The Optimizer - Weekly SEO News

A reciprocal link is when a web site links to you and you link back to them.

If you own a website, I'm sure you've received emails asking for link exchanges. This article's purpose is to help you decide who you should be linking to and why.

Look before you link!

Indiscriminate linking can be harmful to your search engine rankings and your reputation. When considering another website for a link exchange, always check out the potential link partner's web site and the page that your link is going to be placed on.

Five essential rules to follow when choosing a link partner.


1. Make sure that the website is related to yours. For example, if you're a real estate agent, don't exchange links with pages about diet pills or casinos. Link to other real estate related web sites, like mortgages or real estate agents in other areas.

2. Don't link to link farms. You can tell a page is a link farm by the fact that there's usually no company logo, hundreds of links and no real content.

3. Think of your outbound link as a recommendation for that site. If the web site or link page is of poor quality, don't link to it. Ask yourself, "Would I recommend this page to my visitors?"

4. Ensure your link will be found by search engines. Just paste the URL of the web page you'll be linked on into Google, Yahoo, or MSN. If the page comes up in the results, it's indexed.

5. Examine the links on the potential link exchange partner's web page. Make sure the links point straight to other sites and are not redirected or use JavaScript linking code. Look at the HTML source code and check the the links for the following text: "rel=nofollow". This code tells major search engines not to count this link in ranking algorithms.

If done correctly, reciprocal linking can be a great way to increase your online traffic. So, don't forget! Always look before you link!

Labels: links

There's a useful tool at SearchGuild.com titled "Search Term Difficulty Checker".

Search Term Difficulty Checker is an online application that makes use of the Google API to analyze a keyword phrase search in order to dertermine the difficulty of acheiving a top 10 ranking for that phrase.

It does this by analyzing the results of the search with an algorithm that approximates the Google search algorithm.

After sifting through my email for my Google API key, which this tool requires, I tried out a couple of phrases myself and here are the results. (The higher the number, the more difficult it is to rank a phrase or keyword.)

google - PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE: 5458186

web promotion - INTERMEDIATE: 62110

seo - INTERMEDIATE: 30134

search engine optimization - INTERMEDIATE: 27072

robert raught - INTERMEDIATE: 20451

flying spaghetti monster - EASY: 2796

Now if I could only find a client that wants to promote a website about flying spaghetti monsters. Hrm...

Here's a link to Search Term Difficulty Checker

Labels: seo tools

Yes, you heard it correctly. According to this new "search engine", 23% of internet users in 2005 will be cows. I would love to say, "And that's no bull!", but we all know it is.

You (or your cow) can search for web pages, images and blogs and the results are listed underneath Google Adword's results. Can't think of anything to search for because you're a cow and you have a pea brain? No worries! On the left are links to the last 10 searches which include phrases like, "how to make chicken fried steak", "cipralex side effect" and "grass".

To make your search even more moorific, you can select a moo factor which will play various cow sound bites after each search.

What are the humans saying about this? Here's a quote from a recent Mloo visitor,

"My pet cow is going to be so happy when I tell her about this search engine. Lately she has been ticked at the results from Yahoo."

Link to Mloo Search Engine

Labels: search

Google, Inc. launched a new voice and text messaging software titled "Google Talk" yesterday.

Unlike other IM services on the market, Google Talk is based on an open communications model giving users the ability to connect to the service using any client that uses the same standard. Some of these IM clients include Trillian, Adium, iChat, GAIM, and Psi.

Google Talk is also integrated with Google's popular email service Gmail. Google Talk preloads your Gmail contacts and comes with a Gmail notification feature that tells you when you have Gmail. Gmail has been an invite only service for about 8 months now. But, now anyone in the US with a mobile phone can sign up for a Gmail account by going to the sign up page and entering their mobile phone number.

Google Talk is rudimentary compared to other established IM services like MSN Messenger, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger. There's no file transfer or video conferencing. But I trust Google will soon be including these options and more as Google Talk is still in BETA.

