For years we have been warning that unethical SEO techniques that violate Google's SEO guidelines could result in a site being banned from the Google index. In the past week, Google made a fairly major ranking update that appears to have wiped clients of Traffic Power, from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
A growing class action lawsuit is targeting what are being called unethical SEO practices used by Traffic Power. Many webmasters are familiar with a regular barrage of unsolicited Emails and phone calls from this firm and most wisely choose to ignore them. Some webmasters, unfortunately, did not ignore Traffic Power and contracted them to perform services on their websites. In the past weeks, clients of Traffic Power were almost universally banned from Google. While there is no way these businesses will make it back into the Google index without a significant amount of work on their websites, they may find some sense of solace in a growing class action lawsuit currently being developed by the San Francisco IT law firm, Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo, LLP.
Traffic Power (TP) is a fairly large company based in Las Vegas with a very bad reputation. Since the latest Google update, many of their former clients have posted information in a variety of search engine related forums detailing the techniques TP used to achieve placements for their sites. The postings read like a list of what NOT to do when considering SEO techniques. In the words of StepForth PPC and Link Building expert Scott Van Achte, "They (TP techniques) are so 90's". Getting a huge portion of your client list banned from Google takes a great deal of dedication to poor practices. Based on information provided by their former clients, here are a few of the methods used by TP and how to spot if these techniques are used on your website.
Doorway Pages While Traffic Power uses the phrase "Attraction Pages", the design of numerous pages on the same topic designed specifically to game search engines is a technique that was banned years ago. As recently as November, Traffic Power told clients they would, "...build 280 individual HTML attraction pages that attract the search engines for your targeted keywords. The attraction pages are designed using a computer-generated analysis to conform to the ranking criteria of the top search engines. These pages provide spider food for the search engine spiders that includes significant unique content relating to your site." This technique directly violates Google's SEO guidelines. Here is Google's take on Doorway Pages: "Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content."
As of today, Traffic Power's website refers to Search Engine Entrance Pages (SEE Pages). Here is a quote snipped from their FAQ page:
"A search engine entrance (SEE) page is a one page version of content taken from your site that is housed at a new Web site address. To create a SEE page site we register a new domain based on your keywords and upload the SEE page, the Traffic-Power.com code, and over 100 unique Advertising Pages. If someone finds the SEE page directly or through an Advertising Page they will be automatically sent to your original site once they click on any link on the SEE page." This is a spammy technique that violates Google's SEO guidelines.
Automated Link Building - Link Farming Link building is an important factor in Google ranking. Link Farming is an unethical means of providing links to your clients. Traffic Power does not refer to their technique as Link Farming but instead told clients they would be added to specifically themed "link pools". Google's SEO Guidelines and Webmaster Guidelines have at least two warnings about this sort of practice.
Mouse-Over Redirects This technique is truly creative spam. Traffic Power designs a page that redirects to the client's website when a mouse is drawn over any portion of that page. What this does is a cheap but relativity simple cousin to cloaking in that Google is fed one set of information but the live-site viewer is offered a different set of information when they move their mouse over the page that ranked well in Google's SERP. From what I gather in the various forums, this is the trick that got a wide array of Traffic Power's client base banned.
I am, or someone I know is, a Traffic Power Client - NOW WHAT? First of all, take a deep breath. The sky may have fallen for a short period but your website is not necessarily damned to eternal Google purgatory. There are a number of resources you can turn to, depending on your web design skills, the amount of free time you have, and your confidence in your own abilities. The SEO Consultants Directory has taken a lead role in helping former Traffic Power clients cope with the situation they find themselves in. SEO Consultants has been retained by a consortium of business owners who are concerned about this issue. While remaining anonymous, the Consortium is obviously actively pursuing information about Traffic Power and has asked SEO Consultants to gather and publish information about this issue. They have published a series of pages with detailed suggestions on what former Traffic Power clients should do. I strongly suggest anyone who has had an association with Traffic Power to visit this series of pages.
