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Google-Ad-SiteLinks-Format

2011-06-10T15:37:00.000+05:30

Google AdWords is always experimenting with new formats, improved targeting, and other ways to make both Google and all its advertisers a little more money. Their most recent experiment isembedded Ad SiteLinks, which automatically link portions of your ad's text to sub-pages within your site.

How SiteLinks Works

As you can see from the example above, the concept to this new ad format is straightforward: you get an extra link to a location other than your default destination URL. However, you're not actually going through and creating a complex set of HTML code for the ad. Rather, you just sign up for Ad SiteLinks.

The Ad SiteLinks program has been running since 2009 and has gradually been expanding since. The original format of those links placed additional desination URL options at the bottom of the actual advertisement, and only came up if 1) the advertiser had added specific terms and a page URL to the Ad SiteLinks interface inside Adwords and 2) the Ad SiteLinks were very close matches to the actual search query. If your ads seems to be providing exact responses, Google would provide up to two lines of links.

The exact same resource is used for the embedded format. You create the AdWords Ad as normal, but now Google will match up text in your ads with you SiteLink text and will hyperlink sections of your advertisement. This will only happen when all of the following are true:

Your SiteLink text is highly relevant to the user query.
Your adveritsement is appearing above the search results.
You don't qualify for the one- or two-line SiteLinks formats.

Setting Up SiteLinks

Google's implmenting this because it can direct people to deeper pages on your site that are more likely to be relevant and lead to user action. It's also anticipated that your click-through rate will increase when embedded links appear. So, are you in? Here's how to get signed up:

Log into AdWords as normal.
Go into the campaign where you want to add the SiteLinks extension.
Go to the "Settings" tab and scroll down to "Ad extensions."
On the message that indicates that you can manage your extensions using the Ad extension tab, click on the hyperlinked phrase "Ad extensions tab."
You will be taken to the Ad extension settings for your current campaign. This tab will now be availble in this and all other campaigns.
Below the tab names you'll see a row that starts with "View." Click on "View" and select "Sitelinks Extensions."
Click the "New extension" button (directly below "View").
Fill out the link text and URLs. Make sure that you either match the text here to your advertisements or the text in your advertisements to the links you add here.
Click "Save.

That's all that's required. Google will now provide your links in embedded, one-line, and two-line format, and will give you specific analytics on the CTR, CPC, and other details of your SiteLinks.

Sivakiran is as an SEO Specialist at it consultancy services - training institute in bangalore – a digital marketing agency in Bangalore India. He has a background in English Language study and regularly blogs about all things SEO and Social Media on the SEARNENGINEMARKETINGNEWS blog.

SEO will Control Your Brand's Reputation

2011-03-26T13:38:00.000+05:30

http://searchenginewatch.com/Brand searches frequently account for between 40 and 70 percent of all organic search traffic to a business website.
For service or product offerings, brand searches frequently signify that the searcher is "late" in the buy cycle and significantly more likely to make a transaction. Other times, these searches are conducted as a result off offline advertisement or reference from a respected influencer, such as a friend or a family member.
Regardless, branded search typically creates the highest conversion rates, the longest TOS (time on site), and the most pages/visit. In short, it's your moneymaker.
It's probably also the most neglected aspect of SEO.
Nightmare situations can frequently occur when negative content unexpectedly creeps into the SERPs of brand terms. This can include unfavorable reviews from companies such as Yelp or TripAdvisor. Additionally, unflattering blog posts or competitor squatting in search results can instantaneously have an adverse effect on sales.
Here are just a few ways to keep your branded traffic coming into your site with a positive outlook:
Socialize
Creating branded social channels are a great way to instantly populate your brand's SERP with content that is completely controlled by your organization. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are great channels to get the ball rolling.
Additional algorithmic factors such as clickstream data and social sharing are expected to play greater roles over time, meaning significant (and natural) followership to these interactive content-sharing mechanisms will become increasingly important.
Evangelize
And no, I don't mean sign up for 50 Yelp accounts. For local businesses, offsite user review sites are exceptionally important in earning consumer trust.
If a customer/client receives great service, don't be shy about asking for a review. If you're a bit more modest, keep well-placed buttons linking to the conversations on web pages, social sites, or offline marketing material. Additionally, setting up a Google Alerts or using more sophisticated tools such as Techrigy or Radian6 can help you locate both positive and negative boards and conversations on which to unleash your team of loyal ambassadors.
Frequently, many marketers feel powerless when up against closed conversations. In this case, try ramping up conversations on more powerful domains.
Optimize
Like any other web page, extend basic optimization strategies to your off-domain pages. This includes optimizing content (likely for brand names), creating rich content, and pointing/driving inbound links. For newbies, try seeding off-domain discussions on powerful domains that are thematically relevant.
Avoid
Many companies with bad reputations have them for a reason. This makes them more inclined to try easy (and stupid) fixes such as sock puppet marketing, a.k.a. "I heard about product X. It's so good -- you should really try it!"
If you try these strategies, you will fool no one. It's no longer 1998, folks. Users are quick to spot this spammy approach and even quicker to call you out on it. The repercussion can often be even more brand damage (and possibly even more bad press).
Also, never try to sue the company that's hosting the forum or discussion. This is wasted effort. Be transparent, communicate with your audience, and do your best to listen and react to the community -- and build links.

Source: search engine watch and Inventateq

How To Use Twitter To help Your Google Search Rankings

2011-01-27T12:36:00.001+05:30

Following the confirmation from Matt Cutts in December that Google is now factoring social signals into its ranking decisions, as highlighted in Danny Sullivan’s article, What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count? If social authority is a ranking factor, many people will be turning to Twitter in hope of a quick SEO boost.
Google isn’t giving the same kind of authority to tweeted links as it is to other web-based links, but it has admitted using ‘social signals’ like tweets and unlocked Facebook mentions to help it determine a page’s ranking.
I recently presented at Sphinncon Israel on how to use social media to improve your search rankings, so thought I’d take this further by looking at how you can make the most of developing your social media influence on Twitter for SEO benefit. Much of this advice is Twitter 101, but it never hurts to fully understand the basics.

Get An Active Twitter Account

This is clearly the first step and sounds very obvious – but many people will be disappointed to discover that simply opening an account and tweeting their own content doesn’t miraculously fire their pages up the rankings! Your Twitter account cannot exist in isolation if it’s going to achieve anything – so you need to connect with relevant friends and industry peers.
That means doing more than posting links to your own website. You need to enter conversations, respond to questions and queries, talk to customers who mention your brand, and interact.
It’s a social platform, it only works if you use it socially. On top of that, if you want other people to retweet your content, you’ll have more success if you’re being followed by relevant people – so make the effort in building those relationships.

Use Twitter Tools To Help With Promotion

I don’t mean the automated follow/unfollow tools – but look for the type of tools and ideas which can help to leverage your profile.
Examples of tools which have worked very well are those such as Twtpoll or Paywithatweet, where you are naturally generating retweets and @ mentions by adding value to your followers.

Connect With Contacts From Other Social Media Sites

There are so many social media websites available that it’s almost impossible to keep up-to-date with the different sets of connections we all have. Obviously, these each have different types of target audiences and you’re unlikely to want to become Facebook friends with everyone you talk to on Twitter – but what about LinkedIn, Foursquare, FriendFeed, Quora etc?
In my experience, most people are happy to share the same/very similar contacts across different social sites, it’s just not always that easy in practice. There are two ways which I’ve found are effective at managing this:

Sometimes it’s just a simple job of importing LinkedIn contacts via Twitter, and then looking to export your other social media contacts into Gmail and importing from there.
If you want to dig a bit deeper, I find that tools such as Flowtown are a great way of grouping shared connections across social sites and then you can make sure you are connected with all of those key influencers in the same place.

By doing this, you are connecting with people who you already know from other sites, so they are likely to be valuable followers on Twitter who can help to connect with when building your profile.

Run Twitter Competitions

One potentially valuable way of leveraging Twitter to help your SEO efforts is to run retweet competitions. This is where people retweet a comment – usually including a link to your website, in the hopes of winning a prize you’re offering.
It can be an effective way to build a high number of links and increase followers, so many companies, including national newspapers, are leaping on the bandwagon. But this may not work for long. Google moves fast and it will be developing techniques to assess the value of tweets rather than something as simple as just the number.
So, make use of Twitter competitions for now, but don’t rely on this as a long-term strategy, because it probably isn’t.

