming your long term search strategy.

Newbies - the new kids on the block. Fresh young websites that are still in diapers. These sites often show an unranked Google PageRank so is there any value in linking to, or more importantly from a search engine optimization perspective, getting linked from?

There are many quotes that come to mind, however, in plain terms, what may appear useless today could prove to be powerful down the road. The real art of search engine optimization is just reaching the top of the SERP’s, it is also about staying there, going the distance.

The only way you can plan for the future is by looking for related sites that are growing, developing their own inbound links and slowly improving their position. While they may have only a minor effect on your SEO outcomes in the short term; in the long term they will be valuable.

Obviously a little common sense is required. The pages must be relevant to your pages and the site itself there for the long haul. It is a waste of time and energy to build links from a site that will be gone tomorrow. Over time you can come recognize sites that are going to be short lived. The content is sparse, the site full of ads and they often provide little or no value.

Avoid those sites at all costs. On the other hand, sites that have good content and have been optimized for the search engines are, over time, going to acquire their own inbound links. As this happens their rankings will grow stronger and with it yours.

Young sites should hold no fears when it comes to linking so long as you do your home work first, but the key to remember is only partner and link with sites that you have a business relationship with, this will be valuable for everyone for sure!

The fact that Yahoo! is including ‘breaking news’ in the search results is probably no longer news, however some of what they have written on their Ysearch blog is rather interesting.

Every user will cheer when a search engine tries to improve the quality and relevance of the data returned for a search query. The improved to the search include:

Based on the newsworthiness of each query, we’re now displaying the News Direct Display (DD) in the most relevant position(s) on SERP

We’re also better able to detect queries that are newsworthy, which means we’re showing more fresh News DDs than before

Including news is not new, rather following the leaders. One little statement may be worth following up:

….so putting the News DD at a slightly lower position makes more sense.

I would like to how they determine where they put the news and when Yahoo! says slightly lower - what does that mean? Obviously they are not going to put it page two.

New and relevant information will always be a draw card particularly if it drives the opposition over the fold. If that occurs, you may be able to take advantage of the situation.

Most SEO consultants pay little to the importance of Google PageRank these days and its relevance to ranking a website naturally in the search engines. However, the data used to determine Google PageRank can often be an indication of what direction your overall search engine optimization strategy should take.

Search Engine Roundtable has picked up on a thread from Webmaster World on the Changes Made To Google PageRank. The observations that they make in this post are interesting and the points made are thought provoking for sure.

The Webmaster World forum is still arguing many of the points. Looking at the points that were raised are:
1. Internal links and external links on the same page may not be splitting the Google PageRank vote equally.
2. Depending on the location of the link, Google PageRank may be weighted differently.
3. Multiple links to the same URL from the same page may not each get the same piece of the Page Rank vote.
4. “Run-of-site” external links, like Blogrolls, may now have diminished PageRank.
5. Links between domains that Google sees as “related” may have their PageRank significantly damped down. Possibly the same goes for sites that link to sub-domains.

These points all revolve around links and how the link juice is spread. It has been known for a while that Google doesn’t treat every internal and external links equally. Blogrolls have always been a little suspect when it comes to link value often being seen as a form of link exchange. Good search engine optimization programs now try to concentrate on content links with effective anchor text.

From the forum came an interesting comment on content and the relationship of duplicate content and how it affects Google PageRank for a website. Good white hat or clean SEO is aimed at getting pages rated highly within the search results pages. You can achieve a top 5 or top 10 placements and still have a low or even zero Google PageRank.

The danger when looking at factors that affect your PageRank is that you comprise your search ranking by altering your search engine optimization program. What affects PageRank may have a marginal effect on your search ranking, but obviously the two are determined separately using different algorithms. If they the same data was used for each calculation then the Google PageRank factors would be a strong indication of search rank - and it isn’t

If you are a celebrity that lives a risky life style there is only so long before your habits are exposed online. What do you do when you are photographed stepping out of your Bentley surround by cop cars because you just ran a red light? To make things worse your about 3.5 minutes away from a DUI.

