Google Print Ads Now Open to All AdWords Advertisers

More than two years after first testing the sale of magazine ads, Google's print ad program has left beta and now allows AdWords advertisers to place ads in more than 200 newspapers across the United States. Google began testing the newspaper ad auction for a small group of advertisers last November with just over 50 newspaper partners, including The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Yesterday, Google announced they would be opening the Google Print Ads system to all AdWords users, allowing companies of all sizes quick and easy access to managing ad campaigns in newspapers across the United States.

The process to begin running print ads is pretty simple.

First, you'll need to log in to your Google AdWords account. You'll notice that a new tab has been added that says "Print Ads."



Click on the "Print Ads" tab and you'll be taken to the "Getting Started" page.



This page will show you an overview of any print campaigns you might have running. To set up a new campaign, click the "Create a new print campaign" link.



The first thing you'll need to do is name your print campaign and set your run dates. (Note: Google uses these run dates to get an idea of what your campaign might cost...you can change the actual ad run dates later.)

Next you'll need to begin your search for newspapers. You can search by newspaper name, by location, by circulation, by available ad size and by which sections of the paper ads are available.



You can see in the image above that I've narrowed my search to include papers selling 2 inches of ad space in the Living section.

Google will then offer up a list of newspapers that fit your search criteria:



Clicking on "info" for any of these papers will bring up a new window with detailed information about the location of the paper, the circulation and current ad prices.



Once an advertiser has reviewed the information about each paper, they can work their way through the list selecting the newspapers they wish to have their ad run in.



Depending on your search criteria, Google may also offer up the option of "Newspaper Packages." Google explains Newspaper Packages this way:

Newspaper packages are groups of newspapers sold together as a bundle at the request of the publishers. Packages often include newspapers that are located in the same metropolitan area or owned by the same parent company.



Once you've selected the newspapers or packages that you wish to bid on, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "continue."

Next, you'll need to choose the ad sizes and ad prices you wish you offer. Google will let you make these specifications for each and every newspaper or newspaper package you have selected.



As you can see in the image above, you'll be asked to select the section of the paper, ad size and days of the week you wish to see your ad run. If a specific section of the paper only appears on certain days, Google's system will limit your selection to those days of the week.

The system will also tell you what the list price of your desired ads is and will allow you to tailor your offer price. The Google Print Ads system users a slider bar that allows you to see what percentage off list price you are offering.

The column on the far right tells you what your maximum ad cost per week is by multiplying your offer price times the number of days you've requested your ad runs.

Once you've selected the ad location, ad size and ad price for each newspaper, Google Print Ads will give you a summary box that shows your total maximum ad spend each week if all of your offers are accepted.

It's important to note that if you are using a standard credit card, Google Print Ads imposes a weekly spend limit on your campaigns. While you will be allowed to place offers for ads that total more than your spending limit, Google will keep a running tab of accepted offers.

As soon as your accepted offers total your weekly spending limit, all other offers will be listed as 'expired' and newspapers will not have the ability to accept those ads. (Advertisers can apply to Google for an increased spending limit.)

Once you've submitted your placement information, Google Print Ads moves on to having you upload the images of your ad files.



At this point you can either upload PDF files of each ad, find a Google Print Ads approved company to create your ad (possibly for free with the help of a Print Ad credit), or defer ad uploads until after your placements have been accepted.

You can also specify whether you plan to change your ad during the course of the ad run. (While Google Print Ads does not allow you to upload more than one ad per newspaper, it does allow you to contact each newspaper individually to arrange for additional ad uploads.)



Finally, Google Print Ads will give you the opportunity to review your entire proposed campaign one last time before you send it off to publishers for their review and approval.



One important thing to note about Google Print Ads campaigns is that they are not being sold through an auction. In other words, advertisers are not directly competing with other advertisers to buy ad space. Instead, Google will send your ad offers to each newspaper publisher where they will be individually reviewed. Publishers may then accept your ad as is, or contact you to initiate conversation about why your ad was refused.

Google claims that ads are generally reviewed and either accepted or rejected within about a day.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/010343.html

Optimizing Content for Universal Search

By now, you've all heard about Google's new Universal Search concept, which combines all the information within its vertical databases into one index to serve a single set of Web search results. As you can imagine, this will require some adjustments to standard search engine optimization techniques. If you have been following the Bruce Clay methodology, then you should already be on the right track to optimizing every aspect of your Web site that is under your control. With the arrival of universal search, it's not just a good idea; it's a necessity.

Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer said the company's goal for universal search is to create "a seamless, integrated experience to get users the best answers." Mayer stated on the official Google blog that the universal search vision would be "one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges" the search engine would face. Mayer first suggested this concept to Google back in 2001. Since then, the company has been building the infrastructure, algorithms and presentation mechanisms needed to blend the different content from Images, Video, News, Maps, Blogs et al into its Web results. This is Google's first step toward removing the partition that separates its numerous search silos, integrating these vast repositories of information into a universal set of search results. The object is to make queries more relevant for users, but what are the ramifications for SEO?

Google Relevancy Challenge

Based on industry research, Google has a relevancy problem because the database is too vast. Back in 2005, Jupiter Research touched on this, stating it identified an opportunity for vertical search engines. The study inferred that general search engines were good at classifying vast amounts of information, but not very good at serving results that helped users make decisions.

A year later, Outsell came out with "Vertical Search Delivers What Big Search Engines Miss," a study that also mentioned the opportunity for vertical search due to dissatisfaction with general search engines. This report published the oft-quoted fact stating that the average Internet search failure rate is 31.9 percent. The study identified two market trends contributing to the growth of vertical search – failed general searches and rising keyword prices in paid search.

Another noteworthy study was conducted by Convera. Over 1,000 online business users were asked about their search practices, successes, and failures. Only 21 percent of the respondents thought that search queries on general search engines were understood, a mere 10 percent found critical information on the first try in general search engines. This study concluded, "To date, professionals have not been adequately served by consumer search engines."

The results of these studies show that Google and other general search engines are challenged to produce relevant results, suggesting vertical and niche search engines could eliminate such problems because the niche databases contain topic-specific information, serving targeted, more relevant answers to user queries.

