There are many changes taking place in the top search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all adapting to the many transformations occuring within the search industry. Because of these changes, I thought I would take the time to give you an overview of what's taking place within the market and how it affects you as a webmaster. To begin, let's start with Google.
Back in 2003, Google would index and crawl the web about once a month and everything would change all in one shot. WebMasterWorld would actually name these updates with names like Brandy, Florida, and Bourbon.
Google has moved away from these monthly updates to an ever-changing process. You can now see daily changes within the SERPS with the biggest changes occuring during algorithm updates.
Late June and July of this year saw some major changes within the Google algorithm. If your site was hurt from this algorithm change, you should re-examine your site and be sure to follow the guidelines below:
1. Pursue a continuous linking campaign with other quality sites. This can be achieved through article syndication, exchanging RSS feeds, submitting to directories or syndicating a press release.
2. Create a Google sitemap to increase the coverage of your webpages.
3. Make sure your site has a clear navigation system. Every page should be reachable from at least one static link.
4. Avoid all deceptive or manipulative behavior. Don't get involved in linking schemes. Avoid all forms of cloaking and avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Besides the changes taking place within organic search results, there have also been recent changes within Google Adwords. In July of 2006, Google updated their landing page algorithm. These changes have harmed a number of online marketers. Many advertisers who had been paying five or ten cents a clíck are now required to bid at least 50 cents to a dolloar or more. There are also other advertisers who kept their bid prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th page positions when they used to buy first page positions.
Some advertisers have even been effectively shutdown.
However, keep in mind that not all advertisers have been affected. There are four main types of sites that have been hit the hardest. These include:
* one page salës letter websites
* squeeze pages
* adsense sites (particularly those involved in Adsense arbitrage)
* affíliate sites
The new landing page algorithm gives a quality score to every landing page. Fortunately for us, Google has left some clues as to how they are ranking these pages.
Below are 3 general guidelines that will help those who have been hurt by the recent updates.
1. Provide relevant and substantial content.
2. Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information related to the product or service in your ad.
3. Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site's content.
To stay in accördance with the new quality score guidelines, you may want to remove all Adsense ads from your landing pages, create or find more original content for your sites, ensure that your landing page has at least 500 words, and chëck to make sure that your ad relates perfectly with the content of your landing page.
Google is getting smarter everyday. Our job is not to trick the search engines but to deliver truly valuable information to our visitors. By doing this along with some basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques, you should perform very well in the search engines over the long-haul.
There have also been some recent changes at MSN.
They have changed the name of their search engine spiders. Before the changes, they were all called "msnbot,". Fortunately, they are now starting to group their spiders into separate categories.
The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products.
The MSN News bot is msnbot-news.
The MSN Image Search bot is msnbot-media.
The MSN search bot is still called msnbot.
It should now be much easier for webmasters to decipher what's really going on in their web logs. In addition, webmasters can also block specific bots if they need to, without blocking MSN Search.
Last, but not least, there is Yahoo. This company has experienced some very exciting changes within the past few months.
One of these is the launch of a new Yahoo Search Crawler. The new crawler is faster and more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, website owners should notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the Yahoo crawler.
Yahoo also released an index update in mid-July. You can read all about it at http://www.ysearchblog.com.
In addition, there are a number of other, smaller-based search engines who are leading the way in the future of search engine technology. One of the best examples I have seen is Eurekster.com. They have developed a social search engine powered by the wisdom of crowds.
Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory technology, which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user share their searches and sites with friends. For example, if you do a search on "internet marketing", you'll see sites related to "internet marketing" that your friends also found useful. These results are marked with an icon.
This personalization helps to increase relevancy in a way that no algorithm can match.
I expect to see many changes within Google, Yahoo, and MSN in upcoming years as they merge search engine technology with social search in order to make search results more relevant as well as personalized. One thing is clear, the future evolution of search is sure to be exciting to watch.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
How To Make Sure That Your Websites Are Fully Crawlable By The Search Engines
Making sure that your websites are fully crawlable is a key component for any search strategy, especially if you want your sites to rank well for multiple related keyword phrases or different products.
