SEO-RELATED MISTAKES YOU MUST AVOID

Terri Wells wrote in SEOCHAT.com mistakes related to SEO that should be avoided by webmasters. These mistakes could have bad results on your site’s position in search engines, traffic, and revenues which in the end badly hurts your strategy especially if your sites are intended as money generators. Some of the main ideas of her article are summarized here.

Keep Your Site Always Accessible
Taking your site down offline, due to maintenance for example, is bad for search engine optimization (SEO) as this will upset visitors especially regular readers. Even worst is if search engine robots crawl your site when it is down. Your site will be assumed to have expired and lost its position in search engine results pages (SERP).

To climb up the search engine rankings afterward when it’s up online would require full SEO effort again. It’s better for you to put up a mirror site when your original site needs to go offline.

If the site is a business portal and you’re not able to attend to it, say during vacation, it’s best to just let it up and running than to have it down. One advantage is that when it’s online your site has a chance to climb up the SERP. You can place a note saying that you’re not available during a certain time to avoid confusion or have forms for them to still place orders.

Spend Time and Money Wisely
There are tendencies for people who don’t know SEO to hire SEO companies to improve SERP positions drastically. Largely, these are spamming. Most of these companies will build large number of links to your sites. What people don’t know is that the links come from unrelated sites that aren’t counted as valuable to get your position up in SERP.

Search engines also have the ability to detect suspicious links, especially a large number of them and may penalize you for that. As a rule of thumb, good links take time and don’t come cheap.

Search engine crawlers eventually will index your new site, so it’s a waste of time to submit the URL yourself to search engines (although there are tips that say otherwise).

Submitting your URL to directories also have less effect on SERP nowadays compared to a few years ago because today’s search engines have more advanced and improved criteria indexing sites and blogs – most directories are now classified as link farms only, which is not seen as valuable links.Submitting to manually edited site like Wikipedia won’t do any good because they are set with a “nofollow” property, meaning that crawlers do not follow outbound links.

Compromising Content is a Bad Thing 
The strategy of splitting content in subdomains to gain more spots in SERP is not a good one. It risks visitors’ experience as the contents are divided in different subdomains or even domains making it harder to find. In the long term, your readers’ bad experience dominates and affects your site negatively in terms of traffic and in the end conversions to revenues.

There are reports mentioning that some sites aren’t crawlable and thus won’t lendthem positions in SERP. Some of the main causes are:

• Incorrect robots.txt files.
• Need Session IDs.
• URLs have too many variables.
• Complex navigation menu.
• Too much use of AJAX, Flash, or graphics.

The good trend is to make it as simple as possible.

Although one should focus on SEO to get noticed, compromising content is not the way to go. Many have made this mistake. In a bigger picture, the main purpose people search the internet is to find good content; tricking them into sites without real and valuable content won’t last long.

Don't Abuse Keywords
Today’s search engines are advanced enough to have the ability to detect keyword abuse as spamming. And, they’re advanced enough to penalize those sites that do this. Types of keyword abuse include:

• Stuffing content too much with keywords.
• Stuffing meta tags, titles, and headers with keywords.
• Having the same meta tags on every page (identified by robots as duplicating contents).
• Tricking readers with hidden keywords (keywords with background color to make them invisible).

Good Practices
Targeting general keywords will make it nearly impossible to rank in SERP. Instead, try targeting longer and specific keywords such as “making money with blogs” rather than just “money” with too much competition from more established websites. New sites will have more chances of crawling up the SERP using more specific keywords, and results into better conversion if your main goal is to make money.

Focusing too much on building the perfect keyword density is not a good idea too because this makes your writing flows unnaturally, too repetitive with the same keywords, and boring to the readers. Write naturally and let those keywords fall into place. Forcing it only makes your content unreal and annoying to read.

Effective SEO Comes Cheap

Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well optimized website will revenue lots of earnings for the marketer. However, optimizing your site proficiency cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area.

But to tell you the authenticity, you can essentially get knowledge on low cost SEO anywhere network the Internet. But only several really show you how to salt mines out an affordable search engine optimization endeavor. And those few that really inform include this article.


1. Link exchanges

One cheap SEO method that can get you best results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. Depending on the websites that you would agnate to exchange links with, this tool could constant cost you nothing at all. Trial the author or lessor of the web site you want to hold a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking using this means of getting your website optimized.

2. Write or acquire key word rich articles

Writing in toto informative and keyword - opulent articles is one surefire way to make your Internet business more visible than ever. It's either you write your own articles or you get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author's byline in tact.

So far, we've uncovered some interesting facts about . You may decide that the following information is even more interesting.

Just don't stuff your articles with keywords that even idiots would get bore of reading them. The readability and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your writers will keep on coming back to your website or not.

3. Catchy Domain Name

What better will make your target visitors remember your website but with a very easy - to - recall section name. Something sweet and short will prove to be very meritorious. Registering your domain name is not for free. But creativity is.

4. Organize your site navigation

Providing easy steps in navigating your site is one way to make your visitors become at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the scamper of traffic to your website.

Low cost SEO is always evolving like any other approach in information technology. There are many methods that can very well land you on the top ten rankings of Google or on any other search engines. Some may cost a lot but licensed are methods that can give you the same contact at a low price or you can unbroken do on your own such as those mentioned above.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here to have a beneficial impact. Then you'll be glad you took the time to learn more about .

