Archive for February, 2010
February 12th, 2010 by Lisa Rosenkrantz
What is the Google Keyword Tool?
For those wishing to begin or step up a pay per click or SEO campaign, this online keyword research tool is the best available when they’re searching for relevant keywords that will help get websites found in the search engines. It enables you to explore keywords and their variations using search-based information and to generate valuable lists. You use this information to decide which keywords to bid on for advertising and/or optimizing your website.
What do you need it for?
You need quality keywords to make your site known to people who are searching on the Internet. Choosing your keywords wisely is your best bet for successful search engine marketing, but it can be a daunting task. With the invaluable data that is available to you via the keyword tool, you can quickly and easily target the best keywords for your needs. Using this free service will save you a lot of time, money and effort. Among other things, you will find out the search volume and competition level of your desired keywords, which helps determine if they are appropriate for your website and how much money they are worth in a pay per click campaign.
The search-based keyword suggestion tool can compare your website and current AdWords campaigns against actual, past Google search queries to identify any relevant keywords. You can even change certain settings, like the language or country, and get a different, more specific perspective.
How do you search?
You can do a couple of things with this keyword search tool. One option is to search using descriptive words or phrases by entering a desired term or phrase in the search field. It will yield any and all related keywords and synonyms. You can also enter the URL of the page for which you’re locating keywords, and the tool will pull out terms relative to that page, conduct a search and categorize the results. The tool is also set up so that you can export the list of keywords into an Excel spreadsheet that notes the search volume, competition level, etc. You can then analyze the data and use it for your campaign.
Using keyword tools is only the first step in building the foundation for your SEO campaign. But finding keywords isn’t enough – you have to know what to do with them. The professional SEO strategists at Web.com Search Agency can help you navigate the AdWords keyword tool and apply the information – and get you on the first page of Google. Call us at 1-877-Rank321.
Tags: google keyword tool, keyword tool
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February 12th, 2010 by Lisa Rosenkrantz
Definition
Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that targets online advertisers. In the execution of this offense, pay per click ads are clicked on to artificially increase the click through rate. Every time the ad is clicked on, the advertiser pays; thus, they are paying for nothing. Click fraud can be used to generate revenue from content match PPC ads, which give a share of their click cost to the website hosting the content. Fraudsters also drive competitors out of the market by wasting their advertising dollars on non-converting clicks, or using up a competitor’s entire daily budget in order to make ads disappear. It is enough of a problem that it is illegal in the U.S. and U.K. and considered a felony in nearly all jurisdictions. Many individuals have been arrested for this offense.
How is Click Fraud is Committed?
There is the automated type of PPC click fraud in which software is specifically designed to emulate humans’ behavior – it sends out robots or “bots” to click on paid listings. Some criminals, both competitors and affiliates, use proxy servers that make it possible for their fraudulent activity to go undetected by filters. This artificial click generation is the most difficult to combat.
There are some click fraud rings that actually hire low-cost employees to click on ads and text links as their entire job. These operations are often found in China, India and other foreign countries, though it happens right here in the U.S. as well. These groups are easier to nab, since the clicks can be traced back to their identifiable IP addresses.
Another common form of AdWords click fraud comes from tricksters establishing dummy Web addresses that display nothing but lists of recycled paid ads. When some unsuspecting Internet user clicks on these ads, marketers get billed no matter where the clicks originate from. These publishers, acting as middlemen, set it up so they get a share of these spuriously generated revenues.
What are the PPC companies doing about click fraud?
Big guns, like Google and Yahoo! are reassuring customers that there is no reason to fret because they have sophisticated algorithms in place that enable them to detect click fraud. They keep the details under wraps so illicit clickers can’t use the information to undermine the system.
To further click fraud protection, Google has also put in place a new pricing plan that is more specific about what they will charge for. Instead of just a click, certain actions are defined, such as purchases or form fill-outs. This is an excellent way for advertisers and publishers to have more control over their marketing budgets.
What should you do about click fraud?
First and foremost, to combat Google click fraud, you should pay close attention to your online campaigns throughout the year – being aware that something is amiss is the first step to preventing it from becoming a disaster. Track all your clicks and check those sites that produce high click rates but no sales or desired actions. If you suspect click fraud, don’t hesitate to contact the search engines. You are likely to be refunded.
How we can help
Call Web.com Search Agency to begin your PPC campaign and be found on the first page of Google today. We will help you combat AdSense click fraud.
Tags: click fraud, pay per click fraud
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February 12th, 2010 by Lisa Rosenkrantz
What is Link Juice?