Try Google Talk and send me a message at cozmik[at]Gmail[dot]com.

Labels: google

The Yahoo! web site suggestion page has a new paragraph of text which reads:

You can also provide the location of a text file containing a list of URLs,
one URL per line, say urllist.txt. We also recognize compressed versions of
the file, say urllist.gz.

Yahoo!'s site map technology is far less complicated than Google's sitemap, which must be a special file formatted in XML. Although, unlike Yahoo!'s urllist.txt, which is purely a list of URLs. Google's sitemap.xml contains more information. Such as: last date modified, projected change frequency, and page importance.

While neither of these will probably increase your rankings, they will help ensure that every page you create at least has a chance to get "on the map".

Links: Yahoo! Search submission page, Google's Sitemap login page

Labels: yahoo

Exchanging links can be a great way to build relations with other sites and boost your ranking at the same time. You never know how many friends you can make and what you can learn from them. So let's get started.

First, you need to create a links page. This links page needs to look and feel the same as the rest of your site and should include instructions on how to link to your site and an example of the description you want. If you use buttons for links, make sure you include a text link somewhere so search engines can find your links page easily.

Now that you have your links page ready, it's time to start looking for link partners. When searching for link partners, start by searching for your keywords in Google and choose 10 to 20 sites that have content that is related to or can compliment your site. Then, add a text link with a brief description of thier site on your links page.

Now it's time to send off an email to each site and ask if they will exchange links with you. I have a basic form letter I use for this (form letter at end of article). However, I add something personal about their site, a compliment about something I liked. This lets them know that I'm not a bot sending spam, but a real person interested in exchanging links that has actually took the time to review their site.

If you have not heard from them in 5 to 7 days, go ahead and send another request but not the same one, change this one. You might mention that you have not heard back from them and that you feel your visitors could benefit from their content. You may also want to see if they have a phone number listed and give them a call. I know, as a seasoned webmaster, I enjoy the phone calls I get. Don't be afraid to make several contact attempts. Following up on your link requests is essential. However, don't bombard their email with requests. Always send one last email letting them know you're removing their link and that maybe you can exchange links another time. Always end on a positive note. The idea is to build business relationships, not upset people.

When you get a response that your request has been accepted, go and verify your link is accurate and that the description is to your liking. Don't be afraid to ask for an edit if you're unhappy with the link.

Having a link on a site with a high page rank in Google is better than a page with no or low page rank. Although, until you gain page rank of your own, you may have to settle for links that have low rank. This does not mean you can't request links from high ranking sites. Just be prepared that they may not accept you until you have high page rank. Save these contacts for a latter campaign.

Next week, we will look into some software that can help you with your reciprocal linking campaign and review some websites designed to help you exchange links.

Sample Form letter example for approaching link exchange partners.
******************
Dear John Doe,

My name is Your Name, I am the webmaster for yoursite.com. I have visited your site, sitename.com, and I think that the content could be of interest to our web site visitors.

I have already placed a link to your site along with a description at www.yourstie.com/link.html If you want anything modified or if you have any other cross-promotion ideas, let me know.

I would appreciate if you placed a link back to our site. As soon as I am aware that you have done so, I will move your link to the top of the list in your category. If you put our link on your main page, I will also do the same for you. If you have a banner you'd rather use, let me know.

You can find our linking code at: www.yoursite.com/suggest-link.html.

Sincerely,
Sign Here
******************
Author: Mark Hochhaus

How to Approach Potential Link Exchange Partners presented by: Technet - Your affordable search engine optimization and online marketing company. Call today at 360.503.8878 or visit us online at http://www.increased-online-traffic.com

Labels: links

Google Desktop 2 beta is now available for download. With the release comes a whole new look and a new side bar that aggregates email, photos, stock prices, weather reports, what's popular on the Internet and personalized news headlines (RSS feeds).

