Back to Home Page You are at news.stepforth.com
Contact StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. News.StepForth Home Page StepForth Placement Inc. Home Site
Search Engine Placement Services Free Website SEO Review
This Week's SEO Newsletter The SEO Blog

Warning: include(/home/socia16/public_html/news/search.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 135

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/socia16/public_html/news/search.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 135
Warning: include(/home/socia16/public_html/news/headers/header_blog.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 137

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/socia16/public_html/news/headers/header_blog.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 137
 

StepForth SEO News Blog

Warning: include(/home/socia16/public_html/news/headers/blog_top_articles.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 158

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/socia16/public_html/news/headers/blog_top_articles.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 158

Tuesday, February 10, 2009
SEO Answers: How a Search Engine Ranking is Created

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 3:32 PM

At least a few times a month I get asked various questions about why a search engine ranking looks the way it does.

For example, someone might ask me how they can influence the description and/or title that Google gave their website in their search engine ranking. But easily the most prominent question is "what are those links that show up under some #1 rankings? How can I get those?"

Well, I think it is time to introduce you to a great little video featuring Google's own Matt Cutts in November 2007. The video is an excellent section by section walkthrough of what you know as a search engine ranking but Google calls a snippet. Enjoy!



by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: , , , , ,

Email this News Post: 1 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 3:32 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers: How a Search Engine Ranking is Created

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Tuesday, July 08, 2008
SEO Answers: "I Have Some Essential Content Duplicated Across My Websites, Will I Be Penalized for This?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:55 PM

SEO QUESTION:

"I have a number of websites used to market XYZ Travel. The main site features all products and a number of specialist / boutique websites feature duplicates of these products. Is this an acceptable practice or am I being penalized by Google? How can this be overcome?

"I accept that creative write-ups can be rewritten if essential but fact is fact - what can I do about factual data i.e. room numbers, types, facilities, amenities, address, rates, name etc?"


ANSWER: Since duplicate content became a hot issue a few years ago I have been asked this question many times. Fortunately it seems you are in a position that should not yield any problems but before I explain let me first state what I understand from your email so there is no miscommunication.
Your state of affairs: You have one larger site that has all of your products and a few other sites that serve as niche sites specializing in particular products from your main website. You are concerned that some essential data such as travel details may count as duplicate content because they have to be identical across both the main site and the niche site(s).
And Now My Answer: Provided each page with the duplicated product details also has substantial unique content I believe you will have no problem with duplicate content "penalties". And I am sure you have substantial unique content on these niche sites otherwise there would be no point in creating the sites short of spamming the search engines which is always a bad idea.

It is worthy of noting, however, that even if there were an issue of duplicate content Google representatives have clearly noted that pages with significant duplicate content are merely met with disinterest by the search engine algorithm and passed over; so your site is not directly penalized per se.

The only penalty of any significance takes place when there is evidence of serious duplicate content abuse; when there are nearly identical pages across an entire site. This is common when sites are copies of other sites at which point serious penalties (such as removing the site from the index) are without question the best action.

I hope that has helped you. If you or anyone else would like to pose a question to the StepForth team please visit our SEO Questions form and we will get back to you as soon as possible with an answer.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 1 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:55 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers: "I Have Some Essential Content Duplicated Across My Websites, Will I Be Penalized for This?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Friday, June 06, 2008
Web Marketing Tips by StepForth, Part 1

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:44 PM

Over the course of a day we tend to run into situations where some basic and occasionally not so basic tips and tricks need to be applied to a website. Here are three that come to mind at the moment and might just help you improve your web marketing results.

  1. How to Get an Uncompetitive Term to Rank Well

    Situation: You have a keyphrase that is not incredibly competitive and you just can't seem to figure out why it is stuck on the second page of results.

    Remedy: In the less competitive marketspaces where your phrase is either very niche (i.e. like part number searches or created with industry jargon) or detailed (i.e. 3+ words like "BMW Victoria BC") you can just increase the frequency those words are used within the page. By increasing "keyword frequency" you leave less doubt that a search engine algorithm will determine your Keyphrase is what the page should be ranked for. If competitiveness is truly low this technique will work decently on Google and often very well in Yahoo.

    Frequency Tip: Don't go nuts and add 20 more incidences of the Keyphrase if only 4 will do. Also, do not sacrifice the quality of your writing just to get a ranking or you will drive off visitors when they arrive. Take baby steps! Add only 2 occurrences of the Keyphrase within your content and watch how that affects your rankings. Then you can add or remove from there depending on how your ranking responds on the various search engines.


  2. Decreasing a Webpage's Exit Rate

    Situation: The numbers are incontrovertible, your home page has an intolerably high exit rate (percentage of visitors that enter by that page and quickly exit the site). So how can you lower the exit rate?

    Remedy: First do some research; what keywords are driving the traffic? Are they relevant? If not, ignore that portion of traffic because obviously you cannot make a visitor happy that is looking for something you cannot provide. By the same token look at the referrer of the traffic; it could be another website has misrepresented the purpose of your website thus sending highly irrelevant traffic; again strike this traffic from your view. Once you have considered these issues and separated the wheat from the chaff then you may just need to improve the stickiness of your home page.

    In order to improve the home page it helps to understand a little about your visitors and their needs. In some testing I have been conducting for a service-oriented website it was clearly determined that a home page (effectively your chief landing page) should satisfy two types of visitors.

    > Visitor A just wants to get to the heart of the matter and find out what price you are charging for the product/service they want. So they want an immediately actionable menu.

    > Visitor B needs to trust you and is fully prepared to read the content on your home page to get a feel for the kind of business you represent.

    So what now? The ideal step would be to create various versions of your home page and then use Google Optimizer to compare the reactions to each version and provide you with a clear winning design. That is what we do at StepForth and I can't say enough how well that has helped us. That said, that may be too much for you so just make some changes to your home page and monitor the result over the next month. If you already have a high exit rate (75% or higher) then this test really can't hurt and I imagine you will see some intriguing fluctuations in your page's exit rate and your visitor's time on site.

    When you do create a new version of your home page I suggest writing a quick intro to your services and having that appear first thing on your home page. The intro should have very visible and easy to click links to the key sections/products/services of your website so that hasty visitors can navigate quickly and effectively. Then follow up that intro with the detail and whatever personal touches you want to add to the home page to appease Visitor B.


  3. Essential Content Management System Optimization

    Scenario: Your website is operated on a large content rich Content Management System (CMS) which uses a nearly identical Title and Meta Description tag throughout the whole site. Your website is not ranking well and you cannot understand why since each page has a wealth of content and your prices are competitive.

    Remedy: Consult the documentation of your CMS or tap the resources of your programmer to determine how you can automate the creation of unique Titles and Meta Descriptions across every page within your site; much more feasible than manually optimizing these tags on huge sites. In most Content Management Systems there is a relatively simple fix that can be employed which will allow you to mass-optimize the titles and Meta Descriptions within your web site.

    For example, a real estate website may want to dynamically include the town name and area that a particular home is located within the Title and Meta Description tags; to increase the relevancy of the pages.

    Basic SEO Rule: Title and Description Meta tags must be unique to set the topic of the page for visitors and search engines alike. Also, I strongly recommend starting the Title tag with content unique to the page and then following it by any generic prose. For example Good = "Victoria BMW Sales - Sam Spade Inc." BAD = "Sam Spade Inc. - Victoria BMW Sales".

    Note: You can find more SEO tips in our comprehensive series of article on How to Optimize for Google.

More to Come
I really enjoyed sharing these tips with you and while writing I came up with even more so I will try to write a few more segments in the same format over the next few months.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: , , , , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:44 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Web Marketing Tips by StepForth, Part 1

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
How To Optimize for Google: Q & A

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:48 PM

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: , , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 3:48 PM.