Google's Solution to Relevancy

Since Google's move toward universal search, one can only assume it has considered the above problems and decided that pulling all its databases together, comparing and ranking them accurately at warp speed, could be the solution to relevancy. Doing this requires new technical infrastructure, including new algorithms, software and hardware, which Google has been working on since 2001 and is now in the process of implementing. Universal search has implications for search marketers because it is a departure from the uniformity that characterized search marketing in the past, requiring adjustments in SEO methodology. Since the modifications will be implemented in steps, immediate changes in the SERPS won't be obvious, and there is time to develop new optimization strategies.

Search Personalization

In addition to universal search, Google is also focusing on personalization in the SERPs. This means users will be seeing different SERPS based on their previous queries, if signed into their Google accounts. Users may or may not notice many changes in the SERPs due to universal search and personalization, depending on their level of sophistication and/or powers of observation. However, marketers will be scrambling. Marketers will need to get their clients listed into as many niche databases as possible to increase the breadth of coverage for universal search. Social media optimization techniques can be used to enhance both universal and personalized search results.

Universal Search Optimization Strategies

The focus on personalization and universal search requires more emphasis on social media SEO strategies because of user interest in creating content and the vast amounts of new multimedia content created daily on the Web. Marketers are beginning to drive traffic via social networking sites, and these efforts are known to enhance search engine optimization campaigns. Strategies include creating multimedia content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and then getting them listed on social search sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, as well as niche search engines like Technorati, Podzinger and Blinx.

When creating multimedia content, you must ensure that it is tagged and cataloged correctly. Multimedia content is optimized through established fundamental SEO techniques, such as creating keyword-rich, user-friendly content, unique Meta tags, good site navigation and structure, and implementing a successful linking strategy. Below are a few suggestions for creating and submitting multimedia content for several of Google's vertical databases to gain extended reach through universal search.

Google Image Search: It has always been a good idea to use images on your site for illustrating your products and services. Now, this becomes a way for your customers to find your site via Google Image Search. Optimize your images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags. Use accurate descriptions of your image files for the benefit of the vision impaired and others who might need to view the site with text only.

Google Video (beta): As with optimizing images, use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for your video files. Also create a keyword-rich title tag, description tag, and video site map. Create a Web page to launch your video, optimizing content for SEO and using anchor text wherever possible. Besides submitting to Google Video, also include Blinkx and other social networking and search sites like YouTube and Potzinger (audio and video search engine).

Google News: Here's where you can submit your press releases for display as "news" and subsequent indexing. Issue press releases containing current information about new products and events your site is involved with and Google News will likely pick it up.

Google Maps: This is also known as Google Local, a vertical that has been included in Google search results for a while. Give your site a local presence through the Google Maps Local Business Center where local businesses can get a free basic listing to extend their reach in the SERPs.

Google Blog Search (beta): You all have a corporate blog, right? This is how modern companies communicate with their customers and stakeholders. Tag it (digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon, etc.), submit to Google Blog search, and extend your reach for Web searches on Google.

In closing, there are many ways social and multimedia content can enhance your SEO efforts. Experiment and learn how to use social media to extend your SEO rankings. As you become aware of the many niche databases for submitting multimedia content, this can go a long way toward gaining visibility through Google's personalized and universal search.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/claudiabruemmer/2007/07/optimizing_content_for_univers.html

Getting Into Google

Last night was our third SEMNE event (Search Engine Marketing New England), and we were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the beans about how to get your site into Google. He talked for a half hour or so, and then proceeded to answer audience questions for at least another hour. As I sat there listening to him (yes, I actually listened to this one!), I was struck by what an awesome opportunity it was for everyone in that room to be provided with such important information — straight from Google. It was clear that the 100 or so people in the room agreed. In fact, at 7:30 on the dot, everyone spontaneously stopped their networking activities and simply took their seats without being asked to. These folks definitely came to hear Google!

What Is Indexing?

Dan started out his presentation discussing what “indexing” means and how Google goes about it. Basically, the process for the Google crawler is to first look at the robots.txt file in order to learn where it shouldn’t go, and then it gets down to business visiting the pages it is allowed to visit. As the crawler lands on a page, it finds the relevant information contained on it, then follows each link and repeats the process.

Robots.txt Explored

Dan proceeded to explain how to use your robots.txt file for excluding pages and directories from your site that you might not want indexed, such as the cgi-bin folder. He told us how each of the major search engines have their own commands for this file but that they’re working to standardize things a bit more in the future.

In terms of what the crawler looks at on the page, he said there are over 200 factors, with “relevance” playing a big part in many of them.

Google Still Loves Its PageRank

Dan also discussed the importance of PageRank (the real one that only Google knows about, not the “for-amusement-purposes-only” toolbar PR that many obsess over). He let us know that having high-quality links is still one of the greatest factors towards being indexed and ranked, and then he proceeded to explain how building your site with unique content for your users is one of the best approaches to take. (Now, where have you heard that before? He explained how creating a community of like-minded individuals that builds up its popularity over time is a perfect way to enhance your site.

Did You Know About These Tags?

We were also treated to some additional tips that many people may not have known about. For instance, did you know that you could stop Google from showing any snippet of your page in the search engine results by using a “nosnippet” tag? And you can also stop Google from showing a cached version of your page via the “noarchive” tag. Dan doesn’t recommend these for most pages since snippets are extremely helpful to visitors, as is showing the cache. However, Google understands that there are certain circumstances where you may want to turn those off.

Breaking News!

Google is coming out with a new tag called “unavailable_after” which will allow people to tell Google when a particular page will no longer be available for crawling. For instance, if you have a special offer on your site that expires on a particular date, you might want to use the unavailable_after tag to let Google know when to stop indexing it. Or perhaps you write articles that are free for a particular amount of time, but then get moved to a paid-subscription area of your site. Unavailable_after is the tag for you! Pretty neat stuff!

Webmaster Central Tools

Dan couldn’t say enough good things about their Webmaster Central tools. I have to say that seems to be very common with all the Google reps I’ve heard speak at various conferences. The great thing is that they’re not kidding! If you haven’t tried the webmaster tools yet, you really should because they provide you with a ton of information about your site such as backward links, the keyword phrases with which people have found each page of your site, and much, much more!