It is a search engine optimization (SEO) “slang” term that has gone viral in recent years. Specifically, the link juice definition refers to how much benefit a link passes on or the quality of inbound links a website has. This influences a website’s ranking in the search engines. In Google, PageRank is approximately the same concept as link juice.
Why do you need to worry about link juice?
The most important goal relative to search and SEO is to have your site rank highly in the search engines, preferably in the top 10 results, for your keywords. The more quality links you have, the greater your visibility, the higher your web page rankings become and the more potential traffic you’ll get.
What makes a link juicier?
A link is considered to pass more link juice if the page from which it originates: contains relevant content to where it points, is indexed by the search engines, has a low number of links, has a good amount of authority and has a lot of link juice pointing to it.
In addition, the link itself should not have a nofollow attribute added to it, should not be a paid link and should absolutely contain anchor text that is relevant to the page it points to.
Links that do not have the above characteristics can still help a site, but they just won’t have as much link juice or be quite as beneficial.
Do all links pass juice?
Not necessarily. Keep in mind that not all links are useful to a website, so you shouldn’t go around linking your website to every other website you see. It would be better to create links only with those websites that are related to yours in order to target the appropriate audience. Also, Google does a lot of filtering, so a link’s power is never actually a given.
What are some good sources of SEO link juice?
You can get link juice from a variety of sources. You can generate much of it yourself by submitting to red-hot social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter or to social media sites like Digg and Reddit. Even though these sources are nofollowed, you can generate buzz that generates links and link juice from other websites.
There’s a lot to know when it comes to website link juice, so it’s best to get the help of a professional SEO firm like Web.com Search Agency to help you achieve the best results. Call us at 1-877-Rank321.
Tags: link juice, seo link juice
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February 11th, 2010 by Patrick Hare
One of the first disclaimers on the topic of increasing Google PageRank is that it is not necessary for SEO success. Google PageRank is based on the quality of links pointing at your site from other sites, and depends on a variety of factors such as the value of the links pointing at the sites, that are pointing at the sites, that are pointing at your site. Despite the fact that your Page Rank can go down while your rankings go up, some executives and decision makers are more concerned with PR than with actual traffic or sales. Therefore, keeping a high PR is often a political necessity for people in SEO, despite the fact that the difference between PR7 and PR5 site may be negligible when it comes to rankings.
Here are some ways you can improve (or maintain) PageRank:
- Get links from High PR sites. If you’re just trying to increase PageRank, the sites don’t have to be relevant. Another disclaimer is that Google is against buying links to inflate PageRank, so you could conceivably get banned.
- Improve your internal linking. Every internal link on your site should point back to the homepage at its absolute location. If you have some links pointing to your top level domain, and some pointing to “index.htm” then you may be shortchanging the value that interior links are passing from external sources.
- Redirect old or unused sites with link popularity. If you have legacy sites out there, redirect them to your main site. This improves the link count.
- Get More Legitimate Links. This is great for SEO, and if an executive wants to improve PageRank, getting money for link building will improve your traffic and bottom line as well.
- Make sure you aren’t blocking good pages. If your image directory is blocked from search engine spiders, or you have pages that are not of “general interest” but not confidential, you should make them available to search engines. If these pages are getting any links from outside, then some of the value should get passed back to the homepage.
One of the problems with the PageRank calculation is that it is logarithmic. A PageRank 1 site may have only a few links, a PageRank 2 site may have a few dozen, and a PageRank 3 may need thousands. However, you can also increase the PageRank of a low PR site with a single link from a more popular site! This makes any formula for PageRank improvement impossible without inside knowledge of the Google Algorithm. The PageRank formula is also a moving target, since it is based on all the pages found on the internet and how they relate to each other, so (in theory) if it took the equivalent of 100,000 links to get a PR8 back in 2004, it may take 10 million to get the same score today.
Once again, a change in PageRank should not be an occasion to panic (or even celebrate) if there is not a corresponding change in search engine rankings. You have no control over the sites that link to you. PageRank scores are also usually a few months old when they are finally updated to search engine toolbars, and there is a “true” PR score that is only known to the Google algorithm, and based on dozens of factors. If you have people in your organization that are obsessed with PageRank, then it is best to inform them of the high cost of maintaining it, and channeling that energy toward more link building and online marketing practices. At the time of this writing, MSN.com has a PR of 8, and Yahoo has a PR of 9, so money only gets you to a certain level if you don’t have a sufficient number of inbound links.