What Does this Mean for Ethical SEO's? As with our cousins in other service based industries, the Search Engine Marketing sector has had to deal with cheats for years. The fact is, the services we sell can not be touched, smelt, eaten or easily understood by our clients. As a sector, we rely on a trusting relationship with our clients. Without the trust of webmasters and business owners, none of us would work in this fascinating business environment. An SEO who cheats or uses illegal practices as a common rule makes all of our lives more difficult. From a business perspective, cheaters place us all in perceptual peril. From a human perspective, no one with any sense of kindness likes to see other businesses suffer because they got scammed. There are REAL PEOPLE behind the website with REAL JOBS and REAL LIVES, many of whom have never read source-code. These real people have mortgages or rent to pay. They need to feed their children and pay for their educations. A business that has been banned by Google after previously enjoying strong placements will almost certainly suffer for the sudden lack of inclusion. Will any of those real people get laid off from their real jobs due to the techniques used on their sites by Traffic Power? This is a REAL ISSUE for the SEO and SEM communities.
We are in the unique position of seeing commonly used practices suddenly banned by the mediums we work with, however, a good SEO or SEM firm learns to adapt their techniques to meet the ever changing best practice guidelines. As a matter of fact, there is a specific search engine marketing forum dedicated to discussing and promoting best practices in our industry. Run by South Carolina based SEO Doug Heil, the Best Practices Search Engine Forums are among the most widely referred to sources of information and discussion in the ethical SEO sector. As with many other Search Engine related forums, there has been quite a bit of discussion about the Traffic Power issue. Here is a link to the liveliest discussion at the Best Practices Forum. I wrote to Doug Heil asking him his opinion on this issue. Here is what he had to say about "outing" SEO and SEM firms using unethical practices on client sites, "Naming spammers does two things; It 'informs' the general public as to 'who' might risk your website, and it informs the spamming SEO that they have a problem. "Many" times SEO's have contacted me saying they made changes to their business model because of what was discussed in my forums, and have become a true "Best Practice SEO" who follows the guidelines of the search engines." Doug is absolutely correct on this issue.
Here are links to other forums and discussions about this issue.
SEOs This issue is going to spill over into the mainstream media sooner than later. When it does, it is likely our industry will be placed under an electronic microscope. There will be a number of stories about ethical and unethical SEO techniques and there will be a number of SEO and SEM firms who will likely feel the heat. At this time, it is probably a good idea for all of us to review our techniques and be ready to explain them (without giving away the farm of course) whenever clients or the media come calling.
Webmasters and Business Owners The only real advice I can offer is to ask difficult questions before hiring an SEO firm. Take a few minutes to learn about the industry so you will be able to make an informed decision regarding the company you are going to bet your placements on. If you feel uncomfortable with the answers you are receiving from an SEO, be sure to copy everything down and check your notes with another SEO firm. Look to see if the SEO firm you are thinking about hiring has posted a statement of ethics on their website. Check with past clients to be sure that the company does stick to its ethics. Most importantly, shop around. The highest price does not necessarily guarantee the highest level of service. Similarly, the lowest fees don't necessarily mean you'll get scammed. In Latin the phrase is CAVEAT EMPTOR or "Let the Buyer Beware". Don't get caught unaware like clients of Traffic Power have.
Apple Computers CEO Steve Jobs has scooped rival Bill Gates for the umpteenth time in their parallel careers. Yesterday, Jobs unleashed TIGER, the new Apple O/S. Tiger's main feature, aside from providing an operating environment is SEARCH. Helping users find documents, email, and websites on their hard drives, intranets and the greater Internet, Tiger seems to have taken the important pages from the MS engineers' notebooks. For anyone who has seen the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", this seems to be a bit of ironic justice. Sometimes I wish I was a MAC user.
