Search Engine Optimization Blog - SEO Blog

New and Improved BigOak

2008-11-11T15:49:00.000-05:00

Yes we are still around, and going strong. Check us out at
at Big Oak SEO

and

our new SEO blog.

Big Oak SEO Blog has moved

2006-10-23T12:57:00.000-05:00

We have moved our SEO blog. Please visit us at Big Oak SEO

seo blog, big oak seo

About Us Page Lifts Ecommerce Conversions

2006-07-06T11:40:00.000-05:00

CASE STUDY: Personable 'About Us' Page Lifts Ecommerce Conversions 30%

SUMMARY: On most sites the 'About Us' page (aka 'Company Info') is a copywriting backwater -- a little dry, a little boring, a lot corporate.

But, what if you lavished the creative marketing attention on your About Us page that you do for your top offerings and landing pages? Can an outstanding About Us page help an ecommerce site stand out in an ocean of competitors?

Oh, yes, it can:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=28532

SEO Copywriting Services

2006-06-12T09:04:00.000-05:00

SEO Copywriting, or to give it its full name, search engine optimization copywriting or search engine copywriting, is the technique of writing the viewable text on a web page in such a way that it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the targeted search terms.

As well as the viewable text, SEO Copywriting usually optimizes other on-page elements for the targeted search terms. These include the Title, Description and Keywords tags, headings and alt text.

The idea behind SEO Copywriting is that search engines want genuine content pages and not additional pages (often called "doorway pages") that are created for the sole purpose of achieving high rankings. Therefore, the engines cannot possibly view SEO copywritten pages as undesirable, and the rankings they achieve tend to be as stable as those that are achieved by other search engine optimization techniques.

SEO Copywriting, also known as Writing for Search Engines, is a new kind of writing! There is another very similar discipline which is popularly called Writing for the Web. But, SEO copywriting has search engines as the primary target, instead of the actual reader.

It is safe to say that any action you take to enhance your search engine ranking at the detriment of the user is unethical SEO. So, if you write in a way that enhances your appeal to search engines, but makes your content less valuable but this is possible to have both! Good SEo Copywriting and voluble marketing content.

So, what is SEO copywriting again? Well, to begin with, learn that writing for the web is different from writing in print. On the web, you must use short content, bullet points, getting to the main theme right away... Additionally, SEO copywriting brings in the need to target keywords. Depending upon the content generation plans, you could target one or more keywords per page. Things are getting so competitive, that I prefer to target one keyword per page. But, there are many SEOs who are unable to justify the high cost of content generation and will prefer to optimize a page for more than one keyword.

Writing copy optimized for search engines can be tricky so let us do it. You want a website with enough of the right keywords to attract the search engines. But you don't want copy with so many keywords that it then sounds silly to the people who read it. Effective search engine copywriting is a delicate balance between satisfying your website's human visitors and the search engine spiders.A

Web Site Search Engine Ranking Factors

2006-04-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

The Factors that Play a Role in Your Web Site's Ranking
By Courtney Heard (c) 2005

Have you ever had a proposal, estimate or quote for search
engine optimization work and wondered what goes into the
pricing? What makes one site need more work than another? Why
do some sites increase rankings faster than others? Why do
some sites get more traffic from their top page ranking than
yours?

There are so many aspects of a web site that can decrease or
boost your search engine rankings. Each web site is as unique
as DNA and as such, will react differently to different
marketing treatments.

What are these different factors that go into your web site's
ranking? Here is a list of the most important aspects:

1. The State of Your Site Prior to the Optimization - Your web
site can have many different attributes that contribute to its
ability to rank well or not so well. Your site's PageRank for
example, if your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, it's going to take a lot
longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking well. If
your site is poorly designed, contains frames or is written
entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be required to redesign
your site so that it is search engine friendly. If your site has
very few incoming links, a fair amount of link development will
have to be done in order for you to see the rankings and traffic
you're after. A web site that has been around for a while and
developed its PageRank, has a search engine friendly design and
obtains links on a frequent basis, will be able to reach top
positions much faster than other sites, once an optimization
campaign is under way.