Tags: increase page rank
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February 11th, 2010 by Patrick Hare
Most online entrepreneurs end up finding about SEO accidentally, but they usually follow the same pattern to link building. First, they build a website and wonder why it isn’t getting found on search engines. Next, they read up on SEO, start with some metatags, and may get limited results. They may even add more content. At some point, they learn that Google, Bing, and Yahoo need to see links from other websites in order to give the website credibility and better rankings.
Here are a few ways to get new links to your website:
Buy Them. The fastest and most obvious way to get links. Google’s official position is that it is against people buying links to inflate PageRank. If you engage in low-quality link building schemes your site can get penalized. If you invest in high-quality link building without masking your activities, you can also get flagged. If you are trying to make money selling anything online, your competitors are probably out there buying links, and they buy more every month. There are ways to get links without being seen as a flagrant buyer of PageRank, and you can promote your site online simultaneously.
Create Link Bait. If you want to know how to get links for free, link bait is usually the best way. The problem is that you either have to make something useful or viral that is going to get repeat visits and recommendations from other netizens. This can be expensive and it doesn’t always work. If you have content that is interesting, humorous, or frequently updated, you may be creating link bait without even knowing it. One way to get links is to create controversy, because even if you’re dead wrong, people will link to your site in order to criticize it. Naturally, some lines of business don’t work well with controversy, and other link building methods are recommended. The tough thing about link bait is that you may have to “prime the pump” with PPC advertising in order to get people interested.
Build Tools and Calculators. The creation of a useful set of online tools is generally a great way to get links, and Web.com Search Agency has had success with its SEO Tools and Widgets, which are popular among DIY SEO types. People who keep coming back to use your tools also have a high likelihood of becoming customers. In our case, our tools may help define the customer’s problem, but it still takes experienced experts to build a solution to low rankings. If you have a site that helps people refinance mortgages, the ideal type of tool would be a calculator that shows people how to reduce their interest rates. One of the most successful tools of all time, the Adobe Acrobat Reader, is also the reason that Adobe has such a high number of links and usually gets a PageRank score of 10.
Tell People What They Want To Know. In the past, advice forums got links, but forums need to be maintained and scanned for spam on a regular basis. Adding white papers, procedures, and useful tips to your site is a good way to get links. Blogs, Advice and Resources sections, and news updates may help people understand a topic. Furthermore, if you’re an expert in a certain niche, you can expound on the nuances of your product or service, and you can get found by people who are looking for what you have to offer.
When people use free utilities like our link popularity checker to see how they stack up to the competition, they may start to panic. Competitors may have several thousand links pointing at their sites. However, factors like link quality, on-page SEO, and even your domain name may offer you a leg up when you embark on an optimization project. A few good links from the right places can counteract thousands of low-quality ones. Your competitor may also be getting links that aren’t relevant to the keyword you’re going after, so the actual “important” link count can be much lower. Even in highly competitive fields, there are proven methods for link building that get results, but naturally it costs a lot more to acquire links in these fields. Nonetheless, understanding the playing field helps you create a strategy for acquiring the best links, and in an expensive field like internet marketing, this can be tremendously advantageous.
Tags: how to get links
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February 9th, 2010 by Patrick Hare
Part of the problem with landing page design for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is that there is a conflict between the type of page that is likely to rank on a search engine and the type of page that a person will interact with. In the world of landing page specialists, these page types are known as reference (favored by search engines) and transactional (favored by people who want to make money online).
If you’ve ever wondered why Wikipedia consistently shows up in the top 10 search results, then the referential landing page type should be of interest. When you consider that Google’s original goal was to catalog the world’s information, and to deliver relevant results, Wikipedia goes a long way to making this possible. Its pages are full of information, which may be disputed at times, but is generally in-depth about its topic matter. As a reference landing page, Wikipedia organizes itself in a way that gets read, with a brief abstract at the top and deeper material down below. There are also images on the right if they are appropriate. For reference landing pages, the old adage that “content is king” is still true, assuming that Google, Bing, or Yahoo trust the rest of the site enough to cite its pages.
Transactional landing pages, however, are what turn visitors into buyers. A Pay-Per-Click
(PPC) landing page is almost always transactional, and has just enough information to get the customer moving. It has clear calls to action, above the fold reinforcement, and plenty of trust indicators (like HackerSafe and BBB logos) designed to reduce Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (AKA “FUD”) while encouraging the customer to start the shopping process.
When it comes to SEO, there is a conflict which is usually addressed by creating a hybrid between reference and transactional landing pages. This is done by making sure calls to action are near the top of the page, while SEO elements and reference content are closer to the bottom of the design. In a manner of speaking, the search engine should like the page enough to get the reader to visit, but the visitor should be so enchanted by the transactional calls to action that the information (which got the visitor there) is basically ignored or forgotten. A side benefit of having hybrid pages is that people who want to know more about the product or service will actually read the content and stay on the site longer, and may bookmark it. Additionally, using a hybrid page as a PPC landing page may improve your quality score because more keyword variations are being covered on the page.
