tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76868084822558847642024-03-08T06:32:24.184-08:00SEO Learning NotesOffers SEO, SMO, SEM, SMM a Complete Internet Marketing Training in Gurgaon City 9871280005Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00036546565079273069noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7686808482255884764.post-70679065022700595782013-01-13T07:41:00.002-08:002013-01-13T08:13:32.912-08:00Internet Marketing Learning Book <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Advanced Internet
Marketing Course<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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1. Introduction of SEO and Search Engines</div>
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(What are SEO,
Benefits of SEO, and Features of SEO?)</div>
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2. Types of SEO</div>
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(How Many Types of
SEO)</div>
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(Off Page and On
Page)</div>
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(Off Page
Description and On Page Description)</div>
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3. About Off Page</div>
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Directory</div>
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Article</div>
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Blog</div>
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Forum</div>
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Social Bookmark </div>
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Classified</div>
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Network Creation </div>
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4. About On Page</div>
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<st1:place w:st="on">Meta</st1:place>
Tag</div>
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Content</div>
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Anchor Text</div>
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Alt Tag</div>
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Error Checking
and Solution</div>
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Broken link
Checking and Solution</div>
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5. Competitor Analysis</div>
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6. Keywords Research & Analysis</div>
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7. Content Copywriting & Optimization</div>
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8. Sitemap Creation & Submission</div>
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9. RSS Creation & Submission</div>
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10. About Robots.txt </div>
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11. Static & Dynamic Websites</div>
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12. Website Planning & Structure</div>
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13. About SMO</div>
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14. About SEM</div>
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15. About PPC</div>
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16. Social Media & Network Marketing</div>
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17. Website Analytics</div>
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18. About Google Penalty</div>
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19. Gorilla Marketing (Viral Marketing)</div>
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20. Email Marketing</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Introduction of SEO and Search Engines<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the
more technical part of Web marketing. This is true because SEO does help in the
promotion of sites and at the same time it requires some technical knowledge –
at least familiarity with basic HTML. SEO is sometimes also called SEO
copyrighting because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in
search engines deal with text. Generally, SEO can be defined as the activity of
optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search
engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.</div>
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One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all
the things that are necessary to do, this does not automatically guarantee you
top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will not go
unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals – i.e to get into the top 30
results in Google for a particular keyword, rather than be the number one for
10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will feel happier and more satisfied with
your results.</div>
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Although SEO helps to increase the traffic to one's site,
SEO is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid search results
for given keywords but basically the idea behind the SEO techniques is to get
top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not
because you pay.</div>
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SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity.
Sometimes it is enough to do some generic SEO in order to get high in search
engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare keywords, then you do not
have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases, if you
really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and
devote significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do
some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work and
which items are most important in SEO.</div>
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<b>1. How Search Engines
Work<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The first basic truth you need to learn about SEO is that
search engines are not humans. While this might be obvious for everybody, the
differences between how humans and search engines view web pages aren't. Unlike
humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly,
search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a
cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines
crawl the Web, looking at particular site items (mainly text) to get an idea
what a site is about. This brief explanation is not the most precise because as
we will see next, search engines perform several activities in order to deliver
search results – crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and
retrieving.</div>
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First, search engines crawl the Web to see what is there.
This task is performed by e piece of software, called a crawler or a spider (or
Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders follow links from one page to
another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the number
of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is impossible for a spider to visit a
site daily just to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has
been modified. Sometimes crawlers will not visit your site for a month or two,
so during this time your SEO efforts will not be rewarded. But there is nothing
you can do about it, so just keep quiet.</div>
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What you can do is to check what a crawler sees from your
site. As already mentioned, crawlers are not humans and they do not see images,
Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-protected pages and directories, so
if you have tons of these on your site, you'd better run the Spider Simulator
below to see if these goodies are viewable by the spider. If they are not
viewable, they will not be spidered, not indexed, not processed, etc. - in a
word they will be non-existent for search engines.</div>
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After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its
content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, from where it can
later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the
words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to
particular keywords. For a human it will not be possible to process such
amounts of information but generally search engines deal just fine with this
task. Sometimes they might not get the meaning of a page right but if you help
them by optimizing it, it will be easier for them to classify your pages
correctly and for you – to get higher rankings.</div>
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When a search request comes, the search engine processes it
– i.e. it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed
pages in the database. Since it is likely that more than one page (practically
it is millions of pages) contains the search string, the search engine starts
calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index to the search
string.</div>
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There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of
these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword
density, links, or metatags. That is why different search engines give
different search results pages for the same search string. What is more, it is
a known fact that all major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc.
periodically change their algorithms and if you want to keep at the top, you
also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason (the
other is your competitors) to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you'd like to
be at the top.</div>
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The last step in search engines' activity is retrieving the
results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the
browser – i.e. the endless pages of search results that are sorted from the
most relevant to the least relevant sites.</div>
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<b>2. Differences
Between the Major Search Engines<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Although the basic principle of operation of all search
engines is the same, the minor differences between them lead to major changes
in results relevancy. For different search engines different factors are
important. There were times, when SEO experts joked that the algorithms of Bing
are intentionally made just the opposite of those of Google. While this might
have a grain of truth, it is a matter a fact that the major search engines like
different stuff and if you plan to conquer more than one of them, you need to
optimize carefully.</div>
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There are many examples of the differences between search
engines. For instance, for Yahoo! and Bing, on-page keyword factors are of
primary importance, while for Google links are very, very important. Also, for
Google sites are like wine – the older, the better, while Yahoo! generally has
no expressed preference towards sites and domains with tradition (i.e. older
ones). Thus you might need more time till your site gets mature to be admitted
to the top in Google, than in Yahoo!.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">How many types of SEO<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Many there are two types of SEO</div>
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White Hat SEO</div>
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Black Hat SEO<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>White Hat SEO<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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White hat SEO, as
the name suggests, is clean and wholesome, and the type of search engine
optimization service most businesses would want for their website. To put it in
more accessible terms, white hat SEO is to search engine marketing what
organically grown food is to a healthy diet. It is not only wholesome and
ethical, but is also sustainable. Of course, developing organic and sustainable
rankings (just like organic food) requires a lot of time and care. Naturally,
this is reflected in the cost of practicing white hat SEO, whether you do it
yourself or hire a professional to do it for you. The good news is, however,
that the initial higher cost of developing a sustainable SEO strategy, and
implementation thereof, translates into cost savings in the long term.<o:p></o:p></div>
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White hat SEO
tactics, techniques, and strategies are those which adhere to guidelines set by
the search engines, and involve no deception. White hat search engine
optimization merely seeks to provide the most search engine friendly
presentation of useful content which is inherently valuable and specifically
designed for human consumption.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another important
characteristic of white hat SEO is that it cannot generate great results for
poor quality content.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Black Hat SEO<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Black hat SEO, as
you may have already guessed (assuming you read the part about white hat SEO)
is the evil brother. It is slick, talks a fast game, and can get you on the top
ten lists for a while, but your website, and ultimately you, may end up paying
a very high price for letting the evil brother be your guide. Going back tot he
food reference, you can think of white hat SEO as the fat infused fast food, or
the sugary treat full of high fructose corn syrup--it tastes so good and makes
you crave more of it. Unfortunately, the goodness comes at a cost, which can be
a debilitating and even life-threatening illness in the case of your body, and
a penalized or banned website in the case of, well, your website.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Black hat SEO,
unlike its wholesome kin, uses tricks, schemes, and games to circumvent the
algorithmic barriers set up by the search engines to prevent bad content from
gaining high rankings in the search engine result pages (SERPs).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Black hat SEO is not
to be mistaken for plain bad search engine optimization which is the result of
either lack of knowledge or cutting corners.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>One New Addition is called Grey Hat
SEO<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Grey Hat SEO is mid-way between the two tools above and is
all about the balance between risk and reward. There are actually a wide number
of SEO services solutions categorized under this. Some Grey Hat SEO services
may tend to use more dubious strategies and take even bigger risks to produce
fast and high search engine rankings. While many Gray Hat SEO services methods
obey search engine guidelines, others might put you at risk. If you opt for SEO
services using Grey Hat, be sure about what you are exactly subjecting your
online site to.</div>
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<b>On Page Optimization<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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On-page optimization (on-page SEO) is what can be done on
the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search engines for
target keywords related to the on-page content.</div>
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On-Page SEO Checklist</div>
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* Always start
with keyword selection, research and testing</div>
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* Meta Description
tag</div>
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* ALT tags</div>
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* H1 tags</div>
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* URL structure</div>
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* Internal linking
strategy</div>
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* Content</div>
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* Keyword density</div>
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* Site maps, both
XML and user facing</div>
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* Usability and
accessibility</div>
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* Track target
keywords</div>
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Avoid common on-page SEO mistakes such as:</div>
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* Duplicate
content</div>
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* URL variants of
the same pages</div>
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* Off-site images
and content on-site</div>
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* Duplicate title
tags</div>
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Do not use on-page SEO spamming tactics such as:</div>
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* Hidden text</div>
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* Hidden links</div>
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* Keyword
repetition</div>
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* Doorway pages</div>
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* Mirror pages</div>
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* Cloaking</div>
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Off-Page Optimization (SEO)</div>
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Defined: Off-page optimization (off-page SEO) is what can be
done off the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search
engines for target keywords related to the on-page content and keywords in off-page
direct-links.</div>
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Off-Page SEO Checklist</div>
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* Always start
with keyword research, testing and selection</div>
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* Use Keywords in
link anchor text</div>
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* Obtain links
from high ranking publisher sites</div>
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* One-way inbound
links (not link exchange or reciprocal links)</div>
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* Different
keywords in your link-ads from the same site</div>
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* Gradual link
building technology (no growth spikes)</div>
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* Use relevant
keywords near your inbound link (contextual relevance)</div>
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* Deep linking
(from multiple pages to multiple pages)</div>
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* Target a large
list of keywords (5-500+)</div>
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* Link from sites
with a variety of LinkRanks</div>
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* Track active all
keywords and refine strategy as required</div>
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* Discontinue
campaigns if ranking does not improve</div>
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* Expect results
in 1-2 months (Bing) 1-9 months (Google, Yahoo)</div>
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Avoid common off-page SEO mistakes:</div>
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* Duplicate
keywords in link avderts</div>
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* Site-wide links
causing link growth spikes</div>
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* Using on-page
SEOs to do the work of specialist off-page SEO's</div>
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* Placing random links
without keywords near your link adverts</div>
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Do not use off-page SEO spamming tactics such as:</div>
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* Link farms
(sites with 100+ outbound links per page)</div>
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* Using irrelevant
keywords in your link-ads</div>
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* Garbage links</div>
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* Link churning</div>
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* Hidden inbound
links</div>
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<b>Off Page Optimization
VS On Page SEO (Optimization)<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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You may have made sure that you picked one of the best on
page optimization agencies in the industry, got references, asked for case
studies then after risking it all with a 12 month contract, you invested all
your expectations and large part of your internet marketing budget with the
on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) agency.</div>
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Months later with your patience worn through and no
significant results delivered, you must be frustrated with the lack of returns
on your investment and possibly even ready to give up on SEO all together.</div>
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We have been very surprised to see how many of the top SEO
agencies in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region>
have been very slow to change their optimization strategies; now that on page
optimization has mostly lost all of its affect.</div>
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<b>Is there any need for