Create Quality Content, Conversations Follow

This is the simplest rule for most SEO strategies, but it’s also one of the hardest to pull off. If you want people to retweet your content and enhance your importance in Google’s eyes, then create valuable articles and tools that will make them want to link to it and share it with their own followers.
While shortcuts like competitions will provide a quick boost, the best way to use Twitter for SEO is to fill your site with quality content, whether it’s blog posts, widgets, fantastic discount vouchers or whatever attraction you can create. Of course, that works in the wider web too. SEO shortcuts aren’t the answer, quality content is.
Posting quality content will also encourage people to follow you. Building high numbers of followers will enhance your authority in Google’s eyes, meaning, any links you post will carry more weight.
Also, have a look at the top stories featured on the homepage of Tweetmeme to get an idea of the type of content which generally performs well on Twitter in terms of getting shared – and ask yourself if your content is something that you would retweet if it was someone else’s work?

Use Your Targeted Keywords

Just as you optimise your own website with the keywords you want to rank for, make sure your Twitter account is also optimised this way to add context around your tweets.
Add keywords and phrases to your Twitter bio and use them (naturally, mind!) in your tweets. Without that, Google may not know how relevant your tweets and retweets are.

Make Your Tweets Retweetable

This is a very simple Twitter rule that gets completely missed by so many corporate accounts. Aim to leave enough space for people to retweet your comments and links, and to leave comments of their own.
There are only 140 characters to play with, so it’s not that easy – but it is essential.
Otherwise, you risk people cutting off the link in order to make their comments, or even deciding not to make the effort to edit it down and not retweeting at all. That’s not much use to you and your website’s SEO in the long run.

Google Maps will drop its real estate listings search option on February 10th

2011-01-27T12:24:00.001+05:30

Google has just made a surprising announcement: Google Maps will drop its real estate listings search option on February 10th.

Real estate was one of the options available inside Google Maps since July 2009, when it added a similar search form like the ones available on many real estate-specific websites. Google’s real estate search wasn’t as advanced as some of those sites, but offered enough basics for most homebuyers to start the process of finding a new home.

Problem is that very few people used it. That’s one of the reasons that Google cites for dropping real estate search:

In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.

In fact, PropertyPal.com — one of the services that has provided UK real estate listings to Google since last summer– confirmed that today:

… on the whole, we experienced minimal traffic from maps over the course of its short 8 month lifespan. Google had tried a number of strategies to promote the service including running Google ads, none of which pushed any significant traffic, or increased uptake.

The loss of real estate listings in Google Maps also means the end of Place Pages for individual property listings — a move that, at the time, seemed to signal Google’s strongest intention of being a major player in real estate search.

It seems impossible to think that Google would give up completely on real estate search — it’s too important of an activity in that industry, with the National Association of Realtors reporting in recent years that about 85% of all home buyers begin their search online. What does the future hold for Google and real estate search?

“We’ll continue to explore this area,” according to today’s announcement.

Unifying content under multilingual webpages

2011-01-19T15:47:00.001+05:30

If you have a global site containing pages where the:

template (i.e. side navigation, footer) is machine-translated into various languages,
main content remains unchanged, creating largely duplicate pages,

and sometimes search results direct users to the wrong language, we’d like to help you better target your international/multilingual audience through:

As you know, when rel=”canonical” or a 301 response code is properly implemented, we become more precise in clustering information from duplicate URLs, such as consolidating their linking properties. Now, when rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” is included in conjunction with rel=”canonical” or 301s, not only will our indexing and linking properties be more accurate, but we can better serve users the URL of their preferred language.

Sample configuration that’s prime for rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”

How does this all work? Imagine that you’re the proud owner of example.com, a site called “The Network” where you allow users to create their very own profile. Let’s say Javier Lopez, a Spanish speaker, makes his page at http://es.example.com/javier-lopez:

Because you’re trying to target a multilingual audience, once Javier hits “Publish,” his profile becomes immediately available in other languages with the translated templates. Also, each of the new language versions is served on a separate URL.

Two localized versions, http://en.example.com/javier-lopez in English and http://fr.example.com/javier-lopez in French

Background on the old issue: duplicate content caused by language variations

The configuration above allowed visitors speaking different languages to more easily interpret the content, but for search engines it was slightly problematic: there are three URLs (English, French, and Spanish versions) for the same main content in Javier’s profile. Webmasters wanted to avoid duplicate content issues (such as PageRank dilution) from these multiple versions and still ensure that we would serve the appropriate version to the user.

A new solution for localized templates

First of all, just to be clear, the strategy we’re proposing isn’t appropriate for multilingual sites that completely translate each page’s content. We’re trying to specifically improve the situation where the template is localized but the main content of a page remains duplicate/identical across language/country variants.

Before we get into the specific steps, our prior advice remains applicable:

Have one URL associated with one piece of content. We recommend against using the same URL for multiple languages, such as serving both French and English versions on example.com/page.html based on user information (IP address, Accept-Language HTTP header).

When multiple languages are at play, it’s best to include the language or country indication in the URL, e.g., example.com/en/welcome.html and example.com/fr/accueil.html (which specify “en” and “fr”) rather than example.com/welcome.html and example.com/accueil.html (which don’t contain an explicit country/language specification). More suggestions can be found in our blog posts about designing localized URLs and multilingual sites.

For the new feature:

Step 1: Select the proper canonical.
The canonical designates the version of your content you’d like indexed and returned to users.
The first step towards making the right content indexable is to pick one canonical URL that best reflects the genuine locale of the page’s main content. In the example above, since Javier is a Spanish-speaking user and he created his profile on es.example.com, http://es.example.com/javier-lopez is the logical canonical. The title and snippet in all locales will be selected from the canonical URL.

Once you have the canonical URL picked out, you can either:
A. 301 (permanent redirect) from the language variants to the canonical

As an example, if a French speaker visits fr.example.com/javier-lopez (not the canonical), have this page include a cookie to remember the user's language preference of French. Then permanently redirect from fr.example.com/javier-lopez to the canonical at es.example.com/javier-lopez. Because of the cookie, es.example.com/javier-lopez will still render its boilerplate in French (even on the es.example.com subdomain!). Similarly, en.example.com/javier-lopez would set the value of this cookie to English and then 301 redirect to es.example.com/javier-lopez.

Including a language selection link is also helpful should a multilingual user prefer a different experience of your site.

B. Use rel=”canonical”

On the other language variants, include a link rel=”canonical” tag pointing to your chosen canonical. In our example, since the canonical for Javier’s profile is the Spanish version, the English and French pages (and optionally even the Spanish page itself) would include .

Cookies are not involved in this setup. Therefore, a French speaker will be served es.example.com/javier-lopez with a Spanish template. Implement step 2 if you want the French speakers to be served the French version at fr.example.com/javier-lopez in Google search results.
Step 2: In the canonical URL, specify the various language versions via the rel=”alternate” link tag, using its hreflang attribute.

rel=”alternate” URLs can be displayed in search results in accordance with a user’s language preference. The title and snippet, however, remain generated from the canonical URL (as is customary with rel=”canonical”), not from the content of any rel=”alternate”.
You can help Google display the correctly localized variant of your URL to our international users by adding the following tags to http://es.example.com/javier-lopez, the selected canonical:

rel=”alternate” indicates that the URL contains an alternate version located at the URI of the href value. hreflang identifies the language code of the alternate URL and can be specified with ISO-639.

Please note: If your site supports many languages and you’re worried about the increased file size when declaring numerous rel=”alternate” URLs, please see our Help Center article about configuring rel=”alternate” with file size constraints.

Once the steps are completed, the configuration on “The Network” would look like this:

http://en.example.com/javier-lopez
either 301s with a language cookie or contains
http://fr.example.com/javier-lopez
either 301s with a language cookie or contains
http://es.example.com/javier-lopez
is the canonical and contains

and

Results of the above implementation

When your content is returned in search results, users will likely see the URL that corresponds to their language preference, whether or not it’s the canonical. (Good news!) This is because with with rel=”canonical” or a 301 redirect, we can cluster the language variations with the canonical. With rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” at serve-time we can deliver the URL of the most appropriate language to the user: English speakers will be served en.example.com/javier-lopez as the result for the URL in Javier’s profile, French speakers will see fr.example.com/javier-lopez, Spanish speakers will see es.example.com/javier-lopez.

