Oct
31
Yahoo Updates Their Index
Filed Under Yahoo Updates | 1 Comment
Yahoo’s index has changed. They had notified webmasters in September that they had made upgrades to their algorithm to go along with the new Yahoo Search Assist. It took a couple of weeks for them to roll out the update, but there are significant ranking changes in their SERP’s.
What Has Changed In Yahoo?
One of the more significant changes I noticed was there are more blog type pages in their natural SERP’s. Yahoo has always been behind Google when it comes to recognizing blogs as solid content providers. This blog has never had many pages in Yahoo’s SERP’s, but today I noticed over 75 posts that cracked the top 20 for its keywords. This is good news for social network marketing based search engine optimization strategies.
One thing that I have noticed in comparing Yahoo to Google is that Yahoo’s SERP’s have improved and in many cases are better than Google. The reason why everyone used Google in the first place was the relevancy of their results. Over the last year Google’s results have been watered down with ad-only, weak content sites. Yahoo has tightened up the Inktomi engine and let in fresh content sites. They don’t give as much juice to Wikipedia either which is a good sign.
The bottom line is that except for ASK, the major search engines have all suffered from content spam and are not as relevant as they used to be just 3 years ago. From a marketing standpoint it is more important than ever to utilize social network marketing strategies and to follow Solid SEO Guidelines.
A final note: Yahoo’s spider which is called Slurp is still based upon Inktomi. Meta tags are very important to Yahoo, more so than Google. Your site’s description can greatly affect your placement. With WordPress there is a plugin called Head Meta Description which allows you to control the meta description, but on other websites it is important to optimize your description for Yahoo. If you don’t have a proper meta description Yahoo will resort to the one that is in the Yahoo Directory which is BAD. If that has happened to your site you can apply the following meta tag for both Yahoo and Google’s directory which is just as lame, the ODP:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp,noydir” />
Be sure to check your meta tags if you expect to have any placement in Yahoo.
Another problem with Yahoo is their ping service. I have noticed that many Site Explorer API’s are not functioning anymore. None of the WordPress systems I maintain are able to update Yahoo through ping or XML-RPC. If you are unsure of what XML-RPC or ping services are read my post: Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing for an explanation and a list of ping services.
I believe that these are just some bugs related to their Search Assist update and the recent shuffling of their index.
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Oct
27
Google Page Rank Goes Up For Some Sites
Filed Under Google Updates | 5 Comments
This morning the new Google Page Rank Update was unveiled and many sites that I manage rose in PR. Get Found Now and it’s blog rose from a 3 to a 4 and all of my other clients that use WordPress also saw an increase in PR. This is coming on the heels of Google’s Last Page Rank Update Which Hit Sites Selling Links Hard.
I am still not convinced that Google’s public Page Rank matters very much in the SERP’s, but we shall see over the next couple of weeks if the index reflects these changes to PR. I certainly hope that it does since all my sites rose in PR. Whether PR matters or not, by sticking to solid SEO practices and Search Engine Optimization Guideline We All Must Follow your sites will be as successful as mine. The trick is to not do anything tricky. Post relevant unique content, use solid keyword stuffing tactics, use deep link navigation and obtain on-topic inbound links and you will do fine.
The fact that this update rolls out within a week of a negative update is indicative of Google trying to appease webmasters clamoring for justice in the SERP’s. It remains to be seen how our placement will be affected with the new PR.
Along with the PR update there was also some of the dancing you would expect within the SERP’s. The main index has not had a major update in a while and I suspect that we are 2 to 3 weeks away from an index overhaul. The last time Google updated PR, 15 days later there was a major overhaul of not only some elements of their algorithm, but of the SERP’s as well. I believe that something similar will take place again.
Everyone by now should have a baseline of where there top 100 keywords rank in Google. I use Rank Tracker as my tool of choice for creating SERP’s reports. I will be running reports daily on all of the sites I manage and will keep you all informed of any major index changes.
Oct
26
Google Page Rank Update Hits Sites Hard
Filed Under Google Updates | 1 Comment
The wait for Google’s Page Rank update is finally over, but the results are not what many expected. Staying true to their threat that they will be penalizing websites that sell links, they have knocked some pretty heavy sites on the head. This is one more example of Google eliminating competition in online paid advertising. While this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that follows Matt Cutt’s blog, it still is more evidence that Google Is Not Your Friend.
Again they are expending energy on creating a monopoly in online advertising and not doing anything to make their SERP’s better.
Does Page Rank Matter Anyway?
There are a lot of my peers that believe as I do: Page Rank means less now than ever. This is a bold statement, but I think it is true, as far as “public” page rank goes. Yes there is a difference to the little green bar on your Google Toolbar and what Google really uses to gauge sites. In fact of all the sites that were targeted in “Google’s bitch slap” as some are calling it, none have seen a decrease in placement as far as I can see. Several high rollers in the blogosphere that were hit by a 3 PR drop haven’t lost any traffic either.