On Page Optimization?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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There are some basic optimization issues that are critical
to have in place and then there are more technical / advanced techniques that
can improve your search engine rankings. You should not pay for basic SEO
advice and you do not need to pay much for advanced optimization advice.</div>
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We disclose up to date SEO advice and tips to most of our
clients at no charge.</div>
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After having the basics in place, creating masses of useful
content is the main on-page optimization strategy that a webmaster should focus
on, but without off-page SEO you will not see your website’s current ranking
increase significantly.</div>
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<b>More on off-page
optimization…<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Off page optimization or off-page SEO is basically
controlling how the internet portrays your website. </div>
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A professional off-page SEO will be able to employ their own
resources* to control how search engines view your website and thereby control
your ranking. Most off-page SEO techniques done well will result in very high
ROI and high ranking in MSN, Google and Yahoo!</div>
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One way links from their link publishing partners</div>
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Gradual link building technology</div>
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Your business partners and their link publishing resources</div>
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General internet resources: Powerful free directories, one
way link brokering etc.</div>
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Online PR campaigns</div>
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News articles</div>
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<b>Directory
Submissions: </b>Submitting your site URL to the relevant categories of popular
directories like DMOZ, Best of the Web, etc can help you to get valuable back links.</div>
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<b>Article Submission:</b>
An easy way to get link juice via back links is to submit unique articles to
various popular article submission sites like EzineArticles.com,
GoArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.com, iSnare.com, and ArticlesBase.com.</div>
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<b>Forum:</b> Set up your
account on some popular forums, build your credibility there and soon you will
be allowed to add your site URL in your signature, which will act as a backlink
and help to lure your avid followers to your site.</div>
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<b>Blogging:</b> Whether
you have a blog of your own or want to write as a contributing blogger for some
popular blogging sites, this can prove to be an effective way of making people
take notice of what you have to offer. RSS Feed generation and submission also
help to keep your avid readers interested in your updates and news even when
they don’t have the time to actually visit the site.</div>
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<b>Social Bookmarking
and Q and A Postings: </b>You can also further your SEO interests by posting
question and answers on Yahoo Answers, and via social bookmarking.</div>
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<b>Social Networking:</b>
Networking on various social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and
LinkedIn are the newest buzz in SEO tactics, which webmasters are using with a
zeal. You too can join the bandwagon after some careful planning.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">SEO Competitive Analysis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many SEO clients are focused on receiving ranking reports
for their keywords as a major deliverable associated with a properly managed
SEO campaign.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But ranking reports don't mean nearly as much as they once
did. Search engine rankings change regularly, are different on various data
centers, and won't generate traffic to the Web site, much less generate leads
and sales, especially if a site ranks well for keywords that aren't often
searched.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I preach to my prospects and clients that they should be
focused on analytics and measurement of SEO much like they would (try to)
measure any form of marketing effort. Is the SEO program generating qualified
traffic to the site? Is the SEO effort generating phone calls (yes, you can
track this)? Is the SEO effort delivering a solid ROI (for what I'm spending on
these efforts, either in internal resources or outsourcing)?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, that's not to say that a firm you've outsourced your
SEO efforts to shouldn't be delivering reports. They absolutely should. But,
let's try to focus on things that actually matter. These include things like
solid keyword research, a competitive analysis, a site structure analysis and
analytics reports that "mean something" (making sure that analytics
programs are set up properly and tracking what matters).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today, I'll touch upon one of the most overlooked aspects of
a successful SEO effort: the competitive analysis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Determine Who Your
Competitors Are<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many CMOs are quick to list off a number of competitors
(those that they think of as competitors in the traditional sense). In the SEO
landscape, we lean towards those "keyword competitors" -- Web sites
that are ranking for keywords we'd like our client to be found for.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A good example of this would be a client from my former life
who sold "signs" (banners, billboards, etc.). One of their main
keywords was (is) "signs." At the time, the movie "Signs,"
starring Mel Gibson, was released. Obviously, the movie isn't a direct
competitor for this keyword, but a page devoted to this movie ranks number one
in Google for "signs," and the movie still has several mentions in
Google's top 10.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>How to Compete for
Various Keywords<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once you've determined the keyword competitors, you need to
determine the factors that might be in play to help these Web sites to rank,
while yours may not.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's possible to get carried away with this type of
analysis, as there are over 100 factors in play to determine why a Web site
might rank, and the factors (and the weight of the factors) will fluctuate in
the search engine's algorithms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With that said, there are some pretty consistent things that
you can look for to better compete for various keywords:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Age of Domain:</b>
Many people getting into business on the Web for the first time don't know this
simple rule. Buying an aged domain saves you a great amount of time. While
you're at it, buy a domain that already has links pointing to it (links from
within your chosen industry, ideally). When you look at the Web sites that are
ranking for your selected keywords, you'll most likely see a trend that those
listed on the first page of the search results are many years old. This could
be because it took that long to generate enough quality links/content, but an
aged domain is certainly one of the most important factors that goes into
getting a Web site to rank.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Pages Indexed:</b>
This is what I refer to as the "Wikipedia effect." Wikipedia is an
extremely deep Web site, with only one page relevant to your search. Why does
it keep showing up when you're searching? Because the search engines have
determined that the Web site -- as a whole -- is an "authority" site.
That is, it's deep with quality content (there are a number of other reasons
why this Web site ranks, but the depth of the Web site is certainly key among
those reasons). Wikipedia has more than 380 million pages indexed in Yahoo.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Linking: </b>Through
an easy "site:www.sitename.com" search on Yahoo, you can see the
pages indexed and links indexed for any Web site that you're analyzing. Click
on the "Inlinks" link and use the drop down to select "except
from this domain," so that you aren't counting those internal links in
your analysis. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By following these three simple steps, you'll gain a greater
insight into what it takes to rank for the keywords you're interested in
ranking for, and help you better understand the steps/tactics that you'll need
to employ to compete with those that are showing up in the SERPs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Keyword Research and Analysis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Keyword research is one of the most important parts of
online marketing. Sometimes we don't realize just how much of a difference it
can make in the overall success of a search engine marketing campaign or even
the success of an online business. In fact, it's my belief that the keyword
phrase<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>the term that a searcher types into the search
engine when they're searching <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>can make or break online business.
Target the wrong keyword phrases and an online business is destined to fail.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Domain names by themselves are no longer the most valuable
"location" on the internet<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>keywords are. If you buy a
domain name and put up a website, visitors won't automatically flock to your
website and buy your products. The popular phrase "if you build it they
will come" is not true when it comes to online businesses. You must market
your website online, and one of the best forms of ROI for an online business is
through search engine marketing. All search engine marketing campaigns need to
start with a set of keywords. It's those keywords that are an online business'
location, just as a traditional brick and mortar store's location is a physical
street address.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Location<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you're considering opening a gas station, one of the most
important decisions related to the success of the gas station is going to be
its location. Selling gas near a busy highway where there is a large traffic
count would be ideal. So, it's logical to get the traffic count data for
several locations before deciding where to purchase land and build your gas
station. In the online marketing world, we have the opportunity to get traffic
counts as well<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>the average number of
searches per day for certain keyword phrases. By positioning your online
business in the proper keyword "locations", your online business will
thrive. Target the wrong keyword phrases and your online business won't get any
search engine traffic, and no potential customers will visit your website.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you're a brick and mortar business that sells power
tools, proper keyword research can be a tremendous help<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>even
before you set up your online business. Keyword research can tell you exactly which
power tools are more popular online<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>which may be different than
the best selling power tools in your retail store. Armed with this knowledge,
you can focus on the more popular products that customers are looking for
online. For example, did you know that more people search for portable
generators online than any other type of power tool? Perhaps this is due to the
recent weather-related disasters that have hit the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region> or the pending winter
weather, but focusing on selling portable generators online might be good for
business. Keyword research using Word tracker (www.wordtracker.com) gives us
this valuable information<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>it can also give us the list
of other power tools that are being searched for, which will be a good start
for a list of keywords.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Keyword Research
Tools<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There many online keyword research tools, and many of them
work differently and provide you with different data. Oftentimes there will be
differences in the data, and that's primarily due to the actual source of the
data. For example, according to Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), one of the
most popular keyword research tools, "All search terms are collected from
the major metacrawlers - Dogpile and Metacrawler." Yahoo! Search
Marketing, formerly Overture, still has the free Overture Keyword Selector Tool
(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), whose data comes
directly from their database<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>the keyword data is usually
one month old.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Content Copywriting
& Optimization<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Search engines love relevance. They live for relevance.
Nothing pleases them more than finding the most informative, appropriate and
useful website to match a query. The search engine companies spend millions of
pounds and working hours in attempting to formulate ways by which the rubbish
can be ignored and only the purest, most useful sites returned. It's a noble
quest. They work tirelessly to out-tech, head off and second guess the engine
manipulators, the spandexes, and the accident lists, those who would knowingly
or otherwise abuse the integrity of search returns by working the system to
return unhelpful and irrelevant pages against queries for their own ends.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The search engines are seeking the foremost authority on a
given subject. They want the most reputable sites and those that know the most
on a particular topic. The most rewarding approach when seeking to legitimately
see your site at the top of the heap is not to ask what search engines can do
for you, but what you can do for search engines. It's not up to the search
engines to make your site relevant. That's the job of the site owner.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The way you do this is in principle, simple enough - through
SEO Copywriting and text-related content. Engines can't read images or graphics;
they cannot determine the relevance of Flash in relation to a search term. The
two most important factors upon which they can determine relevance is on the
site text and more importantly the links from authoritative sites inspired by
that text.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The days of the Search Engine Optimization copywriter
weaving their magic with perfect keyword selection, placement and Density to
achieve wondrous top page rankings are long gone (despite what many will try to
tell you). Of course, keywords are still important, especially in titles as
engines prefer nice tight search return matches, but it's more a case of
frequency rather than density that improves rankings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There's a common consensus these days amongst Search Engine Optimization
professionals that the major determinant of ranking position for any particular
page is down to what happens off the page, in the form of links from other
sites. Reputation built on authority bestowed by other reputable sites through
sheer worth and relevance. Good is good is good. When Barack Obama recently
quipped 'you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig' what he's saying
(without wishing to be piggist) is that you can't properly disguise something
ugly, something unappealing. By the same token quality will always out.
Compelling content gains eyeballs, gains traction, gains authority, gains high
search engine placement, gains eyeballs, gains traction and so it continues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At SEO Consult we understand this clearly and work hard to
get the wheels of virtuous search engine performance rolling.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Appreciating something is all well and good; it's acting on
that knowledge that delivers results and at SEO Consult a great deal of our
work is in partnering our clients to formulate and apply the maximum possible
value into site Copy and Content.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Getting authoritative links has become the most difficult
aspect of Search Engine Optimization, hence the emergence from 2006 of Social
Media Marketing as a way to attract links with compelling content, hence the
explosion in online articles and blogs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The critical starting point before a word of Search Engine
Optimization copywriting has been written is the project scope and definition
stage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's at this point that business objectives need to be
clearly defined through goal analysis. What are we aiming to achieve? This
helps us measure campaign effectiveness and stay on track and focused.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We then define our ideal site visitors through audience
analysis. Through research, surveys and the like we try to get inside the head
of the prospective audience and define the campaign's semantic space. Content
on the site will be directed specifically at them in a language they understand
and appeals. Content needs to press the right emotional buttons to generate
positive responses and ultimately inbound links. Similar emotional forces to
those that prompt us to buy can also cause us to link, bookmark, Twitter and
Digg. Compelling benefits in the form of content provide visitors the
motivation to emotionally invest in a site by linking to it. At this stage of
the Search Engine Optimization process we're simply defining an environment in
which our audience might best relate to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Ask yourself what creates value for your users,"
Google says.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The audience analysis acts as the foundation for intelligent
keyword selection - all part of the semantic space definition process.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We collaborate with clients to create a list of preferable
keywords and phrases that, based on our research, present the best
opportunities for attracting potential visitors, customers and links. We make a
point of revisiting the keyword formulation step as part of campaign assessment
so that we can hone and tweak as necessary.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's impossible to repeat this too often or overstress -
Content of value is the key and it's the inbound links that reflect its worth
in the eyes of Internet users and therefore the search engines. Of course there
are useful optimization techniques that should also be applied to the site to
make it search friendly and at SEO Consult we expertly address optimization
issues such as - site structure, site hierarchy, optimized and themed Tag
Naming. In reality though, it's only worth pursuing additional optimization
through tweaking once those all-important inbound links have been attracted to
the site in the first place. Tweaking a page for higher rankings before the
content has been established as compelling is largely futile. The site is 'all
dressed up, with nowhere to go.'</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As those search engine algorithms move further and further
away from old school relevance measurements and increasingly assign site
importance and authority to off page factors such as social media tagging and
blog-driven links, so expert Search Engine Optimization copywriters armed with
the ability and empathy to prompt inbound links and consequent conversions are
finding themselves becoming vital components in search engine marketing
campaigns.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SEO Consult offers passionate, professional and hugely
experienced writers. Both creative and qualified our writers are committed to
delivering the very best copy solutions to your campaigns.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SEO copywriting is the process of writing literal and
utilitarian content for websites with the perfect blend of information and
keywords. The SEO copywriting and content optimization services of a
professional SEO company would achieve top ranking for your website. The
skillfully crafted website content brings immense benefits to your business
firm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Quality Services
ensure Better Rankings<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SEO copywriting and optimization services of a SEO company
help to make a website attractive and thus increase the number of visitors.
