StepForth SEO News Blog

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

1. Once I have a website how do I ensure mobile users find it? The obvious answer was a redirection of some sort but what kind?
2. Is there a simple answer to the most popular programming languages online?
   

Labels: Mobile, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How to Redirect Mobile Traffic to the Mobile Version of a Website

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Over the past few weeks I have received a few questions regarding my 3 part series on How to Optimize for Google. This post will answer a few of the questions I have received.

Do hyperlinked images count as back links? Which scores higher, text or image links?

Yes, Google does count hyperlinked images, however, to get the most out of imaged based links it is best to have relevant, preferably keyword-rich, alt text tagged onto the image.

As far as which scores higher, for the most part they are equal, assuming that the image has the appropriate alt text. In some cases a text based link may actually pass on a little more value if it is located within a highly relevant paragraph as an in-line link.

What about Business Link Directories?

Some link directories can offer significant value to your site. While many may be virtually useless, a well targeted business directory of related websites can help boost your link density and ultimately your organic rankings.

When submitting your site to a link directory, make sure it is somewhat reputable. Check out how well they are indexed in Google, what the Google PR is on internal pages, and generally how many links does the directory contain. If you find that the most relevant category for your site listing has literally hundreds of links, this could raise a flag to pass on this one.

Avoid the FFA (Free for all) directories. These tend to be loaded with SPAM websites that could drag you down. Hand edited and even some paid directories are often the best bet. Make sure that the page that will house your link is indexed in Google, preferably has some Google PR showing up, and that it does not use the rel=nofollow attribute, or another form of blocking the spiders from seeing your site. Also make sure that the link doesn’t direct through some tracking script as these will often pass no value.

When it comes to deciding on if a directory is worth submitting to if you use your common sense, you should be okay. Remember the key here is relevance.

What are your thoughts on Siloing?

While siloing may not be perfect for all websites, it can help focus certain areas of your site on a specific theme, which in turn can help your rankings for phrases related to that theme. By driving spiders and passing PR only among a specific silo, it helps to keep the relevance up, and ultimately can help with your search rankings.

If you do have your site setup using a silo structure, also try to get inbound links directed to each of the specific silos as this will further help boost the PR value of the pages within each section.

-------------------

If you have any questions regarding my recent "How to Optimize for Google" series or anything SEO related for that matter, please feel free to send them to us here at StepForth!

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte, SEO Answers, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How To Optimize for Google: Q & A

Labels: Algo, Google, PPC, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google's Ad Quality Score Leaked

Friday, April 25, 2008

In the first quarter of 2008 earnings are up, employees are down, Microsoft started its attempts at a takeover, and Yahoo still found time to get into bed with Google (although the U.S. Justice Department is still out on that one).

(Note: this posting was originally aired in this week's StepForth Weekly Newsletter)

First quarter earnings for Yahoo were higher than most experts had predicted. Sales rose by 9 percent to $1.8 billion, with an increase in net income by a sizable 282% to $542 million, compared with $142 Million for the same period in 2007. These profits were largely in thanks to Yahoo's investment in the initial public offering of Alibaba.com which accounted for $401 million.

In mid February Yahoo also laid off approximately 1000 employees, thus taking a significant chunk out of their payroll. While this would account for only a small percentage of the increased profit, considering that many of the layoffs involved fairly prominent and higher paid employees, it likely totals up to a sizable amount.

Analysts were expecting revenues at $1.32 billion excluding acquisition costs yet Yahoo's first quarter revenue was, in fact, about $300 million higher at $1.35 billion.

This recently announced increase in Q1 profits has not had an impact on Microsoft’s acquisition attempt. Back at the start of February Microsoft had offered $31 per share in an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo and since then Yahoo has been battling this Microsoft takeover. On Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, according to the Seattle Times, "Yahoo’s quarterly results would not affect the value of Yahoo to Microsoft." Microsoft has also threatened that if things are not resolved by this Saturday, they will bring a lower bid directly to Yahoo shareholders.