Testing these hybrid pages creates a special challenge that is unavailable to the person who creates transactional landing pages especially for PPC. For one thing, A/B testing on a hybrid page raises the specter of duplicate content or cloaking, since you may be using specialized tools to present different versions of the same page. Most of the time, A/B Testing and its cousin Multivariate testing are done on pages that are not in the normal path of search engine spiders. This kind of testing can also cause problems for classic SEO types, who need to be sure that controls are in place for content and tags, so the search engine won’t be seeing too much (or tool little) keyword content relative to the title and inbound links.
The best possible solution to design for hybrid pages is to use known conversion factors from tested PPC landing pages and try to emulate that information at the top of the landing page. As a caveat, there should also be a follow-up call to action below the fold, or at the bottom of the content, so interested readers won’t jump off to another page before being reminded of the site’s value proposition.
From an SEO standpoint, referential pages will almost always have a head up in search engine rankings. Many people in web design prefer to present pages in a transactional manner, along with graphic design elements which may not be helpful for search engine spiders. SEO consultants have an obligation to educate their customers on a balanced approach to page design, since it is the sales off the website that generally justify the consultant’s continued retention. Although it is not always easy to explain that “people can’t criticize the appearance of your site if they can’t find it,” a blended approach between information and action can generally soothe the client once they see a lower bounce rate, higher quality score, or more sales as a result of an SEO strategy that brings visitors who turn into conversions.
Tags: landing page design
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February 5th, 2010 by Patrick Hare
Search Engine Optimization Training is useful in a variety of website design and development fields beyond pure SEO. Editors of newspapers with online editions have learned that an SEO-friendly article title with a demand-driven keyword focus can provide a traffic advantage in both natural and news aggregation results. Ecommerce shopping cart SEO knowledge helps programmers build web stores that get cached in Google, and when it comes to building strong internal links, SEO training may be the difference between top 5 results and a trickle of traffic from the second page.
Aside from improving your website ROI, here are some other real world uses of SEO training:
- Doing market research with the Google Keyword Tool
- Using Google Analytics to model in-store customer behavior
- Using competitor link analysis to discover potential new clients or vendors
- Analyzing competitor meta descriptions to get ideas for messaging in collateral and direct mail pieces
- Helping your independent sales contractors get an edge over their counterparts in other companies.
How do you get SEO training, without signing up for a class? Obviously, the first thing to do is head for your nearest search engine. There is a lot of information about SEO that can be learned online, from the basics to advanced techniques. The pitfall about getting all your knowledge online is that SEO techniques can spoil over time. Last year’s article about “proven SEO techniques” is probably a little stale, but anything from 5 years ago is practically toxic. Whenever possible, you should be looking for the most modern trends in SEO, and one way to do this when searching is to put the current calendar year in your search term. At the very least, you won’t be getting advice on dangerous methods like doorway pages, link exchanges, and cloaking.
Some of the best places to learn DIY SEO techniques are:
One of the standard disclaimers for any kind of SEO training is that the best way to get search engine rankings is to start with a site that people will want to see and share. You have to be a resource for your topic, even if your goal is to make money selling products. How can you do this? One way is to create original content about the item, including tips on installation, replacement, activation, and so on. If you want to get into a highly competitive field like credit card merchant account services, you could add features to your site describing the process of getting an account, what to avoid, how to get the best credit card rates, and how to link your merchant account into your online shopping cart. While everyone else is just listing credit card machines and discount rates, you now have an advantage because you’ve got original, helpful content that people will want to point links at.
Finally, it should be pointed out that basic SEO training is no substitute for in-depth experience on multiple SEO accounts. A large part of becoming an “SEO Expert” involves overcoming challenges that can crop up at any time, and staying current with search engine algorithm changes. Unless you’re into self-service SEO for the long haul, retaining a professional SEO agency can represent a significant cost savings over the time and energy it takes to stay current and avoid search engine penalties. At Web.com Search Agency, our account managers are continuously learning new SEO techniques just to stay current, and we make sure to pass on a lot of information to our customers as well. This kind of “light training” allows us to help customers identify opportunities for traffic and sales growth. As a result, the SEO training we give to our customers allows them to grow their businesses in a cost effective manner, while giving them an unparalleled understanding of the online business marketplace.