They raise the client company’s online visibility, attracting increased traffic
and leading to enhanced sales. Various SEO copywriting optimization services
include:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• SEO press release writing services</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Case study writing and optimization</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• SEO article writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Newsletter writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Travel writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Technical writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• PPC Ad writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Ecommerce writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Web page copywriting services</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Blog copywriting services</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Article writing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
• Writing research based articles</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A premier SEO company offers professional services for SEO
optimization and copywriting. If the content is highly optimized, it places
your website in a top position on popular search engines. Optimized copywriting
is achieved by employing advanced technology and search engine optimization
tools. It is performed by highly skilled and trained copywriters. They analyze
the target of a business firm and carry out productive copywriting. Copywriting
is done in a easy-to-read, understandable and attractive style. Most searched
keywords are placed in optimal format with a combination of title, keyword
tags, headings, alt text, description and link anchor tags.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Utilize Services of a
Top SEO Company<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A leading SEO company is the best option if you need
professional aid in copywriting and optimized content for your website. SEO
copywriting and content optimization services of such a company maintains top
search engine ranking on a regular basis, making your website profitable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">RSS Creation & Submission<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>How to Create RSS
Feeds<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since any RSS-file is a specially formatted XML file, it can
be edited with any XML-editor. And since XML-files are just plain text you can
use any text editor, even Notepad, to create your first feed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Step-by-Step guide to Creating an RSS Feed</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Follow these steps to create a simple RSS feed manually.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>1: Create an empty
text file<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Use Windows Notepad or any other text editor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>2: Add XML
Declaration Tag<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since RSS is a dialect of XML, the first line in the feed
must be the XML declaration.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<?xml version="1.0"?></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>3: RSS Channel<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now it is time to add the rss XML tag, and the channel tag.
All feed contents will go inside these two tags.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<rss version="2.0"></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<channel></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>4: RSS Feed
Properties<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next step is to place information about the RSS feed such as
it's title, it's description, it's language and a link to it's web-site. And
finally add the lastBuildDate field which should be the date and time that the
feed was last changed. This field is optional, but highly recommended.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<title>John Smith News</title></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<link>http://JohnSmithHomepage.com</link></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<description>Latest stories form John
Smith</description></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<lastBuildDate><st1:date day="12" month="9" w:st="on" year="2005">Mon, 12 Sep 2005</st1:date> <st1:time hour="18" minute="37" w:st="on">18:37:00
GMT</st1:time></lastBuildDate></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<language>en-us</language></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>5: Adding Items to
your RSS Feed<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every RSS feed consists of items, and each item is an RSS
Feed has a title, link, description, publication date, and (optionally) guid
(unique identifier).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<item></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<title>My First Article</title></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<link>http://JohnSmithHomepage,com/Article1.html</link></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<guid>http://JohnSmithHomepage,com/Article1.html</guid></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<pubDate><st1:date day="12" month="9" w:st="on" year="2005">Mon, 12 Sep 2005</st1:date> <st1:time hour="18" minute="37" w:st="on">18:37:00
GMT</st1:time></pubDate></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<description>It's my first article. Hello
World!</description></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</item></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!-- insert more items here --></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>6: Add closing tags
for Channel and RSS.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</channel></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</rss></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>7: Validate your new
RSS feed<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After you have created your RSS Feed, validate it</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Sample feed<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here's a sample RSS file which can be used as a template for
your first feed:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<?xml version="1.0"?></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<rss version="2.0"></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<channel></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<title>John
Smith News</title></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<link>http://JohnSmithHomepage.com/</link></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<description>Latest
stories form John Smith</description></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<language>en-us</language></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<lastBuildDate><st1:date day="10" month="6" w:st="on" year="2003">Tue,
10 Jun 2003</st1:date> <st1:time hour="9" minute="41" w:st="on">09:41:01 GMT</st1:time></lastBuildDate></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<item></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<title>My
First Article</title></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<link>http://JohnSmithHomepage,com/Article1.html</link></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<description>It's my first article. Hello
World!</description></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<pubDate><st1:date day="3" month="6" w:st="on" year="2003">Tue, 03 Jun 2003</st1:date> <st1:time hour="9" minute="39" w:st="on">09:39:21 GMT</st1:time></pubDate></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</item></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<item></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<title>My
Second Article - I have bought a cat</title></div>
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<link>http://JohnSmithHomepage,com/Article2.html</link></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<description>I've boght a cat. Now I have a
pet.</description></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<pubDate><st1:date day="17" month="1" w:st="on" year="2007">Tue, 17 Jan 2007</st1:date> <st1:time hour="10" minute="39" w:st="on">10:39:21 GMT</st1:time></pubDate></div>
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</item></div>
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</div>
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</channel></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</rss></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Robots exclusion standard<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Robot Exclusion Standard, also known as the Robots
Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to prevent
cooperating web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a
website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search
engines to categorize and archive web sites, or by webmasters to proofread
source code. The standard is unrelated to, but can be used in conjunction with,
Sitemaps, a robot inclusion standard for websites.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>About the standard<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If a site owner wishes to give instructions to web robots
they must place a text file called robots.txt in the root of the web site
hierarchy (e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt). This text file should contain the
instructions in a specific format (see examples below). Robots that choose to
follow the instructions try to fetch this file and read the instructions before
fetching any other file from the web site. If this file doesn't exist web
robots assume that the web owner wishes to provide no specific instructions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A robots.txt file on a website will function as a request
that specified robots ignore specified files or directories in their search.
This might be, for example, out of a preference for privacy from search engine
results, or the belief that the content of the selected directories might be
misleading or irrelevant to the categorization of the site as a whole, or out
of a desire that an application only operate on certain data.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For websites with multiple sub domains, each sub domain must
have its own robots.txt file. If example.com had a robots.txt file but
a.example.com did not, the rules that would apply for example.com would not
apply to a.example.com.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Disadvantages<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The protocol is purely advisory. It relies on the
cooperation of the web robot, so that marking an area of a site out of bounds with
robots.txt does not guarantee privacy. Some web site administrators have tried
to use the robots file to make private parts of a website invisible to the rest
of the world, but the file is necessarily publicly available and its content is
easily checked by anyone with a web browser.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is no official standards body or RFC for the
robots.txt protocol. It was created by consensus in June 1994 by members of the
robots mailing list (robots-request@nexor.co.uk). The information specifying
the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called robots.txt
in the top-level directory of the website. The robots.txt patterns are matched
by simple substring comparisons, so care should be taken to make sure that
patterns matching directories have the final '/' character appended, otherwise
all files with names starting with that substring will match, rather than just
those in the directory intended.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Examples<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This example allows all robots to visit all files because
the wildcard "*" specifies all robots:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User-agent: *</div>
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Disallow:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This example keeps all robots out:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User-agent: *</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The next is an example that tells all crawlers not to enter
four directories of a website:</div>
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<br /></div>
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User-agent: *</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /cgi-bin/</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /images/</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /tmp/</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /private/</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Example that tells a specific crawler not to enter one
specific directory:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User-agent: BadBot # replace the 'BadBot' with the actual
user-agent of the bot</div>
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Disallow: /private/</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Example that tells all crawlers not to enter one specific file:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User-agent: *</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /directory/file.html</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note that all other files in the specified directory will be
processed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Example demonstrating how comments can be used:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
# Comments appear after the "#" symbol at the
start of a line, or after a directive</div>
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User-agent: * # match all bots</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: / # keep them out</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[edit] Nonstandard extensions</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[edit] Crawl-delay directive</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Several major crawlers support a Crawl-delay parameter, set
to the number of seconds to wait between successive requests to the same server:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User-agent: *</div>
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Crawl-delay: 10</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[edit] Allow directive</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some major crawlers support an Allow directive which can
counteract a following Disallow directive. This is useful when one disallows an
entire directory but still wants some HTML documents in that directory crawled
and indexed. While by standard implementation the first matching robots.txt
pattern always wins, Google's implementation differs in that Allow patterns
with equal or more characters in the directive path win over a matching Disallow
pattern. Bing uses the Allow or Disallow directive which is the most specific.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In order to be compatible to all robots, if one wants to
allow single files inside an otherwise disallowed directory, it is necessary to
place the Allow directive(s) first, followed by the Disallow, for example:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Allow: /folder1/myfile.html</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Disallow: /folder1/</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This example will Disallow anything in /folder1/ except
/folder1/myfile.html, since the latter will match first. In case of Google,
though, the order is not important.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sitemap</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some crawlers support a Sitemap directive, allowing multiple
Sitemaps in the same robots.txt in the form:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sitemap:
http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/profiles-sitemap.xml</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sitemap: http://www.google.com/hostednews/sitemap_index.xml</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Static Vs Dynamic websites - what's the difference?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>What are static and
dynamic websites?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are many static websites on the Internet, you won’t be
able to tell immediately if it is static, but the chances are, if the site
looks basic and is for a smaller company, and simply delivers information
without any bells and whistles, it could be a static website. Static websites
can only really be updated by someone with a knowledge of website development.