As part of a search to find alternatives to the Microsoft takeover, Yahoo announced a test where 3% of paid ads appearing on US based Yahoo searches would actually be from Google’s AdSense program. The test is expected to last up to two weeks. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, this has sparked the U.S. Justice Department to look into possible antitrust applications - no word yet on the results of that investigation.

By close of day Wednesday, Yahoo shares were down $0.15 closing at $28.08 Yahoo shares rose sharply by about 50% back in February with the news of the possible Microsoft buyout, and have hovered around the $28 mark ever since.

Yahoo's earnings release for Q1 of 2008 can be downloaded in PDF form from Yahoo Investor Relations.

Labels: Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo's 1st Quarter of 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Sitemap: http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte, SEO, SEO Tips, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How to Optimize for Google - Part 3 of 3

Monday, April 21, 2008

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How to Optimize for Google - Part 2 of 3

This is the second in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

If you missed part one, you can view it here. Today I will be covering Yahoo’s Panama. Of the three, this is my least favoured, so I’m wearing my Yahoo Search Marketing ball cap today, to remind myself not to allow too much vitriol to slip into the article.

Interface

One of the things I like about Panama is the use of colour to highlight various features. Particularly when I’m creating new campaigns or ads, these buttons stand out very well. Also, the capability of different colour fonts and sectional backgrounds eases the look of pages that would otherwise appear cluttered with all sorts of information.

The dashboard is the first of 4 tabs, the others being Campaigns, Reports and Administration.

The Campaign tab contains 5 links to navigate back and forth:

1. Campaign: A table showing all the account campaigns and basic performance information for each.


2. Ad Groups: Shows basic performance data for all ad groups, listing also which campaign each ad group belongs to.


3. Keywords: A table showing all the keywords in the account with basic data and lists which campaign and which ad group each belongs to (very handy feature this).


4. Editorial Status: contains status listing of pending, declined and removed ads and keywords.


5. Search: Allows search for campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads. I am not sure why this page exists as essentially the same function is available on each of the other pages.
   

One thing to note, with exception of the search page, all of the above can be viewed for specific date ranges using a fairly robust date range selection system.

Reports

Reports can be saved in several different formats. Performance reports can be saved in CSV for Excel, CSV, TSV and XML, while financial reports can be saved as either PDF or TXT. Reports can be set up for either the campaign, ad group or keyword level to view overall performance data. There are also optional views for geographic location, daily spending and URL performance. There is an option to use saved templates, but it is limited to 5 saved configurations.

The Tactics selection includes the ability to turn on or off either Sponsored Search or Content Match, set match type to advanced or standard and add keyword exclusions. This is kind of an odd spot to put these; one would normally expect to see this in campaign level settings, but it seems Panama is only capable of this at the account level. A definite minus for flexibility.

Campaign Setup

1. First thing is naming the campaign and setting up geo-targeting. You can select Entire Market or specify by region or specific city/area. There are some pitfalls to watch out for here. If you haven’t read my previous article on this you can find it here.


2. The second step is creating an initial ad group and defining tactics.


3. Now it is time to input your keywords. You can get suggested keywords at this point, have this tool scan a URL for suggestions or input your own list. Excluded (negative) keywords may also be input here.


4. Next step is to set the ad group default maximum bids for sponsored search and/or content match. One thing I really like about this stage is a side graph that shows estimates for average position, number of impressions and clicks, average CPC (cost per click) and the percentage share of available clicks. This graph updates to changes in the set bid, so is useful for gauging where to set your max.


5. The next step is writing the ad itself. Two things to watch out for here; one is the long descriptions and the other, the display URL. Yahoo does not allow long descriptions and has not for quite some time, beyond me why they have not taken it out of the set up process. The display URL input box is hidden and you need to click the little bullet arrow to view. It really does not save much space doing that, so I have no idea why it is designed like that.


6. After this stage is review, which takes you back to the second step and you can edit any errors along the way, or you can just choose to move to stage 7…


7. Which is the budgeting of the campaign and setting up a display schedule if necessary. There is a display estimates feature that allows you to view monthly clicks and impressions for varying schedules.