Bill Gates has announced that MSN is about to revamp its search feature and introduce a new, proprietary back-end database to run it. Speaking in Sydney Australia, Gates informed journalists, "The format of the site will change and so will the quality of what you get." We expect the look of the site to change before the technology does but when the back-end is introduced, it may act like no other search tool currently does. Having conducted linguistics and taxonomy research for the better part of a decade, the Microsoft team expects to be able to not only find documents based on specific keywords and phrases, but to also find documents based on the context of the keyword phrase or full sentences entered into their new search tool. While Gates did not set a firm date, the new tool is expected to be released before the end of 2004.
Yahoo's Overture has picked up the Local Search gauntlet dropped by Google's Adwords program in April. As Scott Van Achte writes this week, "Overture's Local Match allows advertisers to promote their business regardless of weather or not they even have a website." In this move, Yahoo is not only targeting Google's Adwords program, they are also taking on the Yellow Pages. "It's an important part of the search business," said Overture spokesperson Gaude Paez. "Our own research, as well as the research of others, shows that many people who search for products buy them offline." (quote from Jason Lopez NewsFactor Network article)
Localized search is one of the key features the major search engines are trying to perfect in order to present stronger competition to each other and other traditional listings services such as the aforementioned Yellow Pages.
In the organic listings, Yahoo is basing its localized results on the street address mentioned on a website while Google bases its localized results on the IP number of the computer conducting the search.
Google ADWORDS In a recent Google mail out sent to AdWords advertisers, Google announced that over the next few days they will be introducing changes to their AdWords program in an attempt to increase the relevance of targeted ads and increase conversions.
Google's improvements will give them the ability to more precisely identify the most relevant ads for a particular query, which in turn may result in more qualified traffic for some advertisers and less un-qualified for others.
In Google's example, a company advertising for Alaskan cruises may select ‘cruises’ as a broad-matched keyword. If searchers were looking for ‘Hawaiian cruises’ the Alaskan ad will show up but generate very few clicks, drastically reducing its click through rate. This would result in the keyword ‘cruises’ being disabled for poor performance. With the new system, broad matched terms such as ‘cruises’ will only be disabled for queries that are not converting and will stay active for more relevant searches.
These changes will only affect broad-matched keywords, but in the future Google plans on making improvements, which will utilize phrase and exact match.
To ensure that you continue to get the most out of your AdWords ads, or any other PPC campaign, regular monitoring and tweaking is always recommended.
Overture LOCAL MATCH Recently Google introduced local ad targeting right down to a 20 mile radius for its AdWords advertisers. Overture has now begun to offer the same local targeting known as ‘Local Match,’ but is directing focus more towards businesses with a physical street address.
Overture's Local Match allows advertisers to promote their business regardless of weather or not they even have a website. When a user performs a search for a product or service on a search site such as Yahoo, the sponsored ad will appear. When clicked, it brings up the ‘locator page’ which will provide a map to the business, physical address, a link to their web page (if applicable) and other customizable information.
Local Match, although useful for online businesses is more targeted towards companies who are lacking a web presence or are more interested in having customers arrive at their physical store.
Local Match is based on a cost-per-click platform and required a minimum $20 monthly deposit, but unlike Overtures traditional PPC, there is no minimum spend.
In the PPC world the more you pay the higher you rank. A #1 ranking on Overture for “search engine placement” would cost $8.01 and a #3, $5.25. It has generally been understood that this is a major difference between the PPC engines and the natural engines. You can’t buy placement on the natural search engines … or can you?
A relatively recent development in the world of the SEO has been the practice of buying links. The purchase of links serves two functions though only one is of importance for the purpose of this article. Paid links, like paid advertising, can bring you direct traffic through click on your link. This is the less relevant aspect for the purpose of this article. The main reason that the purchase of paid links has become as popular as it has among the SEO community is for the one-way links that it builds to your website.
For any of you who have ever done reciprocal link building you know that finding high quality, high PageRank links can be extremely daunting. If you are willing to pay for those links however the effort and time required comes down quite significantly (though obviously the cost goes up).
Paid links range in price from anywhere between $5/mth to thousands and take into consideration a number of factors including:
1/ PageRank of the site
2/ Number of pages the link will be placed on
3/ The number of characters allowed for the link (i.e. 20 characters long, 30 characters long, etc.)