Your livelihood can be seriously affected and yopur face soon to be seriously tarnished online regardless of how powerful you are or how much money you got in your offshore account. Your personal brand is everything and you can never take that for granted. Celebrity Reputation Management is a growing industry and it is only going to grow more with the power of the internet. Have we seen everything the internet has to offer? I highly doubt it. A celebrity doesn’t necessarily have to take a reactive approach. You can start by taking a proactive approach. By releasing good positive info surrounding your name you can create a sort of buffer zone between yourself and negative press to find its way into your life. You can definitely kiss those endorsement deals good by if you find yourself in a sticky situation. Can you afford to have your mug shot showing up under your searched birth name if something gets hairy in your life? Reputation Management is the answer that will help you out from under all the negative weight. There a few things you can do help create a friendly buffer for you:

1. Launching a myspace or facebook account and creating groups so that fans can follow and comment.

2. Setting up a blog dedicated to your name and leeting your fanbase into the progress of your career as a celebrity.

3. Setting up a LinkedIn profile and allowing connctions to be made easily.

If you are a celebrity with a spotty online reputation it is time you let a professional clean things up a bit for you.

The major aim of a websites search engine optimization strategy is to balance on page and off page activities. The off page activities lean heavily towards building inbound links. Microsoft’s BrowseRank will base ranking on an entirely different set of data. How will that affect SEO?

It appears that BrowseRank is intended to be based on the activities of the user. In other words, traffic will be the major component of any algorithm. The aim of a search engine optimization program is get a page ranked high enough to attract organic search traffic. The traffic you can attract, the higher your BrowseRank.

What isn’t clear is how this traffic will be measures. I have yet to see an analytics package that can accurately measure traffic. If traffic cannot be measured accurately, how reliable can a ranking system be that is based on those measurements.

Other aspects that could cause concern include artificial traffic spikes. A heavy flow of traffic from any of the social bookmarking sites can produce abnormal results. BrowseRank’s algorithm may provide for some smoothing to take out traffic spikes, however web sites that ‘buy’ traffic could inflate their visitor numbers and sustain it over a period of time.

Google’s own PageRank is no longer relevant to most serious web users, despite Google’s claims. Once the novelty effects wear off BrowseRank will probably suffer the same fate.

It interesting to note that there are already several different ranking systems floating around. Google PageRank is one, Compete another and Alexis a third. What makes these systems noteworthy is there lack of impact on rankings in the search engines. No one pays much attention to them these days and they certainly have little bearing on our SEO activities. BrowseRank will be no different.

There are a lot of articles around the net at present regarding Google’s Wikipedia like concept; aptly named Knol. Much of the talk has revolved around the high rankings that some Knol’s are already receiving.

As a frequent search user, it can be frustrating to continually see Wikipedia pages at the top of the search results. One recent search returned three entries in the top ten, two in the top five. If Knol also starts to rank highly, will I start to find three, four or perhaps five of the top results pointing to either Wikipedia or Knol? If so, I will be looking at other search engines to find relevant information.

From and SEO point of view, Knol may not be of much use. It will mean having to work harder if we want to outrank the entries on Knol and Wikipedia. More importantly, if Google’s search results do start to return pages from these two entities then optimizing for the smaller engines may become more important.

From Google’s perspective, paid results clicks may well go through the roof. If the results returned are from Wikipedia or Knol, the searcher can either refine their search or make a selection from the paid results. Searchers are generally lazy so the paid results will often be their first option. PPC campaigns will really need to concentrate on getting high positions on the paid results and be well written to attract the click.

User satisfaction is low when it comes to the major search engines. SEO will need to readdress their approach to social marketing and social optimization in an attempt to replace any loss of organic traffic through the search engines.

Ultimately, if users cannot find what they are looking for because those entries are buried amongst the Knol’s and Wikipedia entries then they will go elsewhere. Will they leave in sufficient numbers to affect the major search engines? Only time will tell and this will depend on highly these Knols rank once the dust has settled.

I am sure Google’s aim is to outperform Wikipedia in this area so over time get used to seeing a Knol at number one and at least one Wikipedia entry at number two. As for SEO, the future has become uncertain again. What is obvious is that you will need to be thorough with your page optimization and perhaps think seriously of using experts in the SEO field to gain the most benefits possible.