8. The last step is reviewing and activating your campaign.

The overall difference in quality and difficulty between AdWords and Panama exams was pretty obvious. But at least Yahoo allows professional accreditation, unlike MSN, whose recently implemented program is only available for US residents.

These are some of the gripes I have with Panama I have not covered in previous articles. I will try not to foam at the mouth too much.

• As with MSN Adcenter, the timeout seems much too short. While writing this article I was using an existing account to view different sections of the interface. I had to re-log into the account dozens of times. I would write a few sentences, go back to look at something and more often than not I would find myself logged out.

• Some of the labels and wording are not ideally descriptive. One example I mentioned earlier has to do with conversion tracking. Another instance regards ad display rate. In AdWords, you can adjust ads so better performing ads get more exposure. There did not seem to be a feature in Panama, until I clicked on the “optimize ads” button. I thought this was some sort of tool to suggest ad changes but after reading the lengthy description I realized it is for displaying the “best” ad.
  

• The campaign “Tune up” tool is of questionable value. I ran a test on this and the recommendations given were pretty doubtful. Basically, the tool recommended I up the daily budget by 350%, jack up the keyword max bids (in some cases quite dramatically) and change some match types. The estimated rewards for providing Yahoo with this additional spend were a 2% percent improvement in CTR (click through rate), a 20% increase in clicks and no estimation on conversion changes. All this with only a 4% increase in monthly cost. Regardless of any of the other estimations, I cannot equate a 350% increase in daily spend equaling a 4% increase in estimated spend.
  

• Setting up campaigns, especially ones with lots of ad copy, is laborious and time consuming. There is no option for uploading work or any tools to make this a smoother process. It is either do it from scratch or a lengthy cut and paste session from a spreadsheet. To give an example, I recently set up account in all 3 engines. It took roughly a half hour to get everything set up with the AdWords Editor tool and uploaded. Then having saved the campaign information in CSV format from the AdWords Editor, I uploaded the file into MSN Adcenter, set up the bidding and activated the campaign. This took all of about 10 minutes. Finally, setting up the same campaign in Yahoo, took over 3 tedious hours of copying and pasting.
  

• I mentioned the “hidden” display URL box when writing ads which is annoying when first setting up. If you are creating new ads however, even in an entirely new campaign in an existing account, by default the original display URL is set in there for every new ad in the account. So if you are using a different domain, you have to ensure you open up the hidden entry box and change it for each ad. There is a way around this, but it is obscurely set in Administration under the account set up page.
  
  Also, if you are modifying ads, your modifications will not show until the changes have been approved, which can take several days. By this I mean you cannot even see the changes you have made until the ads have been approved. (This caused me quite a bit of grief recently, as I was required to do a massive overhaul when a client renamed all the URL’s on their site - it was very annoying to be unable to double check my changes upon completion.)
  

• My last and biggest beef with Yahoo is the quality of their support. I have worked with first tier support in the past and I know the drill. The incidence of skimming the first line or so of a support request and firing back a template response which generally has nothing to do with the context of the support request seems to be higher than most here.
  
  My perception of the quality of first tier staff training diminishes with each successive phone call. When trying to figure out the problem which led to the discovery of certain geo-targeting issues, we went through quite a few emails and phone calls before finding someone with an adequate grasp of their system to understand what was wrong.
  
  In another case, a support saga of epic proportions, I received 5 successively different, nonsensical explanations, none of which addressed my actual question. Sensing the circular pattern of this, I struggled to get direct contact up-tier. Incredibly, one rep actually told me editors aren’t allowed phones, to keep them impartial. When I finally got put through to an editor, I was initially told more of the same, but upon realizing I wasn’t buying it, he simply went ahead and fixed the problem. Quite an ordeal and a completely unnecessary waste of time.

Summary

Over the course of writing this article, I realized there are quite a few things I do like about this interface. If they made it a little easier to work with and especially if they improve their customer support, I would have no qualms about using this interface.

by Tim Rule, PPC Specialist, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Management – Part 2 - A User's Review of Yahoo

Friday, April 18, 2008

• How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It
  Source: Popular Mechanics. April 16th, 2008.
  
