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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Reputation Enhancement is Critical to Internet Success

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 11:52 AM

In the following interview, world renown Internet marketer Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today interviews Ross Dunn from StepForth Web Marketing about Reputation Enhancement and how important it is for businesses of every type on the Internet.

Labels: Blogs, Interviews, Ralph Wilson, Reputation Enhancement, Ross Dunn, Web Marketing Tips, Web Marketing Today

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 11:52 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Friday, October 24, 2008

Google Separates Search Stats

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 3:24 PM

Good news for users of Google Adwords. Last week Google added the option to allow AdWords users to view separate statistics for Google search and the Google Search Partner Network (such as Aol.com and Ask.com). Prior to this, performance data was only listed for both networks combined.

I spent some time reading through various forum threads on this topic and I got the impression that I would be turning off the display for the search partner network; a lot of folks seem to be skeptical about the relative value of advertising on the partner network.

The first account I viewed using this feature showed zero conversions on the search partner’s network, while the conversion rate was pretty decent on the Google network. However, other accounts showed the search partner network actually out performing the Google network. From what I’ve seen so far, it can be worth advertising on both networks.

One thing that would be nice to see, now that we can view this information separately is the ability to turn off the display on either network. Currently, the only options are to have either both search networks turned off or to display the Google network only. It we were allowed to manage these in separate campaigns, we could optimize to make the most of this additional data.

After looking these stats on a number of older client accounts, I came to the conclusion that Google shows historical statistics data for the search partner network dating back to Dec 2006, so we can view nearly 2 years of accumulated data.

All things considered, this is a very nice addition to the already robust feature of the AdWords system. Kudos once again Google, for making my job easier.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 3:24 PM.

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Website Slowing You Down?

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 11:42 AM

In a world where more and more households are connected to the internet, bandwidth is becoming an issue and brownouts have been predicted to occur in the next few years. With the strain on the infrastructure of the internet this makes having an efficient, fast loading website all that much more important.

The bottom line for most site owners though, is not the efficiency of the internet as a whole, but rather the financial sustainability of their websites. While there are many ways to make a site perform better in terms of converting visitors, one of the simplest, and probably most important aspects is simply to reduce the load time of your website.

If your site suffers from poor performance you could be missing out not only on sales and average visitor time on site, but also search rankings. Below I will discuss some of the negative impacts a slow loading site may experience, as well as a few ways you can correct the issue. In some cases, correcting the problem will cost you only some time, although it has the potential to really pay off in the long run.

Negative Impacts of Long Load Times
If your site takes too long to load this can have a number of negative effects including loss of sales, loss or rankings, and increased pay per click cost. It can even increase your hosting costs depending on the cause.

Loss of Sales
Let’s pretend for a moment that search engines just didn’t exist and rankings didn’t matter. People are impatient - if your site takes too long to load, many potential customers will simply give up and go elsewhere.

Broadband connections are growing incredibly fast in the US; however, according to a study posted at FoxNews this past July, approximately 10% of Americans still have dial-up internet access. If your site loads slowly, you may be alienating 10% of your potential customers.

The last thing you want to do is frustrate your visitors. If you do this, you may drive them away, never to return. If you can provide a fast loading efficient website, you will increase the likelihood that your visitors will make a purchase, and return again in the future.

Increased Pay per Click Costs
Only a few short months ago a post by Heather Lane at the Inside AdWords blog announced that landing page load times will affect a keyword’s quality score. The reason for this is quite simple: a fast loading website improves the end user experience. As a result, ads directing to a slow loading page will be given a lower quality score. This in turn will cause your keyword bids to be higher, costing you significantly on a per click basis.

Loss of Organic Rankings
We know two things for a fact. Google factors in load times with AdWords, and Google focuses on an improved end user experience. As a result, I for one am convinced that a site’s load time does impact overall organic search rankings. While this is likely only a small piece of the very large algorithmic puzzle, it does play a part, and if you can speed up your site, you just may be able to move your rankings up a notch or two.

Speeding up your site is unlikely to move your site from page 8 all the way to page 1, but it may be enough to move up a few positions.

Increased Hosting Costs
Assuming your load times are due to file size issues and not other server constraints, your hosting costs may be more than they need to be. This factor will vary a great deal based on the hosting company and the package you have chosen.

Many hosts now offer packages where a significant amount of bandwidth usage is included, resulting in a single flat monthly or annual rate. (LunarPages for example, has a $4.95 monthly plan with unlimited bandwidth per month.) If your hosting provider does put a limit on usage and you are using beyond the allocated max, you could be paying a fair bit in overage charges. If you fall into this category, optimizing your files to reduce bandwidth usages could save you a considerable amount of cash.

Issues and Fixes
There are a number of issues that can cause a site to load slowly. Below I have noted a few items that are fairly common and can be relatively easily corrected.