Sitemaps Explored

One of the main tools in Webmaster Central is the ability to provide Google with an XML sitemap. Dan told us that a Google sitemap can be used to provide them with URLs that they would otherwise not be able to find because they weren’t linked to from anywhere else. He used the term “walled garden” to describe a set of pages that are linked only to each other but not linked from anywhere else. He said that you could simply submit one of the URLs via your sitemap, and then they’d crawl the rest. He also talked about how sitemaps were good for getting pages indexed that could be reached only via webforms. He did admit later that even though those pages would be likely to be indexed via the sitemap, at this time they would still most likely be considered low quality since they wouldn’t have any PageRank. Google is working on a way to change this in the future, however.

Flash and AJAX

Lastly, Dan mentioned that Google still isn’t doing a great job of indexing content that is contained within Flash and/or AJAX. He said that you should definitely limit your use of these technologies for content that you want indexed. He provided a bit of information regarding Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR), and explained that when used in the manner for which it was intended, it’s a perfectly acceptable solution for Google. Dan said that Google does hope to do a better job of indexing the information contained in Flash at some point in the future.

The Q&A

Many of the points mentioned above were also covered in greater detail during Dan’s extensive Q&A session. However, there were many additional enlightening tidbits that got covered. For instance, Sherwood Stranieri from Catalyst Online asked about Google’s new Universal Search, specifically as it applied to when particular videos (that were not served up from any Google properties) would show up in the main search results. Dan explained that in Universal Search, the videos that show up are the same that show up first while using Google’s video search function.

The Dreaded Supplemental Results

Of course, someone just *had* to ask about supplemental results and what causes pages to be banished there. (This is one of the most common questions that I hear at all SEO/SEM conferences.) Dan provided us with some insights as to what the supplemental results were and how you could get your URLs out of them. He explained that basically the supplemental index is where they put pages that have low PageRank (the real kind) or ones that don’t change very often. These pages generally don’t show up in the search results unless there are not enough relevant pages in the main results to show. He had some good news to report: Google is starting to crawl the supplemental index more often, and soon the distinction between the main index and the supplemental index will be blurring. For now, to get your URLs back into the main results, he suggested more incoming links (of course!).

There was a whole lot more discussed, but I think this is enough to digest for now! All in all, my SEMNE co-founder Pauline and I were extremely pleased with how the night unfolded. We had a great turnout, met a ton of new contacts, caught up with a bunch of old friends, and received some great information straight from Google!

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/whalen/2007/0712_jw1.html

The Lucky Thirteen: The Critical SEO Checklist

When it comes to SEO not all of us have the time to be experts. At some point the real "gurus" of SEO and other topics are the people with a whole lot of time on their hands. This líst, put together with the everyday webmaster in mind, drives home some absolutely crucial points that you should keep in mind when optimizing your pages for valuable search rankings.

1. Chëck Search Engine Crawl Error Pages

It's important to monitor search engine crawl error reports to keep on top of how your site and its pages are performing. Monitoring error reports can help you determine when and where Googlebot or another crawler is having trouble indexing your content - which can help you find a solution to the problem.

2. Create/update robots.txt and sitemap files

These files are supported by major search engines and are incredibly useful tools for ensuring that crawlers index your important site content while avoiding those sections/files that you deem to be either unimportant or cause problems in the crawl process. In many cases we've seen the proper use of these files make all the difference between a total crawl failure for a site and a full index of content pages which makes them crucial from an SEO standpoint.

3. Chëck Googlebot activity reports

These reports allow you to monitor how long it's taking Googlebot to access your pages. This information can be very important if you are worried that you may be on a slow network or experiencing web server problems. If it is taking search engine crawlers a long time to index your pages it may be the case that there are times when they "time out" and stop trying. Additionally, if the crawlers are unable to call your pages up quickly there is a good chance users are experiencing the same lag in load times, and we all know how impatient internet users can be.

4. Chëck how your site looks to browsers without image and JavaScrípt support

One of the best ways to determine just what your site looks like to a search engine crawler is to view your pages in a browser with image and JavaScrípt support disabled. Mozilla's Firefox browser has a plug-in available called the "Web Developer Toolbar" that adds this functionality and a lot more to the popular standards-compliant browser. If after turning off image and JavaScrípt support you aren't able to make sense of your pages at all, it is a good sign that your site is not well-optimized for search. While images and JavaScrípt can add a lot to the user experience they should always be viewed as a "luxury" - or simply an improvement upon an already-solid textual content base.

5. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML, not images

One of the most common mistakes in web design is to use images for site navigation. While for some companies and webmasters SEO is not a concern and therefore they can get away with this, for anyone worried about having well-optimized pages this should be the first thing to go. Not only will it render your site navigation basically valueless for search engine crawlers, but within reason very similar effects can usually be achieved with CSS roll-overs that maintain the aesthetic impact while still providing valuable and relevant link text to search engines.

6. Chëck that all images include ALT text

Failing to include descriptive ALT text with images is to miss out on another place to optimize your pages. Not only is this important for accessibility for vision-impaired users, but search engines simply can't "take a look" at your images and decipher the content there. They can only see your ALT text, if you've provided it, and the association they'll make with the image and your relevant content will be based exclusively on this attribute.

7. Use Flash content sparingly

Several years ago Flash hit the scene and spread like wild fire. It was neat looking, quick to download and brought interactivity and animation on the web to a new height. However, from an SEO standpoint, Flash files might as well be spacer GIFs - they're empty. Search engines are not able to index text/content within a Flash file. For this reason, while Flash can do a lot for presentation, from an accessibility and SEO standpoint it should be used very sparingly and only on non-crucial content.

8. Ensure that each page has a unique title and meta description tag

Optimization of title tags is one of the most important on-page SEO points. Many webmasters are apparently unaware and use either duplicate title tags for multiple pages or do not target search traffíc at all within this valuable tag. Run a search on a competitive keyword of your choice on Google - clíck on the first few links that show up and see what text appears in the title bar for the window. You should see right away that this is a key place to include target keywords for your pages.

9. Make sure that important page elements are HTML

The simple fact to keep in mind when optimizing a page is that the crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. Anything you've put together in a Flash movie, an image or any other multimedia component is likely to be invisible to search engines. With that in mind it should be clear that the most important elements of your page, where the heart of your content will lie, should be presented in clean, standards-compliant and optimized HTML source code.