  Excerpt: Such a prediction probably seems ridiculous when Google has a market capitalization five times that of Ford and General Motors combined. After all, Google has developed a superfast, highly efficient method of making sense of the most overwhelming mass of data mankind has ever created. What’s more..." read on
  
  
  
• 20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi Manber
  Source Popular Mechanics. April 16th, 2008.
  
  This is an excellent interview and it even covers a response (as shown below) from Guru to the concept that social media will kill search.
  
  Excerpt: (Interviewer) "While we’re talking on the subject of personalization, a colleague of mine said that search as you know it is falling to the wayside and changing dramatically as social networking comes into play—trending toward this MySpace-Facebook model where people look to their friends or their community as the take-off point. Do you see that as a bona fide trend? And, if so, does search become less important?" (Reponse from Guru) "Search has always been about people. It’s not an abstract thing. It’s not a formula. It’s about getting people what they need. The art of ranking is one of taking lots of signals and putting them together. Signals from..." read on
  
  

Labels: Google, Link Forth, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: A Google LinkForth - Articles of Note this Friday

Thursday, April 17, 2008

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google's Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google's cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn't mean Google won't follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

MyTourismSite.com/?locid="victoria"&catid="accommodations"
&type="hotel"&comp="hilton"

stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:

MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How to Optimize for Google – Part 1 of 3

1. Keep adding content to your website in the form of a blog or informational pages and where appropriate provide relevant textual links to the pages you want to maintain rankings. Check out our comprehensive tutorial on how to create, market and manage your own blog.
   
   
2. If you write articles for your blog(s) try submitting them to article sites like ezinearticles.com. If your article includes links to your website these external sites will provide link juice to your content and help you maintain visibility.
   
   
3. PRWeb is a great tool for telling the world about your company's accomplishments; see this video interview on link building and publicity with PR Web. By submitting a carefully written press release to PRWeb you can (depending on the service you choose) attain a large number of incoming links. These links will not necessarily provide long term impact because they tend to devalue after a week or two but inevitably you will get additional long-term links out of the process. By the way, if you don't know of a topic to create a blog about consider creating one that just offers company news releases - there is nothing wrong with that.
   
   
4. Submit your blog's RSS feed to the multitude of RSS aggregation sites (news sites) online. These sites will help pump up the visibility of the content you write. This is particularly important if you rarely have time to write new content for your blog because it will give you the most bang for your effort.
   
   
5. Keep in tune with the changes at search engines by monitoring sites like Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and of course StepForth's SEO News Blog. If you hear of a pending or current algorithmic update on a key search engine find out all you can about it and prepare your website to bear the change - if necessary. If you find you aren't sure what to do in response to an algorithmic update just contact a reputable SEO and get their opinion. You can find reputable SEOs in many places but to be sure you know who you are asking do a little digging to find out just how long they have been practicing SEO.
   

Labels: Interviews, Ross Dunn, SEO, SEO Answers, SEO Tips

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Top 5 Ways to Keep it Up - Rankings That Is

Friday, April 11, 2008

Labels: Google, Ross Dunn, SEO, SEO News, SEO Tips

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Matt Cutts Pipes in on Google Spidering Forms

"Only a small number of particularly useful sites receive this treatment, and our crawl agent, the ever-friendly Googlebot, always adheres to robots.txt, nofollow, and noindex directives. That means that if a search form is forbidden in robots.txt, we won't crawl any of the URLs that a form would generate. Similarly, we only retrieve GET forms and avoid forms that require any kind of user information. For example, we omit any forms that have a password input or that use terms commonly associated with personal information such as logins, userids, contacts, etc. We are also mindful of the impact we can have on web sites and limit ourselves to a very small number of fetches for a given site."

Labels: Algo, Google, Ross Dunn, SEO, SEO News

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google Now Fills Out Forms When Spidering

Thursday, April 10, 2008

In this article two important marketing strategies are reviewed: search engine optimization and social media.

Just as the spokes of a wheel are held together and strengthened by its hub so too is the planning for a successful marketing campaign. The greater the integrity and quality of the hub, the better are the chances that the spokes will stay true and provide far reaching performance.