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization is the process of building your site in order to achieve a high ranking in the search engines. SEO is one of the most cost effective methods to generate traffic to your website, much cheaper than purchased links or pay per click advertising.

The three major search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN, in order of importance. Google and Yahoo are the most popular, used by a vast majority of internet searchers. 

I spend my time working with my own sites to gain high rankings in the major search engines. This site discusses my findings, and will help you to get started with SEO quickly and easily. 

Before you begin, you'll need to know exactly how the search engines work. You need to understand the search engine's algorithms, and how they list your site for specific keywords. 

First, I recommend that you spend some time reading the digital point forums, sitepoint forums, and other forums for webmasters. Take the time to participate and ask questions, and then apply what you've learned to your own sites. 

Once you have a site ready I recommend that you submit your site to Google, Yahoo and MSN manually via their submission service. 

Unique content is best. Content sites with good search engine rankings and regular money coming in from Adsense sell well, and sell quickly. Avoid auto generated, machine spun content - it is spammy and may even get your website targeted for duplicate content. Instead, invest in high quality, unique content.

Search Engine Friendly Websites

You can create a search engine friendly website, by taking care of a few pointers. But, Creating a search engine friendly site does not necessarily mean that you will get top 10 listing for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. It is however a significant step if you want to rank anywhere near the first few pages of the search engine results. A site that is not search engine ready may not even appear in the results for any query. 

Why my website is not ranking?

It depends on the keywords, backlinks, site age, site content and your competitors. The use of CSS alone does not help a site rank, but the cleanliness and ease of site navigation that helps. Search engines love good navigation, ease of use and readability for a visitor.

Focus on Quality Content

Put your energy and time to include quality content in your site. The content should drive people to come to your page day after day or week after week to see new updated content.



Avoid Flash and Videos

Flash in your site can really attract visitor's but it is not spider-friendly. Robots will not index flash content site. Most search engine spiders are still unable to properly index Flash content. Search engine spiders are designed to read text and ignore images, so placing the majority of your site's content in a Flash file leaves most search engines without much content to read and use to determine your site's ranking.

Use CSS this make site more friendly.

Create Relevant Title Tags and descriptions

Validate HTML Code

Use Straight HTML Navigation Links on Your Website.

Remove Hidden Text and text with very small fonts.

Compliment your Java script attractive menus with a simple sitemap in your webpage or a simple menu somewhere at the bottom.

Use Sitemaps (HTML and XML sitemap ( XML is for search engine)
Sitemaps are pages containing text links to all the other pages on the site

SEO Keyword Research

Steps for Keyword Research

1. Make a initial list of every possible search word/phrase referred to as keywords that a potential customer may use to look
for your product, information or services that you have on your website. Use more phrases rather then individual words.

2. Don't use highly competitive keywords initially in the first phase of your seo as your seo handwork would get wasted. Try getting your pages ranked for less competitive keywords (but relevant) initially .

3. The more information you can include in your keywords , the better. What I mean by information is be specific about the
location or services you provide. Add your location to your keyword if your content is geographically sensitive.

For example: A person may use "search engine optimization India" is you are looking for an SEO from India.

4. Add and refine the keywords you listed above by analyzing your competitors keywords. For each of the top 3 pages you find in Google, yahoo and msn make a list of the title and keyword tags. See if you can find patterns of why these 3 pages are ranked for the keywords you wanted to be ranked for.

My approach to remove and prune the above keyword list is to

• Remove difficult terms
• Remove Over-Competitive terms
• Use questions for which your website would provide answers or solutions
• Remove Ambiguous and broad terms (try to be as specific as possible)
  

5. Try to append the following most common action words to your keywords wherever relevant and make sure your website caters to them.

Some of the action words are:

Free
Buy
Find
Purchase
Discounted
Lowest Price
Luxury
Cheap

and so on.

6. Avoid keywords that do not ad any value or weight to your keyword list such as

The
Of
For
Or
This
And
That
To
www
web

and so on.

7. Keep track of your server logs or stats to check what people have searched for (keyword) to reach your site. keep track of those main top keywords that people have used to reach your site and hence make them your primary keywords over a long span of time to capture the market for those keywords in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

8. Ask your customers and potential customers what all keywords they had used in order to get to your site. Try to pick out the most relevant keywords from the list and use them on your website.

9. Try getting a ranking by using the most common misspelled keywords.

For example: A person may use "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimization" to search for an SEO website.

10. Use both singular and plural versions of your top keywords.

For example: A person may use "seo freelancer" or "seo freelancers" to search for an SEO website.

11. Use Specialized Keyword Tools to measure the actual statistics or popularity that your keywords give eliminate the few
that are not getting traffic.

Example Tool: Word Tracker, Keyword Overture Selector Tool, Google Ad words Keyword Tool.

This is the only keyword tracker I have ever needed to get the job done. It is reasonably priced and the features seem almost endless. You can even download a free version and use most of the functions and get by if you wish. Paying definitely had its benefits though. You can research a ton of words at a time and analyze your online competitions back links. WebCEO is the only program I have ever needed to accomplish high rankings on good keywords that I have found with little competition

Free Search Engines URL Submission

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Search Engine Optimization Companies

For site owners that are too busy or simply have no desire to handle their own SEO, there are numerous different seo firms out there that can optimize your site for you. However, not all of these SEO companies are created equal. It is very important to weed out the ones that are fly-by-night organizations as well as the ones that simply don’t mesh with your unique vision for your site.