I am more inclined to believe that this is a warning shot across the bow of sites that are selling links, more than an actual real penalty like their earlier 1 to 30 drop that affected some sites a year or so ago.
If you actively sell links, you better make sure your links are both stealth (not part of a syndication network like Text Link Ads) and are relevant to your site’s content theme. When I buy links, I don’t choose sites that have off-topic links. I also only buy links as a last resort for a client’s site that has gotten off to a rocky start or are trying to expand their keyword set.
All in all a look at the SERP’s shows more and more sites ranking in the top 10 for high powered keywords that have PR in the 2’s and 3’s. A lot of people are freaking out about this, but I am counseling my clients to remain calm and stick to our plans which rarely include paid links. The best thing to do now is stick to the SEO Guidelines We All Need To Follow.
Oct
24
A few years back I was filling out my resume. It was very difficult to explain what exactly it was that I did. SEO was a term that hadn’t quite hit the limelight. In fact searches on Monster and other career sites yielded no results for SEO or search engine optimization jobs at all. Internet Marketing had a few listings, but they were limited to pyramid schemes or other nonsense.
Today the job market knows what SEO is and there are plenty of listings for people that are experienced in both search engine optimization and search engine marketing. The problem now is that what people like me do is hardly covered by these categories and again I have no easy answer for the question “what do you do?” My kids also have a hard time in school answering “what does your daddy do?”
With the addition of social network marketing, Web 2.0 applications, server technologies, podcasting, blogging and other next generation skills added to my resume, it is harder to say in a few words what it is I do. I guess the best description would be - Internet Presence Management. That pretty much encompasses what I do, I mange online businesses Internet presence. Every aspect of what they do online and how they do it from the server to the website, from traffic analysis to usability studies my peers and I are Internet Presence Managers!
Now that I have a title all figured out I can finish that resume. Not that I really am looking for a job, but I like to see what is out there. I have gotten many clients by answering ads in Monster and careers.com. One of the major changes in my industry is that companies are looking to keep their SEO in-house as opposed to outsourcing it. Companies that live and die by their presence within organic SERP’s really need someone full time to help them make decisions that pertain to their Internet Presence.
A company that relies on search engines for their business must take SEO into consideration in every single business decision that they make.
Search Engine Optimization Guidelines For the 21st Century
SEO today is a lot different than 1999. Pay Per Click is not an option for a lot of small companies in large markets due to click fraud and ad-only sites spending lots of money filtering traffic through their spam doorway sites (read my article PPC Is Ruining the Web for more info). Legitimate companies are having a harder time than ever penetrating the SERP’s. To combat scamming spam, we all need to follow several guidelines to rise above the muck in the SERP’s.
- Take SEO Into Consideration - Search Engine Optimization needs to be thought about in every business decision that your company makes. Most marketing departments have at least one SEO expert, but SEO must be taken into consideration by executives, programmers, graphic designers and web developers as well. Every decision from personnel to what type of web server your sites are hosted on, needs to keep SEO in mind.
- Keywords Matter - by now you all know that SEO starts with keyword discovery. While a lot of experts rely on tools to make keyword lists, I prefer to use the interview process to create and organize keywords. Knowing what your potential customers are going to type into the search engines is the first step in site development and marketing plans.
- Social Network Marketing - now more than ever Web 2.0 or social network marketing is taking the drivers seat in SEO strategies. Mainstream sites that are not embracing Web 2.0 will be left behind by their competitors that are using it. Read my post Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing for more insight into these strategies. There are a whole set of guidelines just for Web 2.0 marketing. For this post I will touch on a few of the more important concepts.
- Participate In Markets That Apply To Your Business - It is important to market your site in relevant communities. Rather than going for exposure everywhere, stay targeted. In online marketing more is usually better, but sometimes a sniper rifle will do more damage than a machine gun.
- Keep It Real - this is especially true if you are utilizing blogs as your primary social marketing outlet. Promote yourself, not your products in your blog. If you do it right, people will follow your links and find your products or services easily. They don’t require blatant promotion, in fact that can turn a visitor off more often than not.
- Learn About Your Community - you don’t want to rush right into a social network and self-promote without showing the community that you have something to offer first. You need to get experienced in your marketplace before posting in forums or marketing in social media sites.
- Stay On Topic - don’t dilute your content with multiple topics about everything under the sun. Stay focused on what you do best, write about what you know. This is particularly important when trying to obtain inbound links. Good content is the best way to create a buzz and get solid inbound links.