By implementing step 1, only content from the canonical version will be available for users in search results (i.e. content from the duplicate versions won’t be searchable). Because the Spanish version es.example.com/javier-lopez is the canonical, queries that include template content from this page, e.g. [Javier Lopez familia] -- when using any language preference -- may return his profile (content from the canonical version). On the other hand, queries that include template content of the “duplicate” version, e.g. [Javier Lopez family], are less likely to return his profile page. If you would like the other language versions indexed separately and searchable, avoid using rel=”canonical” and rel=”alternate”.

Indexing properties, such as linking information, from the duplicate language variants will be consolidated with the canonical.

To recap (one more time, with feeling!)

For sites that have their template localized but the keep their pages’ main content untranslated:

Step 1: Once you have the canonical picked out you can use either rel=”canonical” or a 301 (permanent redirect) from the various localized pages to the canonical URL.

Step 2: On the canonical URL, specify the language-specific duplicated content with different boilerplate via the rel=”alternate” link tag, using its hreflang attribute. This way, Google can show the correctly-localized variant of your URLs to our international users.

We realize this can be a little complicated, so if you have questions, please ask in our webmaster forum! DCEVDQXZ4G7N

How to Get Facebook Fans to increase website traffic

2011-01-18T17:19:00.002+05:30

Have you ever found an easy and superior way to do something, then watched in bafflement as people insist on doing it the hard way?

You will never make money on Facebook if you have the wrong fans. And the best way to get the right Facebook fans for your business is with Facebook ads.

There are two main obstacles to people using Facebook Advertising:

A lot of companies don’t have a budget for Facebook ads
Most people don’t know how to create Facebook ads that are affordable

Let’s tackle both issues…

1. Why It’s Foolish Not to Budget For Facebook Ads

Ok I’ll give you a pass if you have no budget for AdWords and no budget for print and… basically no budget for advertising. No wait, I won’t give you a pass on that- the number one reason businesses fail is they don’t advertise. Ok I made that up- but companies who’ve been through recessions and survived have seen their competitors flounder and go out of business after stopping their advertising to save money.

So should you spend some of your AdWords money on Facebook? Probably. But first let me show you my priorities for businesses. I do AdWords, SEO, Email Marketing, and Facebook marketing for clients, so my recommendations are not biased toward one online channel. Let’s talk about that, then I’ll come back to Facebook ads.

Prioritizing Your Online Marketing Efforts:

AdWords for the highest ROI keywords
AdWords reaches a point of diminishing return. Once you’ve established what keywords you can get a good ROI on, spend the rest of your budget on the lower priorities.
SEO to get long term traffic on keywords you can rank for
Every site reaches a point where they frankly don’t deserve to rank for more competitive terms. Even expanding your content with your blog only goes so far. Keep blogging, and move on to Facebook.
Facebook Marketing and Advertising
Facebook now gets more pageviews than Google. You can capture a targeted audience and, like an email list, market to them repeatedly. It’s way better than Twitter for B2C marketing
Twitter Networking for PR and Opportunities
Twitter gets only 5% the reach of Facebook, but it’s great for networking, reaching bloggers and journalists, and B2B marketing.
David Blaine
He is amazing, so if the previous channels didn’t work, you’d better get in touch with the street magician.

Free Facebook Fans Suck

Don’t go to Facebook just because you don’t have a budget for AdWords. It really sucks to try to get fans the free route.

Yes, you can get 50 of your friends to fan your page. No that’s probably not your target market.
Yes you can run contests, but these fans will all be cheap – as in, they want free or low cost stuff. They’ll discount you to death. Red ocean, anyone?
Yes, you can create a video that you call “viral” but unless it gets thousands or millions of views, it wasn’t really viral. Viral marketing is nearly impossible to do on purpose.

Cheap Fan Services?

You can even get some company in India to get you really cheap fans, but I keep hearing from regretful business owners who look at their Page Insights and find these fans are from countries they don’t serve. They may even be fake profiles, which means they won’t interact with you and they’ll water down your Post Feedback Rate. I’m not saying anything as sweeping as companies from India are unethical, but I am saying that you need to watch out for these super-cheap fan services and check up on the fan quality if you do feel you need to go this route.

How To Get Good, Cheap Fans Who May Actually Buy From You

If you haven’t been into the Facebook Advertising interface, maybe you don’t understand how incredible the targeting is:

Age
Gender
Location
Language
Relationship Status
Sexual gender preference
Education
Interest targeting
Page targeting

And if you’re stuck in the search marketing mentality (I was since I never did marketing or advertising until Google came along), you probably don’t realize how much demographic targeting can increase CTR (which lowers CPC, just like in AdWords).

Yes, interest targeting is different from keyword targeting, but that’s another issue. We’re just trying to get you the right fans- people who would buy your product or service if they knew about it.

There’s still a big question about whether Facebook marketing leads to sales. I have seen it work. But I’ll tell you it will absolutely NOT work if you have the wrong fans. So it’s worth it to pay for fans if that means you get real prospects into your Facebook Marketing sequence.

2. How to Do Facebook Advertising Affordably

Here are some of the biggest mistakes I see people making with Facebook ads, which drives up the cost and keeps you from finding cheap, targeted fans:

Not testing enough ads
Sound familiar? I’ve written that about AdWords too :-) You need to test 20-40 Facebook ads to find one or two that are cheap.
Targeting too many interests with the same ad
Also similar to an AdWords mistake. In AdWords we group keywords tightly and make the ad fit them – same deal with Facebook Ads.
Using the wrong bidding model
If you use CPC when you should be using CPM, your cost can be 25 times higher.
Bad Pictures
Remember, this is FACEbook. If you’re not testing faces, think about it. Also, a 110×80 image is pretty small, so you may need to zoom in closer than you think. Oh, and by the way, hot woman are not always the best choice.
Long Copy
Assume you’ll get 3 seconds of the ad viewer’s time – less than AdWords. Make it snappy.
Trying to Do Too Much
With the ad, just get the like or the click. Break your sales process into more pieces to ensure you get a higher conversion rate on the current action (which is a click or a like).

If you fix those six things, you’ll be ahead of the curve. If you want to learn more, check out my FanReach training.

How Much Do Fans Cost?

Based on my own experience, which includes about 25 companies in addition to another 15 or so case studies I’ve seen from several other Facebook marketers I work with, here is the range I target and expect:

Business to Consumer: $0.003 – $0.35 per fan; three fans per penny is the cheapest I’ve ever seen. I’d expect an average of about $0.15 per fan
Business to Business: $0.50 – $2.00 per fan; you may be able to go lower, but this is what I’ve seen. However, B2B offerings can be higher revenue, so it may still all work out for you with good margin.

However, not every business is ideal for Facebook Marketing. If you can’t find a discernable passion your audience has in common, they probably don’t “like” anything you can target cheaply enough.

Also, every niche is different, every business is different. As you may know with AdWords, two businesses targeting the same keywords can get dramatically different results because of their brand, offerings, and websites. It’s the same with Facebook Marketing.

Go ye and get likes wisely.

SEOgadget released keyword tool

2010-12-15T11:53:00.000+05:30

SEOgadget.co.uk has announced a new keyword tool beta to make the keyword research process more actionable and (hopefully) enjoyable experience. According to the announcement, “Getting clear visibility on keyword search volume and opportunity data is painstaking and time intensive, but it’s such an important part of the initial and ongoing process of SEO”.

The tool combines keyword data from your Google Analytics account with local search volume (based on your geographic location via the adwords api) and search engine ranking. Allowing for 1000, 5000, or 10,000 keywords in a campaign, the tool aims to solve some of the laborious, copy and paste related operations associated with larger scale keyword research projects.

Aimed at SEO people, the tool allows you to create a keyword category to group keywords in almost any way you choose. In the example below, a stone merchants website has created a “products” category with “keyword markers” such as “flint”, “pebble”, “stone” and “gravel”.

You could use the category editor to create all types of keyword groups all the way down the user journey from “intent” to “purchase”. Site architects might be interested in creating categories to represent all content groups on their site. Think: gender (“shoes for men”, “shoes for women”), colour (“red”, “blue”, “green”), or type (“boots”, “shoes”, “heels”) and so on.

Data can be custom filtered, using rank, visits and search volume to find “low hanging fruit”, “keywords that rank on page 2” or combinations of rank, visits and search volume.