Tags: seo training
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February 3rd, 2010 by Jessica Runberg
Anyone who’s SEO-savvy knows that a big key to increasing your exposure in search engines is to get the Web crawlers to visit your site, and to do it often. When visited, spiders create a site cache to help them archive what’s on the page. This cache, or snapshot, of a Web page stores the information exactly as it appeared on the date the site was crawled.
Once cached and included in the index, the spiders return periodically to see what – if anything – has changed. The old versus new comparison is a quick and easy way for the search engines to update their archives and adjust their rankings accordingly.
The more frequently you update your site, the more often the spiders will visit and note changes that will help your site rank higher in the search engines. Search engines use the content stored in the website cache to determine if the page is a good match for the query in question; so unless you’ve been crawled recently, your changes won’t be noted.
What does this mean for your website? Your cached Web pages are the secret to your online success! Any updates you make to your site are meaningless from an SEO perspective until the site is archived. Since there’s no set schedule that the spiders “crawl the Web,” getting the engines to take note of website updates is often a bit of a waiting game. Depending on the frequency your site is updated, your site may be crawled as often as every day or two, but it can sometimes take a week or longer.
Why does Google cache pages? Basically, it delivers results by comparing the content on your site with that of every other site it can find. By caching your content into its database, Google is then able to deliver up your website for thousands of different keyword queries. Since Google has to know what is on each site before it can deliver results to a customer, it periodically caches Web pages in order to make sure the end user gets the right information. Periodic caching also ensures that new content on the site is reflected in the search engine index. One of the other great things about cached information is that it allows the search engine to judge your site on its own merits, as opposed to using information compiled in directories.
When was the last time your site was crawled? Visiting a cached version of your site is easy; just click on the cached button that appears along with your page’s search engine listings. To learn more, give us a call at 1-877-Rank-321.
Tags: cached websites, web cache
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February 3rd, 2010 by Jessica Runberg
Want to know what people are saying about your products or services at this exact moment? Now you can thanks to the Google Trends Tool, which can be found at Google.com/Trends.
Google Trends is kind of like that person in your neighborhood who knows everything about everyone. All you have to do is ask! Here how it works: Google analyzes a portion of the searches it receives relative to the rest of the searches on the Internet. In doing so, it’s able to calculate what the top searches are at a given point in time and provide accompanying details such as what city most of these searches originated from or when searches for the term in question peaked. This feature is also referred to as Google Hot Trends.
Google Trends for websites also includes Hot Searches, which lends insight into the social media world. Hot Searches keeps track of the latest buzz in blogs, Facebook and Twitter updates, news and more. It’s updated by the second for a pulse on what’s happening right now. You can choose to look at the aggregated data for general buzz or type in a specific keyword or topic for the latest.
From a marketing perspective, these tools are a goldmine. You can keep an eye on your company’s products or services, or even your competitors. The tool also makes it easy to respond to customer complaints or concerns as they happen. If you sell products or services nationwide, you can gain insight as to precisely where in the country people are searching for your keywords. The sky is the limit!
Learn about Google website trends and other ways to stay in-the-know by contacting Web.com Search Agency today! 1-877-Rank-321.
Tags: Google Trends
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February 3rd, 2010 by Jessica Runberg
Want to find something on the Internet? All you have to do is type a keyword or two in a search engine – and voila! – thousands or millions of websites with potential matches appear. Instead of having to sift through each one to determine which of these pages might be most useful to you, the search engines do all of the time consuming and monotonous work for you, ranking the results in order of relevance to your query within a matter of seconds.
There are many types of search engines, but the most popular by far are crawler-based engines. Crawler-based engines visit websites and make copies of the content in their index for quick and easy reference. When a user types in a search query, these engines scan their indexes to find the most relevant and authoritative websites that represent a quality match. Google, Yahoo! and Bing are examples of this type of search engine.
Other variations of crawler-based websites include scraper sites that compile results from other search engines, such as Dogpile, and question-and-answer engines such as Ask.com that allow you to pose your query in the form of a question and receive the results in a relevant answer form. Human-powered directories such as the online version of Yellow Pages or Dex allow businesses to submit their websites manually to the directory for easy category retrieval by industry, business, location or other variable.
Despite various niche types of search engine platforms, Google, Yahoo! and Bing remain the big players in the search engine landscape. And from an SEO perspective, these are most certainly the biggies for increasing traffic and conversions. Ranking highly in these engines, especially Google, is a surefire recipe for success.
Want to learn how your website can rank highly in the major search engines? Give us a call at 1-877-Rank-321 to speak to an SEO strategist today!
Tags: Search engine types, search engines
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