If you are in the market for a search engine optimization company, here are some warning signs you should be aware of, as well as some questions that you can ask these companies to make sure that they are a good fit for your SEO needs.

Warning Sign – Guaranteed number one ranking on any search engine.

There is virtually no way that any SEO company can guarantee this. Search engines, especially the top ones like Google and Yahoo, do not charge for their number one slot. You get it by hard work, the right keywords and the right mix of SEO. Never work with a search engine optimization firm that makes these kinds of claims. You’ll only be disappointed.

Question to Ask – What are the average rankings for clients that have worked with you in the past?

This is a reasonable question and one that you should ask every company you are interviewing. Ideally, they need to tell you what the ranking was before and after they optimized the site. There should be a large difference. If a company doesn’t have many top 30 rankings, it’s probably a good idea to give them a pass since they may not be very effective.

Warning Sign – You get an email telling you that your site is not listed in search engines.

This is pretty much a spam technique that is used by companies that are not legitimate. Chances are, your site is likely already ranked, it may not be very high, but it’s ranked. Never respond to these ads since they are usually sent by companies that specialize in taking advantage of their customers.

Question to Ask – How do you plan to get my site listed higher in search engine rankings?

You need to know what an SEO company has planned for you. Most will offer a free consultation that will map out the various techniques that you could be using to improve your ranking and your traffic. See if you agree with what they have planned and be sure to ask more qualifying questions if you don’t understand something.

Warning Sign – Pay for placement ads, solicitations and emails.

These ads will typically promise that they will get you listed on X search engine for X amount of dollars. Most consumers interpret this as a high ranking in exchange for money, not as a simple addition to a search engine directory. The fact is, you can add your site right now to any search engine out there and it won’t cost you a dime.

Question to Ask – How many search engines does the company focus on when they are optimizing your site?

While it is great to focus on SEO techniques for a higher ranking on Google, the most popular search engine, millions of people still use MSN or Yahoo. Even the smaller search engines still have users. If you don’t include these engines in a campaign, you could be losing out on thousands of potential visitors.

Warning Sign – Gibberish responses and a “mysterious” air to their communications.

Some companies like to claim that SEO is a mystical experience that only the truly initiated can understand. The common man has no business handling their optimization according to these shady SEO companies. Search engine optimization is really not that complicated. It may be time consuming, but it’s not figuring out a foreign language.

Question to Ask – Will they explain in plain English what they intend to do?

Search engine optimization companies tend to deal with jargon on a daily basis and some may forget that the average person may not know what meta tags are or what ROI is. Ask them to explain the terms they are using. If they don’t, walk away.

Warning Sign – Promises of thousands of sites linking in to yours.

This is a common practice that is usually considered “black hat” or illegal. Link baiting is a practice that is thoroughly discouraged by search engines. In fact, they may even remove your site from their directory entirely if they find out that you are using this technique (and yes, they really can find out quite easily thanks to their programmed spiders.) Link bait directories are a waste of your money and exist only to bilk people out of their hard earned cash. They serve virtually no purpose and most consumers will never actually see them.

Question to Ask – How do they plan to build organic link ins for your site?

Linking in is a very important part of SEO, if it is done properly. There are ways that you can legitimately increase the amount of sites that link to you. Find out what your search engine optimization company plans to do to accomplish this the right way.

Warning Sign – The company recommends “keyword stuffing” or they provide you with a sample of content that is literally jam packed with keywords.

This is another black hat technique that is very looked down upon. If a company is offering to create special content for you that is jam packed with keywords, turn them down. It will only hurt your ranking. If in the event a real person happens to find this content, it won’t do them any good anyway, so you will have wasted your money.

Question to Ask – How much keyword density do they recommend?

The appropriate answer is 3 to 4% for most sites. Any more and you’ve got a mess of keyword stuffing. Any less and it won’t do any good. In some cases, 2% may be optimal, but the generally accepted amount is 3 to 4%.

SEO: 20 Best Blog Post Ideas for Small Business Blogging

1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what’s happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can.

2. Trends in your industry. I read constantly and subscribe to more industry publications than I have time to review. However, there are a handful that I do regularly read, and it’s to those that I look to for what the trends seem to be. When you blog about the trend, put your unique perspective on it, or write a rebuttal post, disagreeing with the relevance of the trend.

3. Get personal. Tell a story about what’s happening in your life or in your business that would be useful or instructive for your readers. Chronicle both your highs and lows, your wins and your struggles. One key to successful blogging is getting personal with your readers. The more “real” you are with your readers, the better your reader gets to know you and begins to like and trust you. You become a “real, live” human being to them who faces similar issues that they face.

4. Top 10. Most of my writing is in the form of a Top 10 list because it’s an easy way for me to outline the points I want to make and then go back and fill in the details for each point. In this case, each of your points for a topic can become an individual blog post, and when all the points are complete, you can compile the full list for an article for your ezine or website.

5. Frequently asked questions. If you’ve been in business for awhile, you know the questions that clients and prospective clients ask you to answer over and over again. Instead of repeatedly responding to the same questions, write a series of blog posts that answer your target market’s most frequently asked questions.

6. How you helped a client solve a problem. Clients hire you to solve a specific problem they’re having, whether they do that when they buy your service or your product. List 3-5 most recent problems that you have helped your clients solve. Create a post that talks about the problem and the solution you provided (either with your client’s permission, or by making it generic enough to hide the client’s identity) that becomes a learning experience for your readers.