If you’d like to export your data to make pivot charts and tables, that’s easy. The data comes out of the tool in a CSV format with each keyword, search volume, category and rank in the data.

Learn more about the tool on the SEOgadget blog, check out the tool at tools.seogadget.co.uk. Search Engine Journal readers can signup with a 50% discount on their first month’s subscription with SEMNews READERS

SEO - Cost per Keyword - A Myth

2010-11-24T15:27:00.001+05:30

SEO Companies Claims Cost Per Keyword or Pay Per Keyword SEO - This is Nothing But Yet Another SEO Myth

Pay Per Keyword SEO! Cheap SEO Plan starting from $ x per keyword! Cost of SEO Silver Package - 10 Keywords .., Cost of SEO Gold Package - 30 Keywords .. and many similar quotes are quite common on the websites and proposals of many SEO Companies. Have you ever thought what and how one can do per keyword SEO or how can any SEO company restrict their services for specific number of keywords only???

Here is yet another very common SEO myth I want to discuss, and this is regarding SEO companies and consultants charging their clients per keyword or offering packages for certain number of keywords. What I have learned from my past SEO assignments is a Website can be optimized or a web page/URL can be optimized and it should be optimized for users and not for search engines or to satisfy your client's ego.

Example of perfect SEO is to get rank well for all the phrases (keywords) related to the services, subject, product etc.. offered on that particular URL or web page which a normal search engine user will type to reach you. Now here is the whole catch there are hundreds and thousands of users looking for a particular service offered on your web page, what do you think? all of them will repeat same 3 to 5 keywords?

Take an example you sell Microsoft Products Online then you target keywords "microsoft products online" , "buy microsoft mouse online" & "buy microsoft keyboard" that means the page will also get optimized for keywords like "buy microsoft products online", "buy microsoft keyboard online", "buy microsoft mouse and keyboard" ... etc. ) which are the permutations of the above two keywords! and why would you want to miss on key phrases like "cheap online microsoft store", "where can i buy genuine microsoft keyboards" "free shipping of microsoft mouse and keyboard" and similar other scores of phrases which describes your services.

Now if you are outsourcing your website's SEO to an agency who work on pay per keyword model are they not going to optimize the web page for all these phrases??? or you will be paying your agency only for specified 3-4 keywords and will not pay them for other keywords which are the phrases out of the permutation of selected initial key phrases??? or are they going to charge you for every keyword your site ranks on?? may be for many keywords your site will be ranking not because of the SEO agency's efforts but just because of your content! So are you underpaying your SEO agency or overpaying them???

Now if you are a SEO agency approached by this same client, and he wants you to optimize this page for some 3-4 keywords, will you optimize this page only for those keywords? say one keyword is "buy microsoft mouse" but you fail to come on first page for this keyword rather the site ranks for a different keyword "buy black microsoft mouse online" and brings decent traffic and conversions and this keyword is not included in your SEO proposal or contract of your so called Silver, Gold, Platinum etc SEO package will you charge your client? Take another case here you rank for both the keywords "buy microsoft mouse" (this is included in your package) and "buy black microsoft mouse online" (this is not included in your package) there is a possibility that the page will give better or maximum conversion for the second keyword than the one listed in your proposal!! Don't you want to take credit for the success and conversions by this keyword when you know this is ranked because of your efforts?

So both of us, clients and SEO company should understand a website cannot be optimized for specific bunch of keywords. Websites are optimized to appear on search engine result pages when somebody writes any query on search bar related to the offerings of your web page and you can not limit or specify the kind of query user will write there. Just like on any offline coffee shop different people may ask for their cappuccino as - "May I have a cappuccino!" or "One cappuccino for me" or "Cappuccino please" or "I would like to have a hot Cappuccino - Thank You (with a smile)" or simple "Cappuccino" etc etc....

The discussion is open here for SEO companies and for clients who are looking for SEO agencies on the pricing model here!!

Google Instant results - Read more info here

2010-10-15T12:25:00.000+05:30

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Google announces that Goggles is available for the iPhone

2010-10-06T13:41:00.001+05:30

In December Google Goggles was released for Android. The feature allowed users to search in the Google Maps for Mobile by using a picture they took on their mobile device. It highlights recognized objects and then all you have to do is click on it to find out more information. Also, it can help with more relevant local search results by using the pictures as landmarks. Today, Google announces that Goggles is available for the iPhone!

Google Mobile’s blog does warn that since “computer vision” is difficult that it’s still a Labs product and that they will continue to work on it to make it work better. Google Mobile App is in the Apple App Store and users need only downloaded the updated version on their iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 devices. Devices must be running iOS 4 or above and Goggles is only enabled for English-speaking users.

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New Features in Search Funnels of Google Adwords

2010-10-06T13:39:00.000+05:30

We’ve received very positive feedback from advertisers using Search Funnels—the new set of reports launched in Conversions. Advertisers are beginning to understand the path to conversion beyond just the last click and are now able to give credit to assisting keywords and ads that customers saw and/or clicked before converting. Each buying cycle is different and Search Funnels is eliminating the guesswork over the roles your keywords are playing in the path to conversion.

And here’s the first round of improvements, as requested by you.

click for full size image

Longer, customizable Conversion History Windows

A buyer may take longer to research and buy a vacation package rather than purchase movie tickets, for example. The funnel for various conversion types can differ greatly in regards to time to purchase and number of clicks to purchase. Now, you can adjust the time span, or Conversion History Window, to 30 days (default), 60 days or 90 days prior to a conversion to see the Search Funnel data leading to that conversion. With this feature, you can look further back into the history of your conversion paths.

Only show complete conversion paths

A percentage of surfers clear cookies from time to time, which can influence search funnels data by causing conversion paths to appear shorter by eliminating some upper funnel assists - impressions or clicks on your keywords - that may have occurred prior to cookie deletion. For instance, if a buyer clicks on one of your ads, then clears cookies, then goes on to click another one or your ads before making a purchase, the click prior to cookie deletion will not show up in your Search Funnels reports.

Now, you can sanitize the search funnel data you’re looking at by checking a box in your reports called “Only show complete conversion paths.” This option will filter out conversions that are from paths that are potentially biased by cookie deletion. As such, while you will end up analyzing fewer conversions overall, you will be seeing truer, more complete conversion paths. Use this option to strengthen your overall funnel analysis and understand how buyers are finding your products.

These new features were created based on feedback we received from Search Funnels users and we hope you find them useful as you experiment with, analyze, and optimize your portfolio of keywords.

Source: Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew

Google AdSense: Now serving multiple ad networks

2010-03-17T13:47:00.001+05:30

We have launched a new capability in AdSense allowing Google-certified ad networks compete directly within AdSense, which means that advertisers from these third-party networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers to show on the Google Content Network.

These new capabilities will automatically be enabled for your account, and you'll see a new section in your Ad Review Center where you can allow or block specific ad networks or all networks except AdWords. Please note that we'll gradually be adding new ad networks to AdSense accounts over the next few months, so you won't see any immediate impact on your ads or your earnings.

To ensure the quality of the ads that appear on AdSense publisher websites, Google will certify all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. Some participating ad networks use targeting methods similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. These ad networks won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising, but we'll allow networks that comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools. Publishers can opt out of user interest targeting from these ad networks, and Google has changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this.

We are currently only accepting ads from Google-certified ad networks in North America and Europe, but we will make this feature available to ad networks in additional parts of the world in the future.

To learn more and manage the ad networks appearing on your pages, visit the AdSense Help Center at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=13522 and visit our blog post at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/03/google-certified-ad-networks-now.html.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Source from Google Blog

Important Misconceptions of SEO

2010-02-26T13:14:00.001+05:30

Being an internet marketer for many years now I have heard some really out of whack misconceptions when it comes to SEO and how it helps grow a business online.

Here are some of the most important misconceptions of SEO that I think should be called out:

1. It is all Technical – Search engine optimization is only about 15-20% technical. The rest requires a marketing approach. Think about it, if you are trying to get rankings in the search engines don’t you have to put yourself in your audiences shoes and anticipate what they search for, what they read and what they want to see on your website? That requires a marketing hat.

2. Rankings Happen Quick – Search engine optimization is time and labor intensive. It takes time to get things moving in any direction. Nothing happens over night or even in one month or two.