What's interesting about the RSS aggregater module is that it automatically pulls RSS feeds from visited web pages. This option is meant to simplify joining a feed as even the most novice web user will be able to subscribe because the feeds will just automatically appear on the side bar. What if you acquire too many or unwanted feeds? There's an option to customize and remove feeds on demand.

Now, if I can just get everyone using Google Desktop 2 to visit this website...

Need a link? Google Desktop Beta 2

Labels: google

You've spent many hours trying to increase your online traffic with your linking campaign. You've sent out 200 e-mails pleading with other web sites to trade links with your site. Many of your e-mails bounce back.

The requests that find thier targets get rejected for numerous reasons. For example, your Google pagerank is too low or your links pages are dynamic and not static, etc., blah, blah, etc., ad nauseum. Out of those 200 requests, you wind up getting 25 reciprocal links, if you are lucky.

So, you say to yourself, "Great, now i have 25 more links!". But are these links really worth it? Do they generate any traffic?

There are many reasons why your links won't even get counted or indexed by the search engines. If your link is on a page among 100 other links, or the page is irrelevant to your subject matter, the page probably won't hold much weight with most search engines. It's also rumored that Google is changing it's algorithm to discount reciprocal links altogether.

So, what can you do to get your links indexed and noticed? Write your own content, distribute it to article directories or trade it with other related websites!

Here are 8 tips on increasing your online traffic with distributed content.

1. Try to write about popular content. The more popular it is, the more people will download it and want to include it on their websites and the more links you'll have pointing back to your site.
2. Try not to use any promotional jargon or sales pitches in your articles. If you do, many webmasters will not want to include your article on thier site.
3. Use plain English. Don't try to get too technical. Read it back to yourself and make sure you don't get tongue-tied when reading it.
4. If possible, work in your site's main keyword phrases into your articles. If your site is about online marketing, write articles about online marketing.
5. Make sure you include an "About the Author" section at the bottom. Make it somewhat short and always include a link back to your site in an anchor tag. And once again, include your keywords in the link text.
6. Proofread your article carefully. I see so many articles out there with misspellings. It just makes you look bad. After you spell check, have a friend or co-worker read it to double check for errors.
7. When you're finished with your article, submit it to popular article directories like goarticles.com, articlefactory.com, amazines.com and imparticles.com. For a fee, there are even services out there that will submit your articles to the top directories for you.
8. Make sure you publish your articles on your own website too, more content equals more traffic. Don't worry about getting penalized by search engines for having duplicate content. You only get penalized if the content is duplicated on your own domain, not if it's duplicated on other websites.

So there you have it. Distributed content allows you to make every link count, by creating targeted links that directly contribute to your search engine rankings, and by delivering targeted traffic on it's own. And besides, it might even make you famous!

Labels: links

The Googlers at Google AdSense launched their official AdSense blog Monday morning.

According to the first post at "Inside AdSense", it seems they felt left out because Google AdWords has had thier blog, "Inside AdWords", up and running for three months now.

Look forward to posts around 2-3 times a week from various Adsense employees on topics like optimization tips, product feature descriptions and ideas on getting more out of AdSense.

Labels: adsense, google

Yahoo has revamped it's local portal today with a new set of features and an updated user interface. Here's a break down of the newly added content:

• Most popular local searches - I see SEO opportunities here.
  
• Search by neighborhood - Major cities are now broken down into local neighborhoods.
  
• View local info on a map - There's also a toggle to show local wi-fi hotspots and traffic data, where available.
  
• Upcoming local events for chosen location - If anyone finds out how to submit an event, please leave a comment.
  
• User recommended restaurants and other recommended businesses and services.
  
• RSS Content - Add current events, top restaurants and local favorites to My Yahoo or any feed reader.
  
• Browse by category or location - In case you don't know exactly what to search for.
  