Issue: Un-Optimized Images
This is probably one of the biggest culprits out there impacting load time today. I have seen countless websites where image optimization is simply not done, resulting in significantly increased page load times. One of the biggest problems is when images are scaled down to fit the application.

Quite often webmasters will take a large image, and scale it down using the height and width attributes rather than physically resizing the image. What this does is then require the browser to load the full high resolution image, when it really only needs a fraction.

Let’s take this real world example. A client recently had a photo on their home page; the photo was 600 x 403 pixels, weighed in at 124.68 KB, and visually they had scaled the image to fit 473 x 317 pixels.

By resizing the original image to the desired dimensions, and then reducing the quality of the jpg to 70%, the end result was an image that looked identical on his website but weighed in at only 23 KB - that’s 101.68 KB smaller than the original. Using a simple filesize download calculator I found online, 101.68 KB would take 14 seconds to download using a 56 Kb modem, or about 2 seconds on your run of the mill broadband connection.

For broadband users 2 seconds may not seem like much, but remember, this is only for a single image. When you add up all other images and on-site components, the time can significantly add up.

Issue: Un-Optimized files
Another way you can speed up your sites load time is to have clean HTML, CSS, and other included files. Remove extraneous code from your files, and use CSS wherever possible. Every piece of old html code adds up in size, even if it doesn’t impact the visual site itself. I have seen many cases where links have been removed but the code remains accidentally, leaving something like:

link code

This code, while as tiny as it is, does contribute to an increase in load time (and in this specific example, could also be seen as spam by search engines).

If your site makes use of CSS, consider compressing it to save on load times. You can do this by grouping identical styles to save space. For instance,

p {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:12px
}

li {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:12px
}

can be compressed by grouping these two styles, reducing the coding by half:

p,li {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:12px
}

Again this may not seem like much, but when you add this up with all of the other little things, it can ultimately result in a significantly increased load time for the page as a whole.

Audio and video can also be compressed. If your site uses a fair bit of multimedia, see if you can compress these files a bit more than you have already. You may be able to save some load time here as well without impacting user experience.

Issue: Hosting Server
It is possible that your site is perfect in every way, but the culprit is simply your web host. It does not necessarily mean that your host is slow, but if you are paying for an account on an old archaic computer with limited system resources servicing 1000 websites, this could seriously impact your site’s load time. If you have worked to ensure that the site is well optimized for efficiency and the load times are still extreme, you may need to upgrade your hosting account to one more suited for your business needs.

If your site is a fairly basic, such as a static 8 page html site, then a slow server may have little to no impact, but if your site requires extensive database queries and the help of an intensive content management system, and serves up tens of thousands of visitors a day, then you may need to switch to a higher end dedicated server. If you have found that your server is the only problem in your slow load times, contact your host to see what they can do for you.

Issue: HTTP Requests
According to a post at the Yahoo Developer Blog, "80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, style sheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages."

The article discusses combining files in order to reduce the number of HTTP requests, largely by the use of CSS Sprites. They also discuss using image maps to combine multiple images, however, from an SEO perspective, this is not something that I would recommend as my experience has shown image-mapped links are not always followed by search engine spiders.

They go on to explain a vast number of rather technical aspects to speeding up a page. If you are a technical person capable of implementing advanced techniques, the Yahoo Developer Network is definitely something you should check out.

Load Time Tools
Before you undergo any changes to your site to resolve the slow load times, I suggest first finding a tool and benchmarking your progress. Record how long your site takes to load, and then try again after you have made an effort to correct the problem.

There are a number of tools out there that can help you calculate your load times. One such tool is WebSiteOptimization.com. This site specializes in optimizing the performance of your site in order to decrease bandwidth and load times. They have created a very simple tool which will give you the load times for the individual components of your site, which can give you a good idea where to start.

Summary
If you take a bit of time to speed up the load time for your website by optimizing your existing content and cleaning up your code, you may just find yourself making more sales. As an added bonus you may also find improved search engine rankings, which will then in turn increase your sales further. Depending on your hosting provider, you may even have a reduced monthly hosting bill. Decreasing the load time of your site is really win-win for everyone.

As the internet becomes more and more bandwidth intensive with an ever increasing stream of users and higher use applications, doing whatever we can do reduce the strain on the system will make for a faster internet for everyone. If every webpage on the internet could be reduced be even just 100 kb, the web would be a much faster place.

(How do you keep your site loading quickly? Post your comments on this article with your tips and tricks for reducing load time!)

Labels: Scott Van Achte, SEO Tips, Web Marketing Tips

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 11:42 AM.

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Google Displaying Error URL Sources

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 7:15 AM

Google, in their Webmaster Central Blog, has introduced a nice little feature to the webmaster tools interface recently. The new feature identifies source URL's for various errors that they detect.