10. Be sure to target keywords in your page content

Some webmasters publish their pages in hopes that they will rank well for competitive keywords within their topic or niche. However, this will simply nevër happen unless you include your target keywords in the page content. This means creating well-optimized content that mentions these keywords frequently without triggering spam filters. Any way you cut it you're going to need to do some writing - if you don't like doing it yourself it's a good idea to hire a professional copy writer. Simply put: without relevant content that mentions your target keywords you will not rank well.

11. Don't use frames

There is still some debate as to whether frames are absolutely horrible for SEO or whether they are simply just not the best choice. Is there really a difference? Either way, you probably don't want to use frames. Crawlers can have trouble getting through to your content and effectively indexing individual pages, for one thing. For another, most functionality that the use of frames allows is easily duplicated using proper CSS coding. There is still some use for a frames-based layout, but it is still better to avoid it if at all possible.

12. Make sure that your server is returning a 404 error code for unfound pages

We've all seen it. We're browsing around at a new or familiar site, clicking links and reading content, when we get the infamous blank screen that reads "404 page not found" error. While broken links that point to these pages should definitely be avoided you also don't want to create a "custom error page" to replace this page. Why? Well, it's simple: if you generate a custom error page, crawlers can spend time following broken links that they won't know are broken. A 404 error page is easily recognizable, and search engine crawlers are programmed to stop following links that generate this page. If crawlers end up in a section of your site that is down through an old link that you missed, they might not spend the time to index the rest of your site.

13. Ensure that crawlers will not fall into infinite loops

Many webmasters see fit to include scripting languages, such as Perl, Php and Asp to add interactive functionality to their web pages. Whether for a calendar system, a forum, eCommerce functionality for an online store, etc. scripting is used quite frequently on the internet. However, what some webmasters don't realize is that unless they use robots.txt files or take other preventative measures search engine crawlers can fall into what are called "infinite loops" in their pages. Imagine, if you will, a scrípt that allows a webmaster to add a calendar to one of his pages. Now, any programmer worth his salt would base this scrípt on calculations - it would auto-generate each page based on the previous month and a formula to determine how the days and dates would fall. That scrípt, depending on sophistication, could plausibly extend infinitely into the past or future. Now think of the way a crawler works - it follows links, indexes what it finds, and follows more links. What's to stop a crawler from clicking "next month" in a calendar scrípt an infinite number of times? Nothing - well, almost nothing. Crawlers are well-built programs that need to run efficiently. As such they are built to recognize when they've run into an "infinite loop" situation like this, and they will simply stop indexing pages at a site that is flagged for this error.

Source: SiteProNews.com

Most Deadly SEO Sins – Common mistakes even experts fail to notice

If you are initiating Search Engine Optimization of your website, you probably have done some study about SEO techniques through forums and articles. You may have somewhat worked out a roadmap of how to proceed with the site optimization process. While you may be clear on ‘what to do’, it would also help to understand ‘what not to do’. Very often, SEO professionals miss out these critical aspects of optimization rendering all their site optimization work ‘useless’. Here are the 10 most avoidable situations while you are carrying out SEO for your website.

1. Optimizing for the wrong keywords:
The biggest sin anyone can make in a SEO campaign is to choose the wrong keywords to optimize your site with. If your Site is ranking high for a keyword that is not being searched for then even a very high ranking cannot bring you any traffic. On the other hand, if you are ranking high with wrong keywords then you would get you traffic but will not convert into transactions. For a detailed advise on keyword research, read a detailed article - http://www.redalkemi.com/articles/keyword-research-article.php

2. Spamming:
Search Engines are getting smarter by the day. Over a period of time Search Engines have evolved from “Ignoring” spam to a point where they now 'penalize' websites for using spam techniques. Following are the prominent Search engine spam techniques you should avoid.

* Hidden text:
Hidden text is using the same color text on your page as the background color. In order to get a higher keyword density, webmasters sometimes add a lot of keywords as hidden text because they are not visible to the human viewer but can be read by the search engine crawlers in the source code of the page. Most search engines can now detect which pages use such techniques and ignore or ban such sites.

* Doorway pages:
A doorway page is a web page designed for search engines so as to rank well for specific keyword phrases and redirect a user to a different page on visit. This is called “bait & switch” technique. These pages usually rely on frequent repetition of the keyword phrase, and try to "trick" search engines into ranking them well. Most search engines can now detect techniques such as “Meta Refresh” and penalize such sites. If you've used doorway pages on your website and it is still not penalized, you stand a good chance to come out clean by deleting these pages immediately.

* Doorway domains / multiple domains with same content:
This technique uses URL-redirection meant to display another web address for the same web page or several domains show same content. In a typical example, the user types in a web address such as www.new-blue-widget.com but the URL is redirected to www.widget.com. Alternately, both these websites show identical content in the hope that one or the other may rank high in the search engine result pages (SERP). Most of the time these domains are registered by the same party. Many people also use ‘disposable’ domain names in sending out email spam so as to protect their main domains. Search engines can easily detect these techniques.

* Duplicate content:
Many site owners try to increase their content base by creating multiple pages of the same content either on the same site or copying the same site over several domains they may own. Search engines avoid cluttering their index with duplicate content and penalize sites which do excessive content duplication in order to ‘trick’ their algorithms.

* Cloaking:
Cloaking is a technique of serving keyword-stuffed spam pages to search engine spiders by detecting their IP address, while serving totally different pages to human visitors. This is different than geo-targeting where you may show different content to different visitors based on their region or language. The search engines can differentiate between the two and might penalize your site if you are attempting to ‘trick’ them. If you want to avoid any penalties, the thumb rule is to show the same content to search engines that you show to the visitors.

* Keyword spam:
Keyword spam is a technique to stuff lots of keywords all over the page – in the Title tag, Meta tags, Anchor texts, Alt Attributes etc., in an attempt to increase keyword density or accommodate large number of keywords on the same page. This not only results in the page text to sound stupid to your readers, but you also lose the ‘theme’ of the page. Search engines rate pages as per ‘themes’ and credit pages which have content classified in nicely laid out ‘themes’. For best results, one should always focus on optimizing a page with 2-3 themed keywords rather than trying to optimize with lots of keywords. Over-optimized pages with keyword spam may invite search engine penalties.