3. I Only Need to Do It for 2 Months – SEO does not have a finish line. When you take a marketing approach to your SEO it is something you never really stop doing. Why would you stop marketing your company? You wouldn’t and that is why your SEO should never stop either. Rankings are not the only goal for search engine marketing. Building many relevant one way links is also a goal. This can only happen over time.

4. SEO Costs $39.95 – When it comes to search engine marketing you really get what you pay for. That doesn’t mean it should cost an arm and a leg but price should be appropriate to amount of work and man hours put into a certain effort in order to get it right. Prices that sound to good to be true usually are. Do you really think you can grow a business online successfully for the same cost as a cup of coffee per day?

5. SEO Software Should Do the Trick – Search engine optimization cannot be put on auto pilot by some software program. Some software’s are capable of isolating gaps or errors in your website or campaign but that still requires you as a business owner or marketer to make the necessary changes to get things moving in the right direction.

There are many misconceptions in the SEO industry and over time they should all be cleared up as the industry continues to mature and evolve. I only highlighted several that came to my mind, please feel free to share any that you may have heard.

How to Grow ur Business with Twitter

2010-02-04T16:54:00.002+05:30

The newest player on the social networking scene is Twitter. Marketing in this venue still relatively new, and for the owners of small businesses especially, this type of advertising is not only cost effective but just plain effective. The great thing about marketing on any social networking site is that you do not have to know much about computers or marketing, and you can still run a really good marketing campaign.

Twitter is a microblogging site. You can send tiny messages of 140 characters or less to whomever you wish. The newest flavor in social networking sites, Twitter can be used to build personal networks or business networks.

Different Ways to Use Twitter Marketing

While there are many different ways to incorporate Twitter into your marketing campaign, some of the more common uses are strictly to share information. Since you can share tiny blurbs of information with a huge number of people at the click of a button, Twitter is great for keeping your Twitter followers updated. It can be used to share public service announcements, news updates, business news and friend and family updates. It is built for disseminating information almost constantly.

Because Twitter is designed to constantly feed current updates to your followers, it is a natural for marketing a business. The proper way to share business information over Twitter is to tweet a link for a website containing the complete information. For business owners sharing their information over Twitter lets your prospects and customers discover you. Twitter does have very strict etiquette when it comes to advertising, and by offending the protocol, you can quickly alienate followers and potentially damage your brand.

Twitter is a great tool for promoting your company’s events. Twitter is designed to share timely news, so promoting today’s lunch special would be appropriate, but tweeting about month old news is not appropriate. Keep your tweets conversational and very personal in tone. Any advertising should be in a ‘by the way’ fashion, not ‘in your face’ advertising.

Twitter Marketing can have Lots of Personality

The more personality that your brand has, the easier it will be to tweet about. A unique voice will make your tweets entertaining. You can always wrap your tweets around a kernel of important information, and then deliver them in an entertaining and conversational manner. Your followers will look forward to hearing from you, and you will be able to get your message out constantly which is a great way to market your small business.

Another place where Twitter is incredibly valuable is with your customer contact. Twitter is designed to be conversational, and it is a great way to keep a dialogue going with your customers and prospects. It’s also useful for catching service problems and getting feed back from ustomers. This is particularly helpful to make sure that you are building a good reputation for your company. Twitter allows you to correct problems and retain customers.

We at Inventateq - SEO Training Institute in Bangalore India will work hard to give our best knowledge and latest information on search engine marketing industry to our blog users, we love to receive ur comments

Google's URL shortening service: Goo.gl

2010-02-01T16:12:00.001+05:30

Everyone needs to shorten a URL sometimes.

Whether it’s to prevent long URLs wrapping in emails, to hide affiliate links or to make links look neater in newsletters or on web pages, a URL shortening service comes in handy. These are simply tools that take long URLs and reduce them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share.

First into the market was TinyURL, a service that we didn’t even know we needed until it suddenly became vital. With tweets set at 140 characters, use of TinyURL went into overdrive as Twitter became more and more popular.

But after a while, TinyURLs weren’t tiny anymore and we started looking elsewhere. A couple of small players hit the market and then an outfit called Bit.ly started offering link shortening with built in click through stats and that was enough for most of us to ditched the competition.

Bit.ly became king of the URL shorteners in May 2009 when Twitter announced they were formally abandoning TinyURL to make Bit.ly their preferred shortening service. This wasn’t much of a surprise, given both Twitter and Bit.ly shared common startup investment partners. But the move meant that links from alternative URL trimmers started throwing errors if used in tweets.

Now Google has jumped into the URL shortening pool, with the launch last month of Goo.gl . At this stage, Goo.gl is only available for use within Google Toolbar and Feedburner, but it’s expected to rollout for general use eventually, complete with full link tracking.

As TechCrunch points out in their post about the service, it’s the link data that will win the war between the URL shorteners. But I have a feeling that if and when Goo.gl rolls out as a stand alone service, Twitter will need to rethink their relationship with Bit.ly.

Inventateq – A SEO & PPC Training Institute in Bangalore

2010-01-27T12:57:00.003+05:30

Adding another feather to Inventateq, herewith we are offering you a collection and combination of SEO, PPC and Internet Marketing Training Courses. We are Glad to announce you that the manual training sessions have been promoted by Inventateq to providing you the best knowledge of Internet Marketing in a short time.

We offer you not only theoretical knowledge but also provide you the experimental & Practical support with Lab sessions. We are pleased to announce that we are also extending our support for 100% Guaranteed Placement Assistance too.

We flagged our presence at: Inventateq

55/1, 2^nd floor, C-Main,

Corp. Colony, Beside Tilak Nagar Police Station, n INOX

4^th ‘T’ Block, Jayanagar,

Bangalore – 41.

At the outset we, “Inventateq” extend a warm welcome to all budding professional to give the sharp edge to their Internet Marketing skills. We help organizations, individual professionals, with the new combinations of courses in respect to their needs and demands. All the courses are designed to meet the competitions of the new era. The SEO & SEM courses are designed economically feasible to make the highest usability of all aspiring learners. Keeping the level of importance of SEO has for any website, we are designed the training to turn out to be the best and updated, to meet the ongoing competition time to time.

The Investors are betting as much as amount for Internet & Online Marketing. Unlike outsourcing the SEO services to consultant, the importance of SEO, forcing the Companies to hire the SEO professionals for doing online Marketing, which is comparatively benefitable for the Investors, this in turn increasing the demand for SEO Professionals day by day. Keeping the ongoing importance in view we at Inventa teq designed all the courses to meet the specifications of the individual requirements.

Inventateq – Bangalore (India) Based Online Marketing (SEO.SEM) technology company engaged in the business of providing job training for all types of Internet Marketing (SEO.SEM) Courses used in the real world job environment. Inventateq caters to all individuals ranging from beginner level computer user to the IT professional. Inventateq’s graduate students are prepared to take on the challenges they will face in today’s job market.

Information on Admission & Training Enrollment

Those candidates who wish to enroll and attend the Training programe, please contact bavajan@inventateq.com or bavajan.ads@gmail.com ……………………………..

The Physical address of the Training Institute is also mentioned here above. The candidates can also walk in to the Institute to enroll the name.

Contact US:

Mobile: +919036096570

Email: bavajan@inventateq.com , lakshmi@inventateq.com

Skype: bava_sem

Yahoo: bavajan_s@yahoo.com

gmail: bavajan.seo@gmail.com

Website: www.inventateq.com

Address: Inventateq

55/1, 2^nd floor, C-Main,

Corp. Colony, Beside Tilak Nagar Police Station, Near INOX

4^th ‘T’ Block, Jayanagar,

Bangalore – 41.

See you in our Institute

Google AdWords Mobile Optimization Techniques

2010-01-27T12:54:00.002+05:30

Google is going mobile in a big way. Following the announcement of Nexus One, the official Google phone, and the acquisition of adMob, Google is ready to make some serious moves on the small screen.

Early days of mobile advertising

Before smart phones hit the market, mobile advertisers were confined to the small screens of traditional mobile units. Web access on those phones was painful and expensive“web pages” on those phones often consisted of nothing more than several hyperlinks. Needless to say, the technology never really took off. The iPhone changed all of that in late 2007, by offering a full touch screen HTML browser. Suddenly web-on-mobile devices started to make more sense for both phone users and advertisers.

AdWords and mobile

Soon after the iPhone launch, Google introduced a new feature in the AdWords “Settings” tab. This feature enabled online advertisers to syndicate AdWords ads to mobile phones. With the flip of a switch, online ads could be displayed on browser-based handsets around the world.