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

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Thursday, April 17, 2008
Top 5 Ways to Keep it Up - Rankings That Is

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:06 PM

Today I was kindly offered the opportunity to participate in Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. The discussion we had was all about what it takes to keep rankings high in search engine results after successfully attaining them. Here is a link to the episode on the Webcology page where our show will be archived and to Jim's article on Keeping it Up and here are a few tips from me on the essentials of maintaining rankings:
  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.
These are just a few tips but they cover the main points that everyone should know about maintaining rankings. If you have any SEO questions just use our Free SEO Questions submission form.

Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: , , , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 1:06 PM.

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

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Thursday, January 31, 2008
Marketing Questions From SEO Blog Readers

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:50 PM

The following were questions sent to us by readers of the StepForth SEO Newsletter and the StepForth SEO Blog. If you have a question of your own we would love to hear from you; submit your SEO question.

Question from Steve:
Information about the why's & how-to's of the BLOGosphere have made for a plethora of copy all over the SEO world, yet my constantly recurring question never seems to come up! And this first question always leads me to second one. (1) If your business is NOT in any way concerned with... let's call it "journalism" (it seems that the business of StepForth would have a sizable reliance on journalistic talent), how would a company go about deploying a blog initiative and still have time to sleep more than one or two nights a week? (...there's this business we gotta keep running!) And (2) if one were to hire one of many firms offering such a BLOG service, how would it come off as more than a thinly veiled SERP ranking initiative, when your business is not of the type where there is really any "news" to report -- AND further, where the BLOG service cannot possibly be expected to have the specific knowledge needed to write usefully pertinent journalistic copy?

Answers from Ross Dunn:
1) You are right Steve, I imagine there are some industries where having a blog would be rather useless but I haven't run into one yet. There are usually a few things to write about: tips on how to use your product, tips on how to get more out of your service, client testimonials, client case studies, industry news, new products or services being offered and why, new staff profiles, emerging opportunities in your industry, etc.

As to how to find the time to keep up a blog... it can be a struggle there is no doubt. Indeed I sometimes find our blog gets put on the back burner while we tackle extraordinary busy periods with new SEO jobs or competitor analysis contracts. The key is that whatever you write does not have to be epic in length - it just has to be interesting or provide some value to readers and build relevance to your site.

2) I would welcome feedback from anyone who has experience using an outside blogging firm. I have yet to hire a blog writer unfamiliar with my business - they have all been on staff writers with experience with SEO/SEM. Even my clients have been tempted to hire on and take a bit of the burden off but have not gone that route yet. That said, I have been keeping my ear to the ground for good writers and companies that could fit this niche. In on case I met some people who had teams of writers each with experience in different industries and that was how they answered my concerns about quality content. In their case the cost of hiring a writer included a small investment in the time it took for the writer to learn the basics of the industry so they could adequately write about it. Unfortunately I cannot vouch for the end quality of their writing because I have yet to go that route.

As for content such an offsite writer could provide... well there are some pieces of information that do not require intimate product/service knowledge. For example, the blog writer could keep the blog up to date with industry news, new products/services you are providing (by paraphrasing your site), they could even troll the forums related to your industry and create daily summaries of the discussions that take place. All of these elements can provide additional relevance to a website.


Question from JAG:
If we have a website and the homepage lists a number cities in a dropdown list. Are google robots smart enough to navigate through the dropdown list and start indexing the individual cities?

Answer from Ross Dunn: What I would term a "standard" drop down menu system is not search engine friendly because it is chalk full of code that search engines ignore. In my opinion the best drop menus are DHTML or CSS because they have the ability to be search engine friendly while offering the space saving and aesthetic advantages of a drop menu.


Question from Mackenzie:
Just recently I had a client ask about “Conversation Domination”. From what I have read, I’m skeptical as it seems like a scam. Because I look to Step Forth as SEO experts, I was wondering what your take is on this concept.

Answer from Ross Dunn: Hi Mackenzie, thank you for your kind words, I am happy to help. Conversation domination is a term I have only heard of a couple times before and from my research it appears that it is currently a term used for a set of social media marketing tactics designed by marketers Howie Swartz and Jack Humphreys. Now I don't know if they in fact originally coined this phrase... I may be giving too much credit since it seems a logical turn of phrase in the social marketing realm.

Your question prompted some curiousity on my part so I checked into this a little further into their program and from what I have seen so far their program teaches users various techniques for taking advantage of social marketing to boost search engine rankings. Unfortunately I do not know how ethical their practices are or if ethics are a even considered in their teachings. That said I only had limited time to review their info so I would not discount it - they could have a great program.

If your client is looking to delve into social media marketing there are other resources that will provide free advice while they decide what direction to take:
Where's StepForth in this list? We are not quite ready to commercially offer social media marketing services and until we are I think the teams above are more qualified to be your teachers. Soon, however, our new social media marketing specialist will be writing for this blog and we will be launching services to bring social marketing in house and take advantage of that realm with the zeal and professionalism that StepForth is known for.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 4:50 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Marketing Questions From SEO Blog Readers

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Thursday, January 24, 2008
Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:16 PM

These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.

This is where redirects come in. Using the correct redirect, in most cases a permanent 301, is key to helping maintain your existing rankings, whether your site is undergoing a complete face lift, or if you simply want to move a few pages around.

While Permanent 301 Redirects are the most common there are valid situations where either 301's or 302's may be the most appropriate. This article will discuss what these redirects do, common and less common uses, implementation, and how to check that you have set them up correctly

1.) What are these redirects, what do they do?

Permanent 301
To summarize in a few lines, permanent 301 redirects are just as they sound. They are permanent redirects from an old URL to a new one. These redirects tell the search engines that the old location is to be removed from their index and replaced with the new location. Using 301 redirects is the most search engine friendly way to redirect traffic and engines, and far out weighs that of various JavaScript and Meta refresh redirects.

Temporary 302
Temporary 302 redirects are also as they sound; temporary. Here you are telling the search engines to read and use the content on the new page, but to keep checking the original URL first as it will ultimately be reestablished.


2.) Common and Less Common Uses
There are many special cases where you should stand back and consider which redirect to use. In nearly all situations a permanent 301 will be the answer, but sometimes a 302 just may fit the bill. Here are some examples of when to use each redirect.

A.) Permanent 301 Redirects
As noted earlier, 301 redirects are by far the most common. When using them you are telling the search engines "do not come back to this location, the page has permanently moved."

All three search engines handle 301 redirects the same. If Site A is 301'd to Site B, then Site B will show up in the search results and Site A will ultimately be completely removed.

Page Deleted or Moved
Probably the most common use is the moving or deletion of a single page. Let’s say that you are no longer selling a specific product and therefore have no need for its page. Using a 301 redirect to send the spiders to either the next closest product, or to a relevant product list would be of far more value then having your site return a 404 error and sending users to an error page.

The same goes with pages that are simply moved. While you are probably better off keeping the page where it is, there are many valid reasons why you may need it moved, and in this case a 301 redirect is essential to keep both the search engines, and your site users (who may have bookmarked this old page) happy.

New Top Level Domain
If you are thinking about changing your main domain name, don’t do it. If you find that there is just no way around it, and that the change is essential, 301 redirects are your answer.

By using a 301 redirect to send traffic from your old site to your new site you can help ensure that ranking damage will be minimal. Without a 301 redirect your new site will be a completely from scratch endeavor with years of hard work down the drain and any historic profile that a search engine has created will not be carried over to the new site.

WWW vs Non-WWW
This is now one of the most common uses of a 301 redirect when used in combination with Mod Rewrites. Essentially by using a permanent 301 redirect to send traffic destined to the non www version of your site (site.com) to the www version (www.site.com) you can focus the strength and prevent page rank split, giving your site's home page (and internal pages) a nice little boost.

For more information on this specific form of redirect, please see:
How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL’s.

Duplicate Pages
More often than not you will find websites with valid multiple home page URL's all which serve up the same identical page. This is most common with two versions of the home page such as: www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html.