* Excessive HTML markup:
It is common knowledge that search engines give more credit to text marked as Headline

H1

/

H2

or other attributes like making the text bold, underlined, colored, italicized etc. In an attempt to improve importance of the text, many webmasters do an excessive HTML markup of their page content and hide the ugly display behind a craftily made CSS. Search engines have a fair idea of a balanced markup and penalize sites which do excessive HTML markup in an attempt to ‘trick’ their algorithms.

3. Creating search engine roadblocks:
If you are developing a website, it helps to know of ways you can prevent creating search engine roadblocks. Your SEO efforts may not get results if your site structure is such that search engines find it difficult to index your site easily. Following are some of the problem areas which create a hurdle in your site indexing -

* Having Flash-based site:
Sites built in Flash may have a greater aesthetic impact but perform poorly in search engines. Most search engines cannot read text or links embedded in Flash. It is best to limit the use of flash for content which absolutely requires flash or make a text-based alternate for your website so that search engine crawlers can index your site content easily.

* Having text in images:
Search engines cannot read text embedded in images. If you have too much content and navigation using graphic, image maps or image buttons, it would be good to either convert them to simple text or have an alternate navigation bar at the bottom of your website. It would also help to have appropriate text in the Alt-Text tag for each image. Similarly

* Having frame-based sites:
If you have built your website using frames, you might have a major problem indexing content sitting inside frames. The way frames and the content page URLs are structured, most search engines find it difficult to reach the inner page content of your website. It is best to restructure your website and remove frames so that you can get your site in the search engine index.

* Having free content behind login:
Some sites & forums prefer the visitors to login before they can reach the real content of the website. Due to lack of awareness or inadvertently, if you have placed all your content behind a login, then the search engines cannot index your site as their crawlers cannot fill in a login-password or ‘register’ on your website. You might want to restructure your website such that you can show the publicly-available content without the need to login to your website.

* Poor site inter-linking:
Poor site interlinking not only poses hurdles to search engines for indexing your site but also makes your site navigation difficult for your site visitors. It is advisable to have a good navigation bar and a site map on your site so that each page is not more than two clicks away.

* Deep directory structure:
A deep directory structure is generally difficult for search engines to crawl. While it is not a rule, it would be good if you can keep your directories not more than one or two levels down, neatly classified into ‘themes’. Deep directory structure also makes your inner pages URLs look too long which discourages other sites to link to your inner pages.

4. Having less content / Non-original content:
Search engines thrive on text content. They are mainly looking for text content on your website and reward sites which have lots of easily accessible, non-duplicate original text content. If your sites has less or non-original content picked up from other sites or your affiliate sites, it is unlikely that you would be rewarded, no matter how many efforts you put in optimizing your website. A good way to generate original content is to write nice, keyword rich, descriptive articles classified in themes, about your product or service, its usage, benefits and tips etc.

5. Using session IDs:
Session ID is a long string of jumbled characters appearing in the URL of your website which changes on each visit. They are usually used to track a visitor ’s online shopping cart contents. When a search engine crawler visits your website, your server assigns it a session ID and the crawler indexes your content and associates it with that session ID. Most search engines have hundreds of bots crawling and re-crawling the web. On each repeat visit of the crawler to your website, they index a fresh copy of your content and associates it with different URLs (session IDs) resulting in cluttering the search engine database with lots of duplicate content. Since search engines are not very good at tackling this problem, they often drop the site from future indexing. If you wish to track as user’s session, a better solution is to use cookies instead of session IDs. Cookies are information files stored on user’s computers and perform the same task as a session ID.

6. No efforts in getting incoming links:
Incoming links to your website are very important and are responsible for high rankings on search engines to a large extent. Link popularity determines how important your site is. Link building is an important part of your SEO campaign. No extent of site optimization can get you high rankings if you do not carry out a supporting link building campaign. For more information, read our article - www.redalkemi.com/articles/link-popularity.php

7. Relying on one-time SEO:
Search engine optimization is a constant process. You need to update your website SEO when you add new content, update old content or change the theme of your web pages. Addition of new content often requires you to update site interlinking, improve navigation and add links in your site map. Search patterns and keyword phrases also change over time as the search community matures or industry trends change. This requires a fresh keyword research and SEO perspective on your site. Changes may also become necessary if your current SEO strategy is not paying off. In any case, optimizing your site once and expecting it to give you sustained results without further efforts is a mistake.

8. Showing impatience:
SEO of a website rarely show instant results. If your site is already indexed in search engines, it may take about 4-8 weeks to index your new content. New sites may take 4-6 months to get indexed for the first time. It takes time for SEO results to show up. It is easy to think the past efforts were not good enough and get tempted to change the optimization techniques. It is not advisable to change the optimization of your site pages before you are able to see the results of your previous SEO efforts.

If you keep the above points in mind while carrying out SEO for your site, you would be safe from any penalties. If you are outsourcing your site SEO to a professional company, make sure they adhere to the above guidelines and do not risk your site into a search engine penalty. Remember, just a few precautions can go a long way in having your site rank high and stay away from undesirable search engine penalties.

Related Reading:

* Why do we need Search Engine Optimization?

* Process of website indexing by Google & other Search Engines

Source: http://www.redalkemi.com/articles/seo-spamming.php

Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips

Using a professional search engine optimization service can sometimes be expensive. However, if your budget is tight and you have a basic understanding of web page construction it is possible to optimize your own website without hiring an SEO specialist. For those who would like to give it a try, here are ten "Do it yourself" search engine optimization tips:

1. Think about SEO right from the start.

Many people plan, design and build their websites without giving any thought as to whether their site is search engine friendly or whether it will be capable of attracting traffic in organic search engine results. At the last minute, after most of the site has been built, they try to optimize their site, not realizing that this work should have been done throughout the planning and building process.

It is far better to think about search engine optimization in the earliest stages of the project. For example, if it is at all possible, choose a domain name that will allow you to include your most important keyword or search term in your URL. If you are selling bicycles then you would do well have to a domain name like www.xyzbicycles.com . And don't stop with the domain name; include your keywords in your file names as well. For example, a sub-page of this hypothetical site might be www.xyzbicycles.com/road-bikes.html

2. Design your site with both search engines and users in mind.

Your site should be easy for your human readers to understand, but it should also be easy for search engine robots as well. If you want to see what a search engine robot will "see" then view your site in a notepad document or use the html view of the popular web editing programs.

