Unhealthy SEO Practices
July 25, 2009 at 1:48 pm | Posted in SEO, search engines | Leave a CommentTags: search engine optimization, SEO
Stay Away From Unlawful Content
Search engines will not put up with any unlawful use of copyrighted content nor will they promote any website that condones illegal behavior. Stay far away from any unlawful activities and do not raise any suspicions amongst search engines.
Do Not Hide Content
One sure way to get blocked from a search engine is to hide content. This is a black hat method of SEO accomplished by coloring text the same color as the background of a website so that only a search engine spider can find it.
Do Not Practice Any Cloaking
Cloaking, serving up different content to search engines than to actual users, is highly banned by search engines and is also a sure fire way to be blacklisted immediately.
Do Not Use Doorway Pages
Doorway pages were once popular however, search engines have caught on and know when you are pretending to be one thing when you are not. Stay away from doorway pages and take down any that you might currently have set up.
Do Not Reuse (Duplicate) Content
Using the same content from page to page on your website does not make it more relevant nor bigger. It’s also important not to copy or duplicate content from any other websites as search engines will pick up on this as well.
Increased Web Traffic From SEO Benefits Small Businesses
May 6, 2009 at 1:10 pm | Posted in SEO, home business, search engines | Leave a CommentTags: business, home business, SEO
While it had a successful brick-and-mortar store, R.A.G. New York couldn’t get its website’s sales off the ground until the company turned to search engine optimization (SEO).
Jay Greenstein, president of R.A.G. New York says that while he has six physical locations for his stores, his website was generating only three sales per day. But after implementing an SEO campaign, Greenstein told the New York Daily News that sales went from $2,000 in August to more than $12,000 last December.
SEO works for small businesses by making sure the company’s website appears on the first page of Google or any other search engine’s result page. As Gabriel Shaoolian, creative director for Blue Fountain Media told the news provider, “page two is useless.”
Greenstein told the paper that he paid $30,000 to get the project going and now spends $1,000 each month to make sure his website stays high in search results for specific keywords.
It appears that many retailers are turning to SEO to help generate website traffic and increasingly turning their back on paid search. A recent study from Internet Retailer found that 55.3 percent of respondents said they would increase their SEO budget in 2009 while only 24.2 percent said they would boost their use of paid search.
Source: NEBS Newsdesk
Keywords Is A Double-Edged Sword
April 29, 2009 at 1:02 pm | Posted in SEO, search engines | Leave a CommentTags: keywords
We have all heard of keyword stuffing and know the danger it can wrought on your search engine rankings.
If you’re not ranking for a given keyword, placing a few dozen more instances of it on your page is very rarely the answer. Folks have been asking about modified versions of their keywords, whether they need to add more related text content, whether they need to use it more times per sentence or per paragraph and my answer is always the same.
Once you’ve got your keyword in your content a few times, in your H1, title and URL, and maybe in the alt tag of an image, you’re 80-90% of the way there with on-page optimization.
The content needs to be valuable to a human (so you can earn links and interest and return visits and sharing), not more “optimized” for search engines with repetitions of your keyword.
You also need to be careful of repetitive keyword targeting.
If you’re targeting a specific keyword term or phrase, it’s not necessary, and often ill-advised, to place that keyword in the title tag, H1 and body text of every page on your site.
It’s certainly OK to use the term/phrase in passing and when relevant, but remember that pages target rankings, not sites – a good rule is to target one specific keyword term/phrase per page, sometimes more, but only in rare circumstances (like when you’re trying to get a secondary, indented listing) do you actually want to target the same term on multiple pages.
5 Practices That Get Your Site Booted From Search Engines
April 25, 2009 at 12:41 pm | Posted in blogging, search engines | Leave a CommentSome companies that specialize in search-engine optimization lure unwitting small-business owners into using deceptive techniques to attract viewers to their sites, which can get the sites banned from search engines.
Social-media strategist Janet Meiners Thaeler suggests avoiding these five practices: Keyword stuffing; overused boldface and excessive links; hidden links; complicated link schemes; and multiple domains with the same content.
Source: Small Biz Trends
Yahoo’s profits slump almost 80%
April 24, 2009 at 3:43 am | Posted in search engines | Leave a CommentTags: search engine, yahoo
Yahoo said its net profit slumped nearly 80% in the first three months of the year and that it will trim its workforce by 5%.
First quarter net income came in at $117.6m, or eight cents per share, compared to $536.8m, or 37 cents per share, during the same time last year.
CEO Carol Bartz said:
“Yahoo is not immune to the ongoing economic downturn, but careful cost management in the first quarter allowed our operating cash flow to come in near the high end of our outlook range.
“With our leading audience properties, substantial reach and innovative advertising solutions, we are confident Yahoo will be well positioned when online brand advertising resumes its growth.”
More layoffs are expected in the coming weeks. About 5% of its current work force may be cut to allow “flexibility for accelerated strategic investments and targeted hiring in its core operations.”
Yahoo’s earnings were in line with analyst expectations. During a conference call last night, Bartz refused to discuss the possibility of Yahoo selling its online search business to US software colossus Microsoft.
Last year, Microsoft made an unsuccessful takeover bid of $47.5 billion. Its intention is to leverage on Yahoo’s prized search engine asset in order to to close the gap on Google, which currently rules more than 60% of the US online search market.