- Get Those Links - inbound links are the best way to promote your site. They are also the only way to rank high in the SERP’s and stay there. With Social Network Marketing it is easier than ever to obtain links. That being said the reality if the situation is a little different than it used to be. One way inbound links are not easily obtained anymore. Unless you are paying for links or are creating buzz through excellent content, it is harder to get those one way links. Reciprocal links have less of an impact that they used to as well. So why am I contradicting myself? One minute I am saying it is easier than ever to get links, then the next statement I am saying it is harder than ever to get one way links. The answer is the manner in which you can get links. There are more avenues than ever through social network marketing.
- Online Press Releases - here is one avenue Google has not cried about when it comes to paying for links. By using an online distribution network, your release has the potential to gain hundreds of links from a well conceived press release. Optimized Press Releases are a great way to build buzz and links.
- Syndicate Your Content Through RSS - with the advent of RSS Syndication Services there are more ways than ever to get your content on other sites. An RSS link is by far the most powerful link your site can obtain. Another high profile site that puts your feed on it, will boost your rankings faster than any other method. A managed content syndication service will greatly increase your exposure and bring both traffic and links.
- Viral Video Marketing - with sites like You Tube your videos have a great chance to get syndicated leading to inbound links. By creating how-to videos for your products and instructional videos for your services you can say a thousand words with one video and gain exposure and links. Many sites need to educate their customers about their products and services. Video is the best way to get your point across. Remember to stay on topic!
- Pingbacks, Trackbacks and Other Blog Goodies - by having a blog on your primary website you are able to keep the spiders coming back. If you don’t have a blog yet read my post about SEO and WordPress to get started. Blogs are a powerful way to communicate with your customers, but also allow you stay updated with the search engines.
Combining these strategies into your marketing plan will insure success, but don’t think for a second that it will be easy. SEO is a full time commitment that needs to take priority over everything else!
Oct
19
Yep you read right! Click fraud and Viagra is the title of this post. What do the two have together other than keeping a lot of people up at night? “Buy Viagra” is one of the hottest keywords as far as Google AdSense money goes. A site hosting Viagra ads can rake in $10 to $35 per click through Google AdSense. While this post is talking about click fraud, you should know that Viagra type keywords are used by a lot of professionals to gauge Google organic SERP’s.
It is also going to serve as one of the examples I will be using to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Google’s SPAM filters, how their SERP’s are being watered down and spoofed by spammers and how black hat webmasters are raking in a fortune through click fraud.
This is an important concept to understand: how legitimate websites are getting beaten out of hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars a day by publisher click fraud. There are two different types of ads from Google that have two different types of clients:
- Google AdWords - These are ads and keywords that companies buy and bid on. They are mostly text links that appear within Google, but also can appear on other sites through AdSense. People that purchase Google AdWords keyword text ads are advertisers.
- Google AdSense - These are advertiser’s keyword text ads that appear on sites other than Google. People that put Google ads on their sites are called publishers. When advertisers bid on keywords, the top 4 or 5 will be spread out to the sites within Google’s AdSense network that have enough keywords to qualify for those ads. This is where the most damaging and least talked about type of click fraud takes place. Our example today about Viagra and the doorway and ad-only sites is just one of the big money industries that is getting hammered with click fraud.
I am not going to give scumbags the blueprint on how to both spoof Google into placing ads that are not relevant to the site, nor am I going to explain in great detail the simple technology I used to make fraudulent clicks on my own account.
Before I dig in, my post on how PPC Is Ruining The Internet yielded a comment from Neil at Fraudulent Clicks a site that deals with click fraud and has some good info on how to identify it. He had stated that “AdWords suppliers can spot content network fraud quite easily”, a bold statement indeed. I unfortunately disagree, and decided to run a couple of tests to prove that I could wrack up a slew of clicks and have it appear to the advertiser as normal traffic. I have both a Google AdWords account and a separate Google AdSense account which is how I was able to prove that click fraud in NOT easily detected.
The search world often gauges terms related to Viagra due to its popularity in worldwide searches as well as the high price that it brings to publishers. If you want to know anymore about this take a look at one of my friends’ site Syndk8 which is running a test on “buy viagra” SERP’s. (And yes I just participated in that test by putting in the link : ))
How Publisher Click Fraud Is A Million Dollar Industry
Now that everyone understands what publisher click fraud is, I am going to briefly tell you what I did. I put some money into my AdWords account and bid on some low-cost keywords about data backup and put up a one-page wonder sub domain site called crash recovery systems and used some scripts I downloaded off the Internet that allowed me to put 6 Google Ad boxes along with bogus text about disaster recovery I blatantly scraped from another site.