If you have used gif images to represent your headlines or other important text, then this text will not be picked up by the search engine robots. In addition, if you have designed a site that is entirely in a flash format, you will not be providing the search engine spiders with much "food," or searchable text.

Furthermore, if you have long strings of java script and complex style instructions in the head section of your html page it is better to put the java script in an external file and the style instructions in a separate CSS (cascading style sheet) file, in order to give prominence to the actual text of your web page.

3. Write individual title tags for each and every page of your website.

From the standpoint of search engine optimization, the single most important sentence on any web page is the title tag. The title tag gives the search engine a good indication as to what your page is all about. Incorporate your main keywords or search phrases into your title tag, and keep them at the very front of the sentence. These keywords are more important than your company name (unless it is Coca Cola!). So our XYZ Bicycle Company might have a title tag that looks like this "title" Bicycles: Racing Bikes, Mountain Bikes, Road Bikes, Bicycle Accessories from the XYZ Bicycle Company.

The title tags of each of the sub-pages of the site should reflect the main content of those pages. Never use the same title tag for all the pages of the site.

4. Write a concise description tag for each of your web pages.

Just as the title tag is the most important sentence or phrase on any page, the description tag is the most important paragraph on any page. Summarize the gist of your page in two or three sentences, again incorporating the keywords and search phrases for which you think people will use when searching for your site. A description tag for the home page of the XYZ Bicycle Company could look like this: "The EXZ Bicycle Company manufactures mountain bikes, racing bicycles, road bikes and bicycle accessories. Our bicycles are distributed and sold around the world."

5. Put your keywords into headers and headlines on your page.

Your human readers and search engines alike need prominent headlines in order to understand what your page is all about. While a human reader only needs to see the headline in a large bold text, search engines distinguish the headlines, which they regard as important indicators of the page, by noting which phrases are encased in header tags such as H1, H2 and H3 tags etc. H1 is considered most important and your first headline should be labeled with this tag. If the header tags make your copy look too big, then you can change the size of the headers by creating style instructions that will render the headlines into sizes that are consistent with the look and feel of your site.

6. Write copy that includes your keyword and search phrases at the beginning, middle and end.

If you want to write website copy that is search engine optimized, then you only have to follow good writing and presentation procedure. State clearly what you want to say in the opening paragraph, elaborate on your basic ideas in the middle section of your text and at the end summarize what you have said, reminding your readers with text that is similar to the opening paragraph. Be natural; don't try to stuff your page with the keywords. If you read the page out loud and it sounds funny, then you have overdone the repetition of your search phrases and keywords. A density of 2% is considered to be OK. Thus in a 400 word page of text your keyword might be repeated eight times.

7. Place your keywords and phrases in the link text of your web pages.

So far we have placed the keywords in the strategic places of the web page: the title, the description, the headlines and the body text. Now we have to see that the keywords are included in clickable link text on the page. Whenever you are linking to sub pages or other pages of your site, make sure that your keywords are included in the clickable portions of the links. Thus, instead of making a link that says "click here" for more information about bicycle accessories, it would be better to write: click here for more information about "bicycle accessories," with the keywords "bicycle accessories" being the anchor (clickable) text.

8. Install a navigation system that can be easily followed by search engines.

One of the most important steps in getting more traffic to your site is to ensure that all of the site's web pages are included in the search engine indices. Normally a search engine robot will visit the main page of a site and follow links to the other pages. If your navigation system is based on java script, or on images, there is a possibility that some search engine robots will not be able to follow the links and thus they will not pick up the interior pages of your site. One simple remedy for this problem is to build an additional text-link navigation bar and place it at the bottom of the page. This additional navigation bar will serve multiple purposes:

a. Help the search engines to reach the interior pages.

b. Put your keywords in link "anchor text".

c. Remind the user to go deeper into the site by repeating the navigation options again.

9. Build a site map page or use the Google sitemap option.

Getting all of your pages indexed is so important, that it is also prudent to take another step that will ensure that all of your pages are visited by search engine robots. A site map is a page that has text links to all of the pages of your site. As with a text link navigation bar, a site map serves multiple purposes:

1. It helps users to find what they are looking for on the site by providing an outline summary of all of your pages.

2. It helps search engine robots to land on the interior pages.

After you build your site map page, be sure to make a link to it from your home page and the other important pages of your website.

In addition to a normal site map page, you can also make an XML site map, upload it to the server and then register it with the Google site map tool. You can use a free online utility to create your XML site map at: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps for more information. This process is easy to accomplish, and registration with the Google sitemap program will supply you with important statistical information from Google as well as help to get all of your pages indexed.

10. Once your website is up and running concentrate on off-site optimization.

So far all the steps that I have outlined are concerned with on-page factors, the parts of your website that are under your control. But your ranking in Google and other search engines will also be heavily dependent on off-page factors such as how many high quality sites link to your site. Unless you obtain a good amount of high quality links to your site you will not be able to compete in highly competitive search categories.

By far the best way to get links to your site is to build a site that has valuable content. You should endeavor to build a site that is so "cool" or so unique, that other people will link to you without even asking you. Of course this is easier said than done, but it should be what you are striving for.

The next best way to get high quality back links to a website is to write informative articles and get them published on other websites with a link back to your site. This process is known as article marketing and it not only helps to build incoming links, but it also builds your online reputation as an expert in your field.

Other common methods of increasing incoming links include submissions to important directories, participation in forums and careful trading of links with respected websites.

If you follow the ten "do-it-yourself" search engine optimization tips that I have described in this article, you will have taken a big step towards guaranteeing the success of your online enterprise.

News Source: http://www.seo-news.com/

SEO Focus: MSN & Live Search

With the recent MSN/Live Search algorithm update causing a stir amongst webmasters, this is a good time to review how search engine optimization tactics for MSN/Live Search differs from SEO for Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.

Of course, there's no authoritative list of SEO rules to follow for MSN and Live Search (that would just make it a bit too easy!), and the live.com search engine algorithm is still very much evolving - so something that might work today may no longer work in a few months time. Nevertheless, here are a few post-algorithm rules that seem to be accepted in webmaster circles at the moment:

Microsoft Still Has a Problem With Spam.
Most people believe that Microsoft is still lagging behind other search engines in determining relevant, non-spammy search results. Spammy blogspot blogs continue to rank quite well to the frustration of many - you would assume that MSN is hard at work trying to improve the relevance of their search results.