Static websites are the cheapest to develop and host, and many smaller
companies still use these to get a web presence.</div>
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<b>Advantages of static
websites<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Quick to develop</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Cheap to develop</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Cheap to host</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Disadvantages of
static websites<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Requires web
development expertise to update site</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Site not as
useful for the user</div>
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* Content can get
stagnant</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dynamic sites on the other hand can be more expensive to
develop initially, but the advantages are numerous. At a basic level, a dynamic
website can give the website owner the ability to simply update and add new
content to the site. For example, news and events could be posted to the site
through a simple browser interface. Dynamic features of a site are only limited
by imagination. Some examples of dynamic website features could be: content
management system, e-commerce system, bulletin / discussion boards, intranet or
extranet facilities, ability for clients or users to upload documents, ability
for administrators or users to create content or add information to a site
(dynamic publishing).</div>
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<b>Advantages of dynamic
websites<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Much more
functional website</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Much easier to
update</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* New content
brings people back to the site and helps in the search engines</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Can work as a
system to allow staff or users to collaborate</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Disadvantages of
dynamic websites<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Slower / more
expensive to develop</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Hosting costs a
little more</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Summary<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many sites from the last decade are static, but more and
more people are realising the advantages of having a dynamic website. Dynamic
websites can make the most of your site and either use it as a tool or create a
professional, interesting experience for your visitors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Structuring your
website<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Internet users are objective driven. That means that they
arrive at your site because they are looking for specific information. The way
you structure your website is therefore very important in retaining visitors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Plan your structure on paper first</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a good idea to draw a structure chart on paper before
you brief your web designer, and follow these tips:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Limit your site
to between 6 and 8 main sections - any more and you risk creating information
overload</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Put important
information as few clicks away as possible</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Remember that
people may be looking for different ways to get to the same content. Some
enquiries are product brand driven, while other users will focus on the end use
of a product</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Not everyone
will arrive at your site on the Home page. You should plan effective landing
pages that will clearly route users directly into specific topic areas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Social Media Optimization: 13 Rules of SMO<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s a summary of what they’ve put together to date:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. Increase your link ability: Think blogs, content,
aggregation & linkbait.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy: Include calls to
action for users to tag, bookmark and Digg your stuff. I’d suggest the Sociable
Plugin if you have a WordPress powered blog.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Reward inbound links: List blogs which link back to you
via permalinks, trackbacks or recently linking blogs (like the Yahoo &
Google blogs do).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. Help your content travel: Content diversification can
lead to mobility of your content beyond the browser.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. Encourage the mashup: Let others use your content or
tools to produce something a bit different or outside of the box with your
stuff, even RSS.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you: Add
value and outbound links, even if it doesn’t help in the short term, it will in
the long.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
7. Reward helpful and valuable users: Give your contributors
and readers the recognition they deserve.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
8. Participate: Get in there and get involved in the
discussions going on among the blogs and sites of others, and do it
organically. Earn your rep on Digg.com, don’t try and force it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
9. Know how to target your audience: Understand your appeal
and those people you wish to attract.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
10. Create content: A little bit of rules 1 & 4 here,
but the underlying message is know the form of content working for you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
11. Be real: Transparency pays off and no one likes a fake.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And mine:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
12. Don’t forget your roots, be humble: Sometimes it can be
easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember
those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
13. Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh: Social
Media is changing and morphing by the minute, keep up on new tools, products
and challenges in your social sphere.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Search engine marketing – opportunities and risks<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Search engine marketing (SEM) is the single biggest
opportunity in online marketing, which is unsurprising given the growing
popularity of search engines for researching products, services and
organizations. In this section we will set the scene…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Where are we at?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Search usage is continuing to rise among consumers and
professionals who use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find what they<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">‟</span>re
looking for. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Comscore reported in February 2009 that there were 13.5B
searches in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>
alone (up from 6.5B searches in January 2008). According to estimates this is
only 10% of a world total of 135B searches per month2. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>So what</b><b><span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>s the big challenge? <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tapping into the searching behaviors of your audience and
figuring out which keywords you need to focus on requires great tenacity. Not
to mention securing top rankings for your chosen keywords. If you have tried
SEO you’ll know how tricky this can be.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Constant innovations from the rival search engines, coupled
with increased activity from your competitors, means that you have to identify
the right approaches and deploy the right resources to rank well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>And the risks…?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are probably aware of the risks of SEM. Since most
search engine traffic typically originates from one source (typically „The big
G<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">‟</span>,
aka Google) there is a significant risk that algorithm changes can seriously
dent your traffic. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>ve all heard the horror stories about being top one day
and nowhere the next, but how do you ensure this doesn<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>t happen to you? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On top of all that you also need to manage the risks of
pages not being included in the search engine, or of being barred completely
for infringing its guidelines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Where do I start?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>ve already started. We created this guide to provide a
super-comprehensive, hype-free compilation of best practice in SEM. Digest it
in chunks, then act accordingly. And remember to educate agencies and
colleagues along the way (no file-sharing though…!).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of this guide is aimed at helping you perform well in
the organic search results, although there is some crossover with paid-search
(which we will deal with in greater detail in a separate report).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By reading this guide you can maximize your opportunities
from SEM while minimising your risks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Why is search marketing so important?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Web users love to search. They use the main search engines
like Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and Ask to find one thing only – information.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>What sort of information
are they looking for?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clearly this depends on the individual. They might be
looking for entertainment3 news, or hunting for product reviews, or trying to
compare vendors and services, or seeking their soul mate, or buying a
second-hand car. All these goals can start with a simple search query.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The use of keywords or key phrases (combining several
keywords) helps users find exactly what they want. Modern search engines are
generally great at delivering relevant results to users.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Relevance (or relevancy if you are in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>) is the
mantra of all search engine engineers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>A word from our
resident lexicologist…<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Understanding key phrases enables marketers at companies to
target users showing intent or interest in their products.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Notice that we say ‘key phrase<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span> (short for ‘keyword phrase<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>)
rather than ‘keyword<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>. This is because search engines such as Google attribute
more relevance when there is an exact phrase match on a web page (a phrase that
matches the user<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’s
search term).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Search engines also assess other occurrences of the keywords and
synonyms on the page, and also those websites / pages linking to a page. We’</span>ll
get onto that in due course…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>So how big is search?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The number of searches by people trying to find information
is still growing dramatically.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nielsen//Net Ratings reported that there were 5.7 billion
searches in the US in January 2006, a 39% year-on-year increase from 4.1
billion in January 20054. Furthermore, the number of searches in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> is more than
183 million per day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Search Engine Results Page(s) (SERPs).<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Within SEM, there are three main opportunities for
organizations to get their message across, to gain visibility and to direct
visitors to their sites. The first two opportunities are via the SERPs and the
third is on third-party sites.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>1. The Natural or
Organic listings.</b> The part of the pages listing results from a search
engine query which are displayed in a sequence according to relevance of match
between the keyword phrase typed into a search engine and a web page according
to a ranking algorithm used by the search engine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The method for achieving placement in this part of the page
is called search engine optimization (SEO) and is the focus of this best
practice guide.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. The paid or sponsored listings. A relevant ad (typically
a text ad) with a link to a destination page is displayed when the user of a
search engine types in a specific phrase. A fee is charged for every click of
each link, with the amount bid for the click the main factor determining its
position.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The method for achieving placement in this part of the page
is called paid-search (aka ‘pay per-click<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span> or PPC). Econsultancy publishes a
dedicated best practice guide to paid-search marketing, to help you plan,
launch and optimize PPC campaigns.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Content-network listings. These ads are displayed on
third party sites that have an</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ad sense relationship with Google, or which display Yahoo or
MIVA listings on their website. These actually account for a sizeable
proportion of Google revenue8, but tend to have much lower click through rates.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>On-page optimization<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this section we make recommendations on how you should
create documents which the search engine will assess as being highly relevant
to a particular search term a search user has entered as their query. The most
basic test of relevance is the number of times the search phrase appears on the
page. However, there are many factors which are also applied. In this section
we will review:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Within page key phrase factors including keyword density,
synonyms and position</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Page markup key phrase factors including syntactical
accuracy, <title> tags, <meta> tags, <a href=> hyperlink tags
and <img> alt tags.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Document-level key phrase factors such as the inclusion of key
phrases in the domain and document file name.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Competitor
benchmarking<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first stage of competitor benchmarking is to identify
your online competitor types for search traffic. Competitors for particular key
phrases are not necessarily your traditional competitors. For example, for a
mobile phone retailer, when someone searches for a product, you will be competing
for search visibility with these types of websites:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Retailers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Network providers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Handset
manufacturers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Affiliates and
partner sites.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Media-owned sites.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Blogs and personal
sites about mobile phone technology.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To assess the extent that search strategy should focus on
SEO and PPC (and also to be able to compete with these different types of
content providers) it is necessary to assess the relative strength of these
sources, as well as the various approaches to SEM they use. Try to identify competitors
who have optimized their sites most effectively.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Retailers trying to compete on particular product phrases in
the organic listings may find that it is very difficult, since handset and network
providers will often feature prominently in the natural listings because of
their scale (see also Mike Grehan’s „rich-get-richer<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">‟</span> argument, for
explanations on why top Google results can become happily entrenched in their
positions).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, many media-owned sites and blogs can feature
highly in the natural listings, because content is king. This isn<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">’</span>t at
all surprising, given the search robots<span style="font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Mincho";">‟</span> love of text. Retailers tend to
display big conversion-friendly images and lists of features / specifications,
which may be less attractive content as far as Googlebot is concerned, if more
appealing to visitors.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With all this in mind, it seems obvious that many retail
e-commerce managers favor PPC. More likely, it is about short-term (versus
long-term) goals. Or, maybe it is just a case of easy versus difficult.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The second stage of competitor analysis is to compare their
relative performance. Competitors can be compared in a number of ways using
tools that are freely available within the search engines or using paid for
software or services.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So how can I benchmark performance against competitors?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal">Ranking
Position report</li>
</ol>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Compare the relative performance in the natural listings for
different keyphrase types, eg generic / qualified.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Pay per click (PPC)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Pay per click (PPC)</b>
is an Internet advertising model used on websites, where advertisers pay their
host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically
bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly
charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Cost per click (CPC)</b>
is the sum paid by an advertiser to search engines and other Internet
publishers for a single click on their advertisement which directs one visitor
to the advertiser's website.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive
a high volume of traffic to one site, PPC implements the so-called affiliate
model, that provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It
does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of
revenue) to affiliated partner sites. The affiliates provide purchase-point
click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model: If an
affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant.
Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click, and revenue sharing
programs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement
when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content
site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links
or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search
engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among PPC providers, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search
Marketing, and Microsoft ad Center are the three largest network operators, and
all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies
depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular
keyword.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click
fraud, although Google and others have implemented automated systems to guard
against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Determining cost per
click<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two primary models for determining cost per click:
flat-rate and bid-based. In both cases the advertiser must consider the
potential value of a click from a given source. This value is based on the type
of individual the advertiser is expecting to receive as a visitor to his or her
website, and what the advertiser can gain from that visit, usually revenue,
both in the short term as well as in the long term. As with other forms of
advertising targeting is key, and factors that often play into PPC campaigns
include the target's interest (often defined by a search term they have entered
into a search engine, or the content of a page that they are browsing), intent
(e.g., to purchase or not), location (for geo targeting), and the day and time
that they are browsing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Flat-rate PPC<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree
upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the
publisher has a rate card that lists the CPC within different areas of their
website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on
pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a
higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors. However, in many
cases advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a
long-term or high-value contract.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison
shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards. However, these rates are
sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility. These
sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories,
allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers. In many cases, the entire
core content of these sites is paid ads</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Bid-based PPC<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the bid-based model, the advertiser signs a contract that
allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by
a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs
the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad
spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The
auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad
spot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page
(SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword
that is being bid upon occurs. All bids for the keyword that target the
searcher's geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc. are then compared
and the winner determined. In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a
common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on
the page are influenced by the amount each has bid. The ad with the highest bid
generally shows up first, though additional factors such as ad quality and
relevance can sometimes come into play (see Quality Score).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising
networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties
with whom they have partnered. These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf
of the network. In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the
network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross
revenue paid by advertisers. These properties are often referred to as a
content network and the ads on them as contextual ads because the ad spots are
associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are
found. In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate
(CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are
less highly valued. Content network properties can include websites,
newsletters, and e-mails.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual
amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction
hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the
next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower. This avoids
situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small
amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit
less per click.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid
management systems can be deployed. These systems can be used directly by the
advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that
offer PPC bid management as a service. These tools generally allow for bid
management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by
a highly automated system. The system generally sets each bid based on the goal
that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic at
breakeven, and so forth. The system is usually tied into the advertiser's
website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids.
The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and
quantity of the performance data that they have to work with - low-traffic ads
can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools
useless at worst, or inefficient at best.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Social media marketing<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Social media marketing is a recent addition to
organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing
communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their
targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements
of the promotional mix; advertising, personal selling, public relations,
publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. In the traditional marketing
communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of
communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent,
i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations
firms. However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations
communicate. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of
tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share
information and collaborate on projects online.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to
create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with
their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and
presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to
the brand or company itself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible
to anyone with internet access, opening doors for organizations to increase
their brand awareness and facilitate conversations with the customer.
Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for
organizations to implement marketing campaigns. With emergence of services like
Twitter, the barrier to entry in social media is greatly reduced. Report from
company Sysomos shows that half of the users using Twitter are located outside
US demonstrating the global significance of social media marketing.
Organizations can receive direct feedback from their customers and targeted
markets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Platforms<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Social media marketing which is known as SMO Social Media
Optimization benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional
channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight,
recruitment and retention of new customers/business partners, and a method of
managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its
relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of
the foundation on which it is built. A strong foundation serves as a stand or
platform in which the organization can centralize its information and direct
customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as
article and press release publications.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most popular platforms include:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Blogs</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Delicious</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Facebook</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Flickr</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Hi5</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* LinkedIn</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* MySpace</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Reddit</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Tagged</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Twitter</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* YouTube</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* More...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Web analytics<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and
reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web
usage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring website
traffic but can be used as a tool for business research and market research.
Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of
traditional print advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how the
traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign.