That is the first part of publisher click fraud. Taking a webpage and putting on more than 2 allowed ad units and spoofing the AdWords server into serving high cost text ads that have nothing to do with the domain. These are in direct conflict with Google’s Terms and Conditions:
Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful information about the product or service in your ad. For instance, direct users to the page where they can buy the advertised product, rather than to a page with a description of several products.
Originality:Feature unique content that can’t be found on another site.
Provide substantial information. If your ad does link to a page consisting mostly of ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional, unique content.
At this time I have taken the site down just in case someone rats on me and gets my account disabled, but I captured the screen with Camtasia so I could put up a video later on showing the site and ad units it served.
The next thing I did was go onto my Kubuntu machine and loaded Ice Weasel (this is another name for FireFox) that uses a proxy server that utilizes .edu domains. I went to the site and clicked on MY ad. I then quickly chose another server in the list, refreshed my browser, cleared the cookies and went back to the site and clicked the ad again. The whole process took less than a minute.
I did this a few times then went into my AdSense account ad saw that I had made $16.00 at 12 cents per click on the text clicks and 19 cents by using the search box and clicking on my ad in the SERP’s. In fact the search AdSense is even easier to spoof because you are going through yet another interface. By setting up multiple entry points I could have done this all day long and wracked up a hundred or so dollars on a 12 cent click. This can be done to the extreme on personal injury lawyers sites, Viagra and pharmaceutical sites to bring in even more profit.
Now I know my detractors are going to say that advertisers will recognize sites that don’t convert leads or have an inordinate amount of clicks, but a good webmaster knows how to cloak sites and could easily build 10 or 20 doorway pages on different sub domains, hide them and make calls to the ads through proxies and even simulate interest traffic. Interest traffic is a site visitor that looks at more than 2.5 pages in at least 2 minutes of surfing. I was easily able to simulate interest in the site by clicking on links filling out forms. When you are getting a few dollars per click it doesn’t take a genius to know that faking interest on a site can easily spoof the fraud filters.
When I went back into my AdWords account and looked at the analytics, there really wasn’t any apparent click fraud, the traffic looked normal and so did the behavior. Publishers that do this will have multiple sites and many ways to simulate legitimate traffic.
There is only one way to eliminate publisher click fraud. Google MUST remove doorway and ad-only sites. Going back to the Viagra example, a search for “Viagra” yields these results:
The two red arrows are 2 ad-only sites that are in the top 10 of Google for a major search! Look at the web.archive content. It is total nonsense! How can this be? Google needs to focus on getting spam and publisher fraud sites out of the index. Rather than declaring war on paid links, Google should be cleaning up its act.
Oct
16
Why PPC Is Ruining The Web
Filed Under Pay Per Click Advertising | 14 Comments
Everywhere you go on the web you see pay per click ads. They are cluttering up pages and overshadowing the content you are trying to find. It used to be flashy banner ads that were the bane of the Internet, now Google Ads are taking up valuable web properties and making it harder for users to find what they are looking for. Text ad boxes can fill up to 30% of the screen real estate on some sites, and in a lot of cases they are appearing at the top of content pages and therefore BECOMING the content. The ads are what crafty webmasters are now using as the point to which their traffic is driven to.
This is the exact opposite of what search engines like Google preach, yet they are one of the biggest purveyors of text ad boxes with their AdSense program. It is not just the cluttering, the cost per click is being driven up by ad-only sites and are often denizens of click-fraud. Advanced practices like online proxy servers and cookie flushing plugins give AdSense site owners the ability to click on their own ads anonymously. This type of action and fraud is not easily apparent to Google since browsers like FireFox make it easy for users to hide their IP and online identity.
Pay Per Click Problems On The Internet
The major issues that involve pay per click can be broken down into two categories:
- Usability Problems - these issues revolve around how PPC ads are cluttering sites and making it harder for users to find answers. The usability problems are looked at from a user standpoint.
- Advertiser Problems - these issues are with the ads themselves. Click fraud, over priced keywords and low conversion rates are covered here.
Pay Per Click Usability Problems
We have already talked about how these ads are cluttering up sites and are making it difficult to find legitimate content. Sites that are ad-only are slowly taking over placement from legitimate, content oriented sites. The more that sites fill up their spaces with text ad boxes, the less real content can take the limelight.
A content oriented website must follow website usability rules to be successful. By putting AdSense ads in prevalent positions, a greedy webmaster is making it harder for users to navigate and find the products and services that they are looking for. Real content is being confused with paid ads. These types of sites are looking for quick money, not return visitors. The only way to stop this is to leave these sites when you come upon them. They are parasites and make honest hard working legitimate webmasters spend more time and money than we should. They are in direct conflict with Google’s policies, yet Google does nothing about it. It is up to us to not give them any credence by NOT CLICKING ON PAID ADS!