There are times when even the best SEO program struggles to get a couple of places up the search engine ranking ladder to make to the front page. There are number of strategies you could apply; one of these uses Yahoo! Site Explorer.

The differences between being on the front page and being on page two often comes down to site age and the number of backlinks a site has. Pages that are appearing above yours in the SERP’s most likely have these extra backlinks.

You can use Yahoo! Site Explorer to investigate those pages and see which sites are linking in to them. On most occasions, their back links will differ substantially to yours. Those links may be opportunities that your efforts can capitalize on.

If those links are blogs then you can target them with a comment campaign. You are looking for links and you are looking for authority which may lead to more links so ensure your comments add value and are very valuable.

Non Blog or commercial sites may be approachable for links if they are closely related to your niche. If not direct links, then making yourself known to those web sites may assist in the relevant link building efforts.

By including the links that your competitors are receiving into your SEO program may help your site to climb those last few rungs in the SERP’s.

Websites are created for a reason and for many websites they are created for commercial purposes. Whether it is direct sales through the website or attracting customers to a bricks and mortar outlet, the aim is the same. Attracting customers. Search engine optimization is designed to get your website rated highly within the search results so your customers can find you. It should also be considered a part of your customer service program.

We focus a lot on some of the off page requirements such as back links along with on page techniques like keywords and internal linking. What about your customers?

SEO for your customers starts with the search engine itself. We have in the past discussed the description component of your meta tags. This component is your first contact point with the potential customer. The description should accurately describe your site and not be misleading. Well written descriptions act as invitations to the searcher and invite them into your site.

Once a potential customer arrives on your site, it should be welcoming and continue the invitation first made in the description. Content is important to the visitor as well as the search engine. Carefully placed and relevant keywords can actually reinforce the feeling that they are in right place and should stay longer. Keywords are important part of SEO, they can also be important to your customers.

The third aspect of customer service is the way you organize your internal linking. Sales should be only a click away and well signposted. Internal linking has long been a part of a good SEM campaign. These internal links are also part of your customers navigation. Well planned research can take advantage of which anchor text is more likely to be followed. The reason it is followed? It is relevant to what your visitor is looking for.

Naturally, there are many other aspect of site design that should take your customers needs into account. However, don’t let your search engine optimization program be at the expense of your customers when the needs of both can achieved simultaneously with some careful planning.

Many website owners release PDF versions of their content or ebooks in PDF format. For many commercial and professional websites, articles such as operating instructions are also written in PDF format. Your website may benefit if your PDF files are indexed and returned in search results for certain queries. However, search engine optimization for PDF format files can be slightly different to that of a normal web page.

I say slightly different because the general optimization concepts are still the same, it’s how you achieve those concepts that can make a big difference. The following tips may help to get your PDF indexed by the search engines.

Format: PDF’s can be produced in either a text or graphic format. Search engines cannot read the content of a graphic file so for SEO benefits; publish your PDF in text format.

META Tags: PDF’s don’t come with meta tag information. PDF’s do have a specific section where you can include a title, author, subject and keyword. Ensure this is filled in with relevant data. As with all web content, the title should be keyword optimized. This information is accessed through the document properties section.

Description: There is nowhere within a PDF to place a description. The description is the text that is returned in the search results. Left alone, the search engines will find the first paragraph of text and use that. This may not be a great ’selling’ point to attract the searchers click. When you have completed your PDF you can specify the ‘reading order’. Place suitable text close to the front of the document and specify this to be read first.

Tags: If you use Acrobat to create your PDF then you can also specify tags including alt tags for images. This can be accessed in Acrobat through the TouchUp Reader Order panel.

Links: PDF files can and should have links. Links should use standard good white hat techniques such as anchor text. Since PDF’s can change hands several times, links within a PDF back to your own pages can help bring extra traffic.

Version Control: By version control I am not referring to the PDF’s version, rather PDF reader versions. Don’t be too hasty to jump onto the latest version of Acrobat. Using an older version will ensure that search engines can ‘read’ your PDF. Search engines can be slow on the uptake when it comes to new versions.

Fast View: Fast View is an Acrobat option that allows the PDF to be loaded page by page rather than waiting for the entire file to be downloaded before opening. Fast View delivers the document to you reader quickly. Whilst not a true search engine optimization technique, if it loads to slowly and the reader hits the back button too soon, if may harm your search rankings.