In this series we have looked at several ‘spokes’ that contribute to a winning web marketing strategy. Part 1 looked at several of these building blocks: marketing budget and timelines, market research, and competitor analysis while Part 2 discussed the importance of keyword research, focus on achievable phrases, creating relevant textual content and search friendly website design. A future article will deal with the remaining spokes: link building, blogs, newsletters, and website analytics.

But central to all of this, the hub, is search engine optimization. A properly optimized site will make all its associated components strive for greater potential. SEO raises the bar. With the rapid maturation (sophistication?) of the internet it has become ever more challenging to keep up to date with recent advancements and techniques in one’s online quest in search and being found.

Here are some guidelines that have withstood the test of time and will likely continue to be valid for the foreseeable future. The list is not all inclusive and as search engine algorithms constantly change so do the weighting of these variables. The higher a search engine’s confidence in these elements, the higher will be organic placement in their index. Ensure your website has the following focus:

• Keywords: develop a universe of achievable keyword targets and then create sufficient textual content to support these keywords on critical pages in the site so it is optimized for maximum search engine relevancy. Consider having keywords with descriptive or geographic modifiers, if applicable.


• Title Tags: unique and keyword enriched descriptive Title tags must be written for each page in the site. The Title tag is often used as the title for whatever search engine listing you achieve. This makes the Title tag not only a crucial element for achieving listings but may also influence prospects to visit your web site. As a result, it is very important to consider the structure of the Title tag and what message you wish to convey.


• Description Tag: unique keyword enriched Description Meta tags that are page-specific are a critical component in optimizing the site. If the Meta tags are relevant to the page they are on, this may add extra leverage for achieving placement under other keywords. It should be optimized to suit the specific content of the page.
  
  
• Navigation: a text-based navigation map should be available at the bottom of each page in the site. This is especially true if your site utilizes a fully graphical navigation bar or image menu. Text links are extremely important within a web site because they are easily indexed by the search engines.


• XML Sitemap: create an XML site map and feed it to Google. When changes are made to your site Google is notified and this may encourage increased spider frequency.


• Keyword Ratio: keyword to non-keyword ratios should be tested on each page to approximate the average keyword density found on successful competitor’s pages.


• Alt Tags: descriptive image Alt tags should be optimized.


• Links: ensure there are no broken links in your site; repair or delete them.


• Primary Keyword Phrase: the Home page in your site must provide for a specific focus on your primary keyword phrase. A reasonable description length would be 100 – 150 words.
  
  
• Secondary Keyword Phrases: have internal pages focus on secondary keyword phrases that are unique to that page.


• Text Links: place keywords in the text links. Take the opportunity to cleanly add keywords into these links and they may enhance the placement outcome. Refrain from using generic terms such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’.
  
  
• Splash Page: It is irrelevant to have a splash page as your Home Page as there is no text present for spiders to read, record and index.
  
  
• Pop-Ups: do not use pop-ups in place of internal pages as search spiders will not read information contained in them.

As always if you are in the development phase of a new website or revamping an existing one it is always a good idea to purchase a few hours of quality consulting time. Such a precautionary measure can save you from expensive launch delays or having to reprogram code.

When a website is optimized it is important to recognize that SEO is not a one time event. The online environment is a dynamic one and constantly changing. As such, websites require continual management and maintenance. Frequently revise content to keep it fresh to both the search engines and your potential customers.

There are 10 organic listings available on each of Google’s index pages and your goal is to be as high up on that first page of results as possible. Because if you are not there, you can bet it will be your competitor. Implementing a sound SEO campaign and actively maintaining the site will help you get there.

Ross Dunn, StepForth’s CEO authored two extremely popular downloads about SEO. I highly recommend checking them out. Here they are - The Ten Minute Optimization REDUX - A SEO Tips White Paper and Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly? - Your Personal SEO Checklist

On Social Media and What Social Media Can Offer Your Company

Social media communities have the enormous power to change how people view and discuss your product online. You can optimize specific content you have for broadcast to a set of social media channels and their most relevant platforms. Some of the best ways for increasing your exposure on the web can include question and answer websites, blogging, and forums, to myriad social media sites and networks with ten of millions of users.