7. Interview an expert. What people do you know and admire in your industry? If you admire them, chances are that members of your target market do, as well. Contact them for a short email or recorded interview and ask them 3-5 questions that you’d like to hear them answer about their lives, their businesses, industry trends, or how to solve a particular problem. Publish the interviews as blog posts, adding audio and graphics if you have them.

8. Solicit and answer questions. Ask your ezine subscribers or blog readers to ask you their most pressing question related to what you do. I do this and get questions for 1-2 blog posts per week, and it helps me stay in touch with the needs of my readers, as well.

9. Review something. Read a good book lately related to your industry? Just purchased a product to help you solve a problem? Reviews aren’t limited to the critics at the New York Times. Blog about your experience with a product, book, or service, highlighting both the high points and low points, and whether you would recommend that others use or purchase it.

10. Read other blogs. Go to Google’s Blog Search or Technorati and find other blogs related to your industry or your target market. Add those to your blog reader and take an hour or two each week to read the posts on those blogs. Do you agree or disagree with the post? Have another point of view? Think the blogger was on target but you want to expand on her point of view? Reading other blogs is a great way to generate ideas for your own blog.

11. Keep an idea file. Sometimes a blogging idea or concept will strike you when you don’t need (or want) to blog. Begin a blog idea file by creating a document or spreadsheet to track your ideas and thoughts. If you’re in the zone, go ahead and write the post, and then you can post it to your blog on a day when the idea well is dry.

12. Create a tutorial. There’s always something you can tell your target market how to do. Create a written, audio, or video tutorial of the process as your blog post. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, the tutorial may need to created in multiple parts, like Part 1, Part 2, etc., which would make for multiple posts to your blog.

13. Share a positive/negative email. I often share exceptionally positive or negative emails I receive from people (without names to protect their identity as appropriate) either to celebrate kudos I’ve received or to demonstrate how I responded to a particularly nasty or upsetting comment. I get the most mileage out of the negative emails, and I often ask for feedback about how my readers might respond to the situation.

14. Take a tour. Take a self-made in-person or virtual tour of something useful to your readers. For example, if you’re a dating coach, tour the top 5 online dating sites and report your experiences as a client in each. If you’re a restaurant consultant, visit 3 local restaurants and evaluate what’s often overlooked in staff training based on your experience as a customer.

15. Write about a Twitter or Facebook update. You only get 140 characters in Twitter to write about something. If you need more space, or want to respond in greater length to someone’s Tweet or Facebook status update, do so in your blog. Thought-provoking questions are often asked on Twitter, and the answers may inspire you to blog.

16. Create a “Best of” list. What are the top 7 blogs to read in your industry? How about the top 5 people to watch? What about the 10 most useful online tools you use? Nothing attracts attention on a blog quicker than a list, so create one yourself or ask your readers to help you in the process.

17. Report from an event. Attending a professional trade show, conference, or networking event? You can report live about your experiences at the event on your blog. Talk about the workshops your attended, the vendors you met, the speaker you heard — the sky’s the limit!

18. Debunk a myth. Each industry is plagued with myths and fallacies about success/failure or what does/doesn’t work that the industry professionals would like to see vanquished once and for all. Use your blog to debunk some of the most common myths/preconceptions/notions in your industry and set the record straight.

19. Talk to newbies. Picture yourself as a newbie in your industry once again. What do you know now that you didn’t know then? What questions did you ask? What knowledge do you have that you think everyone knows? Getting back to the basics can help bring all of your blog readers up to speed.

20. Write about a client conversation. Many times I’m inspired to blog as an expansion or continuation of a conversation I had with a client. The blog post focuses on a topic of the conversation, not the conversation itself. Typically the strategy/idea/technique you’ve discussed with one client will benefit your blog readers as well.

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg of ideas for posts to your blog. Take a look around your life, your business, conversations with clients and colleagues, and what’s happening in the world around you. You’ll soon begin to see more potential for blog posts than you ever thought possible!

SEO: How to Optimize for Google

Here’s a compilation of  How to Optimize for Google By Scott Van Achte part I, II and III… Great tips for SEO.. muahaha very long article  Enjoy!!  In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. 

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.

Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success.

Title Tag

The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.

It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.

To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.

If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag

The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.

The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.

Meta Keyword Tag

When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density

Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.

This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.

Body Text and Keyword Placement

The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms

Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.

To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’.

Keywords in Domain

There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.

If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.

While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL

Using keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:

MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Heading Tags

Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don’t flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.

Link Anchor text

This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.

While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor.

Image Alt Text

While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.

Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links

These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation

It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

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

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

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

URL Structure

Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.

MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations”

&type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton”

stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:

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

SUMMARY

Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture.

Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. Earlier part, we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools.

LINKS

Links are very important in today’s Google rankings, but just how many links you need will depend on both the competitiveness of your target phrases, and the quality of the incoming links themselves.

Essentially the number one rule of links is to keep it relevant! Topical relevance is very important in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire site linking to you is relevant, that is better.

First to get an idea of how many links you may need, take a look at the top 10 ranking sites in Google and record how many links Yahoo is noting for each site. (This is because Google does not display anywhere near all the links they have noted). The average of this count is often a good indication of how many links your site may need.

There are many different ways to get links to your site including the age old reciprocal link trade, directory links, article based links, and links from press releases.

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal linking has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years, however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links.

Paid Links

Google frowns on paid links, however that is not to say that they don’t work. Often you can find highly reputable and relevant websites which are offering paid advertising spots. If these links are coded to link directly to your website without passing through any tracking redirects, you will in many cases see value in the form of both direct traffic and increased link densities and rankings.