4/ Whether descriptive text will be included
5/ Topic of the site
6/ Location of the link
PageRank The PageRank is arguably the most important of these factors. A link from a PageRank 8 site is far more valuable that a link from a PageRank 6 website.
Number Of Pages This used to be very important but seems to be slipping. Once upon a time a Run-Of-Site link (a link on every page) was extremely valuable as it could translate into hundreds and sometimes thousands of links. It seems that multiple links are no longer valued in the same way as they used to be though there is still a very significant advantage in multiple links from the same site and that is intimidation. When you competition runs a backlink count on you and sees thousands of links pointing to your site they will not like their odds and may choose to compete for a different phrase.
Number Of Characters When you purchase a link the seller will almost always specify the number of characters the link can be in length. The higher the number of characters the more words you can use as the anchor text for the link. This may or may not be important. If your anchor text is “SEO” then it doesn’t much matter if the link can be 30 characters or not. If your anchor text is “search engine placement” then it becomes a much more relevant factor.
Descriptive Text Some site owners will allow you to include descriptive text for relevancy (much like reciprocal links pages but better). This is extremely beneficial if the content of the site you are purchasing links from is not entirely related to yours. This will help the search engines see relevancy between the two sites.
Site Topic Relevant now and destined to become more important as time passes. If the content of the site you are purchasing a link from is entirely related to yours the link would be more valuable. Again, the importance of this will only increase as time goes on.
Location The location of the link on the page is very relevant. The higher up and further left the link is the more weight it will be given. A link in the left-hand navigation is ideal; a link in the footer is the least valuable.
So where do you go to find links to buy if you do want to go this route. There are a number of resources you can use. The first is Google itself. Running a search for “text link” your topic is a good place to start and you can refine your search from there.
There are also a few auction/brokerage sites that allow you to advertise the sale of links on your site and bid on links from others. A few of the more popular are:
LinkAdage (my personal favorite)
BuySellLinks (a good one for lower quality but less expensive links)
TextLinkBrokers (this is a brokerage firm that sells links for others)
Some General Rules To Follow When Buying Links The buying and selling of links, like PPC campaigns, must be monitored to insure that you’re getting the best return on your investment. Some of the basic rules are:
- Monitor the sites you are buying links from on at least a monthly basis to insure that the PR they were when you bought is the same or higher.
- Try to get your link on many but not necessarily all pages of the site. If you can get your link on 20 key pages of a site rather than a run-of-site you are probably better off. As Google and the other search engines try to detect and reduce the weight of paid links, things like a link on every page MAY become indicators to them (I know I would add that in if I were Google).
- Look around before buying. Check all the auction sites and run some searches on Google to find the best values. If you want to get even better results you may want to use the tool I raved about in last week’s article; PRProwler. It will help weed out low PageRank links.
- Unless the price is just something you can’t refuse, try to only get links on highly relevant sites. Relevancy is sure to become an increasingly important factor as time goes on. It’s also a good practice if you’d also like to get real click-throughs from the site you’re buying links from (especially if the link is well located on the page).
I do hope that this helps you in your promotions. If you have any questions about paid links or other SEO issues please don’t hesitate to contact us.
SEO Warning: This technique is still useful but may be targeted by Google in the near future. A good rule of thumb is to be certain the site linking to you is relevant to the topic of your website.
Six months after coming into effect, the US Can-SPAM act is being called a failure. Montreal based Email security firm Vircom says that of the 547,685 email messages it has examined since January 2004 when the law went into effect, only 71 or 0.013% of them conformed with the law. "It is apparent from these results that spammers are not worried about any potential legal action," said Marc Chouinard, head of Vircom's Spam Buster Team. "If a business relies on legislation to handle the spam problem, they are pretty much out of luck," Vircom spam expert Michael Gaudette said in a statement.