One of the ways that you can insure that a search engine spider crawls your site deeply is to provide it a road map of your site. This road map, called a "site map" is a very simple page (from a design standpoint) that only serves one purpose from a search engine optimizers point of view, to get those interior pages into a search engine's index.
A brief history of site maps . . .
Before site maps were recognized by the search engine optimization community as a tool for good search results, it was used by fortune 1000 companies to help visitors to their site find out where a particular service or product was located.
For example: If you want to do some sort of business with your bank online, you might find that their home page doesn't quite get you to the exact location on their site that you want.
After all, a typical bank might offer car loans, student loans, home loans, credit cards, investment accounts, mutual funds, etc.
If per chance you arrived at this banking site on a page other than the home page, you might get a little turned around from a site navigation standpoint.
So, site maps were created.
What is a site map?
A site map is a page that contains a basic HTML link to every page on that web site. Every page, not just your main topics but every page.
Site maps do not need to be fancy (in fact, it's better if they are not), they just need to contain a logical order and links to all of your pages.
How does this benefit us? Three ways . . .
First, a site map gives your customers an easy navigation system to every page in your web site. Now, don't confuse the use of a site map as a replacement for logical navigation on your regular pages. You want to make sure that your site can be navigated simply and easily from any page on your site.
However, some folks (a very small percentage) prefer to see the entire site's structure on one page and choose their destination from it.
Second, a site map is a fantastic way to get a search engine spider to see and crawl every single page in your site. When optimizing different pages in your web site for different keywords, a Site map is a perfect solution for ensuring that a spider can get to every one of those optimized pages.
Third, and this is big: A Site Map provides an opportunity to send link reputation to a particular page. Now, link reputation is a discussion that's beyond the scope of this aricle, but it is perhaps one of the most important factors in off Page search engine optimization.
You want the links on your Site Map Page to Say the right thing about the pages that they are linking to. It's like a vote. So, make sure that your site map is voting correctly for all of your interior pages.
Fourth, site maps are also an additional way to distribute Google page rank. If your site map is just one link off of the first page, it can pass a significant amount of Google page rank deep into your web site. This helps create a site structure where just about every internal page has the same chance of ranking as well as your home page.
Finally, site maps allow you to use dynamic linking strategies to control where page rank does and does not go throughout your site.
For example, a common mistake is to have a normal link to your privacy policy on every page of your site. In actuality, giving your privacy policy page the same page rank as every other page of the site is a big waste of whatever page rank you have available.
So use a good site map and you will reap the rewards.
One of the ways that you can insure that a search engine spider crawls your site deeply is to provide it a road map of your site. This road map, called a "site map" is a very simple page (from a design standpoint) that only serves one purpose from a search engine optimizers point of view, to get those interior pages into a search engine's index.
A brief history of site maps . . .
Before site maps were recognized by the search engine optimization community as a tool for good search results, it was used by fortune 1000 companies to help visitors to their site find out where a particular service or product was located.
For example: If you want to do some sort of business with your bank online, you might find that their home page doesn't quite get you to the exact location on their site that you want.
After all, a typical bank might offer car loans, student loans, home loans, credit cards, investment accounts, mutual funds, etc.
If per chance you arrived at this banking site on a page other than the home page, you might get a little turned around from a site navigation standpoint.
So, site maps were created.
What is a site map?
A site map is a page that contains a basic HTML link to every page on that web site. Every page, not just your main topics but every page.
Site maps do not need to be fancy (in fact, it's better if they are not), they just need to contain a logical order and links to all of your pages.
How does this benefit us? Three ways . . .
First, a site map gives your customers an easy navigation system to every page in your web site. Now, don't confuse the use of a site map as a replacement for logical navigation on your regular pages. You want to make sure that your site can be navigated simply and easily from any page on your site.
However, some folks (a very small percentage) prefer to see the entire site's structure on one page and choose their destination from it.
Second, a site map is a fantastic way to get a search engine spider to see and crawl every single page in your site. When optimizing different pages in your web site for different keywords, a Site map is a perfect solution for ensuring that a spider can get to every one of those optimized pages.