2. The Keywords You Are Targeting - Some keywords are less
competitive than others. If you search Google for a keyword or
keyword phrase, you'll see at the top of the results how many
web pages are listed in those results. That is the amount of web
sites that are competing with yours to reach top page placement
for that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword
phrase "web design" has approximately 303 million web pages
listed in the results, whereas if you search for my name in
quotations, "courtney heard", you will see that there are only
508 web pages listed in the results. It is therefore, much
easier to rank well for the keywords "courtney heard" than it is
for web design. This is why you must choose keywords wisely.
With tools such as wordtracker.com, you can find out
approximately how many searches are performed for a given
keyword or keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords
are, the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site and
the longer the optimization will take.

3. The Size of Your Target Market - If your site is targeting a
global market, it will take a lot more effort to reach the top
ten search results than if your site is targeting a regional
market. It also depends on what sort of market you're targeting.
If your site sells a product that only a small group of people
will be interested in purchasing, your site will be optimized
easier than if the product or service appealed to the global
population. For instance, the keyword phrase "real estate" will
require a lot more effort to reach top page placement for than
"real estate canada" and even "real estate vancouver".

4. Competitor Sites' SEO Campaigns - You might find that once
your optimization campaign is under way, your site jumps and
slips and jumps and slips several times. This can be due to many
things, but the one we'll look at is your competitors' sites SEO
campaigns. If your competitors are aggressively optimizing their
own sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new
rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our 5th and
final point...

5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign - Your own link
development and SEO campaign should be thorough, covering all
the aspects of a well optimized site and utilising all your
resources for obtaining incoming links. If your SEO campaign
isn't approached properly, your competitors can surpass you in
the rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition and
adjust your efforts accordingly.

As you can see, there are many, many things that make your site
unique in the services it requires. Some sites can reach top
page placement by just changing a title tag, while others wait 6
months to even be listed on Google. The bottom line is, educate
yourself, ask questions, choose the right SEO company and be
patient. In time, your top page placement will come.

================================================================
Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs
(http://www.abalone.ca), an Internet Marketing and SEO company
in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development
and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses
since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles
are available at Abalone's Resource Library
(http://www.abalone.ca/resources/).
================================================================

The Truth Behind Click Fraud

2006-03-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

Great article to purchase from one of my favorite sites, Marketing Sherpas.

The Maddening Truth Behind Click Fraud Numbers -- How Big is Fraud Really?

SUMMARY: MarketingSherpa's research department hates click fraud even more than most people. Why? Because the numbers are shrouded in clouds of mystery and hype.

Now that Google's agreed to a $90 million settlement, what does that mean about the size of the fraud universe? Find out in this update from our Research Director Stefan Tornquist:

ARTICLE:
By MarketingSherpa Research Director Stefan Tornquist

For the last 18 months, click fraud has been in the spotlight, but not under the microscope. For all the hype, we’ve seen little in the way of hard numbers. And as you'll see below, MarketingSherpa's own surveys showed marketers themselves weren't terribly concerned about fraud. "It may happen to some people, but not to us," sums up most marketers’ attitudes.

Then last week Google announced they were paying advertisers $90 million to compensate for click fraud … and hype promptly hit a high water mark.

However, we wondered, what's the real data on fraud? ... click here to buy the ariticle.

Choosing the best domain name

2006-03-29T08:56:00.000-05:00

Your domain name is the .com, .net, .org or some other dot
something that people use to get to your web site.
Affiliateblog.com is mine.

A group of investors headed by Jake Weinbaum (the guy behind
Disney's go.com) paid $7.5 million for the name Business.com
back in 1999, aiming to make it a showcase B2B site. According
to their own press they have succeeded. Yes, it's a terrific
name - short, sort of descriptive and easy to remember. There's
some cachet there, but is it $7.5 million worth? That cash could
have bought a lot of promotion or branding for whatever name
they could have had for ten bucks, or a hundred, or two hundred
grand.