For instance, when they display a 404 (not found) error for your site with a link to the missing page, now they will also tell you where they found the link to this error. This added feature can save a webmaster a ton of time in some cases.

While there are other tools out there such as Xenu Link Sleuth, to help detect broken links, this added feature in Google gives site owners one more tool to help troubleshoot a website. The tool will display the source of all URL's causing any errors that Google reports.

In Google's "Not Found" and "Errors in URL's in Sitemaps" sections, you will now notice a "Linked From" column.

While this addition is not a major breakthrough, it does show that Google is actually listening to its users, and does increase the usefulness of Webmaster Tools. (On a side note I found it interesting that in Google’s own screenshots, they had 258 "Not Found" errors - I would have expected a few less.)

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 7:15 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Yahoo Third Quarter Results

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:38 PM

I wrote about Google’s third quarter results last week, and yesterday Yahoo released theirs. While their revenues are up as compared to the third quarter of 2007, Yahoo will be moving forward with layoffs.

In Q3 of 2007 revenues at Yahoo were a reported $1.768 billion. In the same quarter for 2008 they are seeing a figure of $1.786 billion - up about $22 million. As a percentage, this is very small, but growth none the less.

During the Q3 announcement Yahoo noted that it would be cutting 10% of its headcount, but would continue future hiring in developing countries where salaries are lower.

Labels: Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 2:38 PM.

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Google Doing Well After Third Quarter

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:14 PM

With the stock market crashing and Google’s shares at the lowest point they have seen in a few years, Revenues for the third quarter of 2008 remain high. The quarter ending Sept 30 saw total revenues reaching $5.54 billion.

After paying out commissions and crunching the figures, the end result comes in at $4.04 billion, $10 million less than the expected $4.05 billion.

So while the value of their shares may be plummeting, Google, at least for now, appears to be recession proof. In many ways this is not surprising. As consumers are getting tighter with their money and businesses are struggling to make ends meet, boosting up advertising spend online to try and grab what shoppers are out there bodes well for Google.

Google shares closed at $372.54 Friday, down about $5 from opening.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 2:14 PM.

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Major Player updates; Search Engine Turmoil

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 10:00 AM

Pause Button Pressed on Yahoogle

As the time for implementation of the Google/Yahoo agreement drew near, there was little doubt that some sort of action by the US Dept. of Justice would surface. It remains to be seen what direction the DOJ will go, but there is obviously something happening behind the scenes.

On Friday, both search engine giants announced a delay in moving this initiative forward. This move seems contrary to the previous position of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, which indicated that the deal would proceed as planned.

What this delay portends is still anyone's guess. For now, the waiting game that kicked off in June will continue.

Will Yahoo Acquire AOL?

This has certainly been a busy and yet, unproductive year for Yahoo. Beginning with the failed takeover bid by Microsoft, followed by the looming uncertainty over the Google deal, one can only wonder what's next.

While talk of a partial acquisition by Yahoo of AOL services has been ongoing for some time, nothing concrete has come about. The consensus seemed to be that this was a move designed to increase Microsoft's offer for Yahoo, if not to thwart the takeover altogether. If that was the case, then it stopped making sense months ago.

Likely, Yahoo looks upon this potential acquisition as a way to expand both their content services and advertising revenue.

Despite indications of progress, details of these discussions seem as vague and uncertain as anything else involving Yahoo of late.

So far this year, we've seen Microhoo, Yahoogle and YAhOoL. I wonder if we'll see YAskhoo! next.

Perhaps we should start a betting pool, winner take all if guessing the correct date when (if) Yahoo will actually successfully conclude one of their negotiations this year.

Microsoft Search Incentives

While Google innovates and Yahoo spins around in circles, Microsoft adds an unusual approach to gaining additional search market share.

Beginning last spring with the launch of the Cash Back program, Microsoft introduced the notion of search advertising rebate incentives. This allows advertisers a means of paying for advertising on a Cost per Acquisition (CPA) basis and buyers some savings on purchases. If you are unfamiliar with this, Techcrunch did a great analysis of this feature. While many had doubts about this approach, it appears to be working.

search perks logo

Last week, Microsoft added to this type of service by releasing >SearchPerks!, another means of attracting traffic through a points-based reward system. While this is not a new concept, it certainly is unique in the search engine world.

Participating users can expect to receive rewards for redeeming saved up "tickets". There are many types of rewards, such as air miles, music downloads and more. This is a limited time offer and sign up for participation expires on Dec 31, 2008.

While it's too early to tell, some believe this idea does have potential.

No surprise to anyone, this feature is only available to Internet Explorer users. That leaves me out of this program. Like many people, not only do I find that browser (regardless which version) extremely annoying and frustrating to use, I resent Microsoft's constant efforts to restrict compatibility for so many services and 3rd party applications to their browser alone.