• Other local info on Yahoo - Access local info available across Yahoo on the local city page.
  
• Your most recent local searches
  
• Personalized Recommendations - Suggestions about local listings or businesses that are similiar to your prior searches.

If you have a business, now is the time to add or update your local listing.

If you are a developer, here's a link to the API specifications for Yahoo Local.

Labels: search, yahoo

Quote from a forum posting by poster_boy at Webmasterworld.com:

I guess it just went through... refreshed and this appeared.

Message:

We've simplified our keyword status system. Your keywords will now either be active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). Quality remains the most important factor in your keywords' performance. Each keyword will now have a minimum bid that is based on the quality of your keyword and ad text. If your maximum CPC doesn't meet this minimum bid, your keyword will be listed as inactive.

What you should do differently: If a keyword is listed as inactive, improve its quality through optimization, delete it, or raise that keyword's maximum CPC to the minimum bid indicated. (Raising the bid will re-activate the keyword.) If your keyword is active, you don't need to do anything.

User AdwordsAdvisor replies,

Sharp eye you have there poster_boy. ;)

The changes have not actually launched yet - and what you are seeing is some limited pre-launch testing as we get things ready for prime-time.

The changes will relatively launch soon, and as mentioned previously, we'll notify everyone by email when they do occur - and of course I'll post here as well.

In the meantime, for those few that do see the 'new' pages, please know that you are seeing testing, that your account will run as normal during the testing, and that any changes you make in the 'test' interface will be saved.

My apology in advance for any confusion that this testing may cause.

AWA

The new apparent algorithms from the test phase has alot of Adwords advertisers in an uproar.

Read the full thread

Labels: adsense, google

Ask Jeeves, Inc., property of InterActiveCorp, announced today that it's Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings is now available to the public. The advertising program is an open-auction style pay per click (PPC) program that will be displayed prominently above search results and also above the current Google Adwords listings.

Excerpt from the press release:

Available to existing Ask Jeeves advertisers since August 1st, Ask Jeeves
Sponsored Listings is a new search advertising product that allows advertisers
to more effectively purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask Jeeves
(Ask.com) and its advertising syndication network. Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings
has replaced the Company’s Premier Listings product with an open-auction system
that provides easier access for a diverse range of search advertisers.

Ask Jeeves also announced today the integration of IAC Partner Marketing with AJinteractive, the advertising solutions and sales division of Ask Jeeves, to form IAC Advertising Solutions.

Quote from Paul Gardi, executive vice president and general manager of IAC Advertising Solutions.

"With Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings, we are allowing a larger network of
advertisers to optimize their advertising spend on Ask Jeeves and our
syndication network, one of the largest advertising networks on the
Internet."

The Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings program can found at: http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com/

Local search engines are fast becoming the yellow pages of the internet. When searching for information, the geographical location of the site you choose is not all that important. However, when looking for products or services, you may want to deal with a local company. The good news is, the major search engines have stepped up to the plate and have added local search options to their bag of tricks.

Major search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Amazon.com and even newcomers like Local.com now have "local search engines". Google local's market share increased by 61 percent between February and July of 2005. While local search is nothing new to the seasoned web developer, it is important to realize that this technology has matured over the last year and is ready for primetime.

Having your web site listed in the local search engines is much like having a yellow page ad in your local phone book. According to the leading search engine's recent statistics, when local people look for a product or service and geographical location matters, they are using local search. So don't be the last one in your demographic to take advantage of local search engines. You might just wind up being one of the first in your category.

Labels: search

Googletestad or Google Test Ad is a very popular search term that has been ranking in the top 30 keywords at Wordtracker.com for several weeks now. I checked Wordtracker today and it's ranked at 20, one position higher than Britney Spears!

Many websites have been trying to taking advantage of this niche keyword. When performing a search for googletestad in Google, Yahoo and MSN, I found many link farms and various sites devoted to solving the mystery.