Sounds great, right? In theory yes, allowing online advertisers to syndicate pre-existing ads to users on a new type of device with little-to-no work sounds great. Except that these ads were originally designed for users accessing the web from a relatively fixed location on a screen ranging in size from 10 to 20+ inches.

Why does this matter? Users accessing the Internet via PC (laptop or desktop) are in a totally different mindset from their mobile counterparts. Generally, PC users will spend large chunks of time in a fixed location and may spend hours searching and researching.

The PC experience is much more tolerable, searching from the comforts of your home or office is much more enjoyable than trying to navigate a 2-4 inch touch screen while walking down a busy street or riding on a bus.

Additionally, PC users have more time on their hands—when you are on the go you probably have a task to accomplish and you are usually in transit. Mobile users “snack” on the internet in small browsing sessions, and generally access the web when they need a quick answer.

Now you can start to imagine why ads that you have strategically set up with PC users in mind may not be as effective in AdWords’ mobile version.

AdWords mobile optimization techniques

1. Turn off your mobile ad syndication if you haven’t done so already. You will turn it back on when you are ready.

2. Make a copy of your AdWords campaign and append the word “mobile” or another designation to differentiate the new mobile campaign from the standard campaign.

3. Adjust your bids to a lower value. At this point, few advertisers have enough data to clearly suggest how effective mobile ads are versus their traditional AdWords counterparts. Additionally, few advertisers are opted in to the AdWords mobile option. Why risk a higher CPC if you don’t have to?

4. Review your ads. You want to ensure that your ads are clear and to the point. Remember, most mobile users are accessing the web on 2-4 inch screens. The goals of these ads should be relatively similar to those of your traditional AdWords ads. However, there may also be additional opportunities for geo-modification due to enhanced targeting capabilities of mobile devices. Also, be sure to take advantage of Google’s new in-ad phone feature. This will allow users to call your business directly from the SERPs for the price of a standard click.

5. Review your landing pages and optimize them to be more mobile friendly:

Remove non-essential images; these take up space.
Be sure to include your phone number. Many smart phones have a tap-to-call technology built in that will allow your visitors to call your company directly with a simple touch of the screen.
Use contrasting colors and simple fonts. A clean design is even more important on mobile devices.
Organize your content in short lists, and bold important terms if possible.

6. Review your current keywords. Certain keywords may work better than others in the mobile space and testing will reveal their value.

7. Revisit your goals and manage your expectations. Mobile advertising is a great way to stay connected to your audience when they are away from their PC. Reduced expectations for your mobile campaigns should be set as users will be less likely to make a purchase on a mobile device. Lower CPCs should help offset the difference in conversions.

Calls to Action to consider monitoring:

Direct calls to your business
Clickthroughs to specific links
Sharing features (email a friend, tweeting, SMS sharing)

8. Test and monitor your campaigns on an ongoing basis, just as you would with any AdWords campaign. As more consumers switch to smart phones and our lives become increasingly mobile, expect online advertising to follow suit.

With more people using advanced devices and with advancements in mobile technology, opportunities to market to mobile users will increase as well. I’m not suggesting that mobile advertising will become a staple in every advertiser’s marketing mix in 2010, but if you don’t test the new advertising opportunities your business might be missing out. Before launching your first AdWords mobile campaign adhere to the best practices listed above to minimize your risks and increase your ability to control your campaigns.

Is PageRank sculpting now useless?

2010-01-27T12:53:00.000+05:30

Six months ago, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that NoFollowed tags no longer work as a tool for sculpting PageRank and that he would not recommend PageRank sculpting in general. Despite the passage of time and much discussion in forums and on blogs, many website owners are still confused about the importance of optimizing how PageRank flows throughout their site.

My personal opinion, based on experience we’ve had working with client sites, is that it can still be important to optimize PageRank flow through a site. In this article, I’ll explain why, along with recommendations on how to do it. And this isn’t just about achieving higher rankings. I’ll also suggest ways to improve your site’s relevance to searchers once they arrive.

The rules have changed

In 2005, largely in response to the prevalence of blog comment spam, Google said that NoFollowed links “won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.” That meant you could insert NoFollow tags as a way to shape how SEO credit flows through a site—a practice often referred to as “PageRank sculpting.” If you tagged links as NoFollowed, all the credit they would have otherwise received would be redistributed to other links, thereby giving those other links additional credit.

Then, at SMX Advanced 2009, the rules changed again. As explained in Matt Cutts’ post, Google would no longer allow credit to simply flow past NoFollowed links. Now that credit just evaporates. It no longer flows to pages that would have received it as extra credit under the 2005 rules. This means that website owners must now use other methods to affect credit flow—such as changing the site map.

Is PageRank sculpting now useless?

In my opinion, PageRank sculpting still has tremendous value. Yes, website owners must find a new way to sculpt PageRank—but with the opportunity to increase website usability and also achieve better SEO results at the same time.

That opportunity comes from exploiting the difference between PageRank sculpting using NoFollow tags and approaching PageRank sculpting as a general strategy.

PageRank sculpting as a strategy

PageRank sculpting in general has and will continue to be an important aspect of onsite search engine optimization despite Google’s change in its NoFollow policy. Consider the meaning of “PageRank sculpting.” Although I have not been able to find a universal definition, here is one I propose, based on the needs of website owners:

PageRank sculpting is the application of rules regarding the quantity, prioritization and relevance of links on pages throughout a site to efficiently distribute PageRank. For example, suppose a page on my site has 100 PageRank “points” to pass on to the pages that it links to. I will want to be strategic about how those points are distributed rather than squander them indiscriminately.

If the page links to too many pages or has less important links above more important links, or has links that are not relevant given the purpose of that page, I will want to make some major changes. My initial aim may be to “sculpt PageRank” in order to improve SEO rankings. However, in the process of organizing my links for better SEO results I should also be organizing my site to make it more useful and more intuitive for users. In fact, it’s almost impossible to do one without doing the other. That’s why PageRank sculpting should be tackled in tandem with the pursuit of good information architecture. Choices that serve the purposes of one serve the purposes of both.

What works for Google works for users

As search engines continue to evolve there will be increasing overlap between the things you do to improve Google rankings and the things you do to improve the experience of searchers who find your site in Google results. Here is a basic example of how PageRank sculpting and good information architecture can work together.

This is our made-up page called “Page 0.” As you can see, it links to 35 pages:

Page 0 has 70 points of PageRank to share by virtue of the other webpages that link to it (not illustrated). Using the classic definition of PageRank that Matt Cutts uses in his blog post, each of the 35 pages it links to receives two points of PageRank.

From an SEO perspective this works if pages 1-35 each have target keyword phrases of equal importance and value. From an information architecture (IA) perspective this works if pages 1-35 all have content highly relevant to the searchers who reach Page 0. But we’re not living in a dream world.

Regarding SEO: Pages 1-35 will be targeting a diversity of keywords. Those keywords will each have varying “potential” based on how popular they are, how competitive they are and how relevant they are to the products offered on the site. We want to sculpt PageRank so that more points go to pages that target high potential search phrases and away from pages that target low or lower potential search phrases. This requires reorganizing the sitemap such that links are selectively removed from Page 0.

Regarding information architecture: Pages 1-35 will have content suited to a wide variety of searchers, but it’s likely that only a small subset of those pages will be highly relevant and valuable to searchers who enter on Page 0. We want to architect Page 0 with the goal of prioritizing highly relevant links, and removing links that have low or lower relevance from the page.

PageRank sculpting (SEO) and information architecture goals must both be pursued simultaneously for optimal results. Why?

In my opinion, the more PageRank points that Page 0 passes to the remaining pages that it links to:

The more accessible those pages will be to search engine spiders
The higher the PageRank will be for those pages, thus contributing to increased rankings (all things equal)
The less PageRank points that will be “misspent” on low potential pages

The more useful Page 0 is to the subset of searchers who visit it:

The more likely it will be to accumulate links in the future and the more PageRank points it will have to disseminate to the pages it links to
It’s bounce rate will be reduced, thus improving the likelihood it will achieve or maintain higher rankings for the terms it targets
The page will feel “smaller” and more intuitive to searchers who find it, which in our experience leads to higher site-wide conversion rates assuming most other pages on the website follow this same philosophy

Also note the role of prominence—another example of how something that affects Google search results also affects searcher relevance. Just as searchers do, search engine spiders give more attention to pages closer to the top (those that are more prominent). That’s because spiders won’t follow every link from page to page every time they traverse a site. Pages higher in a site’s hierarchy receive more spider visits and so have a higher probability of being re-indexed—and therefore of receiving more inherent strength in search engines.