Labels: Google, Microsoft, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 10:00 AM.

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Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Promoting Your New Website

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:55 PM

A few weeks ago I wrote about building your website from the ground up. This article did not dive into great detail on any specific topics, but rather touched on the key points you will want to address. In this article I will place most of the focus on the promotion aspect of this previous article.

While at times new websites can experience organic search rankings in a matter of months, for the most part, it can take well over a year before you start to see any progress, and that is if you start promoting right away!

SEO
If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, in many cases no level of promotion will help you get those search rankings.

Note: Extreme numbers of inbound links can sometimes cause an un-optimized site to rank, but an optimized website will drastically reduce the number of links needed, and its associated cost. This varies from industry to industry, but is true as a general rule.

Ideally the optimization of your site occurred during the planning and building stages, but if it did not be sure to get this completed as soon as possible.

Press Releases
The first thing you should do when your site goes live is issue a press release. Be sure to include a link back to your website, preferably with your target phrase hyperlinked as well. Submit this press release to an aggregator such as PRWeb. This will help get the word out that your site is live, draw some attention from the public, and also get you that first valuable link to your website.

Search Engine Submission
These days search engines will find your site on their own, and submitting to them is not necessary. If you feel you must submit your site to the engines, submit it only once and shortly after the site goes live.

In order to help the search engines fully spider your new site, the best thing you can do in terms of submissions, is to create and submit an XML sitemap. Submit this sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and also be sure to include a call to it within your robots.txt file by adding the following line including a complete path to your sitemap:

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

There are many tools out there to help you build your xml sitemap. Google has placed a list of some of these tools on their "Third Party Programs" page.

Directory Submission
Back in August I wrote about using Directory Submission to help build links. The general gist of it is to be sure that there is a high level of relevance in the directories you submit your site to, especially if it is a paid directory. Currently DMOZ still has a high level of value as it is seen as a strong authority at Google. Make the attempt to have your site listed here in the most relevant category possible.

Link Building
There are a number of ways you can work to increase your back links. In July I wrote about 13 ways to help build links. Links are one of those strategic tools that will never be a bad investment. Today they play a significant role in search rankings for most industries, especially in Google. While the future will almost undoubtedly still see search value in links, even if that value declines, or disappears entirely, quality links can still help drive traffic as well, and a strong base of inbound links can deliver you customers well into the future.

Explore the different ways to build links to your site. A steady progressive increase in inbound links will help Google look positively in your direction. Do not be afraid of reciprocal links either. If you are trading with highly relevant websites to your industry, then you should have nothing to be afraid of.

Social Media
Promotion largely consists of building links and becoming recognized by the search engines, but in order to help you build those links, getting your name and brand out there can really do wonders. By increasing awareness of your site and product, the public will often help create the buzz you need, and often, this can result in fresh links to your website.

To help get your site in the eyes of as many people as possible, take a look into Social Media and consider creating profiles on some of the popular platforms. This can include creating a YouTube account and uploading instructional, informational, or interesting product videos. You can set up a Facebook page, and work to build a community around your product. Create a profile page on Squidoo, MySpace, and Flickr, amongst many others.

These pages often act as backlinks to your site, and also help spread awareness. Be sure to keep your social endeavors updated regularly or any viewership you have will dwindle as people lose interest. If you are able to build a strong following, this can result in many individuals linking to your site and spreading the word, resulting in long term benefits for you and your site.

Your use of social media does not have to be exactly about your company. For instance, let’s say you sell cars. Your use of the social platform, while it may note your business, can focus on other car info including trivia, news, photos, etc. The key is to keep it relevant, not identical - you are not looking to create a mirror of your site.

Article Writing
Write articles about the subject of your website and submit them to various services such as EzineArticles. Consider also writing for your own blog to help grow your site content. By writing and distributing relevant articles you can create a nice cushion of relevant incoming links. By writing articles that closely match the topic of your site, and including a link back to relevant content within your site, you can help out not only with search engine rankings, but by creating an extra traffic stream for your site

Pay Per Click
While Pay Per Click (PPC) will not give you many long standing benefits, it can help you to start making sales immediately which in turn can give you the funds needed to promote your site via other means. If you need that immediate traffic, this is one way to get it, but at a cost, and as soon as you stop paying, your traffic stops, so it is far from a reliable long term means. In some industries however, it can pay off, so it is definitely worth considering.

Summary
In general, reference your website everywhere possible. Get links from every relevant source you can think of, issue a press release, and get your site listed the key directories for your industry. The more eyes you can put your URL in front of and the more relevant sites you can get to link back to yours, the sooner you will start to see progress in the search engines.

For many industries it can literally take years to get those coveted first page results - in some industries it may be near impossible, but if you want a chance, you need to start promoting that new site of yours immediately.

Labels: Scott Van Achte, SEO Tips

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 2:55 PM.