Web analytics provides data on the number of visitors, page views, etc. to
gauge the traffic and popularity trends which helps doing the market research.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two categories of web analytics; off-site and
on-site web analytics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and
analysis regardless of whether you own or maintain a website. It includes the
measurement of a website's potential audience (opportunity), share of voice
(visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On-site web analytics measure a visitor's journey once on
your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which
landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. On-site web analytics
measures the performance of your website in a commercial context. This data is
typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used
to improve a web site or marketing campaign's audience response.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Historically, web analytics has referred to on-site visitor
measurement. However in recent years this has blurred, mainly because vendors
are producing tools that span both categories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>On-site web analytics
technologies<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many different vendors provide on-site web analytics
software and services. There are two main technological approaches to
collecting the data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in
which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page
tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a
page is rendered by a web browser. Both collect data that can be processed to
produce web traffic reports.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In addition other data sources may also be added to augment
the data. For example; e-mail response rates, direct mail campaign data, sales
and lead information, user performance data such as click heat mapping, or
other custom metrics as needed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Key definitions<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are no globally agreed definitions within web
analytics as the industry bodies have been trying to agree definitions that are
useful and definitive for some time. The main bodies who have had input in this
area have been Jicwebs(Industry Committee for Web Standards)/ABCe (Auditing
Bureau of Circulations electronic, <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>),
The WAA (Web Analytics Association, US) and to a lesser extent the IAB
(Interactive Advertising Bureau). This does not prevent the following list from
being a useful guide, suffering only slightly from ambiguity. Both the WAA and
the ABCe provide more definitive lists for those who are declaring their
statistics using the metrics defined by either.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Hit - A request
for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of
hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but
this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity.
A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete
files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the
number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity
of individual pages on the website than the website's actual popularity. The total
number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate
assessment of popularity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Page view - A
request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An
occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single
page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the
page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Visit / Session
- A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely
identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page
request. A session is defined as a series of page requests from the same
uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes and no
requests for pages from other domains intervening between page requests. In
other words, a session ends when someone goes to another site, or 30 minutes
elapse between page views, whichever comes first. A visit ends only after a 30
minute time delay. If someone leaves a site, then returns within 30 minutes,
this will count as one visit but two sessions. In practice, most systems ignore
sessions and many analysts use both terms for visits. Because time between
pageviews is critical to the definition of visits and sessions, a single page
view does not constitute a visit or a session (it is a "bounce").</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* First Visit /
First Session - A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Visitor / Unique
Visitor / Unique User - The uniquely identified client generating requests on
the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined
time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the
timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the
visitor's computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent.
Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two
Unique Visitors. Increasingly visitors are uniquely identified by Flash LSO's
(Local Shared Object), which are less susceptible to privacy enforcement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Repeat Visitor -
A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the
last and current visit is called visitor regency and is measured in days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* New Visitor - A
visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a
certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes
substituted with analysis of first visits.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Impression - An
impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user's screen. Anytime you
see a banner, that is an impression.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Singletons - The
number of visits where only a single page is viewed. While not a useful metric
in and of itself the number of singletons is indicative of various forms of
Click fraud as well as being used to calculate bounce rate and in some cases to
identify automatons bots).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Bounce Rate -
The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page
without visiting any other pages on the site in between.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* % Exit - The
percentage of users who exit from a page.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Visibility time
- The time a single page (or a blog, Ad Banner...) is viewed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Session Duration
- Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit.
This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not
measure the length of the final page view.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Page View
Duration / Time on Page - Average amount of time that visitors spend on each
page of the site. As with Session Duration, this metric is complicated by the
fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view
unless they record a page close event, such as on Unload().</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Active Time /
Engagement Time - Average amount of time that visitors spend actually
interacting with content on a web page, based on mouse moves, clicks, hovers
and scrolls. Unlike Session Duration and Page View Duration / Time on Page,
this metric can accurately measure the length of engagement in the final page
view.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Page Depth /
Page Views per Session - Page Depth is the average number of page views a
visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing
total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page
Views per Session or PV/Session.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Frequency /
Session per Unique - Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website.
It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the
total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of
your audience.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Click path - the
sequence of hyperlinks one or more website visitors follows on a given site.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Click -
"refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page
in a site to another". Some use click analytics to analyze their web
sites.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* Site Overlay is
a technique in which graphical statistics are shown besides each link on the
web page. These statistics represent the percentage of clicks on each link.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Google Penalty Advice<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Finding the Causes of
a Sudden Drop in Ranking<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To check for Google penalties with any degree of certainty
can be difficult. For example, if your website experiences a sudden reduction
in ranking for its main keyword terms it can be caused solely by a Google
algorithm change or search results (SERP) update.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Google penalty example using Analytics</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When any algorithm change or Google SERP update is released,
there are always winners and losers, and when a sudden drop in rankings is
experienced Google penalties are often incorrectly blamed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, where the traffic reduction from Google non-paid
search is very extreme, as pictured left (from Google Analytics data - traffic
sources > search engines > Google) then a penalty is much more likely.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are a growing number of Google filters now built into
the Google algorithm which aim to detect violations of Google Webmaster
Guidelines in order to help maintain the quality of Google's search results
(SERP) for any given query. One such algorithmic filter is thought to have
caused the massive drop on Google traffic pictured above.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Link Devaluation
Effects<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When considering the cause of a ranking reduction, its worth
noting that Google continually applies link devaluation to links from various
non-reputable sources that it considers spammers are exploiting to artificially
raise the ranking of their sites. Hence continual Google algorithm tweaks are
being made in an effort to combat link spam.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When link devaluation is applied, as it has with reciprocal
links as well as links from many paid link advertisements, low quality web
directories and link farms, reductions in Google ranking may occur affecting
the recipient site of the links. The severity of ranking reductions is usually
synonymous with the website's reliance on that particular type of linking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There's no doubt that do-follow blog links and low quality
web directory links have also been devalued and that this has lead to reduced
website rankings for sites which got a significant number of backlinks or site
wide links from do-follow blogs or directories. In addition, backlinks from
unrelated theme sites are also experiencing Google devaluation - so if your
site heavily relies on these links, then it too may experience a sudden drop in
Google rankings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you suspect a Google penalty, it first makes sense to
check whether any Google algorithm changes have been made which could be the
cause of the problem. SEO Forum posts reflecting algorithm changes usually
appear on the SEO Chat Forum soon after the effects of any update are felt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That said, if your website suffers sudden and dramatic fall
in ranking and no Google algorithm changes have been made, then a Google
penalty or filter may be the cause, especially if you have been embarking on
activities which might have contravened Google Webmaster Guidelines. The most
severe Google penalties lead to total website de-indexing and where the SEO misdemeanour's is serious a site ban may be imposed by Google, accompanied by a
Page Rank reduction to 0 and a greyed out Google Tool bar Page Rank indication.
Google filters are less extreme, but can still be extremely damaging to a
company's profits.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whatever the cause, recovering from a Google penalty or
filter is a challenge and our SEO checklist will help identify likely causes
and reasons for a sudden reduction in Google ranking or an major drop in SERPS
position for your main keywords.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Initial Test for a
Penalty<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When a penalty is suspected, start by checking with Google
the number of URL's it has indexed. This can be accomplished by using the
site: yourdomainname.com command within a Google search window. If no URL's are
indexed and no backlinks show up when the link: yourdomain.com is entered then
there is a high probability of a Google penalty, especially if your site used
to be indexed and used to show backlinks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another indicator of a Google penalty is ceasing to rank for
your own company name, where previously your ranked well for your own brand
name. The exception to this rule is a new website with few backlinks, which may
not be Google indexed since it is still waiting to be crawled. Such websites
frequently show no backlinks, but this doesn't imply they have received a
Google penalty!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not all Google penalties result in a loss of Page Rank. For
example, various Google filters can be triggered by unnatural irregularities in
backlinks (detected by the clever Google algorithm) or by excessive reciprocal
link exchange, particularly using similar keyword optimized anchor text in your
links. The example (left) shows a typical reduction in website traffic caused by
a Google SEO penalty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another good indication that a site is under penalty is to
take a unique paragraph of text from a popular page on the affected site and
searching for it in Google. If the page doesn't come back as #1 and the page is
still showing as cached using cache:www.mydomain.com/page.htm, then this is a
good indication that a penalty or filter has been placed on the domain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To avoid a Google penalty or SERPS filter, take particular
care when embarking on any link building program. In particular, avoid
reciprocal link exchange becoming the main-stay of your SEO campaign.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you suspect your website has received a Google penalty,
you can contact Google by sending an e-mail to help@google.com to ask for help.
They will usually check the spam report queue and offer some form of
assistance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Interestingly, in a recent move by Google, web sites which
are in clear violation of Google's webmaster guidelines or terms of service may
receive an e-mail from Google advising them to clean up their act, warning of a
penalty and website de-indexing. When the breach of Google's terms (e.g. link
spam or hidden text) is removed from the offending site, Google will usually
automatically clear the penalty and re-index the site as many so-called
penalties are actually 'filters' triggered by irregularities found by Google's
algorithm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Google Penalty
Checklist<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If your website has suffered a Google penalty, some free SEO
advice to help identify the cause and solve the problem is provided below. Once
you have identified the cause of the problem, we suggest watching the Google
reconsideration tips video to help prepare a successful reconsideration request
to Google.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For further assistance with Google penalties contact us for
professional help.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Linking to banned
sites</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Run a test on all outbound links from your site to see if
you are linking to any sites which have themselves been Google banned. These
will be sites which are Google de-listed and show Page Rank 0 with a greyed out
Toolbar Page Rank indicator.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Linking to bad neighborhoods</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Check you are not linking to any bad neighbourhoods (neighborhoods - US spelling), link farms or doorway pages. Bad neighbourhoods include spam sites and doorway pages, whilst link farms are just pages of links
to other sites, with no original or useful content.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If in doubt, we recommend quality checking all of your
outbound links to external sites using the Bad Neighbourhood detection tool.
Whilst this SEO tool isn't perfect, it may spot "problem sites".
Another good tip is to do a Google search for the HTML homepage title of sites
that you link to. If the sites don't come up in the top 20 of the Google SERPS,
then they are almost certainly low trust domains and linking to them should be
avoided.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Automated query
penalty</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Google penalties can sometimes be caused by using automated
query tools which make use of Google's API, particularly when such queries are
made from the same IP address that hosts your website. These tools break
Google's terms of service (as laid out in their Webmaster Guidelines). Google
allows certain automated queries into its database using its analytic tools and
when accessing through a registered Google API account. Unauthorized types of
automated query can cause problems, particularly when used excessively.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Over optimization
penalties and Google filters</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These can be triggered by poor SEO techniques such as
aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text. When
managing link building campaigns, always vary the link text used and
incorporate a variety of different keyword terms. Use a back link anchor text analyzer
tool to check back links for sufficient keyword spread. Optimizing for high
paying (often abused) keywords like "Viagra" can further elevate
risk, so mix in some long tail keywords into the equation. For brand new
domains, be sensible and add a few one way back links a week and use deep
linking to website internal pages, rather than just homepage link building.
Above all, always vary your link anchor text to incorporate different keywords,
not variations on the same keyword!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is strong evidence that Google has introduced some new
automatic over optimization filters into their algorithm. These seem to have
the effect of applying a penalty to a page which has been over optimized for the
same keyword by link building. See Google filters for more information or
contact KSL Consulting for assistance (fees apply).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Website cross linking
& link schemes</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits
all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between
those sites. Extensive interlinking of websites, particularly if they are on
the same C Class IP address (same ISP) can be viewed as "link
schemes" by Google, breaking their terms of service. The risks are even
higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back
to site A. In addition, link schemes offering paid link placement in the footer
section of webpages (even on high Page Rank pages) are detectable search engine
spam and are best avoided.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Site-wide links should also be avoided at all costs. The
reality is that site wide links do little to increase site visibility in the
Google SERPS, nor do they improve Page Rank more than a single link, as Google
only counts one link from a site to another. KSL Consulting also believe that
Yahoo! now applies a similar policy. There is some evidence that the extensive
use of site-wide links can lower website Google trust value, which can
subsequently reduce ranking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Duplicate Content
problems</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whilst duplicate content in its own right is not thought to
trigger Google penalties, it can be responsible for the non-indexation of
website content and for placing all duplicate web pages into Google's
supplemental index, which results in pages not ranking in the Google SERP. This
can result in significant traffic loss to a site, similar to that caused by a
penalty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Google will not index duplicate content and any site which utilizes
large amounts of content (like news feeds/articles) featured elsewhere on the
web will likely suffer as a result.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Hidden text or links</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remove any hidden text in your content and remove any hidden
keywords. Such content may be hidden from view using CSS or alternatively, text
may have been coded to be the same colour as the page background, rendering it
invisible. These risky SEO techniques often lead to a Google penalty or web
site ban and should be removed immediately. The same applies to hidden links,
which Matt Cutts has openly stated break their webmaster guidelines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Keyword stuffing
(spamming)</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remove excessive keyword stuffing in your website content
(unnatural repetitions of the same phrase in body text). Always use natural,
well written web copywriting techniques.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Check for Malware
Problems</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is worthwhile carrying out a check to see if Google has
blacklisted your site as unsafe for browsing. To assess whether this is the
case visit</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mydomain.co.uk, replacing
'mydomain.co.uk' with your domain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Automated page
redirects</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The use of automated browser re-directs in any of your
pages. Meta Refresh and JavaScript automated re-directs often result in Google
penalties as the pages using them are perceived to be doorway pages. This
technique is especially dangerous if the refresh time is less than 5 seconds.