Keywords in Domain and Subdomain Names
Currently, keyword rich domain and subdomain names definitely seem to help a website's ranking in MSN/live.com. As this tactic is also quite prone to be abused by spammers, the question is how long MSN will continue to reward keyword rich domain names.

Keep It Short
Relatively little text content seems to be enough to get good rankings in MSN and live.com. As this really contradicts Microsoft's aim to provide relevant search results - you would assume that relevant and authoritative sites would contain a lot of content, not little - it remains to be seen whether this rule of thumb will stand the test of time.

Lower Keyword Density
Microsoft's spam filters appear to be more sensitive to high keyword densities in the content of web pages than other search engines. So it seems that erring on the side of caution and sticking with lower keyword densities will provide better results for MSN. Of course, that might hurt your ranking in other search engines.

Make It Relevant
Whether they are currently doing it very well or not, MSN states that its search engine places great emphasis on the topical relevance of a web page for ranking it. So make sure your copy is highly relevant and on topic.

Clean and Simple Code
While this applies to all search engines, MSN/Live Search seems to respond better than other search engines if the code of your page is well-written, clearly structured and error-free.

Inbound Links
MSN currently doesn't seem to be very discerning in regards to the quality of inbound links to a site, which means that there are a lot of examples of site rankings being boosted by a large number of low quality inbound links. Again, this seems to be favoring spammy search results quite a lot at the moment, so this rule of thumb might not be around for long, and we wouldn't recommend chasing lots of low quality links as you may be penalized in future algorithm updates.

Compared to Google and Yahoo!, the live.com algorithm is not as mature, which means that you can expect to see quite significant changes to the algorithm as Microsoft's engineers tweak it to provide more relevant and less spammy search results. So I'd recommend that you don't get too fixated on the current algorithm, but apply common sense when it comes to your search engine optimization, just like you would for other search engines. If you want to stay up to date on the latest MSN/Live Search developments, I recommend you visit the Webmasterworld Microsoft Search Live forum regularly.

News Source: http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/blog/2006/11/seo-focus-msn-live-search.aspx

Making Sense of Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the strategy of using techniques to try to improve the rank a website has among search engine listings. Longtime marketers know that techniques of SEO must adapt to structures of the popular search engines.

Although most SEO strategy can be done online, some is done offline, like adding URLs to direct mail pieces to drive traffic to sites. Mailing postcards to prospects to advertise an online opportunity, via website URL, can be a very effective marketing effort, as it combines traditional marketing by mail to more advanced internet marketing. Likewise, distributing flyers can be very effective, particularly in urban areas. These are offline methods of traffic-generating which can create traffic, which is one element the search engines are eyeing.

The search engines keep track of a lot of other elements related to your website which tell them, “This is a site of interest and significance”, resulting in a higher ranking for the site in the search results they return to online information seekers.

SEO methods can certainly cover a wide range of website components; including but not limited to domain name, title / heading / HTML tags, file names and directories, frequency of quality terms used, keyword info, image ALT tags, text without frames, photo captions, targeted quality content, regular updating of content, back-links, and overall website popularity.

And SEO strategies that involve manipulation of these various SEO components can be broken down into two main categories; "white hat" or “black hat.” White hat SEO methods are generally those that are approved by search engines, like adding good content and other quality to your site. Black hat SEO methods are referred to as tricks, like using cloaking devices. Some people say all SEO is manipulative. Others say only black hat is.

Some companies offer SEO services. For practically any budget range, you can buy:

- PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns where you try to draw online traffic to your site by bidding on words relating to your niche that you think people will use in search engines to find you.

- Site Submission – There are plenty of companies out there that will allow you to enter your URL into their form and then they will submit it to a group of top search engines for you at no charge, like Submit Express at: http://www.submitexpress.com/list.html . You can also pay them to submit it to many more. Submitting in this manner is generally recommended once a month. You can also purchase products like: WebPosition Gold, a search engine software all-in-one package that optimizes your web pages, submits them to top search engines, then tracks the page rankings and web site visits and visitors.

- Article Marketing – Online marketers write articles that focus on keywords or key content that would attract search engines to them when people search for their key content.

- Links – Not only through article links but other links as well (whether link exchanges or purchased in-bound links), webmasters try to increase their search engine rank by establishing quality linking with top sites or high-traffic sites out there.

- Posting to Opportunity Seeker Message Boards – This is just another method of creating back-links to the website. An e-mail signature with a compelling line of advertising can redirect readers, who have already shown to have an interest in the opportunity market, back to selling website—more back-links.

- Online Directories and Classified Ad Sites – These are more fine sources of potential back-links to the website. Search engine spiders regularly determine popularity of sites via back-links, and rate them higher accordingly, which creates even more traffic flow.

- Link Exchange – This is a slower way to create back-links, but it can be effective if done regularly. Usually, this type of arrangement must be set up webmaster-to-webmaster per mutual agreement, but there are automated tools such as Link Machine which greatly speed up this process.

So add some SEO into your Internet marketing. SEO, when done successfully, can bring waves of traffic that you never expected, and that translates into sales success. Even at little or no cost, there are plenty of things you can do to keep the search engines happy, helping to bring internet visitors to your websites!

News Source: http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=110506_seo-search-engine-optimization-making-sense-internet-marketing.htm

7 Components of a Well-Rounded SEO Program

How can you ensure the viability of your SEO program well into the future? How can you reduce the impact of search engine algorithm changes and enjoy long-term visibility and ranking?
The answer to both questíons involves having a well-rounded SEO program.

Website owners who put too much emphasis on a single element of SEO are more vulnerable to changes in search engine algorithms. If you look at the history of search engine optimization, you'll see a pattern of this:

Back in the day, a lot of webmasters relied heavily on keyword tags to drive their visibility and ranking. But the search engines demoted the importance of the keyword tag, and many websites suffered as a result.

Link exchange networks are a more recent version of this scenario. Search engines are now devaluing links that are part of link farms and obvious reciprocation schemes. And once again, some websites are suffering from it.

But how is it that some websites coast right along, largely unaffected by search engine updates? What's the difference between these unaffected websites and those that are negatively impacted?