Articles

Writing and distributing industry specific articles is a great way to help increase both your link counts and site traffic; for examples of such content see StepForth’s SEO Blog News articles. Consider writing articles on a regular basis and submitting them to some of the more popular services such as EzineArticles. Be sure to include a link to your site from somewhere within the article, or at the very lest within your bio. Try to use a target phrase as part of the anchor text for additional value.

Press Releases

If something of importance has happened to your company such as a new product launch, or other notable achievement - essentially anything news worthy, put out a press release. Submit this press release through services such as PRWeb or PRNewsWire. Again, be sure to include a target phrase as part of the anchor text.

There are also a number of places you can get links that have basically turned south, and are not generally recommended. These include signatures in form posts, guest books, and other typically free links.

Forum Posts

Forum posts can help to marginally increase your link counts; however, with this one you must be careful. Only add a link to your site in your signature if both the forum allows it, and you are a respected member of the forum. If you are a solid contributor and your posts have depth and meaning, and the forum is highly relevant to your site, then having a link in your signature may give your site some juice. Posting wildly to random forms will in most cases get yourself banned, and will be both a waste of time and potentially make you and your site look bad.

Guest Books

In nearly all cases, do not post your link to guest books. If you happen to stumble upon a guestbook that is highly relevant to your site, the other comments are relevant to your site, and you have something useful (and again relevant) to say, then perhaps consider it, but typically focusing on links from guest books is considered SPAM and is best avoided all together.

Blog Comments

Having a link from your blog comments is not necessarily a bad thing. If you find a relevant blog post of use, and have something relevant and constructive to say, don’t be afraid to enter your link into the “URL” field of the form, but don’t try stuffing links into the comment itself.

Link Farms & Bad Neighborhoods

These are sites that allow you to simply post your link no strings attached. They are mostly long scrolling pages with countless links. Stay away from them. If you see one, run in the other direction. These links are bad, will not help with your rankings, and in some cases can actually damage your rankings.

Stay away from sites that cross link with obvious spammers. These networks of SPAM sites are not ones you would want your site associated with, and if you achieve links from enough of these sites it can adversely impact your rankings. Even more important, NEVER link to any of these sites - as that will certainly tie in your connection to them and give Google reason to discount your rankings.

DMOZ, Yahoo and Other Directories

Directory based links can be of significant help, especially if they are from highly reputable directories, the two biggest being DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory.

Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. The big catch however is actually getting your site into the directory in the first place. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link “Volunteer to edit this category” try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually.

Yahoo Directory is seen as an authority in the eyes of Google, and getting your site in will help your link reputation. This link does come at a price of $299 per year, but will play a role in helping your website achieve top rankings.

There are a number of other valuable directories out there that can help you with your search rankings. Before submitting to any directory the key is a combination of relevance and authority. If the directory is relevant and active it may be worth considering.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

Google Webmaster Tools can be very useful for your optimization efforts. It may not directly help you obtain higher rankings, but can help you trouble shoot if you are experiencing problems. It will also allow you to remove URL’s that you don’t want indexed and set various preferences such as your domain, crawl rate, and geographic target.

XML Sitemaps

This is the most common reason people use Google Webmaster Tools - the submission of their XML sitemap. While you can use your robots.txt to have Google find your XML sitemap, by submitting it directly to Google you can check up on the spidering status.

Error checking

Webmaster Tools is also quite useful for checking on various error URL’s that Google may know about. Under the Diagnostics > Web Crawl you can view any errors that Google has to report on your site. By cleaning up any errors you can help increase your chances of rankings.

Links

From inside Google Webmaster Tools you can get a much clearer look at what sites Google is noting as having links to you, and give you a better indication of the need, if any, to increase your link counts.

WWW Preference

Be sure to select your domain preference under Tools > Set Preferred Domain. In nearly all cases you will want to select the version including the “www”

SUMMARY

Inbound links play a significant role in successful Google rankings. By focusing on relevant links, as well as by diversifying where you get those links from, you can build a solid foundation for your search rankings today and into the future.

Stay tuned for How to Optimize for Google Part 3 (of 3) where I will discuss other considerations including redirects, HTTP headers, and a number of other factors which play a role in successfully conquering Google.

In Part 3 we will look at a number of other considerations which play a role in successful rankings in Google, and also touch on some tactics which are best avoided.

Completing Optimization: Other Considerations

Redirects

If you need to use redirects on your site it is very important to use the correct one. If a page is moving to a new location, or being removed all together, it is very important to have this page redirected to either the new location or the next closest page using a Permanent 301 Redirect.

While rare, if a page is being moved to a new location for a short term, with the intent of it returning to the original location, then and only then, will you want to use a Temporary 302 redirect. For more information please see Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302

Non WWW Redirects

To help eliminate page rank split, and provide your site with a little extra value, implement a non-www redirect. What this redirect will do is change the URL to include the “www” whenever a URL is accessed that does not include it. This can help to consolidate links to the correct page and give your site some additional strength. For more help on Non WWW redirects please see: How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL’s

HTTP Headers

Check your page headers! If you have implemented any form of redirect on your site including mod rewrites, check your HTTP headers. You may be surprised at what you find. Some forms of redirects may use a 302 code where you really want a 301. By checking your headers you can ensure all is well, and troubleshoot problems. On our website we have added our own HTTP Header Checker for your convenience.