To avoid Google penalties, use a 301 re-direct or Mod Rewrite technique instead
of these methods. This involves setting up a .htaccess file on your web server.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Link buying or
selling</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Check for any paid links (I.E. buying text links from known
link suppliers / companies). There is some evidence that buying links can hurt
rankings and this was implied by comments from Matt Cutts (a Google engineer)
on his Google SEO blog. Matt states that Google will also devalue links from companies
selling text links, such that they offer zero value to the recipient in terms
for improving website rankings or Page Rank. More recently, Google applied a
Page Rank penalty to known link sellers and many low quality directories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Reciprocal link building
campaigns</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Excessive reciprocal linking may trigger a Google penalty or
cause a SERPS filter to be applied when the same or very similar link anchor
text is used over and over again and large numbers of reciprocal links are
added in a relatively short time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The dangers are made worse by adding reciprocal links to low
quality sites or websites which have an unrelated theme. This can lead to a back
link over optimization penalty (known as a BLOOP to SEO experts!). a Google
Back link Over Optimization Penalty causes a sudden drops in SERPS ranking
(often severe). To avoid this problem, reciprocal link exchange should only be
used as part of a more sustainable SEO strategy which also builds quality one
way links to original website content.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Adding reciprocal links to unrelated sites is a risky SEO
strategy, as is reciprocal link exchange with low quality websites. To help
identify quality link exchange partners we use a simple but effective test -
regardless of indicated Page Rank, if you can't find a website's homepage in
the top 20 of the Google search results (SERPS) when you search for the first 4
words of a site's full HTML title (shown at the top of the Internet Explorer
window) then undertaking reciprocal link exchange with that site may offer few
advantages. Don't forget to check that prospective reciprocal link partners
have a similar theme as your homepage too.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Paid links on
Commercial Directories</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some leading online web directories offer paid placement for
multiple regions where a link to your website appears on many pages of the
directory with keyword optimized anchor text and these links are search engine
accessible (I.E. they have no "nofollow" tag).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you have optimized the same keyword elsewhere in your SEO
campaign, adding hundreds of links from commercial directories with the same or
similar anchor text in a short space of time can cause serious problems. In
extreme cases we've seen these kinds of directory links trigger a Google
filter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Thin Affiliates and
"Made for Adsense" sites</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's a well known fact that Google dislikes affiliate sites
with thin content and the same applies to "made to Adsense" sites.
Always make sure affiliate sites have quality original content if you don't
want to get them filtered out of the search results when someone completes a
Google spam report. We have had personal experience of affiliate sites
acquiring a Google penalty, so don't spend time and money on SEO on such sites
without the right content.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Content Feeds and
I-Frames</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whilst content feeds (including RSS) are widely used on the
web, there is some evidence that pulling in large amounts of duplicate content
through such feeds may have an adverse effect on ranking and in extreme cases
may trigger a Google penalty. In particular, the use of I-frames to pull in
affiliate content should be avoided where possible. Consider the use of banners
and text links as an alternative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Same Registrant
Domains</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Google has access to the WHOIS records for domains and is
known to use this information, it is possible that a penalty applied to one
website may reduce the ranking of other websites with the same registrant,
although most filters only affect one domain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Check Google
Webmaster Guidelines</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and check website
compliance in all respects. Since early 2007, Google may alert webmasters via
the Google Webmaster Console who they feel might have unknowingly broken their
guidelines to advise them that their site has been removed from Google for a
set period of time due to breaking one or more of Google's Webmaster
Guidelines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, blatant spam or significant breaches of Google's
rules will often result in a site being banned, with no Webmaster Console
notification. Where notification of a violation of Google's guidelines is received,
it usually encourages the webmaster to correct the problem/s and then submit a
Google re-inclusion request (now referred to as a 'reconsideration request' in
Webmaster Tools). From my experience, after this is done the website will
usually regain its original ranking in around 14 days, assuming that all
violations of Google's terms and conditions have been resolved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Google Webmaster
Tools</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to Matt Cutts's Blog, Google is improving
webmaster communication with respect to banned sites and penalties. Google is
now informing some (but not all) webmasters the cause of a website ban or
penalty, via their excellent new Webmaster Console. In addition, a Google
re-inclusion request can be made from the same interface. For this reason, if
you've been hit by a web site ban or penalty, it is worthwhile signing up for
Google Webmaster Tools and uploading an XML Sitemap onto your site and then to
check site status in the Google Webmaster Console. This is an easy 15 minute
job and may help to identify the cause and fix for the problem!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Preparing Your Site
for Google Reconsideration</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Google recently prepared a Google reconsideration video
tutorial on how to create a good reconsideration request, including tips on
what Google look for when assessing the reinclusion of any website. The video
tutorial is presented by actual members of Google's reconsideration team and is
very helpful to any webmaster looking to successfully prepare a reconsideration
request.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Google SERP Filters<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is clear evidence that over-optimizing a single
keyword through adding too many back links and site-wide links can result in
triggering a Google filter whereby the recipient page of these links no longer
ranks in the organic SERP for the keyword being optimized.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Affected page/s appear to still be Google indexed and
cached. The Google Trust Rank of the website may be slightly affected leading
to a ranking reduction for other keywords. Interestingly though, affected
websites can retain ranking for other long tail keywords which have not been
over optimized, particularly on pages which have not been subject to aggressive
link building, but may have one or two decent natural links.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One other fact worth noting is that affected pages seem to
have high keyword density to the point of being over-optimized. In some cases
changes to increase page keyword density for the problem keyword may have been
made shortly prior to the Google filter being applied.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the cases observed, the websites still rank for their
company name and pages still show in the Google index (using the
site:domain.com command). However, picking a sentence of text from the affected
page and searching for it in Google yielded no results. It is therefore fair to
assume that the filtered page was all but removed from the index as far as its
ability to rank - even for long-tail keywords, although it still showed as
being Google cached (cache:domain.com/page).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To assess whether your website is affected by a Google SERP
filter, do a site-wide back link anchor text analysis using Majestic SEO (free)
or a paid SEO tool like SEO Moz Links cape and check the spread of keywords
used in links to your page look natural. Check your keyword density too
excluding <st1:place w:st="on">Meta</st1:place> tags. Google is tightening up
on link spam in a big way; be warned!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Check for a Total
Google Website Ban<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you've used unethical black hat SEO techniques your
website could be Google banned and consequently totally de-indexed. If your
site no longer shows any pages indexed when the site: www.yourdomain.com
command is used in Google (and it was previously indexed), then your site may
have received the most extreme form of penalty - a total Google ban. Check for
possible causes using the free SEO advice contained in our penalty checklist
above.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Google Penalty
Recovery Strategy<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recovering from a Google penalty normally involves fixing
the cause of the problem and then waiting for Google to remove any over optimization
penalties or SERPS filters. To fully recover Google ranking may take around 2-3
months after all website problems are corrected, although we have seen penalty
recovery in a matter of weeks following full and thorough resolution of the
Google Webmaster Guidelines infringements.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Google algorithm can automatically remove penalties if
the affected website is still Google indexed. To check whether a particular
website is still Google indexed, refer to our Google indexing page. If your
website has been Google de-indexed and lost Page Rank, then you will need to
make a Google re-inclusion request. Where the reason for the penalty is clear,
it helps to provide details of any changes you've made to correct violations of
the Google Webmaster Guidelines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The best recovery strategy from any Google penalty is to
thoroughly familiarize yourself with Google Webmaster Guidelines and also check
the SEO Chat Forum for threads surrounding any recent Google algorithm changes
and to evaluate recent changes made to your website prior to the sudden drop in
Google ranking. Don't forget to check your link building strategy as poor SEO
often causes Google penalties. Start by removing any reciprocal links to low
quality websites, or sites having no relevance to your website theme.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Preparing for a
Google Re-Inclusion (Reconsideration) Request<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We recommend you start by watching the Google
reconsideration tips video.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If your site has been de-indexed due to a Google penalty,
correct the problem and then apply to be re-included in the Google index by
submitting a Google re-inclusion request from your Webmaster Tools account.
More information about this is provided in Google Webmaster Help. Google refer
to this process as making a "reconsideration request" which is now
submitted from your Webmaster Tools login.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>How long does site
reconsideration take?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By submitting a reconsideration request to Google you enter
the queue for the manual review process whereby your site is manually checked
for violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This can take several weeks.
At the end of the process, an Inbox message is usually sent to the Webmaster to
confirm that the reconsideration has been processed. This will be visible by
logging into Webmaster Tools and then checking your Inbox under 'Messages'.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Gorilla Marketing (Viral Marketing)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Viral marketing and viral advertising are buzzwords
referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to
produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives
(such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to
the spread of virus or computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or
enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the
form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable
software, images, or even text messages.</div>
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The goal of marketers interested in creating successful
viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking
Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the
population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor.</div>
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The term "viral marketing" has also been used
pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the unscrupulous use of
astroturfing on-line combined with under market advertising in shopping centers
to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm. Viral
marketing is a imitation which is by using social media and other channels of
communication spreading the planned content aiming to reach the most efficient
and friendly manner to the target audience. Briefly, the idea spread from
person to person.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Email Marketing<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses
electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising messages
to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or
current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is
usually used to refer to:</div>
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* sending e-mails
with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current
or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,</div>
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* sending e-mails
with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to
purchase something immediately,</div>
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* adding
advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and</div>
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<br /></div>
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* Sending e-mails
over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g.,
network e-mail and FIDO).</div>
<title> tags, <meta> tags, <a href=> hyperlink tags and <img> alt tags.
Document-level key phrase factors such as the inclusion of key phrases in the domain and document file name.
Competitor benchmarking
The first stage of competitor benchmarking is to identify your online competitor types for search traffic. Competitors for particular key phrases are not necessarily your traditional competitors. For example, for a mobile phone retailer, when someone searches for a product, you will be competing for search visibility with these types of websites:
Retailers.
Network providers.
Handset manufacturers.
Affiliates and partner sites.
Media-owned sites.
Blogs and personal sites about mobile phone technology.
To assess the extent that search strategy should focus on SEO and PPC (and also to be able to compete with these different types of content providers) it is necessary to assess the relative strength of these sources, as well as the various approaches to SEM they use. Try to identify competitors who have optimized their sites most effectively.
Retailers trying to compete on particular product phrases in the organic listings may find that it is very difficult, since handset and network providers will often feature prominently in the natural listings because of their scale (see also Mike Grehan’s „rich-get-richer‟ argument, for explanations on why top Google results can become happily entrenched in their positions).
Meanwhile, many media-owned sites and blogs can feature highly in the natural listings, because content is king. This isn’t at all surprising, given the search robots‟ love of text. Retailers tend to display big conversion-friendly images and lists of features / specifications, which may be less attractive content as far as Googlebot is concerned, if more appealing to visitors.
With all this in mind, it seems obvious that many retail e-commerce managers favor PPC. More likely, it is about short-term (versus long-term) goals. Or, maybe it is just a case of easy versus difficult.