Advertiser PPC Problems
People that spend money on pay per click ads are not getting the return on investment (ROI) that they did just a couple of years ago. The reasons for this are many. The more experienced a web user is, the less likely they are to click on sponsored or paid results in the SERP’s. They are even less likely to click on them on other sites that use AdSense. That leaves less experienced users who are much less likely to convert into a lead or a sale and click fraud.
Click fraud is a huge problem for both publishers and advertisers. In case you don’t know the difference, an advertiser is a website that buys paid ads, a publisher is the site on which the paid ad is hosted on. Both parties can be victims to click fraud. Advertisers can have their ads clicked on by their competitors who want to drive them out of the bidding or just want to cost the advertiser money. This is the type of click fraud that is more well known. Google spends millions in click fraud reimbursement when advertisers can bring them proof that their ads have been clicked on in a fraudulent manner. The thing is, Google doesn’t reimburse money, they just give credit to the advertisers account, so the cycle just begins again.
The more prevalent and often less discussed type of click fraud comes from the publisher. Sites that are ad-only are more likely to click on their own ads and cost advertisers money. Google has a very hard time tracking this type of fraud thanks to the privacy technology that exists. I can spoof anybody using FireFox. A site or Google will have no idea what my IP is, what OS I am using or even where I am geographically. I am not a hacker and don’t know anything about programming, but I can hide my identity. These ad-only sites that live on click fraud have many resources available to them. There are keyword sites and services that you can buy that will give you a list of the highest paid keyword clicks on the Internet. They get updated daily.
When you see sites that are sub domains with no relevance to the keyword phrase, more than likely they are a fraud. An example would be: new-york-injury-attourney.somethingalltogetherdifferent.con. These sites will have little content, just enough to spoof the Google AdWords server enough to show ads for injury lawyers in new York City. Keywords having to do with personal injury are good for $25 to $50 a click in LA and New York.
If you run across these types of sites, don’t click on their links, leave! If you are an advertiser, research your keywords in Google and make a list of bogus ad-only sites. You can add them to the filter in AdWords. Be wary of any click charges that come outside of the true SERP’s. Make claims to Google when your traffic is not converting or if your analytics don’t match up to the clicks.
The only way we can do anything about this is to not go on ad-only sites. If they don’t make money, they will eventually go away. Maybe someday Google will adhere to their own policies and declare war on spam sites and ad-only pages.
Oct
15
Google Is Not Your Friend!
Filed Under Google Updates | 15 Comments
I know that is quite a statement - Google is not your friend. In fact while they forge the perception that they are this hip and cool bunch of guys and gals that got started in their garage, the fact is, they run their business with the same imperialistic techniques as the evil empire Microsoft. Google can be very convincing in how they operate, not as an empire out to rule the world, but as a lovable group out to make the world and the Internet a better place for all.
Google’s business tactics are down right scary, as is the amount of private data they are gathering about us and our websites. I am highly concerned that they are applying the data they are gathering through the toolbar, analytics, iGoogle, Gmail and the Webmaster Center and using it against site owners. Their so-called “war on paid links” is a perfect example of how Google is weeding out the competition. Anybody who owns a site and is selling links on it, is a competitor of Google, which is why they are devoting so much energy to stopping paid links. It has nothing to do with the watering down of the index or spoofing the index. Rather, it’s all about money - their money and our money.
If they are so concerned with the nature of things on the web, why don’t they stop allowing sites that have no viable content to place Google Ads on them? There is nothing worse than wasting time searching for something and getting caught in a loop of paid advertising sites that just link to other paid sites through Google Ads. You all know what I am talking about. More and more of these phony websites are getting into the index. What’s worse is that they are allowed to compete for ad space with legitimate companies and drive the cost per click up without delivering any actual content. We’ve all wasted a lot of time searching for products and weeding through the tangle of ad only sites.
So what are we to do about it? Google accounts for 65% of my referrer traffic. Even though I have no ads on this site and my revenue comes from providing services and not from my website, how would I be able to feed my kids if I lost my traffic from Google? Like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, Google is an all-seeing, all powerful overseer of the Internet and it’s either their way or the highway. My biggest problem with Google is the single-mindedness over paid links.
I agree that links to online gambling or casinos on a site about cat food is bad, but who are they to penalize both the advertiser and the publisher when a legitimate on-topic paid link deal is done? What’s worse is the manner in which they police paid links, by having other webmasters nark out their competitors in Google Webmaster Center. What stops a low placed website owner from snitching on a higher placed competitor just to hurt their placement?
Google’s so-called “war on paid links” is just another way for black-hat SEO to win over the hard working guys that optimize their sites, write solid content and use aggressive link strategies. It’s harder than ever to pick up links. In fact, reciprocal linking has also lost weight in the Google algorithm. So what are we supposed to do to earn links? Unless you post articles about Britney Spears, it’s unlikely that a website about network topology is going to generate lots of “buzz”.