Home Page URL

Never have more than one URL for your home page. If your home page is available and displays on more than one URL, then utilize 301 redirects on all but the main URL you want to focus on - in most cases “http://www.xyzname.com/“. All your links pointing to the home page should direct to the exact same URL otherwise you will split the value of your home page into multiple duplicate URL’s.

Google sees “http://www.xyzname.com” and “http://www.xyzname.com/index.shtml” as different pages, but displaying the same content. This splits the overall value of your home page, and can decrease the chances of rankings. By keeping it consistent with a single URL, you eliminate this split and retain more of the strength.

In theory having your home page split like this could bring with it duplicate content penalties, however, I have yet to see this actually happen - that said, it is best to avoid the risk all together.

XML Sitemap

XML Sitemaps are great for ensuring that Google and the other engines are able to spider your entire site. While an XML sitemap will not directly impact your search rankings it can help as Google is more likely to see any SEO based changes more quickly, which in turn can have an impact.

Robots.txt

This is the first file all search engines look for every time they visit your site. While placing a blank robots.txt file in your root folder will not help with search rankings, it will help reduce 404 errors appearing in your log files.

It is also highly recommended that if your site utilizes an XML sitemap, to include a call to this sitemap within the Robots.txt file. Simply add the following line to ensure that the major engines (including Google) can find your sitemap:

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

Potential Blockages

If you are finding that your site is simply not being indexed, it is possible that you are blocking the spiders in one way or another.

Start with checking your main site navigation, if you are using Flash or some other fancy form of navigation that could be your problem right there. Next check your HTTP headers to ensure that your home page is returning a 2xx code which indicates that the clients’ request was successfully received. Finally take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools for any noted errors. If you are blocking Google, chances are you will be able to uncover the issue with these steps.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can be quite damaging to your rankings. Ensure that all content on your site is unique. Don’t steal or “borrow” content from another site, and don’t cut and paste large portions of text from one page of your site to the next. By keeping all pages of your site entirely original you stand the best chances of getting a thumbs up from Google.

Fresh Content / Regular Updates

Update your content. In highly competitive markets, sites with old static content can often slip away. Keep your content fresh and updated to keep bringing Google back to your site. If they find new pages and updated pages with every visit, they will come back more often.

Site Age

The age of your site can also have an effect on search engine rankings. While there is little you can do (short of keeping the same domain) to help on this matter, remember that the longer your site is online, the better its chances for success. It pays to select the perfect domain right from the start and not to change domains mid-stream. Older sites that stand the test of time add a level of authority in Google’s eyes. New sites seldom see rankings for competitive terms in their first year.

Note: Site Age is determined not by the date the domain was originally registered but rather by the date Google first discovered content on your site.

Load Time

Load time can have an impact in your Google AdWords Quality Score but it is unknown for sure if it can also impact your organic search rankings. It is best to keep your load time to as little as possible. If it is not already a part of the Google Algorithm, it likely will be soon. Besides, it is also best in order to give your site visitors the best experience possible.

Server Up Time

This can be a rather significant issue. If you find that your web hosting company has a history of down time, change hosts. If Google comes to visit your site once and it is down, not to worry, they will come back, but if Google visits your site often only to find that it is unavailable, you can find yourself with drastically depleted rankings.

Google Local

If you have a traditional brick and mortar store, consider submitting to Google Local. While this will not directly impact your regular organic rankings, you may find your site ranking above the organic results with a “local business results” map listing. This tends to be most common when your business is near the geographic center of a city, and when the search phrase uses a geographic modifier.

W3C Compliant Code

There is much speculation as to if W3C compliant code can have a positive impact on search rankings, and the majority believe “maybe” with some saying “yes”. Regardless, it is definitely a good idea to have your site be W3C Compliant if at all possible. Not only may it help you in terms of search rankings, but having compliant code can decrease load times, and help to ensure cross-browser compatibility, all of which are good things. If at all possible, it is recommended that sites be made to be compliant.

Many experts who took part in the SEOMoz “Google Search Engine Ranking Factors” lean towards it not being a big contributor, however, it may be an issue if Google has difficulties indexing a page properly.

A code validation service is available at validator.w3.org.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

I want to stress that this section is about things you should NOT do. These issues could be damaging to your rankings. If your site is implementing any of these, it may be best to remove it.

Hidden Text

This includes any text that you can simply not see when viewing the page. It may be text hidden in invisible div layers, text located below the fold with vertical scrolling disabled or even text on the same colored back ground (white text on a white background for instance). Whatever the case, hidden text can get your site into hot water and it is not recommended.

Excessive Keywords

Don’t go over board in placing target phrases within your body text. Stuffing keywords everywhere possible just because you can, is not only unlikely to help you achieve rankings, it could very well have the opposite effect.

Duplicate content

Large amounts of duplicated content or pages, as well as stealing or scraping content from other sites is one good way to get your site banned.

Doorway pages

Creating multiple websites or pages with nearly identical, yet slightly different content for the purposes of trying to grab some Google rankings is a good way to get your site into trouble.

If you have created pages of this nature for PPC campaigns, make sure that they are blocked from the search engines as to not get you into any hot water.

Cloaking

Simple - Don’t Cloak. In a nutshell cloaking is when you display different information to the search engines than you do to your human visitors. Google frowns on this, and if they catch you, watch out!