Speculation that talks between Yahoo and Microsoft might be resurrected has persisted since Bartz replaced Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive in January.
Search Engine Landscape Becoming More Competitve
April 23, 2009 at 12:50 am | Posted in search engines | Leave a CommentThe search engine landscape is getting congested, and companies using search engine optimization (SEO) will become more busy.
Microsoft is poised to make a big push in the search engine market this year with a reported $100 million ad campaign for its new search engine. It’s still unclear what the name of the new engine will be with various media reports saying that the name could be Kumo, Bing or even Hook.
But now it appears another search engine from Microsoft is in the works with paidContent.org reporting that the company has trademarked the name Sift which appears to be its brand for a new mobile search engine.
According to the website, the trademark for Sift says it is a “operating system software for mobile phones; computer search engine software; computer programs for searching email, text messages, address and contact information.”
Although figures from Nielsen show that Microsoft only had 10.3 percent of the search market share in March, if the company is able to take the lead on mobile search it could be a game changer going forward.
This could also have an impact from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective as more people are accessing online information from their cell phones.
According to a report last year from Juniper Research, the number of people accessing the internet from a mobile device will jump from 577 million last year to 1.7 billion by 2013.
Ask Jeeves Return To Challenge Google
April 19, 2009 at 12:11 am | Posted in search engines | Leave a CommentTags: Ask Jeeves, search engine
Three years after being rebranded Ask.com, search engine reverts to Ask Jeeves in bid to take on Google.
Ask.com is to relaunch in the UK as Ask Jeeves three years after ditching the brand. The butler character will be reintroduced to the search engine’s branding and advertising after a makeover – by Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes, no less – that will ditch Jeeves’s pinstripe trousers and coattail jacket for a trendier look.
The Jeeves brand will return in a national TV, press, radio and online campaign kicking off this week after research found that 83% of UK consumers still identified the search engine by the Ask Jeeves name and butler character.
Our users have emphatically told us that they find Jeeves enhances their search experience … they see Jeeves as approachable and trustworthy and, above all, helpful,” said Cesar Mascaraque, the Ask managing director.
“He will be everywhere [and] what I’d like to see, but we are not there yet, is using him like an avatar where people could, say, dress him up with a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops. We want to let people own him.”
Jeeves, who will only be reintroduced in the UK, was the virtual mascot for the search engine from its founding in 1996 until early 2006 when the butler was dropped along with the Ask Jeeves name following the £1bn acquisition of the company by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2005.
As part of the relaunch Jeeves will be given Twitter and Facebook accounts – the latter will be updated later this week with a travel diary and “pictures” of where he has been during his three-year absence – and the butler will be involved in a series of events this week.
Baidu Creates Elderly Friendly Search Engine
April 12, 2009 at 9:50 am | Posted in search engines | Leave a CommentTags: Baidu, search engines
Baidu.com, Google’s major rival in China, has its sights on the elderly. It has launched a search engine especially designed for older Web users last month.
The portal (Baidu Elderly Search in Chinese), features larger fonts and a menu of search selections tailored for a more mature audience, from revolutionary song downloads to online forums on Tai Chi and keeping pet birds, popular pastimes among China’s retirees.
The design emphasizes clicking instead of typing in order to help older users who might not find it easy to type Romanized Chinese (or pinyin) to produce characters for their searches.
Baidu also runs special search sites for children and the blind. But I think it is ahead of its time. The population of elderly online users in China is about 5 million but in another decade or so, the search engine prospects will be phenomenal.
Wikia Search Fails Due To Poor Economy
March 31, 2009 at 9:39 am | Posted in search engines | Leave a CommentTags: search engines
Wikipedia has been one of the biggest successes in the history of the Internet. Unfortunately, Wikia Search has not enjoyed the same success. The wiki-style search engine started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is closing down.
But the biggest factor in his decision to shut it down was apparently the economy. “In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely,” Wales writes. He goes on to state that he believes in the power of search on the Internet and makes a General MacArthur-esque vow to return to the field in any way he can.
Wikia Search worked like other search engines, except that anyone could alter the results, like they would an entry on Wikipedia.
When Wikia Search launched, some touted it as the “Google Killer.” Hype doesn’t get much bigger than that on the Internet, and not surprisingly, Wikia Search could not live up to it. Google Search has simply gotten so dominant that not even the other big players, Yahoo and Microsoft, are able to compete with it in a meaningful way.
Small Business Owners Focus On Web Traffic
March 15, 2009 at 1:12 pm | Posted in SEO, search engines | Leave a CommentTags: SEO, traffic
A user-friendly website design, memorable company logo and small business branding tactics are just the start of what many small business owners are doing to drive traffic to their ecommerce sites.
According to a report in U.S. newspaper the Charlotte Observer, one kid’s clothing boutique has been enticing 6,000 online shoppers a month to their website – up from 2,000 one year earlier.
The store credits its work at optimizing its placement in Google searches with the business success. The small shop of just eight employees has one person dedicated to search engine optimization efforts, says the news source.
The company, Moxie Kids, says that its sales are not limited to the U.S. Thanks to its global reach on the web, the clothing boutique is shipping products to Sweden, Spain and England.
Given the amount of time that Canadian online users are said to spend on the web – checking email or using social media sites among other activities – small retailers could benefit significantly by improving their web presence.
eMarketer has reported that nearly 70 percent of the Canadian population is online.
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