I am a firm believer in paid links from relevant sites as well as on-topic paid posts by bloggers. Google should not take on the role as the Internet police. People like me that use paid linking should not be punished for making a content exchange that involves money. As long as the content is relevant, Google should back off. It’s time that we see Google for what they are - the enemy. The only way we can strike back is to stop paying them. If everyone took down their ads, stopped clicking on ads, and didn’t buy ads for just one day, Google would get a very strong message to back off! Just one day of lost revenue would certainly wake them up to the fact that their “paid link war” is bogus and we aren’t going to take it!
Oct
8
The major search engines are in an advertising war. They are in constant battle for advertising dollars and their market share can mean the difference between life and death or millions in revenue. The question is; “how do search engine advertisement wars affect my placement”?
The answer is “A Lot”!
The manner in which Google, Yahoo and Live go about their business can not only spell life and death for them, but for your site as well. All three of the majors are large publicly traded companies that need advertisement revenue to survive. The latest market share breakdowns show a widening gap between Yahoo and Google, but also show their commitment to bleed every cent out of their advertisers.
A new report by comScore Media Metrix is stating that the 4 majors, Google, Yahoo, Live and AOL (yeah AOL, I am wondering where ASK is and why it isn’t considered a major engine) have all seen an increase in audience, but a decline in Time On Site. The exception is Google which actually had an increase, but I believe that increase is BS. They are taking into consideration search tool bar traffic as well as the new iGoogle home page. In fact this report is missing important factors such as RSS and the advertising opportunities that are now arising within feeds.
Another factor is the amount that these engines are spending on Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube (Google) and Flickr (Yahoo), but again these reporters are missing the 100 million spent on FeedBurner by Google and how their total control over RSS and the advertising that goes in the feeds will allow Google to dominate yet another market share. To add your AdSence code into your FeedBurner feed you have to be invited to do it. This is very similar to Google’s invitation only GMail ad campaign. They want to make you seem special in getting to put ads in your feed, just like you were “special” to get a GMail account.
So Google is the 500 pound gorilla in the search engine room and making their advertising space larger and larger to accomodate more marketing inventory. By doing so they are also selling out the natural or organic side of search, which is why so many of us used Google in the first place. The second that there are ads on iGoogle, that will be it for me!
All the reports and Metrics are fine for advertisers that spend big money, but how does it effect us normal people? The truth is, the advertising trends are much less relevant to a site owner than the changes in how search engine results pages (SERP’s) are being put together. All the majors have instituted advanced media, news, video and user-generated content into the SERP’s. THIS is what we need to stay focused on. How to obtain placement in the new world order of multimedia SERP’s.
Google has Universal Search, Yahoo has Search Assist, Live was created with Web 2.0 in mind (yes Microsoft actually got a leg up on the Internet for once) and ASK just unveiled its new multimedia search program. In fact you should give ASK a try when searching for news or media. Its search is in my opinion the best out there. The Teoma search algorithm is nearly as good as Google used to be, and it is very difficult to spoof Teoma the way Google can be baited and stuffed. This leads to more relevant search results on ASK then on either Google or Yahoo. I also like ASK’s ad space. It’s not so much the search engine, but their partner sites that make ASK a good buy. Excite, Bloglines, iWon, and Evite are just a few of the media spaces that are driven by Teoma.
All in all, the best thing you can do is to have as much Web 2.0 applications as possible in your Internet Presence. Social Network Marketing is not a fad, it is the future. More and more people are getting their content driven to them, rather than going out and finding it. To leverage those users, your site must have an RSS backbone and be media conscience. If your site doesn’t have a blog, get one, now! Take the time to plant your RSS feeds, articles and site. Avoid paid directories and be careful not to buy links from sites that are not relevant to your content.
Related Posts:
- Changing Face Of Google - Universal Search Explained - post about Universal search and how it will effect your website.
- Yahoo Update - Search Assist - Yahoo’s Search Assist changes the SERP’s and how users use them.
- RSS Brings The News To You - Overview of how users are having content driven to them, and not going out and searching for it.
- RSS Real Simple Syndication Overview - Everything you need to know about RSS.
- Social Network Marketing - Web 2.0 Explained - How to leverage Web 2.0 on your site.
- Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing - Overview of Web 2.0 SEO and how they come together in a powerful online marketing combo.