The first step is to update all your home page links to ensure that only non-index.html version is referenced. Should you happen to miss any home page links, and to direct these /index.html pages to the right place, adding the 301 redirect will ensure that you are not splitting the page value.

Old Domains
If you find yourself with multiple websites and one or more of them are completely outdated, but still relevant and you have no chance of revitalizing it, you may want to consider using a 301 redirect to send traffic and engines to your current site.

By redirecting all internal pages of the old site to the most relevant internal pages of your new site, you will not only ensure that site visitors reach the proper updated content, but that any pre-existing rankings, link value, and other search engine goodness is transferred over to the new, active website.

Note: If you find yourself in the unusual situation of having dozens, or even hundreds of old websites, do not 301 all of them at the same time, you could likely be flagged as a spammer and endure penalties or a possible banning. If this is the case, just redirect a few of your sites that happen to have the most to offer in terms of rankings and traffic.

Rewriting confusing URL strings via Mod Rewrite
Lets say that you have a site with long confusing URL strings for all internal pages. These days the major search engines do a much better job of indexing these obscure file locations, but it is still in your best interest to redirect them to a friendlier, cleaner URL. To do this you can use Mod Rewrites which utilize 301 redirects to turn this:

www.site.com/categories/pageid?brand=348H&model=8889KHl&color=554hY

Into this:
www.site.com/bmw/650/white/

This URL is not only far more friendly to human visitors, it adds a higher level of relevance for the search engines and is easy to index.

(For the record, no, I do not own a white BMW 650, but who wouldn’t want one?)

B.) Temporary 302 Redirects
The practical use of a 302 redirect is really quite limited. In most cases a 301 redirect is the correct choice; however, there are always exceptions. If you find yourself in the position where a 301 redirect just won't do, here are a few situations where the 302 may be a better choice.

Temporarily Moving a Page
This is the main reason this 302 redirect exists, but you have to also ask yourself, have you ever temporarily moved a page? If the time comes where you need to relocate a page on a temporary basis, with the ultimate final destination of the page being at the original location, then you would want to use the 302 redirect.

Home Page Redirect
Have you ever visited a websites home page only to find that you have been redirected to some obscure URL string like www.site.com/home/redir/pageinfo?id=23498874&g=34, but in actuality it is still their home page?

There are many cases where various dynamic sites or content management systems choose to rewrite the home page using some lengthy string of variables. The best fix for this is to use a mod-rewrite to change the messy URL into a simple www.site.com. Sometimes however, mod-rewrites may not work due to various server constraints, in which case, using a 302 redirect may be the answer.

By redirecting the home page of your site using a 302 redirect to this longer, more obscure URL, you essentially are telling the engines to continue using the shorter, original URL, but index and rank based on the content of the longer version.

In doing so you will not only clean up the display URL in any search engine rankings, but you will also help retain value from any links pointing into your home page from outside sources, ultimately helping to improve your overall search engine rankings.

Special Promotions
Let’s say you have decided to create a special promotion for a product page on your site. You have toyed with the idea of changing the original product page but have decided against it, and instead created a new promotional page.

While the promotional page is live, use a 302 redirect to temporarily send traffic intended for the product, over to the promotional page, you can then easily remove the 302 redirect once the promotion is over and the original page will come back into play.

302 Hijack
Important Note: We do NOT recommend attempting this, although if you do, you are likely to only harm yourself as this black-hat trick no longer works.

Not too long ago the spammers did what they are good at and found a way to abuse the system, in this case, the 302 redirect.

It was possible to use these 302 redirects to hijack rankings and traffic from another unsuspecting site. How did they do it?

Hackers used the 302 redirects to send the search engines from their domain (Site A) to a page on the target domain, (Site B). Google would see this and the rankings for Site B would be ultimately transferred over to the redirecting page on Site A.

Spiders were essentially cloaked to see the 302 redirect to the page on Site B, while human visitors, arriving from the newly hijacked rankings, would either see the original page, or be directed to another page residing on Site A.

302 Hijack

Because of this vulnerability any 302's that direct to a different top level domain are now treated as 301 redirects by the search engines. By treating these as 301 redirects it eliminates the usefulness of this technique and solves the hijacking problem – sorry spammers.

Special Circumstances
There are always exceptions to every rule and situations which result in the need for a creative solution. In the past we have had a client who found themselves in one of these situations.

When undergoing a huge redesign, a client of ours was forced to have part of their site hosted on one server, and part on another. The part of the site to be moved also had to be placed at the sub domain www1. This presented the potential problem of a huge ranking loss in the search engines which just was not acceptable.

The answer was using 302 redirects on all pages which were moved over to the www1 location. Because the sub domain is still a part of the original top level domain, this solution did not risk any possible penalties from the search engines (in regards to the 302 hijack issue), and also did not cause any problems with the effects of the alternative; a 301 redirect. In the end not only were rankings not compromised, the result of the new website actually caused an overall improvement in listings and site traffic.

This was a circumstance with a number of complicated technical issues I won't go into, but the end result was success, with much thanks to a few 302 redirects.

3.) How to Implement:
The focus of this article is about understanding the difference between these two redirects and which one is right for you. If you need help on the implementation of these redirects visit our tutorials found at:

How to Redirect an Old Domain to a New Domain
How to Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL's


4.) How to Check:
Not sure if you have implemented your redirects correctly? There is a fast and easy check you can do to find out.

Let’s say you are redirecting page A to page B. The obvious way to check is to try loading page A and see what comes up in your browser, but, if you have set up the wrong redirect, to the naked eye it may appear that all is correct.

To ensure that the correct status code is being utilized, use a "header checker" tool, enter the URL for the page to be redirected, and see what comes up. Finding a tool to do this is as simple as searching in Google, but to make things even easier see our HTTP Header Checker tool at StepForth.

5.) 301 / 302 Redirect Warning
Be sure to avoid redirecting large numbers of pages all to one location. This practice is commonly used by spammers and could wind up getting your site into some hot water with Google.

Spammers have been known to create thousands of pages. By generating 1or 2 links to each of these pages, and ensuring that they are spidered and indexed in Google they can then harness the power of redirects to boost site rankings. By taking thousands of pages and redirecting them all to one main page, you would essentially increase the value of the target page and transfer much of the link popularity and boost search engine rankings.

Google is onto this. If you try this, you will likely end up banned, or at least penalized. That said, there may be legitimate reasons why you would drive multiple pages via 301s to another page on your site. If this is the case, be careful so you do not wind up being flagged as spam.

6.) Summary
If your site is in need of a redirect, be sure to use the appropriate one for your situation. Correct use of these redirects can be your best friend when it comes to retaining search engine rankings, and your worst enemy if used incorrectly. There are many situations which may not be covered in this article, but hopefully you now have the information to make an informed decision on which of these two redirects is right for you.

Labels: , , , ,

Email this News Post: 5 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 2:16 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Friday, January 11, 2008
How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:19 PM

Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.

Retrace Your Steps

Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:

  • You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.

  • The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.

  • Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but in most cases they will return to pre-incident status.

Check Your Content

Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website’s rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.

Check Your Server Headers

When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use our free Server Header Checker Tool to review any headers and take action if required but there are others freely available as well.

Search Engine Webmaster Tool Resources

If you have not already done so I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center. Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine’s perspective) for site owners such as:

  • Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why.
  • Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
  • Who is linking to your website.
  • Which pages are the most popular on your website.
  • Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.

In addition these free webmaster resources allow you to submit an XML sitemap of your website so that you can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website.