Third, and this is big: A Site Map provides an opportunity to send link reputation to a particular page. Now, link reputation is a discussion that's beyond the scope of this aricle, but it is perhaps one of the most important factors in off Page search engine optimization.
You want the links on your Site Map Page to Say the right thing about the pages that they are linking to. It's like a vote. So, make sure that your site map is voting correctly for all of your interior pages.
Fourth, site maps are also an additional way to distribute Google page rank. If your site map is just one link off of the first page, it can pass a significant amount of Google page rank deep into your web site. This helps create a site structure where just about every internal page has the same chance of ranking as well as your home page.
Finally, site maps allow you to use dynamic linking strategies to control where page rank does and does not go throughout your site.
For example, a common mistake is to have a normal link to your privacy policy on every page of your site. In actuality, giving your privacy policy page the same page rank as every other page of the site is a big waste of whatever page rank you have available.
So use a good site map and you will reap the rewards.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
How To Get Thousands Of Links Pointing To Your Website
Getting links pointing to your website can be a very difficult and time consuming practice especially if your website is brand new. And if you don't know the proper way to do this effectively it can literally be a major reason why your website fails in getting traffic from search engines. Search engine traffic is one of the most important elements you can do for your website or internet business. Although it takes a lot of trial and error, getting your website listed high in search engine results is what you should strive for.
So what do links have to do with high search engine rankings you might ask? Its simple. The more links pointing to your website the better rankings your site will get. You see every website that is linked to your site is like a vote of confidence from the owner of that site. Search engines use this as one of the most important factors in determining where a website will be ranked. Links also help you in getting your page rank higher. The more links to your site, the higher the page rank, and the better the rankings.
But links must be relevant to your website theme. For example. If you're selling eBooks and you have a food website pointing to your site, that is totally irrelevant and some search engines will even penalize you for this. The more relevant links, the better. Search engines also place great importance on text links with keywords in them. Make sure the sites linking to you use text links with a few of your most important keywords as the title. You should be able to go to your site by simply clicking the title. And it would also help if the description underneath the title is the same as the one in your Meta description tag.
Here are 3 easy ways to get great quality links pointing to your website.
1) Visit the top 100 sites in the search engines with your keywords and ask them about a link exchange. These people already have a high page rank so this will really give your site a push.
2) Join some link exchange programs on the internet for free. You can browse sites and request exchanges with sites similar to yours. You can also set the parameters on sites requesting a link exchange from you.
3) Write great quality articles and submit it to article directories on the internet. By writing an article anyone who uses it must also include your author bio below. This could mean thousands of new links.
By: Joe Terceira
From Qinsbuy Media Group ::Own Qinsbuy.com | Domain name Industry | Homegoshopping.com Shopping Online | Kersearch.com search engine & site promotion articles directory
So what do links have to do with high search engine rankings you might ask? Its simple. The more links pointing to your website the better rankings your site will get. You see every website that is linked to your site is like a vote of confidence from the owner of that site. Search engines use this as one of the most important factors in determining where a website will be ranked. Links also help you in getting your page rank higher. The more links to your site, the higher the page rank, and the better the rankings.
But links must be relevant to your website theme. For example. If you're selling eBooks and you have a food website pointing to your site, that is totally irrelevant and some search engines will even penalize you for this. The more relevant links, the better. Search engines also place great importance on text links with keywords in them. Make sure the sites linking to you use text links with a few of your most important keywords as the title. You should be able to go to your site by simply clicking the title. And it would also help if the description underneath the title is the same as the one in your Meta description tag.
Here are 3 easy ways to get great quality links pointing to your website.
1) Visit the top 100 sites in the search engines with your keywords and ask them about a link exchange. These people already have a high page rank so this will really give your site a push.
2) Join some link exchange programs on the internet for free. You can browse sites and request exchanges with sites similar to yours. You can also set the parameters on sites requesting a link exchange from you.
3) Write great quality articles and submit it to article directories on the internet. By writing an article anyone who uses it must also include your author bio below. This could mean thousands of new links.