Oct
3
Yahoo Update - Search Assist
Filed Under Yahoo Updates | 6 Comments
Yahoo is joining the party with its new “Search Assist“. Google’s Universal Search and to an extent the new Microsoft Live Search have been intermixing the SERP’s with more than just web page results. There are two ways to look at this trend, from a user standpoint and from a SEO standpoint. For the most part as a user I like Universal Search, especially with the added functionality of personalized searching through iGoogle. From an SEO viewpoint I like all this because it validates what I have been telling my clients for years “get with Web 2.0, Social Network Marketing, multimedia and not just SEO”. Read Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing for my philosophy on Web 2.0 and SEO.
How Yahoo’s Search Assist Will Change The SERP’s
By following in the footsteps of Google’s Universal Search, Yahoo is giving more credence to Social Network Marketing and multimedia content, as well as giving more weight to user generated content than it ever has before. Read my post The Changing Face Of Google - Universal Search Explained for more details on what Universal Search is.
While I do cover usability in this blog, it is from the webmaster standpoint. How to best get your site set up for users and lead conversion. That being said, this post is going to cover how Yahoo’s Search Assist is going to effect your placement, and what you can do to take advantage of it. Like I said with Universal Search, if you do things like me, in other words you blog and have multimedia going on like videos and podcasts you will be fine. These new Web 2.0 centered searches are looking for fresh content sources, and reward sites that put out fresh content with increased weight in Yahoo and PR in Google (if they ever get around to updating page rank that is).
OK so what is Search Assist and why should you care? I think the biggest effect Search Assist will have is on how users search on Yahoo. When using Yahoo’s Search Assist, the top row of advertisements or sponsored results are in some cases gone! The natural SERP’s are at the top and the ads are on the right. This is going to appeal to a lot of experienced searchers who will avoid paid listings like the plague. I have found that drilling down into the concepts or links within the Search Assist will eliminate the top ads. My feeling is this is a glitch and they will get those ads back in. My beef with Yahoo has always been the prominence of paid or sponsor links in the SERP’s. I personally don’t trust sites that are either so new that they aren’t in the organic SERP’s, or that are older but don’t have any links to them. That doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling especially when I’m looking to exchange money online.
The graphic below is a search for “data recovery” without the Search Assist activated:
The red arrows show the tab that you use to activate Search Assist as well as the non-paid organic SERP’s location without the Search Assist. The tab opens the window which supposedly helps figure out your “intent”. That is what all the search engine people are calling their intuitive search updates. They think they can glean a users intent by certain keywords and possible search history like Google does in the Personalized Search.
If Yahoo feels that you are having problems finding what you are looking for, the Search Assist box will “automagically” appear. That isn’t my term, blame Tim Mayer on the Yahoo Search Blog where they talk about Search Assist. Below is a screenshot of the Search Assist in action for “hard drive data recovery”:
Where the link finger is, that’s the new Yahoo Search Assist. The fact that it is “exploring concepts” and placing media related and user written content in its search matrix, is very good for sites that embrace Web 2.0 and SEO. Also note that the organic content is at the top and no ads appear, except on the right hand side. There are usually at least 4 prominent ads for that term, so the organic listings are now in full view!
Using Search Assist Output when Your Blog Is Part Of A Website And Not A Stand Alone Site
If your blog is part of an existing domain then you have an opportunity to really take advantage of these changes and use them to your advantage. The key is to plan your content properly so your posts are linking in to the home page of your primary site with your top keywords in the anchor text. When you are blogging about a subject covered by sub pages to your home page, then link to them in your posts. If you are unsure of what I mean by sub pages, read my post on Website Linking Strategies which explains links and pass through ratio (now called “link juice” by the masses).
By using a foundation of marketing pages on your core website, you can use the blog to promote those pages with posts. In return you can also link to your posts from the website pages. The best solution is to actually have your blogs feed appear on your foundation pages. I use CaRP Evolution to turn RSS to HTML as well as adding XML-RPC and ping services into the header of static non-blog pages. I have been testing these tactics on a couple of websites and so far the results have been excellent.
By incorporating dynamic content into static pages, and using your blog as a promotional tool, your site will stand a much better chance of appearing in SERP’s that are flavored with Yahoo’s Search Assist and on Google’s Universal Search.
Using Search Assist Output when Your Blog Is A Stand Alone Website
If a blog is your entire website, read my article WordPress SEO Promoting WordPress Pages with Posts for more insight on using solid SEO strategies for building foundation pages within your blog for promotion. These tactics along with the inherent RSS, ping and XML-RPC in WordPress will insure that your site gets the exposure within these assisted search tools from Live, Yahoo and Google. Obviously you will still need incoming links and content to keep the spiders coming to your site and ranking it high in the SERP’s.
Looking at Yahoo Search Assist from a site owner standpoint, there isn’t a lot you can do other than maintain good practices to offset the changing search engine indexes. By using all the tools that WordPress has to offer, or keeping your static site updated and fresh, you will at least have a fighting chance to gain more exposure. Embrace social network marketing so all your traffic source eggs are not in one basket!