Search Your Site for SPAM

It is possible that your site has been “lucky” enough not to have been penalized until now for certain content transgressions. You see, search engines don’t always catch SPAM right away. In fact, I occasionally find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see blatantly spammy sites appearing in the top 10 search results. Your site may not be entirely spammy but all it takes is for one transgression to come to light for a search engine to penalize your search engine rankings. What SPAM is and how to identify it is an article unto itself so here are some helpful resources for you to review:

Contact an SEO or Request a Forum Review

If you haven’t found a reasonable answer after following the instructions above I would recommend either contacting a reputable SEO company for advice or posting your ranking problems publicly on a popular search marketing forum within a resource like Webmaster World. There are a lot of people on forums that can be incredibly helpful and may have an answer for you. But a word to the wise, make sure the person providing advice has a solid reputation. I strongly recommend reviewing a number of their previous posts and Googling them to ensure they have suitable experience to provide advice – unless of course you have a ‘no duh’ moment where their advice makes perfect sense.

Related Content for Suggested Reading

Ask StepForth a Question

If you have a question about your current rankings or other SEO related questions please submit your question here and we will do our best to respond ASAP.



How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings
by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: , , ,

Email this News Post: 3 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 1:19 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Wednesday, November 07, 2007
StepForth Wants to Answer Your SEO Question FREE

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:50 PM

  • Have you got a burning question about your current search engine optimization campaign?

  • Do you want to ask about the particular nuances of different leading search engines?

  • Are you wondering why after all of your work your website is not getting better rankings?

If so, send your SEO questions to StepForth and if they are not already answered in our "SEO Answers Resource" we will do our best to answer them and possibly feature them in future SEO blog postings or articles.

>> Submit your SEO Question here <<

The Weekly StepForth SEO Newsletter
Also if you are looking for great free SEO tips and advice we highly recommend signing up for our free weekly SEO newsletter - the StepForth Weekly. The StepForth SEO newsletter provides valuable SEO tips and important search engine news on a regular basis to ensure that you are always kept up to date.

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:50 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: StepForth Wants to Answer Your SEO Question FREE

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Friday, February 23, 2007
SEO Answers - "If I use the content I receive as a reseller is it considered duplicate content?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:51 PM

Complete Question: "How about duplicate content for resellers where the manufacturer or producer of a product describes a product with technical details and so on. Do I have to rewrite text, create my own descriptions? Or is Google able to recognize that i have to use the original text from the manufacturer and not to punish me?"

Answer: Google has a powerful algorithm that may be able to determine "right" or "wrong" duplicate content. That said, I would not rely on it. In this scenario I would rewrite the product descriptions wherever possible and improve the optimization of each description while I was at it. After all, many default descriptions are boring and less than ideal for rankings anyway.

But allow me to remind you of one thing... If you are talking about a shopping cart system where you have thousands of widgets and they all appear using similar text then DO NOT be overly concerned about this duplicate content; it is not a threat to your rankings. Yes it is usually ideal to have unique content but in this case just concern yourself with balancing this duplicate content with added value within the rest of the site. You can do this by adding unique pages dedicated to each widget. These pages can be created whatever unique content you want (diagrams, specs, reviews, etc.) but they ultimately serve to introduce a particular widget to users (and search engines) while providing direct links to the appropriate section of the cart.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Original source article and permalink: SEO Answers #15

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:51 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers - "If I use the content I receive as a reseller is it considered duplicate content?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

SEO Answers - "Who is duplicating who? Who says which article URL is the original?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:40 PM

Answer: Excellent question. The fact is there are a few ways to ensure you are chosen as the primary content provider. The best option is to require that all who syndicate your content provides a inline text link directly to your original posting of the article. For example they would say something like this at the end of the article included in a link: "SEO Answers #15 by Ross Dunn". This way everyone who repost's your article is sourcing your content as the original.

If you do not source the original release in this manner the website who publishes your article and gets the most attention for it (via links or publicity measurable by Google) will have a better chance of being chosen as the original content provider.

In conclusion, unless you strictly enforce your ownership to the article you may not get the final credit when Google is forced to guess who published it first.

For more info here is an article on article syndication content duplication I recently wrote.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Original source article and permalink: SEO Answers #15

Labels: , , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:40 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers - "Who is duplicating who? Who says which article URL is the original?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Thursday, February 08, 2007
SEO Answers #14: "Does Article Syndication Amount to a Duplicate Content Penalty?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:09 PM

This SEO answer is a follow-up to a common question I received from my recent article "The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication".

To be as clear as possible with my answer I am going to break it down into two sections: one for those who syndicate their own content and the other for those who publish syndicated content.

Please keep in mind, however, duplicate content is not an exact science or anything close to that. As I wrote this article, I often imagined exceptions where a penalty would or would not take place. That said the following answers are based on what my experience dictates to be the most common scenarios.

Answer 1: Syndicating Your Own Content
If you are sending out your own content for syndication (on other websites) you need not worry yourself with duplicate content penalties because you are the original source of the article. However here is some winning strategies you should use to ensure you get the maximum benefit from your article.

First-off it is often beneficial not to syndicate your content right away but to wait a day or so after writing your article so that the search engines can index the content first on your own website. Why? Because if you syndicate your article before or at the same time you publish it on your own website a 3rd party site may post the article before you do. If that 3rd party happens to be highly credible your article might get spidered there before it does on your website which may reduce your website’s exposure.

This next factor is the most important: all articles must have a link back to a copy of the article on your own website to establish ownership. This will show the search engines that you are the original content creator, which will provide some backlink benefits and increase the chances your article will be found in searches. In some cases, like StepForth’s, we have chosen to point the article to our flagship home page to build backlinks; another reasonable choice.

The downside to such a technique is the original article on our news website is not often credited with the first publication because a source backlink does not exist.

Answer 2: Syndicating Other People's Content
Publishing content that has recently been released for syndication will not result in a duplicate content penalty. Why? Because the content is fresh and the major search engines do not penalize fresh content. It is paramount to note however that publishing older content under the guise of new content is a bad idea and not recommended. For example, if you were to post an old article you found online you would be wasting your time as the search engines would compare this to their database and immediately notice the content is outdated and previously syndicated; they simply would ignore it.

So What Happens to the Majority of Duplicate Content?
Over time, duplicate content is weeded out of the search engine databases for the sake of search efficiency. Generally, the version of the article that is hosted on the most credible website or has the most backlinks (source credits from republishing) is considered the authority source and gets the bulk of the top rankings for that article. This is why sometimes, when looking through search results I occasionally find my own articles sourced from the more popular Search Engine Guide instead of my own site where they were originally posted.

When Does a Duplicate Content “Penalty” Occur?
For the most part, older duplicated content is simply ignored by search engines so the ‘penalty’ per se is really quite benign; meaning the page is not worth the bytes of space it uses. A major search engine such as Google would consider a SPAM penalty for a website that only consisted of content that had previously been syndicated or had repeatedly tried to pass of old content as new. A penalty might be as small as a drop in rankings or as significant as an outright blacklisting. How the ultimate decision is made is buried deep within Google’s SPAM protection algorithms.

In Conclusion
If you syndicate your own content, you have nothing to be concerned about but ensure that anyone who syndicates your content gives you proper link credit.

If you republish syndicated content, you need to be sure the content is fresh, topical to your website and that you have the rights to post it. Ultimately, I suggest following the lead of the best marketing sites on the Internet and intersperse your own freshly written content within your website. After all, over time syndicated content loses its lustre in rankings due to its nature of duplicity so if you have your own unique content your site will fare better in the end.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Permalink to SEO Answers #14: "Does Article Syndication Amount to a Duplicate Content Penalty?"

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

If you have additional questions be sure to send them my way. I cannot promise an immediate response but I will try to get to yours as soon as possible. If you need a faster response please contact Bill Stroll who can arrange some consulting time between us.

Labels: , , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 1:09 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #14: "Does Article Syndication Amount to a Duplicate Content Penalty?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Monday, January 29, 2007
Correction to Post: The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 9:34 AM

Hello all, I wanted to clear up a significant issue with my recent article "The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication". It was edited closely but apparently not quite close enough. Please note the following change in a question within the article:

Q: “Which website should I shut down? Is there anything I should consider first?”