One of the reasons the Can-SPAM act is toothless is that the majority of SPAM does not come from businesses based in the United States. While 55% of all email SPAM originates in the US, less than 1% of the websites the SPAM directs readers to are based in the US. According to a Globe and Mail article, 99% of all websites referred to by SPAM emails are hosted in China, South Korea, the United States, Russia and Brazil, with a whopping 73% of those sites being hosted in China.
Under the Can-SPAM act, unsolicited Emails must have the following elements to comply with the law:
- a functioning return e-mail address
- a postal address and include an option to "unsubscribe."
- a subject line that is not deceptive.
The vast majority of SPAM email does not carry any of the three above mentioned elements. SPAM is a scourge on the Internet. I use CloudMark's SPAMNET to catch SPAM email before it clogs my inbox. I dumped my SPAM box on Monday of this week. As of this minute (Wed. 3:26PM), SPAMNET has filtered 1,222 pieces of SPAM. That is approximately 400 unique SPAM emails per day.
There is one sure-fire way to beat the SPAMMERS right now. DO NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS, ever. Do not click their ads and do not open their emails. Eventually they will stop mass-sending. Even though it's that simple, thousands of people will order sexual enhancements or some such other uselessness from SPAM emails today. Sad.
The folks at Traffic-Power find themselves in a pickle this week. Due to the use of unapproved SEO techniques such as 1x1 pixel gif links, doorway pages and cloaking, many of the clients have found themselves banned by Google.
The SEO Consultants Directory have been commissioned by a Consortium to assemble and publish a collection of online documents that refer to a search engine optimization company by the name of Traffic-Power.com out of Las Vegas, Nevada. If you are a client and/or partner of Traffic-Power.com, it is suggested that you read the following information. (Please click here)
Over the past seven years, it is fairly safe to say that the use of search engines has revolutionized our methods of finding and valuing information. Almost any activity involving research from personal travel planning to corporate business planning has been made far easier through the use of search engines. When one search tool or firm dominates as Google has for the past three years, it will get a lot more attention from the public and the media. Case in point, Google. Synonymous with search, Google has changed the world. For the most part, Google has made it a better place to live. That in itself justifies the intense scrutiny constantly focused at virtually every move made in the Googleplex. The fact they are changing rapidly further justifies the public and media interest and the hoopla.
This week, Google continues to find itself in the public spotlight despite the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) imposed "Quiet Period" preceding the issuance of their long awaited IPO. It has been a busy week in Mountain View California. Google has made several announcements in the past few days, each of which could warrant a full column on their own. Here is a quick run-down of the past seven days of activity.
IPO NEWS As anyone with a computer knows, Google is issuing its Initial Public (stock) Offering in a "Dutch-Auction" format. This means that individual investors will have a short window of time to bid on Google shares in an auction format. As with all auctions, the highest bidders will get the goods. In order to issue public shares, Google had to file detailed plans with the SEC. As with most businesses, especially in the tech world, plans often change when the business or technical environment changes. This week, Google made a few modifications to their original filing with the SEC.
1) Google has lowered the minimum number of shares individuals can bid on to 5 from the traditional 100. This will allow smaller investors the opportunity to participate in the auction by purchasing a smaller block of shares. Google has issued a warning to investors stating that over-enthusiastic bidding might push the price of shares to a cost-price that has no relationship with the actual value of the company, thus pushing the price of shares to unsustainable levels. If this was to happen, speculators and professional investors might choose to short the stock, an action that would burst the balloon and quickly devalue the price of shares.
2) Google is going to outsource its "critical financial functions" which include billing, credit evaluation and collections. This is extremely important to Google as the number of revenue-sharing agreements with individuals, webmasters and other corporations grows exponentially. Google does not have the experience or person-power to track the millions of agreements it has made while it continues to base its bottom line on revenues generated through these agreements. This section of their filing concludes with the statement, "If we do not successfully implement this project, our business, reputation and operating results could be harmed."
3) Google has dropped the venerable brokerage Merrill Lynch from its roster of underwriters. While neither Google or Merrill Lynch are able to discuss details, sources in the financial media cite Merrill Lynch's unwillingness to modify its operating procedures to meet the auction format for such a small profit margin.