Apparently, Googletestad is another name for a google search engine optimization monitoring tool titled: Google Monitor Query.

What is Google Monitor Query? Here's a description from the authors at EasySoftDev:

It is designed for search engine specialists and webmasters who regularly spend
hours of monitoring the ranking of their website at google. The program will
automatically do this annoying job and will give you good statistics about past
searches and website rankings. It also records the website position of your
competitors. It can offer you graphic reports and many useful export
capabilities.

I installed Google Monitor Query 1.4 today and gave it a test run. It's very straightforward, you enter a URL, add your desired keywords and click Check Google. It shows total results for search, ranking postion and the particular page found within your domain.

There's also two more columns, previous postion and best position, that are used as a history of previous searches to keep track of your Google SEO efforts.

Google Monitor Query or Googletestad is shareware and can be purchased for around US$20.

May your 'Googletestad'ing bring you lots of increased online traffic!

Googling is the popular term for searching for someone's name at Google.com in an effort to find out more about them (or dig up dirt). You might google a prospective client, your best friend, a hot date, or even a company's CEO. Just don't go googling Google.

Cnet reporter, Elinor Mills, did some googling of her own on Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and published some personal information about him on Cnet.com last month. Google told Cnet that it will not speak with Cnet reporters until August 2006, according to Jai Singh, editor in chief of Cnet News.com in San Francisco.

Exerpt from San Francisco Chronicle,

"We published a story that recounted how we found information on the (Google)
CEO in a public forum using their service," Singh said. "They had issue with the fact that they felt it was private information and our point is it was public information obtained through public channels using Google search."

Apparently, Google has declined to comment. Happy Googling!

Labels: google

According to an interview by Gary Price at Searchenginewatch.com, Yahoo's Tim Mayer announced that his company will soon be launching Yahoo Site Explorer. A tool that provides webmasters with linkage and indexing data.

"Yahoo Site Explorer is a place to see which pages Yahoo has indexed. After clicking "Explore URL" you'll find the number of pages found in the Yahoo Index and also the number of inlinks. You can sort pages by "depth," submit URLs, and quickly export the results to TSV format. Site Explorer is also supported via an API."

Tim's advice on creating links for link popularity: "Create natural links, make it look natural."

Labels: seo tools, yahoo

According to a recent posting by user McMasters at SEO Chat Forums,

"My most recent Google check bounced! Did this happen to anyone else?"

Well, it hasn't happened to me or anyone else here at Technet Increased Online Traffic. But, isn't it hilarious? I feel for poor McMasters and how he suddenly lost his money. But, when a company whose stock is raising at unbelievable rates bounces a check, you have to at least chuckle.

In reply to another user's comment about how funny the situation is: McMasters states, "Oh, I know, it is hilarious - I don't think the bank is going to give me any problems. Adsense better not be trying to pull one over on me, though!" McMasters also proclaimed that he would keep us all informed on how this issue was resolved. Here's a link to the post.

Labels: adsense, google

Series 01 Edition 01

Hello and welcome to Technet's first of many in a series of reports on search engine optimization (SEO) and web site promotion and SEO News. Over the months, we will be covering everything from page optimization to press releases and much more. So, don't forget to subscribe to this RSS feed, after all you don't want to miss a single weekly edition.

What's all this hype about links?

What's all the talk about links we hear about? Reciprocal links? Non-reciprocal links? Targeted links? Link Popularity? I need links. You should have links. What about the dead links? I don't have enough links! Ever since I joined the link farm, I dropped out of the search engines! Well, you musn't fret; we're going to shed the light on all theses different links. You'll learn the different types, how to get them, how to keep them and how to keep them current.

Over the next few issues, we will investigate the ABCs of linking, look into some helpful software and a take a close look at how Technet has solved this time consuming, but necessary issue for several top sites.

Let's start with some definitions.