A: Yes, it is very important that you choose keep the website that has the most backlinks and has been online the longest. The reason I say this is that Google tends to favour entrenched websites; they have been around a while, are well backlinked and overall appear to have a positive history.

Whatever your decision is, it is vital you understand switching a website to a new domain is a dangerous step. This is because of Google’s famed ‘sandbox’. The ‘sandbox’ is really only an overused turn of phrase that represents a portion of the Google algorithm which considers the age of the domain as a signifier of trust. Generally, new websites will require 6 months to a year before substantial rankings are evident; this is kind of a right of passage that Google appears to be enforcing on the average website. Sites that are obviously popular and quickly gain a load of legitimate link popularity will easily avoid the sandbox (because Google can not afford to miss a ‘great’ website) but this is not the common scenario.

Sorry for this confusion! I hope the rest of that sentence made the mistake irrelevant but I didn't want to take the chance.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR QUESTIONS:
Well I guess we were right thinking this was a hot topic! I have received a deluge that I will respond to as soon as possible. Instead of answering them all one-on-one I will try to find some common issues or questions that I can respond to in a quick follow-up article which would be great for both of us.

Cheers, Ross Dunn

Labels: , , , ,

Email this News Post: 1 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 9:34 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Correction to Post: The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Tuesday, January 16, 2007
SEO Answers #12: "My .co.uk domain lost rankings when I added a .com... why?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 10:01 AM

QUESTION: My client originally promoted a single .co.uk domain that he owned. Recently he purchased a .com and pointed that domain to his current website. Since this change we have noticed his “pages from the UK” content has been dropped from Google UK but the .com is performing well on Google.com under the client’s target keywords. What is going on? – G.S.V.

ANSWER: I see no sure answer why this has happened without more information. First things first, the .com website will get attention from Google.com simply because non-regional TLD’s are favoured at Google.com. Also, the fact that your client’s site got excellent rankings is a testament to the quality optimization of the site (even if you do not want these rankings); so kudos to you if you were the one who optimized the site.

Understanding why the .co.uk dropped in the UK regional rankings seems the tough question. Here are some things to check on:
  1. Was the .com 301 redirected to the .co.uk? A 301 redirect effectively tells the search engines that they should pay attention to the destination domain (.co.uk) versus the domain the spider originally entered at (.com). If you were to enable a 301 redirect now you might save yourself a lot of confusion and potentially pain in the future; since this technique undeniably states which domain represents the flagship website and will limit duplicate content penalties.

  2. Did the .com have a prior history? Perhaps it was bought the .com had a significant number of backlinks or history that outweighed the .co.uk domain. You see, I expect when Google is presented with two domains pointing at the same content it will choose to rank the domain with the most positive history. That is of course, if no other directives have been stated (i.e. 301’s). A way to see if the domain had a history before it was bought is to use the Wayback Machine and see if a prior site existed. Next you should do a backlink check for the domain to see if there are any links that came with the ‘new’ domain.

  3. Is the website hosted in the USA or the UK? If the .co.uk and the .com are both hosted on an American server then achieving a ranking on google.com will be significantly easier than google.co.uk and vice versa. In other words, host in the UK and use a .co.uk domain if you want to be sure to have regional UK rankings.
At the moment these are the most prominent possibilities that come to mind but there are likely more. The fact is, if all else fails and it appears everything is normal I find issues like oddly missing rankings fix themselves over time. I hope your outcome is extremely positive and I do hope you keep me up to date.

If anyone else has experienced this issue or has some educated feedback please post a comment within this posting on The SEO Blog.

PS. Here is a great forum thread at Search Engine Watch discussing Google.com vs. Google.co.uk rankings.

Labels: , , , , ,

Email this News Post: 4 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 10:01 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #12: "My .co.uk domain lost rankings when I added a .com... why?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Monday, January 15, 2007
SEO Answers #11: "How do I edit my website description on Google?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 12:40 AM

QUESTION: How do I edit my website description on Google? Please direct me to the correct place. – Barb C.

ANSWER: There are three ways your website description might have been created by Google and fortunately each method has a solution which I have outlined below:

1) Google most commonly determines page descriptions from an assortment of the text on the page; usually the first 25 words or less. Controlling what is used by Google in this scenario is not foolproof but if you make certain that the first sentence on your page exemplifies an ideal description you will be off to a good start.

2) If Google does not choose the text on your page it may use the META Description tag found in the source. Ensuring that this description is well written is the simplest method of controlling result descriptions.

3) Perhaps the most frustrating scenario is when Google decides to use the description set for your website by the Open Directory Project (ODP). You can tell whether this has happened by searching dmoz.org for your website and cross referencing the description. If it turns out that ODP is the source of your frustrations then you are in luck! Just last year a new META tag was created which tells the search engines to no longer use your ODP description. Just place the following code with the other META tags on your page: <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">

As a final benefit make certain that the descriptive sentence you use for solutions 1 and 2 are identical which emphasize consistency and improve your chances of controlling the description used by Google.

This SEO Tip by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.

Labels: , , , , ,

Email this News Post: 3 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 12:40 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #11: "How do I edit my website description on Google?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

SEO Answers #10: "Do backlinks help just the linked page or the whole site?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 12:27 AM

QUESTION: When a high PR page within a 3rd party website links to a page within my website where is the benefit placed… on my home page or my page that was linked to? – Jose U.

ANSWER: The home page and the linked page benefit from the link… but to different degrees. The majority of the weight is applied to the linked page because it is the page that effectively deserved the vote of confidence but it also counts positively towards the integrity and credibility of your whole website; which in essence is represented by your home page.

Please note, this answer is totally dependent upon the quality of the backlink you received. For example, links from websites that are unrelated or have poor credibility will offer little or no benefit. For more information on what constitutes a ‘good’ backlink see my answer to a recent question from a reader: “What exactly are good backlinks?”.

This SEO tip by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.

Labels: , , , , ,

Email this News Post: 2 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 12:27 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #10: "Do backlinks help just the linked page or the whole site?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
SEO Answers #9: Domain Stop Words, Duplicate Web Sites, & Increasing Article Backlinks

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:40 PM

Three SEO questions are answered in this Q&A article:
  1. Do search engines ignore stop words in domain names?

  2. I created a duplicate website to target my services to a different state. My intention is not to dupe Google but I don't know what else to do. How would you approach this?

  3. What can I do to increase the number of backlinks I am getting from articles?

Question 1) " I know search engines ignore stop words in meta tags and title tags. Do search engines ignore stop or common words in domain names? Example www.therealestate.com or www.arealestate.com " - Corey M.

Answer: Yes, to the degree in which the keywords have any effect the more common words within a domain name would be ignored. It is, however, important to keep in mind that search engines only place a limited amount of weight on keywords in a domain name. In my opinion the only time where a site keyword within a domain name wins a ranking war is when all other elements are equal between you and near-ranked competitor.

Additional Info: I like to do my due diligence before answering any question because frankly I need to be sure the rules have not changed overnight. Here are a couple links to pages that relate to this question:


Question 2) “ Hi Ross - I just finished reading your blog... "SEO Answers #7: " What Determines Duplicate Content SPAM? "and I have a question for you. Allow me to give you a little background: One of my clients has expanded their business into another state with a different name, but it is ultimately the same business. In order to develop a Web presence for this new, duplicate company in a new area, we created a second Website that has its own unique design, etc, but is ultimately a take off on the original site, using the same content, just minor differences to allow for the new name, geographic area, etc. The original site is optimized and of course contains the original content. The duplicate site is not optimized. In no way is our intention to "dupe" anything, but will this cause problems with the engines? We are not trying to get mileage off of the content by duplicating it... this is simply a second company that offers the same services, just in a different state. Each site is in its own domain and has its own URL. Your input? Your suggestions for a different solution? Thanks for your time."