All Flash

Websites that are entirely flash based will not get you into trouble. The reason I have included it here however, is that they won’t do you many favors either. Sites that are all Flash, have little to no content for Google to digest and thus, drastically reduce your chance of rankings. If you must keep your “All Flash” site, it is recommended that you also create a secondary HTML version for the search engines and for those visitors who simply prefer it.

Frames (including iFrames)

Frames are also one of those things that won’t get you into trouble, but do significantly reduce your chances of rankings. If you want any chance of ranking in Google using a Frames site, be sure to copy your relevant content from each page into your ‘noframes’ tag. While this is far from ideal it may help you salvage some listings.

When it comes to including content through the use of an iFrame, remember, Google can not see any of this content located within the frame. It will be of no use to your rankings. If you rely on this content to help your listings, find another method such as a server side include.

TOOLS

In this article I mention a few items which can be made much easier with the help of available online tools. Here are some to help you on your way:

HTTP Header Checker

The StepForth HTTP Header Checker

Spider Simulators

XML Sitemaps, Search Engine Bot Simulator

Page Size and Load Time

1-Hit Load Time Analyzer

Google’s Cached Text Version

Click on “cached” next to your listing in Google, then click “Cached Text Version” at the top of the page. This is Google’s Cached Text version of your page. Substituting www.domain.com with your website will also bring up the cached version:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:WWW.DOMAIN.COM/&hl=en&strip=1

To see a larger selection of tools visit our SEO Tools page at the StepForth website.

SUMMARY

There are a lot of little pieces to getting a site to the top of the rankings in Google that I didn’t have time to mention here. In most cases not all items noted in this 3 part Google optimization series need to be in place to achieve top rankings, however, the more you can implement the better. Links, optimization, and content all play a significant role in Google rankings and the more competitive the term, the bigger the role they play.

If you have a site in a competitive market it is best to ensure that the site is entirely Google friendly and well optimized, while working on increasing links, and expanding on relevant content.

Patience is important and Google rankings are possible, but they do take time and effort. In nearly all cases it can take several months before you start to see significant results, although in cases where a site is just missing one or two pieces of the puzzle and those are put into place, rankings can come much quicker. If you have any questions about optimizing for Google try sending them to us here at StepForth and we will get to them as soon as our workload permits.

SEO: How To Takeover The First Page Of Google

Instead of giving you a cheap “I’m the guru” explanation, I want to actually SHOW you how I rank in Google, by getting one of my brand new videos to pop up in the first few results for a competitive search term.

What I’m actually going to do is get the video “Efusjon Review” to be listed in the top few results in Google over the next few days to a week. By the way, that phrase is being competed for by a million people right now, so it won’t be the easiest result in the universe - also, the video isn’t really an Efusjon Review, it’s actually a commercial for my website. I know, I know, I’m brilliant.

Here’s the general principle of how this works: 

To make a bunch of Google nonsense calculations easy to understand, Google looks at two key areas when ranking a page. They ask ‘how popular is this page?’ And they also ask ‘how relevant to the search term is this page?’ Search relevancy is simply measured by some complex indexing formulas where Google looks at the actual written content on a website. Google search bots have no ability to spider videos, so they simply trust what’s in the video description and index the content according to that info.

Popularity is easier to comprehend, and Google ranks how popular your website is by the following criteria:

1. How many external websites are linked to this piece of content? (i.e. the video, article, site, etc that you want listed on the top of Google)

2. How high do the pages rank that actually link to the content?

3. How much search engine authority does the website with the promoted content have?

Make sense?

So, now that my Efusjon Review is up on YouTube and has been spidered by Google, what I’m going to do is follow a 3 step process:

1. First I’m going to broadcast my video to 10 or so different video sites using a free service called TubeMogul (Google it for details), and I’m going to point the link from the videos back to my original video on YouTube.

2. The second step is to broadcast this article all over the internet through specific article directories using a piece of software I recommend in my blog. (See my ‘David Recommends’ on my blog for more details).

3. I’m going to use a social bookmarking service called OnlyWire to post social bookmarks back to my video, my blog post, and a couple of my articles. OnlyWire is free to use. Google ‘OnlyWire’ for more information.

After I’m done, I’ll have accomplished one thing - I’ll have more links to my video than any other YouTube video on a similar subject. Google will perceive these links as votes of popularity, and within a week my video will be in the top 3 spots in the Google search engines for the phrase ‘Efusjon Review’.

Brilliant, I know…

This information is valuable enough to charge for, but you can do us both a simple favor by bookmarking this content with the OnlyWire button on my blog entry to help share this information across different social networks you’re apart of, that way we can help your friends rank in the search engines, too. I hope you enjoyed this information, and that it helps you dominate your niche in the search engines.

Remember, it’s not what you do today, but what you do consistently for the next six months that will determine how popular your site becomes. Just imagine, if you learn to rank for ONE key phrase per day in Google, in a year your site could easily be ranking for several hundred niche phrases, and you could be getting thousands of visitors per day - would that help your business out?

Adsense: Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success

Successful sports teams have engrained in their heads the fundamentals of their sports. Business leaders and coaches alike who dwell on the fundamentals usually have the most successful outcomes. Failure is almost always rooted in a deviation from the fundamentals. So if your website is not delivering clients, perhaps you’re missing the fundamentals.

Part of the answer is no one actually taught you the fundamentals of website success. Most businesses understand the need for a website, few understand thefundamentals. Getting your website to deliver clients is an exercise in fundamentals. First and foremost is a back to basics, grass roots understanding of your market, website style.