GMAIL NEWS Google's new GMail system will electronically scan the text of all Emails and place contextual advertising based on the topic of the Email. This has raised a great deal of concern for privacy advocates and may prompt legislation banning the practice as is currently being debated in California and Massachusetts. Google has noted that concerns around the collection, use of, or sharing of, personal information found in GMails might "hurt its reputation". In reaction to our increasingly prurient culture, Google has announced several sectors that will not be allowed to target GMail recipients. GMails with words relating to sex, guns, drugs, online dating, and other topics that might offend "family values" will not have advertisements displayed in them. Google will also avoid displaying an ad beside text that criticizes a product or series of products. In other words, if your (BRAND NAME HERE) car breaks down and you write your friend about it, Google will not show ads for cars in that GMail.
Google Dancing with the Penguin? (Open Source Google)
One of the most interesting Google rumours from the past week comes from a tech recruitment trip to Australia where Google hopes to open a Research and Development centre. According to company VP of engineering Wayne Rosing, Google's technical director Craig Silverstein has initiated a project to scan Google's code to determine which parts can be released to the public safely. While they will not open the entire box of code that makes Google operate, especially with Microsoft breathing down their necks, there are several (massive) sections of code that would be of great benefit to the development community.
Google PR and Backlink Update (Just in case you haven't noticed)
Google is in the midst of what appears to be a major update of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), starting with a change in the number of incoming links being measured and a subsequent change in PageRank for most sites. In the past four hours, we have seen PageRanks (as measured by the Google Toolbar) fluctuate wildly, in some cases defying what we understand as "Google Physics". On a Quit-Smoking affiliate product site owned by StepForth's marketing director Dave Davies, the INDEX page was recorded as a PR5 while one of the internal pages showed a PR6! One of our clients wrote me this morning to tell me that a new site which had a PR0 was now a PR5! We measure backlinks twice each day with our first check at 9:15am and our second at 4:15pm. This morning we noted that Google showed StepForth.com had over 2250 incoming links. A few minutes later we noted only 1540 as seen by Google. Similar fluctuations are being shown for several client sites as well.
These fluctuations will have an impact on the rankings as shown in the SERPs. We expect to see some fairly significant changes to the SERPs in the coming days. Google is in an interesting position today. The responsibilties of being the most popular information resource in the world must be enormous. Add the responsibilities of running one of the largest tech-businesses and one can emphasize with the pressures on the executive trio running the show at the Googleplex.
A new search engine focusing on business and industry was released earlier this week. Find.Com is a very interesting tool that seems to combine the "clustering" format of Vivisimo with the variety of a meta-crawler search tool. Owned by Empire Media of New York NY, Find.Com works with search-technology developer TripleHop Technology's enterprise search software, MatchPoint. Here is the explanation of the software and how the search tool works, copied directly from their About page:
TripleHop’s solutions were designed on the premise that the relevancy of search results depends on the task at hand and the intended use of the information collected, and thus changes with the context. TripleHop’s core technology combines the best of semantic and statistical analysis to bring unparalleled recall, precision and contextualization to your queries.
MatchPoint is based on a service oriented architecture that includes several layers. Functional layers include an Information Discovery layer that consists of a set of “intelligent” crawlers and connectors, an Information Processing layer that features most of MatchPoint’s extraction and categorization technology, which feeds the data model (or Information Model) layer. The Information Retrieval layer includes an automatic result categorization (clustering) technology as well as the cornerstone of MatchPoint: the Federator, which merges results from internal indexes with results from the search engine connectors and achieves normalization and cross-sources relevance ranking.
In other words, Find.Com may have built a better mousetrap by combining several successful techniques into one technology.
There was a time when link building meant finding only high PageRank links that used no forms of tracking, but now, free high PR links are extremely difficult to find, and more and more webmasters are using various tracking techniques.
When many people go out looking for links, they tend to focus on higher PageRanks. High PR is certainly useful and very important, but its important to know that those sites have not always had high PR’s. All sites have to start somewhere, and if you can get that free link while the site is at a lower PR why not?