By: Joe Terceira
From Qinsbuy Media Group ::Own Qinsbuy.com | Domain name Industry | Homegoshopping.com Shopping Online | Kersearch.com search engine & site promotion articles directory
Cheap Methods To Drive Site Traffic
It is quite simple bringing traffic to your website when you understand the appropriate strategies. The two most popular and cheap inter-net marketing strategies are pay-per-click (PPC) search engines and Affiliate Programs. These strategies can bring hordes of traffic interested in buying products or services with minimum risk.
Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
PPC search engines are fairly simple. The website owner develops a set of keywords that people use to find you in the search engines and pay a premium to the search engine each time a visitor clicks on the link. It is important to the web site owner that their site obtains the top search engine rank to appear as the first slot. Obtaining the highest rank is fairly simple in the PPC search engine mode. Find out how much the person who currently occupies the number one slot is paying per click, and outbid them by paying a penny more. The website owner pays as little as .001 per click for site traffic and earns their position in the search engine through bidding.
PPC possesses several benefits as a marketing strategy. Besides supplying customers with effective marketing, it is also cost-effective because you pay only when someone actually accesses your site. Moreover, with this method your listing gets posted quickly anywhere within a few hours or at the most, a few days.
The website owner using the PPC method needs to pick the keywords cautiously. Use specific keywords. Avoid being general or it may attract a lot of traffic uninterested in the website's products or services. This would push the costs of a PPC campaign too high.
Most importantly, calculate how much to bid on keywords. The website must still turn a profit after such expenses.
Affiliate Programs
An Affiliate Program is a no-risk partnership with a company, promoting that company's products on a website. In return, the affiliate earns a percentage of their sales. After signing up for an affiliate program, the affiliate is assigned a special "affiliate URL" that tracks all the visitors the affiliate sends to a company's web site and all the sales the affiliate generates. The affiliate earns a commission each time someone the affiliate referred makes a purchase.
The best way to motivate affiliates to promote a company's product or service is to pay those affiliates well for their efforts. Offer attractive commissions and additional incentives such as bonuses for a certain number of sales to push the affiliates to actively promote the website.
Combine both the strategies mentioned above to develop an integrated marketing strategy. This yields even bigger profits. An easy way to start an integrated marketing campaign is by encouraging affiliates to bid on keywords.
By: David Gass
From Qinsbuy Media Group ::Own Qinsbuy.com | Domain name Industry | Homegoshopping.com Shopping Online | Kersearch.com search engine & site promotion articles directory
Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
PPC search engines are fairly simple. The website owner develops a set of keywords that people use to find you in the search engines and pay a premium to the search engine each time a visitor clicks on the link. It is important to the web site owner that their site obtains the top search engine rank to appear as the first slot. Obtaining the highest rank is fairly simple in the PPC search engine mode. Find out how much the person who currently occupies the number one slot is paying per click, and outbid them by paying a penny more. The website owner pays as little as .001 per click for site traffic and earns their position in the search engine through bidding.
PPC possesses several benefits as a marketing strategy. Besides supplying customers with effective marketing, it is also cost-effective because you pay only when someone actually accesses your site. Moreover, with this method your listing gets posted quickly anywhere within a few hours or at the most, a few days.
The website owner using the PPC method needs to pick the keywords cautiously. Use specific keywords. Avoid being general or it may attract a lot of traffic uninterested in the website's products or services. This would push the costs of a PPC campaign too high.
Most importantly, calculate how much to bid on keywords. The website must still turn a profit after such expenses.
Affiliate Programs
An Affiliate Program is a no-risk partnership with a company, promoting that company's products on a website. In return, the affiliate earns a percentage of their sales. After signing up for an affiliate program, the affiliate is assigned a special "affiliate URL" that tracks all the visitors the affiliate sends to a company's web site and all the sales the affiliate generates. The affiliate earns a commission each time someone the affiliate referred makes a purchase.
The best way to motivate affiliates to promote a company's product or service is to pay those affiliates well for their efforts. Offer attractive commissions and additional incentives such as bonuses for a certain number of sales to push the affiliates to actively promote the website.