Link allocation criteria

Ideally we want only pages with both high SEO potential and high searcher relevance (i.e., the “sweet spot”) linked from pages like Page 0 that have lots of PageRank to share—as illustrated below:

Even though they might not fall into the sweet spot, the most relevant links should usually be maintained even if they offer low SEO opportunity. In the past, low SEO opportunity links may have been NoFollowed as part of PageRank sculpting activities. Even though Google says there’s no benefit to NoFollowing these low opportunity links, if we believe their presence will improve the searcher’s experience, they could become a net SEO benefit. You do want to be stingy about linking to low opportunity pages, so consider using your analytics programs to weed out the truly relevant pages from the not-so-relevant pages and preserve your PageRank for high opportunity pages.

When we’re done prioritizing links that offer high SEO potential and high relevance to searchers, Page 0 might look like this:

PageRank points would then be allocated this way:

Now, high SEO potential pages have more than three times the PageRank points coming from Page 0 and there is less clutter for searchers to sort through once they reach the site. Techniques To Conserve PageRank Points

Here are some techniques to reduce the number of pages that a page links to—thereby saving PageRank points for key pages—techniques that also improve usability and conversion rates. These particular techniques resulted from conversion optimization testing we performed for particular clients, and may not work for you.

Reorganize the links that fall under a certain page on your site’s hierarchy. For example, you may find ten low SEO potential pages with very similar content. Rather than link to each one of these pages on Page 0, you may want to link to only one of them. Then link that page to the other nine.

Remove low SEO potential pages that offer little value to searchers you want coming to your site. You can then redirect them in an SEO-friendly way to more valuable pages. On category or product pages (or any page that appears deep in your site) remove the standard site-wide navigation. Replace it with several highly relevant links and content specific to that page. Provide a “continue shopping” or “continue browsing” button in the navigation for searchers who want to access other content on your site. Caveat: Test this tactic, as it might have an impact on usability; more on that below.

Perform usability testing and track conversion rates after you make your changes so that you know whether your changes actually have the effect you intended. Bear in mind that removing site-wide navigation from certain pages goes against standard usability practices. However, when done selectively, we have found it to be an effective practice when applied to some websites for improving both page rank and usability.

It’s also a good idea to perform usability testing and track conversion rates after you make your changes so that you know whether your changes actually have the effect you intended. Bear in mind also that removing site-wide navigation from certain pages goes against standard usability practices. However, when done selectively, we have found it to be an effective practice when applied to some websites for improving both page rank and usability.

A broader context

In my opinion, PageRank sculpting has a lot of value, especially when viewed in a broader context than just inserting NoFollowed tags. More than ever, your traffic volume depends on how well you prioritize high potential search phrases and pages. Both traffic volume and conversion rates depend on what searchers do once they actually reach a page. Do PageRank sculpting right and you’ll simultaneously achieve a stronger SEO result and convert more shoppers into customers.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Marketing News

Google Page Rank (PR) Update Happened Yesterday

2009-12-31T12:27:00.007+05:30

Tonight we saw a PR update which was what is known as a major update, I have been seeing deep indexing all week which typically precedes a large update, also another sign is that they 'goog' switch of filters prior to the updates for about a week.

Looking at the first round (these normally go in a few waves) it would appear to be a little mean, this means in general I see a pattern where some go up and down but on average it would appear to be more to do with how much juice they put into the system than anything specific with the domains (given they (some) do go up and down).

Anyway this is your Happy New Year Update and I hope very much all of you enjoy the results you have worked hard on achieving over the last year.

Bavajan.S - Online Marketing(SEO/SEM) Specialist owns Inventateq, a India based web consulting firm and SEO Course & PPC Training Institute in Bangalore. He also runs Search Engine Marketing News, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topicshas been actively blogging on various blogs since over a year. He writes about social media and entrepreneurship mostly. bsc in animation , 3d animation
game programming

Holiday Cheer from Google Analytics

2009-12-28T16:12:00.001+05:30

Happy Holiday to all and to all up and to the right

As a special holiday treat, we've launched the Holiday bonus features:

Annotations
Have you ever wondered whether a new trend in your data is related to a change in strategy at your company? With Annotations, you won't have to wonder. Annotations let you share tribal knowledge and see your data in context.

Easier Tracking Code setup
No more guessing or hunting for the right tags to paste on your site. The new tracking code setup wizard makes custom tagging easy.

API updates
With Advanced Segments, goal configuration data, and more built into the latest API, you can build even more powerful integrations with Google Analytics.

More dimensions and metrics
New data dimensions and metrics will be made available, including those in our recently announced features.

You can learn about all of these features by watching the newly posted recording of the December 10th Google Analytics New Features webinar, which is the perfect complement to a roaring fire and hot chocolate.

Struggling to find the perfect gift for your web analyst?

Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, recently released his second book, Web Analytics 2.0. The new book is full of helpful insights and strategies for improving your web analytics.

In addition to helping make you a better analyst, you'll be helping others. Avinash is donating 100% of the proceeds from sales of the book to benefit The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya. You can read more about the book on the Analytics blog.

Merry analysing,
Bavajan.S - Online Marketing Specialist

New Set of Google Analytics Features

2009-12-28T16:09:00.000+05:30

Today, Google announcing a new set of Google Analytics features which builds on last year's enterprise-class feature launch. Some add more power to existing capabilities. Others provide new flexibility to further customize and adapt Google Analytics according to the needs of your enterprise. Finally, we'll introduce Analytics Intelligence. Resist the temptation to skip ahead. We wouldn't want you to miss anything. :-)

Powerful.

Power-users have asked us to add even more data manipulation and analysis features to Google Analytics. We've been listening, and are adding the latest power features to expand Google Analytics enterprise-class capabilities.

Engagement Goals..and more of them! Two new goal types allow you to measure user engagement and branding success on your site. The new goal types allow you to set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit. Furthermore, you can now define up to 20 goals per profile. Watch this short video on goals to learn more.

Expanded Mobile Reporting: Google Analytics now tracks mobile websites and mobile apps so you can better measure your mobile marketing efforts. If you're optimizing content for mobile users and have created a mobile website, Google Analytics can track traffic to your mobile website from all web-enabled devices, whether or not the device runs JavaScript. This is made possible by adding a server side code snippet to your mobile website. To install the code snippet, select "Advanced" from the "Add new profile" setup wizard within Google Analytics, and select the radio button, "A site built for a mobile phone". We support PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX sites in this release. Of course, you can still track visits to your regular website coming from high-end, Javascript enabled phones.

iPhone and Android mobile application developers can now also track how users engage with apps, just as with tracking engagement on a website. What's more, for apps on Android devices, usage can be tied back to ad campaigns: from ad to marketplace to download to engagement. Check out the SDKs and technical documentation on mobile apps tracking to get started. And coming soon, you'll be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section!

Advanced Analysis Features: Advanced Table Filtering feature is being added to the arsenal of power tools you can use to perform advanced data analysis. Earlier this year we announced Pivoting and Secondary Dimensions. Using Secondary Dimensions, you could, for example, see revenue metrics for city + keyword combinations. So, you could see how much revenue your site received from visitors in Boston who searched for "bean bag". You could then "pivot" by source and see revenue by search engine for each of these city+keyword combinations. Here's a quick tutorial video.

Now we're adding Advanced Table Filtering. This allows you to filter the rows in a table based on different metric conditions. Watch the following video to see an example of how you could filter thousands of keywords to identify just the keywords with a bounce rate less than 30% and that referred at least 25 visits.

Together, these three power features let you perform in-depth, on the fly analysis without having to export your data to spreadsheet tools.

Unique Visitor Metric: Now when you create a Custom Report, you can select Unique Visitors as a metric against any dimensions in Google Analytics. This allows marketers to see how many actual visitors (unique cookies) make up any user-defined segment.

Flexible.

Every enterprise has unique web analytics tracking and reporting needs. Today, we're enhancing two of the tools that organizations use to adapt and customize Google Analytics. We're adding multiple custom variables to the tracking API and making it easy to share Custom Reports and Advanced Segments.