The second stage of competitor analysis is to compare their relative performance. Competitors can be compared in a number of ways using tools that are freely available within the search engines or using paid for software or services.
So how can I benchmark performance against competitors?
1. Ranking Position report
Compare the relative performance in the natural listings for different keyphrase types, eg generic / qualified.
Pay per click (PPC)
Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, where advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.
Cost per click (CPC) is the sum paid by an advertiser to search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on their advertisement which directs one visitor to the advertiser's website.
In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, PPC implements the so-called affiliate model, that provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites. The affiliates provide purchase-point click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model: If an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click, and revenue sharing programs.
Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.
Among PPC providers, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft ad Center are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword.
The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and others have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.
Determining cost per click
There are two primary models for determining cost per click: flat-rate and bid-based. In both cases the advertiser must consider the potential value of a click from a given source. This value is based on the type of individual the advertiser is expecting to receive as a visitor to his or her website, and what the advertiser can gain from that visit, usually revenue, both in the short term as well as in the long term. As with other forms of advertising targeting is key, and factors that often play into PPC campaigns include the target's interest (often defined by a search term they have entered into a search engine, or the content of a page that they are browsing), intent (e.g., to purchase or not), location (for geo targeting), and the day and time that they are browsing.
Flat-rate PPC
In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher has a rate card that lists the CPC within different areas of their website or network. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors. However, in many cases advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a long-term or high-value contract.
The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards. However, these rates are sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility. These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers. In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads
Bid-based PPC
In the bid-based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot.
When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs. All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc. are then compared and the winner determined. In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid. The ad with the highest bid generally shows up first, though additional factors such as ad quality and relevance can sometimes come into play (see Quality Score).
In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties with whom they have partnered. These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf of the network. In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross revenue paid by advertisers. These properties are often referred to as a content network and the ads on them as contextual ads because the ad spots are associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are found. In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are less highly valued. Content network properties can include websites, newsletters, and e-mails.
Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more (e.g. one penny) than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower. This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click.
To maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid management systems can be deployed. These systems can be used directly by the advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that offer PPC bid management as a service. These tools generally allow for bid management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by a highly automated system. The system generally sets each bid based on the goal that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic at breakeven, and so forth. The system is usually tied into the advertiser's website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids. The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and quantity of the performance data that they have to work with - low-traffic ads can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools useless at worst, or inefficient at best.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is a recent addition to organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix; advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.
Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access, opening doors for organizations to increase their brand awareness and facilitate conversations with the customer. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns. With emergence of services like Twitter, the barrier to entry in social media is greatly reduced. Report from company Sysomos shows that half of the users using Twitter are located outside US demonstrating the global significance of social media marketing. Organizations can receive direct feedback from their customers and targeted markets.
Platforms
Social media marketing which is known as SMO Social Media Optimization benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, recruitment and retention of new customers/business partners, and a method of managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of the foundation on which it is built. A strong foundation serves as a stand or platform in which the organization can centralize its information and direct customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as article and press release publications.
The most popular platforms include:
* Blogs
* Delicious
* Facebook
* Flickr
* Hi5
* LinkedIn
* MySpace
* Reddit
* Tagged
* Twitter
* YouTube
* More...
Web analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.
Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring website traffic but can be used as a tool for business research and market research. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how the traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides data on the number of visitors, page views, etc. to gauge the traffic and popularity trends which helps doing the market research.
There are two categories of web analytics; off-site and on-site web analytics.
Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis regardless of whether you own or maintain a website. It includes the measurement of a website's potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole.
On-site web analytics measure a visitor's journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. On-site web analytics measures the performance of your website in a commercial context. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used to improve a web site or marketing campaign's audience response.
Historically, web analytics has referred to on-site visitor measurement. However in recent years this has blurred, mainly because vendors are producing tools that span both categories.
On-site web analytics technologies
Many different vendors provide on-site web analytics software and services. There are two main technological approaches to collecting the data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser. Both collect data that can be processed to produce web traffic reports.
In addition other data sources may also be added to augment the data. For example; e-mail response rates, direct mail campaign data, sales and lead information, user performance data such as click heat mapping, or other custom metrics as needed.
Key definitions
There are no globally agreed definitions within web analytics as the industry bodies have been trying to agree definitions that are useful and definitive for some time. The main bodies who have had input in this area have been Jicwebs(Industry Committee for Web Standards)/ABCe (Auditing Bureau of Circulations electronic, UK and Europe), The WAA (Web Analytics Association, US) and to a lesser extent the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). This does not prevent the following list from being a useful guide, suffering only slightly from ambiguity. Both the WAA and the ABCe provide more definitive lists for those who are declaring their statistics using the metrics defined by either.
* Hit - A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website's actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.
* Page view - A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.
* Visit / Session - A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request. A session is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes and no requests for pages from other domains intervening between page requests. In other words, a session ends when someone goes to another site, or 30 minutes elapse between page views, whichever comes first. A visit ends only after a 30 minute time delay. If someone leaves a site, then returns within 30 minutes, this will count as one visit but two sessions. In practice, most systems ignore sessions and many analysts use both terms for visits. Because time between pageviews is critical to the definition of visits and sessions, a single page view does not constitute a visit or a session (it is a "bounce").
* First Visit / First Session - A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits.
* Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User - The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor's computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors. Increasingly visitors are uniquely identified by Flash LSO's (Local Shared Object), which are less susceptible to privacy enforcement.
* Repeat Visitor - A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitor regency and is measured in days.
* New Visitor - A visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis of first visits.
* Impression - An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user's screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression.
* Singletons - The number of visits where only a single page is viewed. While not a useful metric in and of itself the number of singletons is indicative of various forms of Click fraud as well as being used to calculate bounce rate and in some cases to identify automatons bots).
* Bounce Rate - The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between.
* % Exit - The percentage of users who exit from a page.
* Visibility time - The time a single page (or a blog, Ad Banner...) is viewed.
* Session Duration - Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit. This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.
* Page View Duration / Time on Page - Average amount of time that visitors spend on each page of the site. As with Session Duration, this metric is complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view unless they record a page close event, such as on Unload().
* Active Time / Engagement Time - Average amount of time that visitors spend actually interacting with content on a web page, based on mouse moves, clicks, hovers and scrolls. Unlike Session Duration and Page View Duration / Time on Page, this metric can accurately measure the length of engagement in the final page view.
* Page Depth / Page Views per Session - Page Depth is the average number of page views a visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page Views per Session or PV/Session.
* Frequency / Session per Unique - Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website. It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of your audience.
* Click path - the sequence of hyperlinks one or more website visitors follows on a given site.
* Click - "refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page in a site to another". Some use click analytics to analyze their web sites.
* Site Overlay is a technique in which graphical statistics are shown besides each link on the web page. These statistics represent the percentage of clicks on each link.
Google Penalty Advice
Finding the Causes of a Sudden Drop in Ranking
To check for Google penalties with any degree of certainty can be difficult. For example, if your website experiences a sudden reduction in ranking for its main keyword terms it can be caused solely by a Google algorithm change or search results (SERP) update.
Google penalty example using Analytics
When any algorithm change or Google SERP update is released, there are always winners and losers, and when a sudden drop in rankings is experienced Google penalties are often incorrectly blamed.
However, where the traffic reduction from Google non-paid search is very extreme, as pictured left (from Google Analytics data - traffic sources > search engines > Google) then a penalty is much more likely.
There are a growing number of Google filters now built into the Google algorithm which aim to detect violations of Google Webmaster Guidelines in order to help maintain the quality of Google's search results (SERP) for any given query. One such algorithmic filter is thought to have caused the massive drop on Google traffic pictured above.
Link Devaluation Effects
When considering the cause of a ranking reduction, its worth noting that Google continually applies link devaluation to links from various non-reputable sources that it considers spammers are exploiting to artificially raise the ranking of their sites. Hence continual Google algorithm tweaks are being made in an effort to combat link spam.
When link devaluation is applied, as it has with reciprocal links as well as links from many paid link advertisements, low quality web directories and link farms, reductions in Google ranking may occur affecting the recipient site of the links. The severity of ranking reductions is usually synonymous with the website's reliance on that particular type of linking.
There's no doubt that do-follow blog links and low quality web directory links have also been devalued and that this has lead to reduced website rankings for sites which got a significant number of backlinks or site wide links from do-follow blogs or directories. In addition, backlinks from unrelated theme sites are also experiencing Google devaluation - so if your site heavily relies on these links, then it too may experience a sudden drop in Google rankings.
If you suspect a Google penalty, it first makes sense to check whether any Google algorithm changes have been made which could be the cause of the problem. SEO Forum posts reflecting algorithm changes usually appear on the SEO Chat Forum soon after the effects of any update are felt.
That said, if your website suffers sudden and dramatic fall in ranking and no Google algorithm changes have been made, then a Google penalty or filter may be the cause, especially if you have been embarking on activities which might have contravened Google Webmaster Guidelines. The most severe Google penalties lead to total website de-indexing and where the SEO misdemeanour is serious a site ban may be imposed by Google, accompanied by a Page Rank reduction to 0 and a greyed out Google Toolbar Page Rank indication. Google filters are less extreme, but can still be extremely damaging to a company's profits.
Whatever the cause, recovering from a Google penalty or filter is a challenge and our SEO checklist will help identify likely causes and reasons for a sudden reduction in Google ranking or an major drop in SERPS position for your main keywords.
Initial Test for a Penalty
When a penalty is suspected, start by checking with Google the number of URL's it has indexed. This can be accomplished by using the site:yourdomainname.com command within a Google search window. If no URL's are indexed and no backlinks show up when the link:yourdomain.com is entered then there is a high probability of a Google penalty, especially if your site used to be indexed and used to show backlinks.
Another indicator of a Google penalty is ceasing to rank for your own company name, where previously your ranked well for your own brand name. The exception to this rule is a new website with few backlinks, which may not be Google indexed since it is still waiting to be crawled. Such websites frequently show no backlinks, but this doesn't imply they have received a Google penalty!
Not all Google penalties result in a loss of Page Rank. For example, various Google filters can be triggered by unnatural irregularities in backlinks (detected by the clever Google algorithm) or by excessive reciprocal link exchange, particularly using similar keyword optimized anchor text in your links. The example (left) shows a typical reduction in website traffic caused by a Google SEO penalty.
Another good indication that a site is under penalty is to take a unique paragraph of text from a popular page on the affected site and searching for it in Google. If the page doesn't come back as #1 and the page is still showing as cached using cache:www.mydomain.com/page.htm, then this is a good indication that a penalty or filter has been placed on the domain.
To avoid a Google penalty or SERPS filter, take particular care when embarking on any link building program. In particular, avoid reciprocal link exchange becoming the main-stay of your SEO campaign.
If you suspect your website has received a Google penalty, you can contact Google by sending an e-mail to help@google.com to ask for help. They will usually check the spam report queue and offer some form of assistance.
Interestingly, in a recent move by Google, web sites which are in clear violation of Google's webmaster guidelines or terms of service may receive an e-mail from Google advising them to clean up their act, warning of a penalty and website de-indexing. When the breach of Google's terms (e.g. link spam or hidden text) is removed from the offending site, Google will usually automatically clear the penalty and re-index the site as many so-called penalties are actually 'filters' triggered by irregularities found by Google's algorithm.
Google Penalty Checklist
If your website has suffered a Google penalty, some free SEO advice to help identify the cause and solve the problem is provided below. Once you have identified the cause of the problem, we suggest watching the Google reconsideration tips video to help prepare a successful reconsideration request to Google.
For further assistance with Google penalties contact us for professional help.
Linking to banned sites
Run a test on all outbound links from your site to see if you are linking to any sites which have themselves been Google banned. These will be sites which are Google de-listed and show Page Rank 0 with a greyed out Toolbar Page Rank indicator.
Linking to bad neighborhoods
Check you are not linking to any bad neighborhoods (neighborhoods - US spelling), link farms or doorway pages. Bad neighborhoods include spam sites and doorway pages, whilst link farms are just pages of links to other sites, with no original or useful content.