Oct
2
WordPress 2.3 Changes
Filed Under WordPress SEO | Leave a Comment
Well the new version of WordPress is here and it is great! While some people are complaining about lack of plugin compatibility, the pros far outweigh the cons in version 2.3. With a little tweaking WordPress is a powerful SEO machine. It is a very good content management system, but what separates it from other database driven CMS’s is its inherent support for SEO. There are several plugins that are vital to good SEO that I have written about. Most of the key plugins still function. One of the best changes to WordPress 2.3 is its capability to show when plugins have new versions. It also eliminates the need for a WordPress version check plugin since it tells you in the dashboard if a new version exists.
The upgrade of WordPress is always pretty easy and this update is no different. I was able to get it up on 17 blogs in a couple of hours. It is important to deactivate all your plugins before this update if you normally don’t do that. I like many webmaster can get pretty lazy when it comes to upgrading, so this time cover all the bases since there are many changes to the database in this upgrade. So please back up your database before updating, especially in 2.3. The WordPress site has a list of compatibility issues with themes and plugins here. This page is the features page with all the new stuff, but also has links to the plugins and themes compatibilities. The list is incomplete, but for the most part if your theme is widget compatible you should be all right.
Major WordPress 2.3 Features
The most obvious feature is tagging. WordPress has really gotten on the tagging bandwagon, probably in response to SES in San Diego where everyone was talking about tagging. One of the most obvious compatibility issues is with Ultimate Tag Warrior. This plugin was named as one of the most important plugins at SES, so it is a little weird that it won’t work with the new WordPress. Granted a lot of its features are now standard in the new upgrade and I am sure the developer will have a new update out soon. I personally have issues with a lot of tagging. I agree that tagging can be useful for posts that fall under multiple categories, but I have concerns over duplicate content issues that can arise from some tagging strategies.
Duplicate content is one of the biggest vulnerabilities with WordPress and giving search engines multiple ways to list the same content is dangerous. I use Technorati to handle tagging and tag clouds. The question is “How much does tagging help usability?” This is a big topic, but I prefer search over tags as a means for visitors to find what they are looking for on my site. Cluttered and long pages can easily disrupt a users concentration as they are searching for information on your blog. Deep link navigation and bread crumb navigation are the best ways to let your visitors know where they are, and where they have been. Previous and Next buttons can get confusing quickly.
One of the best things about the new tagging feature is the related posts by tags. Being able to have all the posts within specific tags listed can help users find all the info that your site has to offer on any given subject. The problem will be in filtering the output so you don’t have too many options for a user. Again cluttered sites are hard to follow and won’t get return visitors or high page views. If you aren’t sure of the difference or importance of these metrics read my post: Hits, Visitors, page views explained.
The tagging features eliminate the need for the following plugins:
- Ultimate Tag Warrior - this plugin is pretty hard to use for regular people like me anyway.
- Jerome’s Keywords - I always used this and was always irritated by how it would loose the keyword filed if you didn’t add the custom key “keywords” in the custom fields. I am still testing how this effects the meta tags.
- Simple Tags - I still use this because of its additional Technorati features.
- Bunny’s Technorati Tags - I always used Simple Tags so don’t know much about Bunny or her plugin.
If these were paid solutions I guess you would wonder if WordPress is becoming the Walmart of content management systems by pushing out the little guy. I will keep everyone informed on how the many tests on tagging that I am running are going.
Along with more features within the visual editor and tagging, the new WordPress also takes care of a couple of permalink and domain problems that have plagued them in the past. You now have control over the www and non-www version of your domain. We all know that Google can see the www and non-www version of a site as 2 different sites. Even though they have solved a lot of this in the Webmaster Center where you can assign the proper FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) of your domain, it is good to have that backed up by WordPress. They have also fixed some of the slug and URL naming issues that occur when importing blogs like Blogger sites which tend to cut off the post title in the URL.
WordPress has always given you the control over the URL through the slug, but now you can be safe in importing or creating long URL’s with their new support of “pretty URL’s”. I know that there are experts out there that claim the URL isn’t important as much in blogs, but I disagree. I go as far as to end the URL string with a .html. While this might not matter to spiders, it does resolve canonical name issues that happen when the trailing slash is not included in the URL string. Yahoo might not care, but Google definitely does. I use the .html in the permalink to resolve this problem. Read more about it on my post - WordPress Permalinks Changing Links On An Existing Site - for more info.
The bottom line is WordPress 2.3 is a great update and worth the time. Back up everything and take it slow and you will be fine. I only scratched the surface of all the features. I have found the new version to be fast and clean. They did an awesome job with this update of WordPress.