Reciprocal Link (Two-way link): When you link to a web site and that web site links back to you, you have one reciprocal link. Reciprocal links need to be related to your web site's subject matter. For example, if your web site sells Milk, then links from other sites that sell milk products. Sites about dairy products would also be good reciprocal linking candidates. While, a link from say a tobacco company would not be recommended. Your reciprocal links need to be related to your web site's main keyword phrase or subject matter.

Non Reciprocal Link (One-way): These links are the most beneficial and also can be the hardest to obtain. Links from search engines or directories are a form of a non-reciprocal linking. However, the links that hold the most weight with the search engines are from other relevant web sites, sites we have not linked to. When a dairy site links to your milk site because they feel your site is of value to their visitors, it is the ultimate compliment and also holds more weight in the search engines. The best way to get this type of link, is to have unique content that is well written. Your site needs to look professional and sound professional. Related sites will be eager to link to you because you have quality, relevant content.

Targeted Links: Targeted links are just what they sound like, links that are related to your sites main subject matter. For example, if you have a site devoted to music then links from other music sites or music stores are good, while links from a site specializing in window blinds are not so good.

Text Links: Text links are simply that, text links. Text links are very important as a search engine can follow a text link and catalog it. It's like a vote for your site.

Graphical Links: Graphic links, such as logos and banners, may look great and attract visitors, but they cannot be read by search engines and are rarely followed by them. While having a graphical link, such as a logo, can give you some recognition and look professional, it must be well made and identifiable. Furthermore, you should always add alt* tags to the graphic html code, as alt tags help with content and keyword density. A text link directly below the graphic for the search engines to follow should be included when ever possible.

* (An alt tag or alternate text is an attribute added to the image tag in html. It is designed to give a text example of what the image is for people browsing without image support, some search engines count this as part of the page content.)

Links Page: This is very important. Your links page needs to fit into your site. It should have the same look and feel as the rest of your pages. Unless you only have five or ten links on your link page, you will need to have categories and even sub-categories for extensive link pages. It's important to keep the number of links per page as low as possible and never over 100 links.

Adding a small form for visitors to suggest links can be a nice feature and I recommend it, but it also can lead to a lot of off-target links suggestions.

When exchanging links, you will have to show the other site owners where their link is placed on your site. Therefore, you'll want to have the links page well laid out and visually appealing.

Dead Links: This is really a maintenance issue, sites go off-line, from time to time page addresses change, or the site changes owners and the content changes. It is important to check your links often to ensure you don't have a page full of dead links or links that have changed and now point to unrelated content. If you don't keep up on this task, you will soon have a page full of dead links and visitors wont come back to use it. Search engines also frown on pages with too many dead links.

Link Farms: Link farms should be avoided; adding your site to one can cause you to loose popularity or have a negative effect on your Page Rank, joining one and displaying their links on your site can get you banned from the most important search engines. With 90% of web traffic originating from only a hand full of search engines, this is something you don't want to happen. It is almost impossible to reverse and it can take you out of the search engines for up to a year or more. Staying away from places that guarantee hundreds or thousands of links by filling out a form.

Links should be arranged one at a time by contacting the desired site owner, by e-mail or more prefferrably by phone, and notifying them that you want to exchange links. This is the best way to do it, any short cuts or get link quick schemes can lead to trouble as soon as the search engines crawl your site.

Links are very important to any site that wants to rank highly in the top search engine results. The more targeted links you have pointing to your site, the more important your site is to the search engines. It's like a voting system. If 100 sites think your content is worth linking to, then search engines like Google will take notice. However, if 10,000 related sites link to you, then search engines will treat you like a king and you will be on the A list for sure.

Next week, we'll dive into approaching site owners and learn some tricks of the trade that will help you streamline your linking campaign.

Author: Mark Hochhaus

Presented by: Technet's Increased Online Traffic - Your affordable search engine optimization and Internet marketing company. Call today at 360.495.4497

Sponsored in part by: IHSProductions Web Design