Keyword research is the first thing every website owner should have done but most didn’t. With respect to your online business, keyword research equals market research. The coolest thing about being online is that you can absolutely KNOW your market, understand their interests and create an online business and marketing plan relative to your market and their needs.

There are probably hundreds of keyword research tools online that can help you do research. Our advice is to seek out an expert. Getting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is quite a different thing.

Relative to keyword research, here’s what we can find via search engine tools: keywords and keyword phrases, search volumes, total web pages using those keywords, web pages optimized for those keywords, keywords in hypertext (called anchor text) linking to other sites and pages. We can even look at any specific website and determine what keywords they are at least trying to rank for. And of course, type the keyword phrase into a search box will list the top ten sites ranking for that term. The result of such a search is referred to as the SERPS or the Search Engine Results Pages.

The best keywords to use are ones that will generate reasonable traffic AND have very little competition. One of the parameters we seek in our keyword research is to determine the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. Google will tell us how many web pages are indexed for the search term. Just run a search and notice in the upper right of the results that Google will tell you how many pages are indexed with your search keywords. Without getting too technical here, Google and the other major search engines will also tell you how many web pages use those keywords in the page title, an indication that those pages specifically cover the topic of your search. Having keywords in the page title is one of the key ways to optimize a webpage for the keyword. Knowing how many pages are doing this gives you a better idea of how many pages are intentionally using the keywords you’re researching.

KEYWORD STRATEGY
The first thing that has to go is the ego of the site and/or business owner. Unless you show up in the first page of the search engine results, you’re NOBODY! Worse, you can’t push your way through the crowd to get to the top of the SERPS. You can get there by Google sponsored ads - Adwords guarantee your visibility on the SERPS. But still the point is, you’ll pay.

Let’s consider three strategies for beating your competition relative to the search engine results.

DIRECT STRATEGY
Choose the same keywords that your competition is ranking for and go head to head. If they are doing pay-per-click, you do it too. In this scenario, you’ll end up spending a lot of money to achieve and maintain top SERPS positions. If your competition is ranking on good, high traffic terms, plan on spending time, money and resources to get to the same position it may have taken them years to achieve. A direct strategy can get bloody. Ultimately, it is the most obvious choice, the least creative and the stupidest!

INDIRECT STRATEGY
Choose keywords that your competitors didn’t even think of! An indirect strategy is often associated with cross marketing and selling through an indirect channel. If you sell a service or product that your competitors don’t have, you channel your efforts through that market knowing there’s some pull-through relative to your other products and services. Very often you could be sucking business right out from under your competition’ s nose and they don’t even see it!

DIVISIONAL STRATEGY
Find out what keywords your competition is NOT ranking for in the same keyword set and go after them. The divisional strategy is the primary marketing method of niche marketers. Most business owners will equate the word “niche” with the word “small”. On the web, niche site owners are millionaires! Get rid of your pre-conceptions. The web is huge.

We use a two step process for choosing keywords. First, you have to take your direct competition into account. The second part is to look specifically at the search engine optimization parameters to determine which keywords make sense for you to specifically go after.

The leverage a website carries is in part determined by its page rank. Page rank is in large part determined by how many other sites on the web link to yours. Your exposure in the SERPS is in turn affected by your page rank. The reason you need to know this is if the top ten websites all out rank you in terms of page rank, you’re better off choosing another keyword.

SEO Testing – Is Your Zipper Down

Today’s post deals with a much more harmless form of SEO Outting, accidental outting and invalidating testing. To teach this lesson I’m going to use a story …

Let’s assume for a minute your at a ball game or party and your friend comes back from the bathroom, and you notice their zipper is down. Because they are your friend you want to help them out, so in a normal voice you point at their crotch and say “excuse me but your zipper is down” … kudo’s to you for being a good friend right?

Well not really, because while your intentions may have been knoble, your execution had the opposite effect, as you just embarrassed your friend unnecessarily in public. A much better course of action would have been leaning in and whispering in their ear that they need to check their zipper, allowing them to correct the situation without alerting everyone around you. Got it … now that I’ve turned into Miss Manners what does that have to do with SEO …

We’re all familiar with the concept of outting someone, paid links, spamming, cloaking or any other search engine guideline offenses. Where you stand on that issue is hotly debated and I’m not wading into that quagmire. However in the same way that you can cause more damage by trying to help some one by loudly pointing out their fly is down, you can also cause damage trying to help someone by pointing out and linking to “strange” things on their website or blog.

In case you haven’t noticed I do a lot of testing here, in fact it was one of the main reasons I started the blog all those years ago. Some of the tests are pretty obvious, others are subtle so subtle you would never spot them for what they are, but most are somewhere in the middle. So if you see something odd going on here there’s a pretty high likelihood there is a test running. Some tests take longer than others, it’s just part of google slowing down the update cycle to put a damper on out ability to reverse engineer things.

How do you know a test from a wordpress hack … you don’t, but if you see something odd, you don’t twitter about it publicly, write about it on your blog, or worst of all link to it (no followed or not) from anywhere, it’s the same as pointing at my crotch and telling me my zipper is down. Really I’m pretty easy to get a hold of, there’s a contact form here and that phone icon in the sidebar will send a copy of your transcribed voicemail to me by email and SMS, so I’m not going to miss anything. You can ask in a roundabout way “you know it’s that guy in that place with the thing …” just don’t link to it ok, cause even though you are trying to help you just invalidated my experiment.