My suggestion, continue to seek out the high PR links, but don’t overlook the sites with a PR 2, 3, or even 0! If you come across a site with a low PR that will offer you a free and relevant link, without taking too much of your time to submit to it, go for it.
We have obtained free links in relevant directories with very low PR’s that now show a PR6 and charge for submissions! This goes for PR0 sites as well… if you find a new site that’s just starting out, and it looks like it has what it takes to move up in popularity, take the link while you can. Always keep in mind, today’s PR2’s are tomorrow’s PR 6’s and 7’s.
Although you should seldom turn down a link, there are times when you should steer the other way. If you come across a site that uses spam or any other ‘illegal’ SEO tactics, stay clear. A link on these sites in many cases may actually damage your placements. Straight link farms are less dangerous, but
will also pose very little, if any, benefit and are best to avoid.
Links on sites that have no relevance what so ever will certainly not harm you, and in some cases may help, but try to keep focus on sites that are related, as you’ll get the most juice from these.
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan posted an interesting thread in the new Search Engine Watch forums yesterday. It seems Danny was interviewed by FOX news in their attempt to prove the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had an anti-American bias. The evidence used by the FOX journalist was that there are 51,100 sites related to the keyword phrase “BBC Anti-American” listed at Google. This sort of statistic is available to anyone as Google displays the approximate number of sites in which keywords entered by a searcher can be found in the upper right corner of search results. Problem is, as an analytic tool, this stat is absolutely useless. The only reasonable inference one can make from viewing this number is that there are approximately 51,000 websites that contain both of the words "BBC" and "Anti-American".
A handy tool for lazy journalists or those who simply choose not to figure out how search engines work is Google Fight. This tool allows users to enter two competing keyword phrases. Just for fun, let's test "BBC Anti-American" against "Fox Anti-American"... BBC had slightly more hits with 51,100 results against Fox's 50,300 results but as the numbers tell, the count is very close, maybe a bit too close.... A quick note to the Department of Homeland Security. Check out that Robert Murdoch fellow or his Fox News employees, Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson. Not only would that be fair and balanced, there just may be something there... Just a thought...
Every few months it is a good idea to review SEO techniques in light of changes in the ranking algorithms used by the major search engines. As of today, there are only two major organic search tools we worry about, Google, and Yahoo. Both of these search tools look at different elements of your website when considering where to rank the site in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). While considered one of the "Big Three", MSN continues to receive results from the Yahoo/Inktomi database with LookSmart listings being displayed from time to time. MSN is likely to release its own algorithmic search engine in the coming months. What works for Yahoo tends to work with MSN. Please note, these basic rules for rankings may change at any given moment. That's one of the things that make this job so much fun...
Google continues to be the most popular search engine in terms of user visits and the number of queries each month. Feeding organic results to AOL, Netscape, Iwon, Go.Com and Excite, as well providing onsite search tools for webmasters wishing to include a search function on their websites, Google is said to drive just under 50% of daily search traffic. Google was founded on a basic algorithm known as PageRank. PageRank is fairly basic in explanation but extremely complex in its application. In as few words as possible, Google checks the number of incoming links directed to each site in its database. The larger number of incoming links from relevant sites, the better chances of achieving strong placements.