Sure, the age of the domain plays a part. But another key difference is the well-rounded nature of a website's SEO program. Instead of focusing on the hottest SEO "trend," websites with long-term SEO success focus on a variety of strategies with equal emphasis.

In that sense, SEO is similar to financial investments. The more you diversify, the less likely you are to suffer across the board when uncontrollable factors fluctuate.

So how do you diversify your search engine optimization? By using a variety of tactics in conjunction with each other. Here are some of the tactics you might use.

7 Components of a Well-Rounded SEO Program:


1. Create quality content
2. Create web-based resources or tools
3. Start a blog
4. Publish press releases online
5. Publish articles online
6. Add your site to quality directories
7. Acquire links from relevant websites

1. Create Quality Content

Good, original content helps your SEO efforts in three ways. First, quality content will make your link-building efforts much easier. Think about the kinds of websites you would link to. I'm willing to bet they all have one thing in common -- relevant and useful content.

Quality content will also increase the number of page views you get per visitor. Again, consider your own behavior for a moment. What do you do when you come across a site that might be relevant to your needs but offers very little content? You probably bail out, don't you? Well guess what. Search engines can track that if you find the site through their results pages. When you conduct a Google search and clíck through one of the listings on the results page, Google can track your immediate actions upon reaching the site. Did you immediately back out, or did you stay a while? "Sticky" websites make your readers happy, increase your salës, and improve your search engine perförmance.

The third way content helps you is by telling the search engine what your site is about in the first place. The more content you have, the more you can use titles, links and page copy to educate readers and search engines alike.

2. Create Web-Based Resources or Tools

Web-based resources and tools are an extension of the last point, quality content. But now we're taking the content idea to a higher level. The goal here is three-fold. We want to give our visitors useful information, we want to increase our website's "buzz" factor, and we want to pave the way for our linking campaign (item 7 below).

Some SEO websites are really good at this strategy. Look at the variety of useful tools located at WeBuildPages.com and see what I mean. Jim Boykin, the owner of the site, knows quality content and useful tools will make people more inclined to (A) stay on his site longer, (B) recommend it to others, and (C) link to it from their own sites.

The key here is to create content and resources that are truly useful (not just marginally useful). For instance, let's consider a mörtgage-related website. Having a mörtgage calculator onsite is helpful, but it's not going to generate much buzz or linking. Those calculators are everywhere. But if the site builds a mörtgage learning center with step-by-step instructions for first-time home buyers, it will more easily acquire links and retain visitors.

3. Start a Blog

You may already know this, but if not here it goes. A blog is not a magical SEO device like some people seem to think. Blogs are chronological content-management tools that convert normal text into HTML. That's all.

With that said, blogs can play a major role in search engine optimization because they make web publishing quick and easy. Because they're so easy to use, site owners are more likely to create new content on a regular basis. Blogs also add an element of freshness to a website -- always a good thing for SEO.

Blogs also help your SEO program by social means. The most popular blogs in a given industry usually have a strong sense of personality. Don't use your blog as another channel for dull corporate speak. Use it to have a frank discussion with your audience. Share your true ideas in your true voice, and other bloggers in your niche community will link to you soon enough (especially if you're an authority).

4. Publish Press Releases Online

Do you have news about your business? If so, publish it online through a site like PRWeb.com. A good news release will go far online, often being picked up by respectable news sites, RSS feeds, blogs and more. If you upgrade your release, you'll be able to hyerplink some of your key phrases. Suddenly, all those sites and blogs are pointing toward you with key phrase hyperlinks!

I've published press releases online for clients and had them picked up by highly ranked authority sites. Sometimes, these sites will use the release to write a story of their own (linking to the source website). In fact, I had a press release spawn a story on a popular website that drove 30% of my client's website traffíc for that week! This direct traffíc is in addition to the long-term SEO benefits of having the story archived.

5. Publish Articles Online

Ah yes, the power of articles. Now we're getting to one of my favorite web marketing strategies. The benefits of article marketing are so great that I've written an entire book on the subject (and made it part of my real estate SEO learning kit). But for now, let's summarize these benefits.

By publishing articles over the web, you extend your communication reach and increase your search engine ranking (by way of relevant backlinks to your website). Using websites like EzineArticles.com and SearchWarp.com, you can tap into a large distribution network. You can also find dozens of niche websites who are hungry for quality content and would gladly publish your articles.

Here's a shortcut to finding these niche websites. Do a search for your key phrase plus the words "submit article." For me, this might be: "real estate marketing +submit article." I can also find niche directories this way by using "real estate marketing +add URL."

And speaking of directories...

6. Add Your Site to Quality Directories

As a matter of course, I always recommend to clients that they add their websites to one or two general directories (like JoeAnt or Best of the Web) and as many niche directories as they can find. Such directories strengthen your link popularity and make you less susceptible to wild ranking fluctuations caused by search engine updates.

For example, one of my websites is related to real estate marketing, so I would do well to get it listed at Reals.com, IRED.com and similar sites. These sites are high-ranked, well-trusted, and relevant to the topic of real estate.

7. Acquire Links From Relevant Websites

I saved link-building for last for a couple of reasons. First, you want to make sure your website is worth linking to in the first place. That's why quality content, resources and blogs were steps 1, 2 and 3. Having a "link-worthy" website will make your link-building efforts much easier. Trust me on this one.

Secondly, I put link-building last because I want you to think bígger than just going out and harvesting links. By illustrating the benefits of press release, articles and directories (all key components of a link-building campaign), I hope to open your eyes to the broader benefits of web publishing in general.

Remember, it 's not just about people finding your site. It's about how they find your site, and what they find when they get there. If somebody finds you through a trusted source (like a news site), and they find quality content and interesting resources when they arrive, you've earned their trust right from the start.

Don't think of link-building as an isolated component of your SEO program. Think of it as an inseparable part of everything you do online.

Conclusion

Each of these topics deserves an article of its own (and then some). But I hope this prompts you to take the next step -- learning about each facet of a well-rounded search engine optimization program.

Does this approach work? I can say it does from firsthand experience. I have sites that rank well for highly competitive phrases, and they have sailed smoothly through all search engine updates over the last few years. They were all built using well-rounded SEO practices.

News Source: http://www.seo-news.com