Is social media marketing a bubble or will this new flurry of interaction really change the face of online visibility? Although it is still early in the game to judge, here are some interesting possibilities that can further promote your online presence.

• Community building: most social media sites are composed of communities, individuals, and groups who can drive large amounts of traffic to your site. Build relationships in these areas to benefit your company and its goals.
  

• Brand Awareness: your identity on the web! People are probably chatting or looking for your products and services on the web right now and you want your brand to be found when this happens. Increased exposure and visibility on social media sites will lead to your site being found and possibly seen as a leader in your industry.
  

• Reputation management: social media creates a better online presence for your products and services. It is important to know where your presence is found and what people are saying so you can control your message. Monitoring tools for keeping track of your online presence, social media achievements and pertinent industry news will keep you abreast.

• Improved search engine ranking: social media creates fresh and relevant content that will be indexed on the search engines and social media sites. Some social media sites are indexed on certain search engines and thus can provide greater exposure of your services. This can lead to information on your site being ranked higher and more often on the search engines.

• Increased visitor traffic: having your presence on social media sites can greatly affect your online traffic. Social media traffic will produce more qualified leads and highly targeted traffic to your website and can lead to viral online exposure.

One of the benefits of a social media program is to promote your site so it is seen as an authority in its field and the place to find information about your product or service. Where is your company or product online in relation to the top social media and niche social media sites related to your industry? Where does your target audience go for industry news, information and resources and which social media sites do they use?

What are your competitors up to in social media? Where are your competitors found on social media sites, where they are promoting their brand online, and what is giving them success online?

Develop marketing content (text, video, and/or audio) to produce a campaign that will showcase your products or services and increase traffic to your site. Determine which web communities (from large to niche social media sites) are best designed to promote your content. Then leverage and target the top social media communities to increase your website’s visibility.

Not only can social media help businesses find their clients online but it can build a positive brand experience where you are seen as a leader in your field having a product or service that many people recognize, trust and use.

Social media marketing works well within a strategic web marketing plan that may also include consultation, competitor analysis, keyword research, a multi-month, hands-on search engine optimization campaign or website analytics.

For a more in depth discussion on social media please see Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing - A StepForth White Paper

Labels: Bill Stroll, SEO, SEO Tips, Social Marketing, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Part 3 - The Genesis for a Successful Online Marketing Campaign

Monday, April 07, 2008

What would you do if you suddenly found your private residence plastered over Google Street View, along with photos of your yard, pool, and other private property? Well, this very thing has happened to Christine and Aaron Boring, and they have since filed a lawsuit against Google.

According to The Smoking Gun, when one of the vehicles shooting photos for the mapping service made a wrong turn up a 50 foot private driveway, it also continued snapping photos and those photos made it onto the live version of Google Street View.

Google spokesman Larry Yu told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "There is no merit to this action. It is unfortunate litigation was chosen to address the concern because we have visible tools, such as a You Tube video, to help people learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal.”

The Boring’s are seeking “in excess of Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars for compensatory, incidental, and consequential damages, punitive damages, costs, all allowable attorneys' fees, and all other damages deemed to be just,"

Another home owned by Janet and George McKee also found its way onto Google Street View. This series of photos is far more intrusive, as the vehicle had to drive up a long winding driveway to approach the house. No word yet on whether or not the McKee’s will also be filing suit. More info and photos on this instance can also be seen at The Smoking Gun.

The “Boring” photos have since been removed from Street View, however, the Mckee’s photos are apparently still listed. Searching Google Maps for the Boring's Address (1567 Oakridge Lane, Pittsburgh, PA 15237), and doing a fair bit of scrolling to the West, you will eventually find their photos have been blacked out and removed from Google.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: "Boring" Photos Result in Google Lawsuit

StepForth SEO News Blog - (Welcome back!) Since 2003 the StepForth blog has covered a range of search marketing industry news and sets a great standard for SEM blog writing. Kudos to Ross Dunn for a great job.