Multiple Custom Variables: Custom Variables provide you the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics and collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. If you've used the _setVar() function, the concept of custom variables will be familiar, but we've taken it a step further: you can now define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (e.g. member vs. non-member), session attributes (e.g. logged-in or not), and by page-level attributes (e.g. viewed Sports section). Use custom variables to classify any number of interactions and behaviors on your site. This powerful customization capability makes Google Analytics even more flexible and able to meet the needs of the most demanding enterprises. Multiple custom variables will become available to all accounts in the coming weeks but you can start learning more about them now.

Sharing Segments and Custom Report Templates: You may have recently noticed in your accounts the ability to administer and share Custom Reports and Advanced Segments, features we announced earlier this year. Have a Custom Report you created just for the Sales Team? Simply share the URL link for that report to anyone who has an Analytics account and a pre-formatted Sales report template will automatically be imported. You can also now select which profiles you want to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports with.

Intelligent.

Now, for the new feature you've been waiting for! Wouldn't it be great if Google Analytics could tell you what to pay attention to? Beginning today, it can.

Analytics Intelligence: We're launching the initial phase of an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine to Google Analytics. Analytics Intelligence will provide automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. For instance, Intelligence could call out a 300% surge in visits from YouTube referrals last Tuesday or let you know bounce rates of visitors from Virginia dropped by 70% two weeks ago. Instead of you having to monitor reports and comb through data, Analytics Intelligence alerts you to the most significant information to pay attention to, saving you time and surfacing traffic insights that could affect your business. Now, you can spend your time actually taking action, instead of trying to figure out what needs to be done.

Custom Alerts make it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what to watch for. You can set daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by email or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur.

Watch this video on Analytics Intelligence and then look for the feature to appear in your account in the coming weeks!

That's the summary. We're excited to share more details about each of these features, so stay tuned! We'll discuss each feature in turn over the next few days.

Google advanced operators all the time

2009-12-24T12:17:00.000+05:30

I find it sad that many people are absolutely unaware of Google advanced operators, or even if they do know about the advanced search, they never use it.

I for one use Google advanced operators all the time: when doing on-page diagnostics; searching for backlink opportunities, doing competitive research, etc, etc

So in this post I decided to share the best tools and tutorials that will help you remember and learn to use the advanced search (if you are not using it already):

Advanced search tools:

To be honest, I am not using any of the following tools on a regular basis. What I find useful about them is (1) the ability to see the advanced search in action via the visualized interface and (2) the ability to get inspired and find new ideas on how to use the advanced search.

1. Searchzooka (online)

Searchzooka is a new online tool that unites quite a few Google search option in one handy interface. It lets you create one advanced search and then use it on Google (as well as other multiple search engines including Digg, Yahoo, Bing) with a single click (you will need to remember a recovery key for that).

It requires no registration and offers the ability to search several search engines and compare results in different tabs.

Search operators supported:

allintitle:
inurl:
exact mach (”")
excluding (-)
site:
filetype:

2. Google Advanced Dork (FireFox)

Google Advanced Dork is a FireFox addon that gives access to the following Google Advanced Operators from the (right-click) context menu:

site:
intitle:
inurl:
ext:
related:
inanchor:
cache:
link:

Google Advanced Operators Toolbar is a similar one but it looks like it is no longer supported (not compatible with new FireFox)

3. Google-SearchTool (desktop, free, Windows)

Google-SearchTool (already mentioned in my Google-desktop search tools overview) is a desktop utility that gives quick access to the following Google search operators:

links:
related:
cache:
info:
exact match (”")

Note: by default the tool opens Internet Explorer to perform the search. To switch to the browser you are using, you will need to enable custom browser. When you enable this option a “popup” asks a name for your custom browser. After that a File popup should appear, browse to the folder/directory of the custom browser and pick out the browsers startup executable.

4. Googlesearches tool (online)

Googlesearches tool is the least reliable of all (that was my immediate impression) but it does provide quite a few great search ideas (for example, I liked [~baseword -baseword] for finding related words without the actual word mentioned).

The search operators supported include:

site:
allintitle:
allinurl:
synonyms / related terms (~)
exact match (”")

Google Advanced Searching Guides

1. Unofficial Google Advanced Search

That’s a very detailed and thorough reference and a guide to using the advanced search operators that Google provides. Most of the operators have a Google Search box pre-filled for you to easily see each operator in action:

2. How To Diagnose Your Site with Google Advanced Search

This guide put up by me showcases how Google search operators can be used for SEO diagnostics – for you to get an idea how to implement that knowledge.

2. Google Advanced Operators Quick Reference Guide

This will come in handy as a google search cheat list of Google search operators including general search, blog search, and news.

4. The Professional’s Guide to Advanced Search Operators (paid)

This guide was created by me for SEOmoz last year. If you are already used to my style, you will like it: it’s full of tables and comparisons as well examples and sample searches.

Online Marketing (SEO.PPC) Services and Training

2009-12-22T12:46:00.001+05:30

Inventateq Marketing offers to grow your business through marketing, research, product development, advertising, TV, radio, Internet marketing, promotion, web development, online advertising, pay per click management (ppc), search engine optimization (seo), metrics and analysis.

in reference to: Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Now Supporting rel="canonical" Across Domains

2009-12-21T13:05:00.000+05:30

Google announced that it now offering cross-domain support of the rel="canonical" link element. If you are unfamiliar with this link element, Google's Matt Cutts discussed it with us here. Basically, it's a way to avoid duplicate content issues, but until now, you couldn't use it across domains.

"For some sites, there are legitimate reasons to [have] duplicate content across different websites — for instance, to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects," says John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst with Google Zürich.

Do you have legitimate reasons for having duplicate content? Tell us about them.

"There are situations where it's not easily possible to set up redirects," he says. "This could be the case when you need to move your website from a server that does not feature server-side redirects. In a situation like this, you can use the rel='canonical' link element across domains to specify the exact URL of whichever domain is preferred for indexing. While the rel='canonical' link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible."

Mueller gives the following ways of handling cross-domain content duplication:

- Choose your preferred domain
- Reduce in-site duplication
- Enable crawling and use 301 (permanent) redirects where possible
- Use the cross-domain rel="canonical" link element

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable gives three reasons why the addition of cross-domain support for the rel="canonical" link element is really important:

1. Some hosts don't allow webmasters to deploy 301 redirects
2. Some site owners aren't technical enough to implement a 301 redirect
3. In some cases, webmasters do not want to redirect users but rather only search engines (i.e. pagination, weird filtering, tracking parameters added to URLs, etc).

To use the link element, pages don't have to be identical, but they should be similar. According to Google, slight differences are fine. You should not point point rel="canonical" to the home page of the preferred site. Google says this can result in problems, and that a mapping from an old URL to a new URL for each URL on the old site is the best way to go.

You should not use a nonindex robots meta tag on pages with a rel="canonical" link element because those pages would not be equivalent with regards to indexing, Google says. One would be allowed while the other would be blocked. Google also says it's important that these pages aren't disallowed from crawling through a robots.txt file, because search engine crawlers won't be able to discover the rel="canonical" link element.

google caffeine coming soon

2009-11-19T11:33:00.000+05:30

As I (and many other top SEO/SEM blogs) have been reporting since mid-August, the big “Google Caffeine” major algorithm update is coming very soon. According to Matt Cutts (Google’s Head of Web Spam Department), the major Google Caffeine update will take place after the holiday season. To read Matt Cutt’s blog post about the Google Caffeine update, please visit the following link:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-caffeine-update/

In case you are interested, Mashable did an analysis of possible changes that might be part of the update back in August here:
http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-new-version/

Here is a very interesting video at the last Search Engine Strategies conference show with Matt Cutts about the Google Caffeine update:

Also, here is more talk from around the web about what might happen:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355684,00.asp
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10394059-93.html
http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/11/11/googles-caffeine-live-at-one-data-center/
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/091110-093955
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/25086.asp

So it looks like we are all in for some changes together. From my experience from the last 2 major Google algorithm updates (2003 and 2005/2006) I always recommend to not panic and expect major fluctuations of the Google search engine result/rankings for your website. Since this is new for everyone in the SEO world, I recommend remaining patient and to continue marketing your website and business in a white hat manner and long term you should be just fine.

Of course, I will keep you updated (as everyone will in the SEO industry) with any major updates, roll outs, etc.