Answer: Simply put if you are truly not looking to get any mileage out of the content then you do not want rankings for it which implies that the site should be blocked to the search engines. I would recommend using your robots.txt file to block the spiders entirely to that website so you do not negatively affect your rankings on the original site. The fact is that duplicate content, good intentions or not, is frowned upon by the search engines and you are gambling by having the site available for spidering.

If, however, you do want the search engines to spider the content then you must rewrite it to avoid duplicate content penalties.

As a final note I would like to pose a question; did your client absolutely have to create a secondary website? In many cases I find that a client need not have created a second site; they just needed to add a new section to their site to manage the new target marketplace. The other option, which may have been appropriate in this case, is to add a subdomain to enjoy the benefits of a secondary home page on a pre-branded domain and fresh marketable URL; nearly the same benefits of having a secondary domain without the headache of marketing an entirely new website. Even in this case, however, you would not be able to use duplicate content so you would be faced with the same issues; either rewrite the content or block it from spiders.



Question 3) "Ross, in an attempt to improve my ranking in the search engines, I have been writing articles for article directories in the hopes of receiving quality backlinks. Recently I came across a site mypagerank.net, which I decided to check on my link popularity. The result indicated that I only had 18 backlinks. What can I do to increase the number of backlinks I am getting? I would have expected more as I have written many more articles and submitted my URL to many directories. Thanks, enjoy reading your articles" - Peter

Answer: First, good work making the effort to write articles, they are an excellent medium for promotion and I commend you for dedicating the time to writing. I certainly understand the significant commitment to time and research required to write usable content. Fortunately, there are a few techniques that may help you squeeze some extra benefits from your hard work:
  1. Be Clear - Request Credit
    Are you being very clear to those republishing your content that you expect a linked credit for the copy? Simply stating that you allow syndication but request credit laid out in a particular linked format will do wonders. At StepForth we clearly request credit and we occasionally troll Google looking for those who have republished our content without credit; it is usually a simple matter to have the content removed or the appropriate link added. Hence, if you see this article does not give credit and provide a link to StepForth.com then please drop me a note, ross@stepforth.com :-)

  2. Pick a Powerful, Timely Topic
    Have you noticed a topic coming up regularly in forums? Perhaps a question that appears to be asked regularly? This is usually a good indication that an article discussing the topic would do well. Remember that many of the syndication networks online are looking for topics that will get readers and ultimately provide impressions for their advertisers. As a result, picking a hot topic will make a world of difference in how widely your article will get picked up.

  3. Optimize the Title
    The title of your article needs to clearly relay the topic and should engage readers and editors alike. The title can make or break a story if it is too vague or boring.

  4. Refer to Your Own Content
    It helps to provide inline links from your article to relevant previous articles or pages on your website. With practice and once you have built up a healthy reservoir of linkable articles it will soon be second nature to refer to links in a manner that is crucial to the article; so that editors note that the backlinks are relevant and play a legitimate role in the purpose of the article. Legitimacy of backlinks is crucial to make the ‘cut' because editors are more likely to remove a link than keep one if it appears merely promotional.

  5. Give Praise Where it is Due
    Within an article don't be afraid to link to other sources where you have noted particularly good information, particularly other small business blogs. The fact is that some bloggers take a real shine to those who syndicate or give credit to their content and may just link back to you in thanks.

  6. Put RSS On Your Side
    If you have not already done so ensure that your articles are syndicated on your website in RSS format as well. This can be easily accomplished by using a blog to publish your articles because most blog systems include automated feed creation. Many of the article syndication networks use articles solely through RSS. So as soon as you get a RSS feed you should go out and tell the world about it. Try using Google and search for "submit feed" or " add blog " and you are certain to find some great sites to submit your syndication feed.
There is a lot more information on this topic so I will provide some links that should help you further:
After all this work is done, keep in mind not every proper (credited) use of your article will deliver the benefits of a backlink. The search engines are frankly too smart to give credit to every article link because of the obvious duplication and the unfortunate proliferation of article scraping sites (sites that republish articles to try and make their sites appear authoritative). That said, the links acquired from truly authoritative sites would pay off as backlinks and hopefully with the more important benefit - direct traffic.

As a final note remember that articles are meant for human consumption so be sure to proofread your work and ensure that the topic is either timely or originally written enough to be useful. I am not saying this applies to you, however, it is important that the quality of the content is high enough to merit wide spread syndication.

by Ross Dunn - CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Permalink to this Article: SEO Questions #9

Labels: , , , ,

Email this News Post: 1 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:40 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #9: Domain Stop Words, Duplicate Web Sites, & Increasing Article Backlinks

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Friday, December 01, 2006
SEO Answers #8: "How Can I Get Rankings When Using Flash and Splash Pages?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 11:22 AM

QUESTION: I have just started my own design company and although very well trained in both designing and programming, earning two associate degrees in this field, not one professor ever said anything about making your websites search engine friendly. I recently designed a website for my sister and i cannot even get her site to show up in any search engine. I have several keywords at the top including a description as well. one problem may be that the index page is sort of a splash page except it is just a handler that detects whether or not the user has flash installed and whether or not they have the bandwidth to view the flash page accurately. it then redirects them to a new page based on the feedback. therefore, there is no real content on the index page. Another possible problem is that she is mentioned on hundreds of other websites. do you have any suggestions for me? Any advice would help. -- Laura P.

ANSWER: As with most questions I receive I could use more information to be certain I am providing an insightful answer. That said, it sounds to me like your design has shut the door to the search engines or in the very least made their task of indexing content more difficult.

Unfortunately Splash pages are extremely search engine unfriendly; especially when they are designed to redirect users to specific content. There are different ways that the design put in place could be hurting results. For example, a search engine spider may be less than happy that you are redirecting it to what appears to be different content (it could look like cloaking) but this one is an unlikely scenario (because search engines tend to be more intelligent these days). On the other hand, the search engine spiders may not have a problem at all with the redirect but the addition of extra steps to reach content never helps rankings.

So what is the solution to this issue? There are a couple ways to fix this and they all vary in the work involved. I will start with the best solution and work my way down.
  1. Flash Integration: I know I am going to get some nasty looks from Flash designers but I honestly feel that Flash is best integrated within HTML. This is especially true if the site in question is concerned about obtaining rankings. So the best way to fix this whole problem is to combine the content with the Flash. In this situation the Flash would appear within the content like images do on a standard HTML page. I realize this will be a load of work but I believe the pay off is substantial; the slick benefits of multimedia with the ranking benefits of spiderable content.

  2. Improve Spider Accessibility: Another option is to remove a step and simply have the Flash option available immediately, continue to automate the detection process but add a final option at the bottom of the page which would be a textual link to the sitemap of the HTML version. By offering a link to an HTML sitemap you provide the search engines with second level access to a page that can access every page within the HTML version of the site. This will improve the search engine friendliness of your website considerably.

    In addition, I recommend adding a Google Sitemap and submitting it to Google using Webmaster Central. Here is a link to a Google sitemap tutorial written by StepForth's Senior SEO, Scott Van Achte.

    Note: it would be to your benefit to offer a prominent link somewhere on the page for users to go directly to the HTML format if they wish.

  3. Working With What You Have: The final option I recommend is to provide content on the splash page (essentially your home page) by way of an introduction. Make the introduction at least one sizable paragraph and ensure that your target phrase appears a couple times within it. Then offer the two options, Flash or HTML for users to choose from thus removing the automation script. Now the home page will actually have some optimized content and you still provide visitors with the two media options.
I hope this helps. Honestly the more I think about the question the more additional options come to mind but I think I have provided some helpful suggestions above. Please let me know how it works out Laura.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Subscribe to the SEO Blog for regular SEO News

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 1 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 11:22 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #8: "How Can I Get Rankings When Using Flash and Splash Pages?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Wednesday, November 29, 2006
How to Optimize a Webpage in Ten Minutes

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 6:04 PM

Image of Ross Dunn along with the text "The Ten Minute Optimization Redux"In April 2003 I wrote an article called “The 10 Minute Optimization” which outlined a 10 minute process to optimize a web page for top search engine rankings. Well, a few things have changed since then so I thought a redux (revision) would be a good idea. How I am going to do this though, is a bit unorthodox. This document is largely still pertinent so instead of rewriting the same SEO tips I reproduced the article (the boxed content) and added a revision section below each point wherever necessary; ultimately bringing this up to date with today's SEO tactics.