Labels: SEO, SEO News, StepForth

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: StepForth Named One of the Best Blogs on the Net

Friday, April 04, 2008

As posted at Yodel Anecdotal, Yahoo has developed and launched a new website targeted at women. Unveiled on Monday, Yahoo! Shine "features the best writers and bloggers in women's publishing". It helps "connect like-minded women, share stories, and more".

Shines editorial team features editors from Lucky, Jane, and the Wall Street Journal. They created Shine to appeal to a large demographic of women and give them a "smart, dynamic place for women to gather, get info, and connect with each other".

Content found on Shine is derived from some the best of the best, and features works from women at Glamour, Self, Cosmo, Women's Health, and more. Shine does not focus on "how to please a man" or "lose 10 lbs fast" but rather more real world, intellectual content, as well as entertainment news.

While many women appreciate and seem to be quite pleased with the site, this is not the case across the board. One woman commented "It's a rather scary thing that Shine is being pushed as the place for women when all that's on here is fluff." In a reply to that post another writes "Yes I have to agree sadly. I hoped it would cover more real issues but seems to sadly fall inline with too many women's magazines."

If they can boost this site to appeal to the majority of women then this is a great move on the part of Yahoo, Just look at all the money Oprah has made creating an empire geared primarily towards women! I'm curious to see how well this site ends up doing, however, aside from visiting Shine today to write this article, I doubt I will personally be spending much time there. Time to go rebuild a carburetor or watch some football.

Labels: Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Yahoo Launches Shine, a Site Geared to Women

If you've been swayed away from your Microsoft Office products and are now a frequent user of Google Docs you may be interested to know that a select few users will now have offline access to their Google Docs files, as Google begins rolling out their offline editing access.

On Monday Google announced in the Official Google Docs Blog the upcoming functionality to their software. The big push came with requiring the ability to work on your documents when on an airplane, commuting to work, or when your home internet access goes down.

Now users will have the ability to work on their files offline and synchronize when they again have an active internet connection. This is all made quite seamless and easy as it all happens behind the scenes. Users will not have to remember to save documents locally, or to save their changes when an active connection is restored, everything is done automatically.

This increased functionality helps Google get one step further in their pursuit to take a piece of Microsoft's desktop publishing pie.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google Docs is Now Available Offline

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Labels: Brayden Reger, Net Reality, Other News

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: A Net Reality - Cybercrime & Punishment

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

Each engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these. The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the three, MSN Adcenter.

Interface

One of the things I like about working within Adcenter is the clean look. Although from time to time I wonder if the uncluttered interface is more a product of its relative youth, there’s no denying it’s easier on the eyes than either of its competitors. In part, this appears to be due to the lack of clutter that plagues both Panama and AdWords. Perhaps Microsoft hasn’t had time to fill every gap on each page as seems to be the case with the others. Part of the reason however, is the use of bullet links. More often than not, clicking on these causes the additional information to appear in place, without having to navigate to another page. This is a refreshing change, as most of my time using these seems to be spent hitting my back button and waiting for complete pages to load.

The layout of subsections is based on 4 tabs; Campaigns, Accounts & Billing, Research and Reports. Clicking on these takes you to exactly what you would expect, no more no less. Everything is laid out in a logical format and it’s pretty quick and easy to find what you’re looking for. After struggling to navigate through Panama in particular, I find this refreshingly simple.

Campaign Setup

Setting up is a 5 step process.

1. First off, you lay out your basic campaign structure by naming the campaign and initial ad group. One of the nifty features at this stage is a checkbox allowing you to copy an existing ad group. I have found this can be a useful time saving feature. Network targeting, campaign scheduling, language and regional targeting can all be set up on this same page. Also, conversion tracking can either be set up here or later in the campaign interface with a single click.
   
   
2. The next step is writing ad copy. The biggest advantage I have found in this stage is that the interface allows you to paste the entire ad description in one line rather than having to fuss with the character limitations for 2 lines of ad text, such as in both Google and Yahoo.
   