According to reports from the Search Engine Strategies conference held last week in London, Google is basing much of its ranking formula on incoming links. There are other factors or elements that Google examines but the real power at Google is in the strength and phrasing of incoming links. There is a great deal of power in links however all links are not created equal. For Google to consider a link as a reflection of the validity of the site in question, that link needs to meet a few basic standards. First of all, the link needs to originate on a page that is relevant to the topic of the page being linked to. Next, the anchor text of that link should be phrased to be relevant to the topic of the site being linked to. We tend to use our main target keyword phrases when acquiring links for our clients' sites. Finally, links from pages that are considered "authorities" such as directories, non-profit organizations, or sites with high PageRank (6/10 or higher as shown in the Google Toolbar), tend to produce stronger results than links from non-authority sites. Other site elements that need to be considered include the TITLE, DESCRIPTION META TAG, BODY TEXT and ONSITE NAVIGATION. With the TITLE, be sure to include your strongest keyword phrase in the title of the website. You should use unique titles on each page of the site, making the title specific to the topic of each page. The DESCRIPTION META TAG is important as it helps Google determine the topic of the website. Keep the DESCRIPTION short and highly focused, weaving your strongest keyword phrases into a well written sentence. The BODY TEXT should also be highly focused with incidents of keyword phrases appearing as near the beginning of the text as possible. Lastly, be certain Google's spider can travel through the entire website from point "A" to point "Z". You can do this by using a text-based navigation map, generally appended to bottom of each page in the site. It is important to understand that Google works by having its spider follow every link it comes across on the web. You don't even need to submit your site to Google if there are links from other sites leading to your site, Google will find it on its own.
Google at a Glance:
- Incoming links from relevant websites
- Keyword enriched anchor text for all incoming links
- Keyword enriched titles (unique for each page in site)
- Well written Description meta tag
- Topical and focused body text with main keyword phrases appearing early in the text
- Easily followed text-based internal navigation
Yahoo has made major improvements on their search tool over the past months and is seen by many as providing more relevant results than Google currently does. Yahoo provides results for, MSN, Overture, HotBot, Excite, and thousands of other websites using Yahoo as their onsite search tool provider. Yahoo's spider (a version of Inktomi's Slurp) works the same way Google's does by following every link it finds on the web. This is the primary way Yahoo populates its database. Like Google, Yahoo does place some weight on the value of incoming links, just not nearly as much as Google does. Yahoo seems to be more interested in the actual site content, which may be why the results shown at Yahoo seem to be more relevant. In order to vie for a strong ranking at Yahoo you should concentrate on extremely well written site content and pay attention to the following site elements: TITLES, DESCRIPTION META TAG, KEYWORDS META TAG (yes, you read that right), BODY TEXT, INTERNAL NAVIGATION, and the number of keywords that appear within your body text.
TITLES should be topical and should include at least one incident of the target keyword phrase. You should write page-specific titles, using different internal pages to promote different keyword phrases. The DESCRIPTION should be short (99 characters or less if possible) and contain as many incidents of the keyword phrase as you can write into a proper sentence. Yahoo seems to be giving some weight to the KEYWORDS meta tag so it is wise to take a bit of time preparing this tag. The BODY TEXT is extremely important at Yahoo, more so than at Google. Be sure you use your keywords and keyword phrases wisely and place them as close to the beginning of the body text as possible. At this point, you need to consider the number of keywords and keyword phrases in comparison with the total number of words used on the page. You want to shoot for a density of approximately 1 keyword for every 20 words found on the page. Please note, this is an approximation. Check your competition to see what their keyword density ratios are as the optimum ratio is often different from one business sector to the next. Lastly, it is important to provide a roadmap for Slurp as it travels through your site by providing a text based navigation map at the bottom of each page in the site.
Yahoo at a Glance:
- Keyword enriched titles (unique titles for unique pages in the site)
- Short keyword enriched Description meta tag
- Keywords meta tag
- Well written, keyword enriched body text
- Easy to follow internal links phrased in standard text
- Keyword Density (ratio of keywords vs. non-keywords) conforms with average from competitors' sites
If you make your website meet the basic standards for the search engines, your site has a much better chance of seeing strong search engine placements. Another essential element for any website is a text-based sitemap listing every page in the website. This provides the ultimate roadmap for search engine spiders and also adds another level of navigational assistance for live-human visitors.
If you are looking to spend some of your advertising dollars on Pay Per Click (PPC), but don't care for the high prices of Google and Overture, you may want to take a look at some of the other PPC engines out there.
Many PPC Engines charge set up fees and have minimum click through rates of 5 and 10 cents, along with minimum monthly spends. For a small business on a limited budget testing the PPC waters, this may prov
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