If in doubt, we recommend quality checking all of your outbound links to external sites using the Bad Neighborhood detection tool. Whilst this SEO tool isn't perfect, it may spot "problem sites". Another good tip is to do a Google search for the HTML homepage title of sites that you link to. If the sites don't come up in the top 20 of the Google SERPS, then they are almost certainly low trust domains and linking to them should be avoided.
Automated query penalty
Google penalties can sometimes be caused by using automated query tools which make use of Google's API, particularly when such queries are made from the same IP address that hosts your website. These tools break Google's terms of service (as laid out in their Webmaster Guidelines). Google allows certain automated queries into its database using its analytic tools and when accessing through a registered Google API account. Unauthorized types of automated query can cause problems, particularly when used excessively.
Over optimization penalties and Google filters
These can be triggered by poor SEO techniques such as aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text. When managing link building campaigns, always vary the link text used and incorporate a variety of different keyword terms. Use a back link anchor text analyzer tool to check back links for sufficient keyword spread. Optimizing for high paying (often abused) keywords like "Viagra" can further elevate risk, so mix in some long tail keywords into the equation. For brand new domains, be sensible and add a few one way back links a week and use deep linking to website internal pages, rather than just homepage link building. Above all, always vary your link anchor text to incorporate different keywords, not variations on the same keyword!
There is strong evidence that Google has introduced some new automatic over optimization filters into their algorithm. These seem to have the effect of applying a penalty to a page which has been over optimized for the same keyword by link building. See Google filters for more information or contact KSL Consulting for assistance (fees apply).
Website cross linking & link schemes
If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between those sites. Extensive interlinking of websites, particularly if they are on the same C Class IP address (same ISP) can be viewed as "link schemes" by Google, breaking their terms of service. The risks are even higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back to site A. In addition, link schemes offering paid link placement in the footer section of webpages (even on high Page Rank pages) are detectable search engine spam and are best avoided.
Site-wide links should also be avoided at all costs. The reality is that site wide links do little to increase site visibility in the Google SERPS, nor do they improve Page Rank more than a single link, as Google only counts one link from a site to another. KSL Consulting also believe that Yahoo! now applies a similar policy. There is some evidence that the extensive use of site-wide links can lower website Google trust value, which can subsequently reduce ranking.
Duplicate Content problems
Whilst duplicate content in its own right is not thought to trigger Google penalties, it can be responsible for the non-indexation of website content and for placing all duplicate web pages into Google's supplemental index, which results in pages not ranking in the Google SERP. This can result in significant traffic loss to a site, similar to that caused by a penalty.
Google will not index duplicate content and any site which utilizes large amounts of content (like news feeds/articles) featured elsewhere on the web will likely suffer as a result.
Hidden text or links
Remove any hidden text in your content and remove any hidden keywords. Such content may be hidden from view using CSS or alternatively, text may have been coded to be the same colour as the page background, rendering it invisible. These risky SEO techniques often lead to a Google penalty or web site ban and should be removed immediately. The same applies to hidden links, which Matt Cutts has openly stated break their webmaster guidelines.
Keyword stuffing (spamming)
Remove excessive keyword stuffing in your website content (unnatural repetitions of the same phrase in body text). Always use natural, well written web copywriting techniques.
Check for Malware Problems
It is worthwhile carrying out a check to see if Google has blacklisted your site as unsafe for browsing. To assess whether this is the case visit
www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mydomain.co.uk, replacing 'mydomain.co.uk' with your domain.
Automated page redirects
The use of automated browser re-directs in any of your pages. Meta Refresh and JavaScript automated re-directs often result in Google penalties as the pages using them are perceived to be doorway pages. This technique is especially dangerous if the refresh time is less than 5 seconds. To avoid Google penalties, use a 301 re-direct or Mod Rewrite technique instead of these methods. This involves setting up a .htaccess file on your web server.
Link buying or selling
Check for any paid links (I.E. buying text links from known link suppliers / companies). There is some evidence that buying links can hurt rankings and this was implied by comments from Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) on his Google SEO blog. Matt states that Google will also devalue links from companies selling text links, such that they offer zero value to the recipient in terms for improving website rankings or Page Rank. More recently, Google applied a Page Rank penalty to known link sellers and many low quality directories.
Reciprocal link building campaigns
Excessive reciprocal linking may trigger a Google penalty or cause a SERPS filter to be applied when the same or very similar link anchor text is used over and over again and large numbers of reciprocal links are added in a relatively short time.
The dangers are made worse by adding reciprocal links to low quality sites or websites which have an unrelated theme. This can lead to a back link over optimization penalty (known as a BLOOP to SEO experts!). a Google Back link Over Optimization Penalty causes a sudden drops in SERPS ranking (often severe). To avoid this problem, reciprocal link exchange should only be used as part of a more sustainable SEO strategy which also builds quality one way links to original website content.
Adding reciprocal links to unrelated sites is a risky SEO strategy, as is reciprocal link exchange with low quality websites. To help identify quality link exchange partners we use a simple but effective test - regardless of indicated Page Rank, if you can't find a website's homepage in the top 20 of the Google search results (SERPS) when you search for the first 4 words of a site's full HTML title (shown at the top of the Internet Explorer window) then undertaking reciprocal link exchange with that site may offer few advantages. Don't forget to check that prospective reciprocal link partners have a similar theme as your homepage too.
Paid links on Commercial Directories
Some leading online web directories offer paid placement for multiple regions where a link to your website appears on many pages of the directory with keyword optimized anchor text and these links are search engine accessible (I.E. they have no "nofollow" tag).
If you have optimized the same keyword elsewhere in your SEO campaign, adding hundreds of links from commercial directories with the same or similar anchor text in a short space of time can cause serious problems. In extreme cases we've seen these kinds of directory links trigger a Google filter.
Thin Affiliates and "Made for Adsense" sites
It's a well known fact that Google dislikes affiliate sites with thin content and the same applies to "made to Adsense" sites. Always make sure affiliate sites have quality original content if you don't want to get them filtered out of the search results when someone completes a Google spam report. We have had personal experience of affiliate sites acquiring a Google penalty, so don't spend time and money on SEO on such sites without the right content.
Content Feeds and I-Frames
Whilst content feeds (including RSS) are widely used on the web, there is some evidence that pulling in large amounts of duplicate content through such feeds may have an adverse effect on ranking and in extreme cases may trigger a Google penalty. In particular, the use of I-frames to pull in affiliate content should be avoided where possible. Consider the use of banners and text links as an alternative.
Same Registrant Domains
As Google has access to the WHOIS records for domains and is known to use this information, it is possible that a penalty applied to one website may reduce the ranking of other websites with the same registrant, although most filters only affect one domain.
Check Google Webmaster Guidelines
Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and check website compliance in all respects. Since early 2007, Google may alert webmasters via the Google Webmaster Console who they feel might have unknowingly broken their guidelines to advise them that their site has been removed from Google for a set period of time due to breaking one or more of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
However, blatant spam or significant breaches of Google's rules will often result in a site being banned, with no Webmaster Console notification. Where notification of a violation of Google's guidelines is received, it usually encourages the webmaster to correct the problem/s and then submit a Google re-inclusion request (now referred to as a 'reconsideration request' in Webmaster Tools). From my experience, after this is done the website will usually regain its original ranking in around 14 days, assuming that all violations of Google's terms and conditions have been resolved.
Google Webmaster Tools
According to Matt Cutts's Blog, Google is improving webmaster communication with respect to banned sites and penalties. Google is now informing some (but not all) webmasters the cause of a website ban or penalty, via their excellent new Webmaster Console. In addition, a Google re-inclusion request can be made from the same interface. For this reason, if you've been hit by a web site ban or penalty, it is worthwhile signing up for Google Webmaster Tools and uploading an XML Sitemap onto your site and then to check site status in the Google Webmaster Console. This is an easy 15 minute job and may help to identify the cause and fix for the problem!
Preparing Your Site for Google Reconsideration
Google recently prepared a Google reconsideration video tutorial on how to create a good reconsideration request, including tips on what Google look for when assessing the reinclusion of any website. The video tutorial is presented by actual members of Google's reconsideration team and is very helpful to any webmaster looking to successfully prepare a reconsideration request.
Google SERP Filters
There is clear evidence that over-optimizing a single keyword through adding too many back links and site-wide links can result in triggering a Google filter whereby the recipient page of these links no longer ranks in the organic SERP for the keyword being optimized.
Affected page/s appear to still be Google indexed and cached. The Google Trust Rank of the website may be slightly affected leading to a ranking reduction for other keywords. Interestingly though, affected websites can retain ranking for other long tail keywords which have not been over optimized, particularly on pages which have not been subject to aggressive link building, but may have one or two decent natural links.
One other fact worth noting is that affected pages seem to have high keyword density to the point of being over-optimized. In some cases changes to increase page keyword density for the problem keyword may have been made shortly prior to the Google filter being applied.
In the cases observed, the websites still rank for their company name and pages still show in the Google index (using the site:domain.com command). However, picking a sentence of text from the affected page and searching for it in Google yielded no results. It is therefore fair to assume that the filtered page was all but removed from the index as far as its ability to rank - even for long-tail keywords, although it still showed as being Google cached (cache:domain.com/page).
To assess whether your website is affected by a Google SERP filter, do a site-wide back link anchor text analysis using Majestic SEO (free) or a paid SEO tool like SEO Moz Links cape and check the spread of keywords used in links to your page look natural. Check your keyword density too excluding Meta tags. Google is tightening up on link spam in a big way; be warned!
Check for a Total Google Website Ban
If you've used unethical black hat SEO techniques your website could be Google banned and consequently totally de-indexed. If your site no longer shows any pages indexed when the site: www.yourdomain.com command is used in Google (and it was previously indexed), then your site may have received the most extreme form of penalty - a total Google ban. Check for possible causes using the free SEO advice contained in our penalty checklist above.
Google Penalty Recovery Strategy
Recovering from a Google penalty normally involves fixing the cause of the problem and then waiting for Google to remove any over optimization penalties or SERPS filters. To fully recover Google ranking may take around 2-3 months after all website problems are corrected, although we have seen penalty recovery in a matter of weeks following full and thorough resolution of the Google Webmaster Guidelines infringements.
The Google algorithm can automatically remove penalties if the affected website is still Google indexed. To check whether a particular website is still Google indexed, refer to our Google indexing page. If your website has been Google de-indexed and lost Page Rank, then you will need to make a Google re-inclusion request. Where the reason for the penalty is clear, it helps to provide details of any changes you've made to correct violations of the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
The best recovery strategy from any Google penalty is to thoroughly familiarize yourself with Google Webmaster Guidelines and also check the SEO Chat Forum for threads surrounding any recent Google algorithm changes and to evaluate recent changes made to your website prior to the sudden drop in Google ranking. Don't forget to check your link building strategy as poor SEO often causes Google penalties. Start by removing any reciprocal links to low quality websites, or sites having no relevance to your website theme.
Preparing for a Google Re-Inclusion (Reconsideration) Request
We recommend you start by watching the Google reconsideration tips video.
If your site has been de-indexed due to a Google penalty, correct the problem and then apply to be re-included in the Google index by submitting a Google re-inclusion request from your Webmaster Tools account. More information about this is provided in Google Webmaster Help. Google refer to this process as making a "reconsideration request" which is now submitted from your Webmaster Tools login.
How long does site reconsideration take?
By submitting a reconsideration request to Google you enter the queue for the manual review process whereby your site is manually checked for violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This can take several weeks. At the end of the process, an Inbox message is usually sent to the Webmaster to confirm that the reconsideration has been processed. This will be visible by logging into Webmaster Tools and then checking your Inbox under 'Messages'.
Gorilla Marketing (Viral Marketing)
Viral marketing and viral advertising are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of virus or computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.
The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor.
The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the unscrupulous use of astronautics on-line combined with under market advertising in shopping centres to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm. Viral marketing is a imitation which is by using social media and other channels of communication spreading the planned content aiming to reach the most efficient and friendly manner to the target audience. Briefly, the idea spread from person to person.
<b>Email Marketing</b>
E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
* sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
* sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
* adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
* Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).
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