   
3. Now you can add your keywords. This is a very straightforward process, You have the option to add your own pre-made list of keywords and/or using a keyword tool that scans a site, or the ad destination URLs. This tool can generate a list of synonyms based on a suggested term, including the number of searches conducted in the previous month.
   
   
4. The last main step is to determine pricing settings. This includes setting a budget (see annoyances and oddities section), bidding and setting bidding options, such as incremental bidding. Here also you can set bids specifically targeting for location, day, time, age, or gender.
   
   
5. The final step is simply a review of all the information entered to this point and the option to change settings. I find this a bit annoying, as opting to change anything takes you back to that stage and after making your adjustment you have to cycle back through the entire process to the review page once again.

Keywords

The only tool this interface has at the moment is the keyword research tool. This can be accessed under the research tab or when editing keyword settings. I have found this far less awkward and time consuming to use than either of the other 2 engines. One thing to note about adjusting keyword settings is how robust the options are generally. When adjusting existing keywords it is simple to add negative keywords to individual keywords, as well as adjust the match types and specific destination URLs by keyword. Another interesting feature is the trend charts, viewable by keyword. With this handy feature you can view individual keyword trends by age and gender, geographical location, social class and affluence.

One major difference with keywords between MSN and the others is the level of editorial control exerted. Recently I was managing a campaign with a particular ad group that had quite a few different ads. Some keywords were reported by MSN as being declined for certain ads, but approved for others. This is certainly a departure from my experiences with either AdWords or Panama, where if a keyword is declined for any reason, that’s that.

Reports

The reporting feature is also quite robust. One can run single use reports or create saved templates for performance, accounting or targeting. It allows for quite a number of specific report types from account overview down to specific ad or keyword performance. A report can be set to display information from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Additionally, filters can be set to customize reports to only display information you wish to view. Automated report scheduling is also an option if you wish to receive emails periodically, without having to fetch them personally. The format for these reports are limited. Currently downloading one gets you a zipped csv file. Hopefully they’ll expand that to allow options for other file formats.

Annoyances and Oddities

These are some of the gripes I have with Adcenter.

• For some reason, they’ve incorporated the option to select campaign settings for either daily budgeting or monthly. While this isn’t really a bad thing, if you select daily budgeting, it requires you to set a monthly budget as well. In my experience, doing this seems to have little effect on the amount spent on a given day. For example, I had set a daily budget of $10.00 while selecting a monthly cap of $310.00 to reflect 31 days in a month. Day by day this particular campaign was spending regularly up to and in excess of $20.00 daily. No amount of fiddling seemed to change that behavior, so consequently the monthly budget was used up in half the time.
  
  
• Normally, when optimizing ads and keywords, I like to pause poorly performing ads. Pausing them, rather than deleting them, allows me to retain the statistics for later viewing. This is handy because sometimes I do not wish to drop an ad or a keyword entirely, but just want to turn it off for a time, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there is no option to pause either an ad or a specific keyword. There is no way short of deletion to stop displaying a specific ad and the only way to “pause” a keyword without deleting it, is to drop the max CPC to the absolute minimum.
  
  
• There is a limitation on viewing data at campaign, ad group or even ad or keyword level. One can only view yesterday, this month, last month, this year, last year or entire time. I find it very strange that unlike anywhere else in this interface, you cannot specify a custom date range. To get around this, you have to go to reports and create and run a report specifying what start and end date you wish to view data for. This can be time consuming and is an obvious flaw that will hopefully be worked out soon.
  
  
• The timeout is quite short. Many times while working in Adcenter, I’ve tabbed back after only several minutes, only to find the system has logged me out and I have to re-login and navigate back to what I’d been working on.

Summary

Overall, I’d have to say that MSN Adcenter is quite easy to use. Although MSN gets the least amount of traffic of the 3 engines, this isn’t entirely disadvantageous. One result of this disparity is that spend for a given campaign is generally significantly less than in either Adwords or Panama. Given that, when a conversion is achieved the difference in ROI is notable. This engine is certainly worth advertising on and with some improvements will be a fine choice.

Labels: MSN, PPC, Tim Rule

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View this Article Only: PPC Management - A User's Review of MSN