Size: Along with Fast View, size does matter. Keep your PDF file to a reasonable size. For search engines, if the file is too large and takes to long to load, they will abandon it and not index it all.

Content: Finally we come to content. Treat your content like you would any other page. It should be keyword optimized without being keyword spammed.

PDF’s were once very popular however there seems to be an increase in the use of PDF’s again, particularly through ebooks. Your on page processes should treat the PDF like any other link. Link to it using relevant anchor text. Keep the PDF stored close to the root directory and available for indexing.

Creating a PDF file takes a lot of work. If you want to be able to have it indexed by the search engines then you should take that extra five minutes to ensure the effective search engine optimization strategies should be applied to it.

Many businesses prefer to undertake their search engine optimization programs in-house rather out-sourcing the service. While this can be done successfully, there are quite a few pitfalls that should be considered before selecting the in house SEO path versus out sourced.

The first real problem is that of talent, or lack of. There are thousands, if not millions of partially trained experts around the world. These partially trained experts can work well as part of a team. However, left to do the job themselves they will only achieve a 60-80% site optimization success rate. They will almost always leave out some components of a good search engine optimization strategy.

SEO experts that are thorough and know the requirements of good search engine optimization are few and far between. These guys (and gals) won’t work for a small salary when they can earn much more as consultants on their own.

As an employer you can often be left with employing second best in this field. Jessica Bowman painted a pretty accurate picture of some of the problems of undertaking search engine optimization in-house. I would suggest any company considering hiring an in-house SEO expert read the article first.

Her conclusion can be a good solution for many companies. It amounts to doing as much as you can in-house then contracting an external consultant to review your efforts and make recommendations. The benefits? Here’s Jessica’ conclusion:
It’s a win-win situation: (1) You get all of the SEO requirements, (2) you aren’t paying for an SEO consultant to write up the basic items, and (3) as you review what the consultant added, your knowledge will grow.

Search engine optimization is an evolving business that requires knowledge of not only what is required today, but where to find information on tomorrow’s requirements. Like any professional, keeping your knowledge up-to-date is half the battle.

For a business undertaking an internal search engine optimization program, you won’t know what key aspects of your program are missing if you are not aware of them - you will be when it’s too late of course. If you are looking to hire an expert SEO consultant, please feel free to give me a call for a free initial analysis at 781-350-4365.

Is Google really opening just a little. Matt Cutts revealed on his blog yesterday that Google toolbar Page Rank’s are about to be released.

It is not often that Google reveals information. In fact they seem to live a life of denial, denying every rumor that surfaces, even if it sounds totally way out.

I would like to say here is an excerpt but all you would get is the ‘hey’ so here is the complete post:

Hey folks, I wanted to let you know that new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites.

Short, sweet and to the point. Now I am a bit of a cynic at times. Could this information just be a decoy to take conversation away from the Google-Digg rumors? Every time we have a toolbar PageRank update there is some form of hue and cry - some crying foul for losing rank - others crowing about their good luck.

Let’s see if the PR talk suppresses the Google-Digg talk shall we?

Search engine optimization can be a strange business sometimes. A forum thread on WebProForum caught my eye today. Portucuenta started the thread asking why his images hadn’t been indexed by Google. He has 16000 images yet only 19 have been indexed.

There was a lot of advice provided including using Google Image Labeler. Why this advice I have no idea since Image Labeler is a toy to get users to label images already in the database, not on your own site. Most advised using basic search engine optimization techniques such as alt tags and waiting for Google to crawl.

One writer went to the trouble of looking at the robots.txt and advised removing all of the disallow’s. This is not necessarily the best option. Search engine optimization relies in part on meta tags and robots files to tell the search engines where they can and cannot go. Removing all the disallow’s is not the answer. However, the robots file did reveal some interesting info.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /class/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /include/
Disallow: /install/
Disallow: /kernel/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /templates_c/
Disallow: /themes/

Perhaps by removing the ‘disallow: /images/’ from the robots file may just be enough to encourage the spiders to visit and start indexing the images. It may not work; however, when it comes to search engine optimization problems, the solution is so simple and obvious that we all miss it.