Combine both the strategies mentioned above to develop an integrated marketing strategy. This yields even bigger profits. An easy way to start an integrated marketing campaign is by encouraging affiliates to bid on keywords.
By: David Gass
From Qinsbuy Media Group ::Own Qinsbuy.com | Domain name Industry | Homegoshopping.com Shopping Online | Kersearch.com search engine & site promotion articles directory
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is also known as (SEO). It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to your website by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher your website ranks in the results of a search, means the greater chance that your website will be visited by a user. Statistics have shown that it is a common practice for internet users to not click through many pages of search results, so where your website ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward your website. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
But performing SEO on your website is very difficult and time consuming and for those who have no idea of what they are doing, it can be torture. Most internet beginners believe that all they have to do is simply submit there websites to all the major search engines and they will get insane amounts of traffic only to find out that they willl be lucky to have the search engines send them 10 visitors a year. There are many things needed to create the perfect search engine friendly website so lets talk about a few of them.
1) First and foremost, you need to research and find great quality keywords that are relevant to what you are selling. You can't simply add Bill Gates to your keywords tag and think you will get traffic especially if what your site content is about has nothing to do with Bill Gates. This is considered spam by many search engines and they will penalize you for this. My suggestion is to research key-phrases that are related to your website. Pick key-phrases that less people are using. Don't try to compete with the big boys right off the bat.
2) Now that you have your key-phrases you will need to design and create a website around these key-phrases without using them repeatedly. Search engines also consider this spam. Your key-phrases have to sound smooth when your site is read and also be placed in the most important to least important order in your keywords Meta tags.
3) Make sure you have some of your keywords in your website Meta Description as well without repeating them. Keep your description to no more then 150 characters. Try to explain the content on your website in the best and shortest possible way. This is what will show when your site appears on search engine listings.
4) Try to add you main keyword to your website title and URL. Search engines love this. Your site will jump major rankings just because of this trick alone. But don't abuse this trick because search engines will penalize you big-time.
5) And finally add content to your site. Search engines want content. They don't care how great your site looks. Whenever someone performs a search, search engines will only display sites with the most relevant content. This is only the tip of the iceberg but it will help in getting your website in the right direction.
By Joe Terceira
From Qinsbuy Media Group ::Own Qinsbuy.com | Domain name Industry | Homegoshopping.com Shopping Online | Kersearch.com search engine & site promotion articles directory
But performing SEO on your website is very difficult and time consuming and for those who have no idea of what they are doing, it can be torture. Most internet beginners believe that all they have to do is simply submit there websites to all the major search engines and they will get insane amounts of traffic only to find out that they willl be lucky to have the search engines send them 10 visitors a year. There are many things needed to create the perfect search engine friendly website so lets talk about a few of them.
1) First and foremost, you need to research and find great quality keywords that are relevant to what you are selling. You can't simply add Bill Gates to your keywords tag and think you will get traffic especially if what your site content is about has nothing to do with Bill Gates. This is considered spam by many search engines and they will penalize you for this. My suggestion is to research key-phrases that are related to your website. Pick key-phrases that less people are using. Don't try to compete with the big boys right off the bat.
2) Now that you have your key-phrases you will need to design and create a website around these key-phrases without using them repeatedly. Search engines also consider this spam. Your key-phrases have to sound smooth when your site is read and also be placed in the most important to least important order in your keywords Meta tags.
3) Make sure you have some of your keywords in your website Meta Description as well without repeating them. Keep your description to no more then 150 characters. Try to explain the content on your website in the best and shortest possible way. This is what will show when your site appears on search engine listings.
4) Try to add you main keyword to your website title and URL. Search engines love this. Your site will jump major rankings just because of this trick alone. But don't abuse this trick because search engines will penalize you big-time.
5) And finally add content to your site. Search engines want content. They don't care how great your site looks. Whenever someone performs a search, search engines will only display sites with the most relevant content. This is only the tip of the iceberg but it will help in getting your website in the right direction.
By Joe Terceira
From Qinsbuy Media Group ::Own Qinsbuy.com | Domain name Industry | Homegoshopping.com Shopping Online | Kersearch.com search engine & site promotion articles directory
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