The result of my work is "The Ten Minute Optimization Redux", an article-turned SEO tips white paper which is 3600 words in length and will arm my readers with a concept of what it takes to get top rankings and optimize a webpage themselves. Now a word of warning... this white paper is not meant for veteran SEO's or advanced SEO's; it is strictly meant to bring business owners up to speed on the latest search engine tactics and the current standards of web page optimization. The following is a table of contents for this white paper.

1. Introduction

2. Setting the Stage
A) Determine Your Targets (Updated for 2006 with new tips)
B) Design - Is Your Page Memorable? (Updated for 2006 with new tips)
C) Spot Check for Relevancy (Updated for 2006 with new tips)

3. The Ten Minute Process - With 2006 Revisions
> Spot Check for Spam
> Polish and Optimize Text
> Optimize the Title
> META Tags (Updated for 2006 with a new tip)
> Navigation... Provide Clear Paths
> Test and Spell-Check (Updated for 2006 with a new tip)
> Hurry Up and Wait (Updated for 2006 with new tips)

4. Link Building - NEW SEO Tips!
Three sure-fire methods to build links to your website.

5. The After Thoughts - NEW SEO Tips!
Links to pertinent articles that are recommended reading and provide more tips and advice from veteran SEO's.

6. Conclusion
Tying it all up.

Read our SEO tips white paper now - it is entirely free!

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 6:04 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: How to Optimize a Webpage in Ten Minutes

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Monday, November 27, 2006
SEO Answers #7: "What Determines Duplicate Content SPAM?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 11:12 PM

QUESTION: We're a very small company with an 11 year website history, with web development resources somewhere between quite miniscule and non-existent. Nonetheless, SEO has been a keen focus of awareness since before it was called that, and up until that infamous "Florida" event 3 or so years ago, we did very well in the SERPs. Over the years a number of people have worked on the code comprising our site, and while there is nothing egregiously, obviously wrong with our content, no one knows if now we're being penalized for something 'lurking' in our code that may be left over from yesteryear and never found and rooted out. The biggest worry and source of disagreement seems to involve "duplicate content".

Two questions:

(1) is there a fast way to ensure elimination of all code that could be found objectionable to major SE 'anti-spam' filtering? and,

(2) is there any way to learn how the SE algorithms define "duplicate content", e.g., is it a matter of word-for-word duplicity, or would a site get penalized even for re-worded content that had the same general meaning -- appearing on more than one page?

- Steve F.

ANSWERS
Thanks Steve, I am going to answer your questions in reverse order below.

Question 2 Answered:
First of all, duplicate content is any substantial piece of content that has been duplicated, word for word, elsewhere on your website. I know, 'substantial' is a bit of a weak explanation but there is no official formula describing how much content can be used without triggering a search engine's spam alarm. Just to be sure, if you are trying to use foil the search engines by using slightly reworded duplicate content then chances are you will not end up a happy site owner. Search engines are getting 'smarter' by the day and frankly I and my SEO company are of the mind that working with them is far healthier than the alternative.

Okay, requisite preaching complete... now lets consider some basics regarding duplicate content so I can assuage any basic fears should they exist. Site navigation and small sections of the page that have, for example a text advertisement, are not of any concern. What would be a concern is if you had a large portion of the content on a page duplicated elsewhere within your site; say, a few paragraphs or a large percentage of the page's content (even as little as 30% duplication may be an issue).

So what happens if you do have duplicate content, are you going to be banned instantly? No, Google (for example) will only negate the benefit of the duplicated page(s) and this negation would not result in a critical penalty. A critical hit would occur, however, if a website were composed of a high ratio of pages that had been determined duplicate content offenders.

Either way, duplicate content is wasteful and no good will come of it.

If you do not think you have any duplicate content then you are probably safe. There is, however, another possibility. Has someone duplicated your website and tarnished your good name? To check for this take some random strings of content and search for them on Google using exact searching (surround the query in quotes). If you come up with a site that is using your content you may have your answer right there - your site has been duped! If duping is the problem you need to contact the site immediately and let them know you have discovered their copyright infringement. If they do not pull the content then if I were you I would send a more formal cease and desist letter.

Question 1 Recapped: Is there a fast way to ensure elimination of all code that could be found objectionable to major SE 'anti-spam' filtering?

Question 1 Answered: There is no single tool that comes to mind which will tell you exactly what is wrong with your site; at least not one that I would recommend. If you need your site reviewed for spam then a search engine consultant like myself can be hired for a couple hours to scan your site and provide concise feedback; in such a case often other beneficial recommendations are made. If you want to check your website yourself then I recommend reading an article written by Jim Hedger (our in-house SEO writer for StepForth at the time) called "15 Shades of SEO Spam" which will provide you with some tips on what tactics can cause problems.

The other option is to go to a reputable search engine forum and ask for the opinions of forum members; they are often very helpful and knowledgeable. Forums I recommend are: Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, Webmaster World and Web Pro News


by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Submit your SEO question to Ross Dunn

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 11:12 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #7: "What Determines Duplicate Content SPAM?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Thursday, November 23, 2006
Ross Dunn Answers SEO Questions - Edition 6

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 5:18 PM

Two excellent questions are answered in this article:

A.) Which steps should I follow when optimizing my dynamic website?

B.) Can you maintain the integrity of my design while implementing SEO?


QUESTION A) Which steps should I follow when optimizing my dynamic website? - Chriz R.

ANSWER:

To be certain of the particular answer for you I would need to know more about your website so I will provide a list of what I would term the most common steps to optimizing a dynamic website that utilizes a shopping cart.

  1. URL's: Banish those ugly dynamic URL's and open your website to the search engines. Accomplish this by using a rewrite such as ISAPI_rewrite on Windows servers or a mod_rewrite on Apache servers. This tweak will provide search engines with an easier route to follow through your website. Why? When search engine spiders visit a website and find dynamic URL's there is a high likelihood that the website will not be fully spidered. This is because search engine spiders are trained to avoid the possibility of getting caught in a loop when indexing a website. For example, what if a search engine spider was indexing a website and found a dynamic calendar? Theoretically this spider could go on forever indexing the calendar, day after day. As a consequence, spiders place a limit on the depth that they will index a dynamic website; usually 3 levels. Here is a sample of a bad URL and a fixed URL:

    Unfriendly URL: filename.php?id=F98ZF4&productId=39222&section=
    wicked&brand=582&template=53

    Search engine friendly URL:
    http://www.surfboardsforyou.com/boards/wickedboards/39222/board53/

    In short, by making your website's URLs appear static the higher the likelihood that your website will be properly indexed. Once this fix has been applied optimize your website for rankings.

  2. Titles and Meta Description Tag : Common in my world of SEO consultation is dealing with Content Management Systems (CMS) that do not allow for product/page specific title or Meta Description tags. These lower quality CMS end up using the same title and Meta Tags on every page within the website; this is the kiss of death for search engine rankings. If you are serious about obtaining top rankings you need to either increase the functionality of your CMS to provide title and description customization or switch to an alternative, more search engine friendly CMS.

    Title Tags: A page title must concisely correspond to the ranking target for the page that it is on; after all it is used as the title for any ranking you obtain so it should be highly relevant. How this is done is up to you and the degree in which your CMS is setup for search engines. For example, excellent search engine friendly shopping carts such as Product Cart and Apple Pie Shopping Cart already incorporate the automation of optimized titles based on the product or page you are on within your website. If your system does not have this innate automation then the best option that comes to mind is to have additional functionality added to your website to allow automation. You can usually hire the maker of the software to make this addition.

    Description Tags: The Description Tag is often used as the description for any search engine ranking a page obtains. As a result, this content must be highly relevant and engaging; to get users to click and visit the page. Fortunately the higher end SEO friendly carts (linked to above) already provide automated Description Tag functionality with the option to override automation with a custom Tag on a page-by-page basis. If your system does not offer automation and/or customization then you should again consider hiring an informed programmer include it.

    Note: Keyword Tags are not mentioned here because of their vastly diminished importance in the world of search engine optimization. The fact is that search engines are paying little (if any) attention to this tag. In fact, I would venture that the Keyword Tag is ignored unless it is being used to SP@M in which case it will produce negative affect. So my tips generally do not include Keyword Tag advice – just FYI.

  3. First Text : If possible, ensure that the first text a search engine indexes is relevant to the page at hand. For example, at StepForth ideally we like to include the page's target keyphrase within the first 10 words of text on the page.

  4. Headings : Often the heading on a page is within the first 100 words of text that a search engine spider will index. To ensure the heading aids rankings it is important that it not only reflects the page's keyphrase but that it utilizes a Heading 1 tag. The Heading 1 tag will provide enough emphasis that the keyphrase will stand out from the prior words indexed. In addition, the Heading 1 tag (H1) was originally created as the signifier of a page's topic and for the most part this fact stands true to this day. If your CMS does not already incorporate H1's in the formal heading of the page then you should seriously consider having this functionality implemented.

  5. Site Structure: If at all possible create a site structure that is no more than 4 levels deep. An example of how this can be arranged is to minimize the number of sub products/pages within your system.

    For example, try to avoid the following 6 level site structure (extreme example):
    Bike Helmets (styles shown) -> Racing Style Bike Helmets (about this style) -> Racing Style Bike Helmets (brands shown) -> Racing Bike Helmets (Styles shown) -> Racing Bike Helmet (image shown) -> Racing Bike Helmet (detail shown)

    Instead you could use this tighter 4 level structure:
    Bike Helmets (styles shown) -> Racing Style Bike Helmets (about this style integrated with a listing of brands shown) -> Racing Bike Helmets (Styles shown) -> Racing Bike Helmet (detail shown)

  6. Navigation : The navigation of your website is paramount to proper search engine spidering. The navigation links should be in text format and use the keyphrase that the target page is optimized for. In addition each page must have a link to a central Sitemap that comprehensively lists every page and product/service within your website.

  7. Images : If your system can support this make certain to place descriptive product information in the ALT tags for each product image. If you can you should also stamp each product picture with your website address in as attractive a manner as possible. The result is that search engine spiders will be able to index your product images appropriately and they may be featured in Google Image searches. By having your website address on the images you will have the added benefit of potentially receiving business from this search venue.
Is There More You Can Do to Optimize Your Dynamic Website?
There are many additional customizations that can be added to a dynamic website to produce efficient optimization results. Unfortunately, it would take too much time for me to describe each one effectively. If you would like more information on what can be done please give me a ring or drop me an email , I would be glad to help or refer you to someone who can.


QUESTION B) Can you maintain the integrity of my design while implementing SEO? - Chriz R.

ANSWER:

My first instinct is to say “yes, of course!” because 90% of the time we do not need to disturb the general integrity of a website when optimizing it (i.e. layout, site structure, the majority of content, etc.). Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The fact of the matter is that some websites are provided with restrictions that stifle proper search engine optimization. For example, it is exceedingly rare but occasionally we are given websites to optimize that:

* Are entirely Flash based
* Have content the clients do not want us to touch at all
* Have too many links to outside sources
* Are loaded with too many incidences of a keyword phrase (SP@M)
* Etc.

In such cases, it is our job to educate the client that the restrictions being placed upon us will significantly diminish the chances for ranking success. It should be noted, however, that in no situation whatsoever will we make changes without the express approval of our client. StepForth is a customer-centric firm so effective communication is our mainstay; we know you know your business far better than we do; we are here simply to help you properly succeed online.

Thank you for your questions Chriz. I have many other great questions awaiting responses and I promise to respond to as many as possible over the next two weeks on the SEO Blog . Tune in and send in your SEO questions here . – Ross Dunn

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 0 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 5:18 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Ross Dunn Answers SEO Questions - Edition 6

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
SEO Answers #5: "Should I Use More Than One Press Release Service?"

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 9:28 PM

Question: There are a number of wire services (like PRweb) for submitting
press articles to online news feeds. Is it recommended to use a few of them
for article submission or am I running the risk of having my article
submitted to any particular distribution partner more than once. Is there
any advice you can give me regarding which services distribute to which
distribution partners and how to select which ones to use. - Frank O.

Answer: I recommend using only a single company to distribute your releases. In my opinion PRWeb is the leader in the world of online press release distribution.

Will using multiple press release companies hurt your online visibility? First of all consider that a professional, well-entrenched company such as PRWeb is going to do an excellent job of disseminating your news so chances are high that you would be wasting money using multiple companies. Secondly, consider the damage you could do if your news appears too often... spamming could produce backlash and I highly doubt multiple submissions will help search engine results.

I have used and hear enough about PRWeb to suggest that it is the 'go-to' company for press releases. That said, I am not an authority in the world of press release advertising (I have a hard enough time staying focused on the SEO world) so I cannot provide much more advice. I did, however, spend additional time studying the forms and they state that the base $80 SEO distribution package on PRWeb (note free submission is now no longer available) gives a great bank for your buck at only $80 per release. In addition, I came across some good feedback on the new SEO + social media $120 package.

In short, I believe my advice is informed enough to serve you well but I am sure there are many with more experience than myself in this area that can provide more detail. If you need more information I suggest checking the forums out at WebmasterWorld, WebProNews or SmallBusinessBrief (Search Engine Guide's forum) and posting your question(s) there.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Submit your SEO question to Ross Dunn

Labels: , ,

Email this News Post: 4 Comments for this Post
This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 9:28 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Answers #5: "Should I Use More Than One Press Release Service?"

ADD TO:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb

08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003
09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003
10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003
11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003
12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004
01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004
04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004
11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004
12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005
01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005
02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005
07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005
08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005
09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005
10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005
11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005
12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006
01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006
02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006
03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006
04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006
05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006
06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006
07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006
08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006
09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006
10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006
11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006
12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007
01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007
02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007
03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007
04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007
05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007
07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007
08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007
09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007
11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007
12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008
01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008
02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008
03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008
04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008
05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008
06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008
07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008
08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008
09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008
10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008
11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008
12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009
01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009
02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009
03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009
04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009


Warning: include(/home/socia16/public_html/news/menus/menu-blog-right.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 1822

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/socia16/public_html/news/menus/menu-blog-right.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 1822

Add to Technorati Favorites


SEO Blog Postings
by General Topic

» SEO
» SEO Answers
» SEO News
» SEO Tips

SEO Blog Postings
by Search Engine

» ASK
» Baidu
» Google
» Microsoft
» MSN
» Yahoo
» Other Engines

SEO Blog Postings
by Category

» AJAX
» Algorithms
» Analytics
» APIs
» Click Fraud
» Conferences
» Copywriting
» Directories
» E-Mail
» Fun Stuff
» Interviews
» Link Building
» Local Search
» Mobile Search
» New Tech
» Online Statistics
» Other News
» Paid Inclusion
» Pay-Per-Click
» SOAP
» Social Marketing
» StepForth Inc.
» Usability
» Video

SEO Blog Postings
by Author

» Ross Dunn
» Scott Van Achte
» Jim Hedger
 

Warning: include(/home/socia16/public_html/news/menus/menu-footer.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 1916

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/socia16/public_html/news/menus/menu-footer.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/step1/public_html/news/blog/labels/SEO Answers.php on line 1916
 StepForth is a Member of the SEO Consultants Directory