Each year for 15 years The first $500K in profit goes toward
amortizing the cost of that domain name. That could also pay
for a terrific affiliate program, a truckload of banner and PPC
advertising, and a nice BMW lease for Mr. Weinbaum (who probably
doesn't need a BMW).

But the Business.com thing has set off a wave of domain name
speculation that staggers the mind. People are snapping up
domain names and ransoming them off to wide-eyed entrepreneurs
with business plans and dreams of riches. Being a hardcore
capitalist I am torn about domain name speculation - I am
tempted to applaud the person making a buck by getting there
first and grabbing up the good names, but I am annoyed at the
restraint of commerce that takes place while someone negotiates
with one of these guys to get the right name.

So if I look at the top 50 websites on Alexa, most of them
should be easy to remember names, right? Wrong. I would argue
that only one, match.com, is an easy-to-remember name that
describes what the site is about.

I keep hearing that the reason these so-called generic or
descriptive domain names are so valuable is that some people
just type domain names into the address bar of their browser
rather than using a search engine. This fact seems to be
intuitively false. I find it hard to believe that someone
looking for information on a particular business would type in
www.business.com. Furthermore, if I look at the top 50 websites
on Alexa only one, match.com, is an easy-to-remember name that
describes what the site is about.

I wondered how many people actually type in their address bar
(address bar?) instead of using a search engine anyway. I
didn't find the answer, but Jupiter Media tells me that 64% of
people looking for something use a search engine.

That means that 36% of people use something other than a search
engine. What makes me believe that people typing stuff into
their address bar doesn't happen much is this simple fact...of
the people using search engines last November, 43% searched for
common websites like Ebay. In other words, instead of typing in
http://www.ebay.com, people Googled Ebay and clicked on one of
the results. That is absolutely hysterical. And totally
believable.

What do all these facts mean? They mean that as far as getting
the person there the first time, everyone starts off on the
same square. If your domain name can get the minority of people
who just type into their address bar to your website without a
search engine, it's worth more than someone who can't.

Here are some of the legendary domain name sales in the past
several years, according to Zetetic:

$12,000,000 - 2006 - sex.com
$7,500,000 - 1999 - business.com
$5,500,000 - 2003 - casino.com
$5,000,000 - 2002 - asseenontv.com
$5,000,000 - 1999 - korea.com
$3,500,000 - 1996 - worldwideweb.com
$3,350,000 - 1999 - altavista.com
$3,300,000 - 1999 - wine.com
$3,000,000 - 1999 - eshow.com
$3,000,000 - 1999 - loans.com
$2,750,000 - 2004 - creditcards.com

All of these with the exception of eshow.com (computer
networking) should get address bar traffic, because people who
type will type in the descriptive names - if I'm looking for
sex-related stuff, I'll type in sex.com. Where my mind gets
boggled is in ROI. If you're selling something on
asseenontv.com that nets you $25, you'll need to sell 200,000
of those George Foreman grills just to pay for your domain
name.

It also dawned on me that if you pay $12,000,000 for sex.com,
the free publicity generated is probably also worth millions.

So now everyone gets dollar signs in their eyes and thinks they
can make a million with their domain name. Here are some
examples of asking prices from Ebay:

6usiness.com (yes, that's a 6) - $7,000,000
ajobformom.com - $3,500,000
Exbay.com - $1,000,000

What does this mean for you? Well, there's some good news and
some bad news. Remember back a few paragraphs when I said that
everyone starts on the same square? That's really the good
news. You can choose a pretty good domain name, put together
some terrific content, employ some simple Search Engine
Optimization and buy some keywords or exchange some links and
you have a pretty good chance of getting people to your site
the first time. Since most of them are coming via a search
engine they're not going to notice your domain name until they
get there anyway, so your domain name means the same thing
(nothing) to the majority of people using the search engine.

One last thing: if you're hoping to be close to the top in the
search results (the so-called organic SEO), having your
keywords in the name of your website gives you a huge boost.
For example, if you're looking for affiliate blog, we will be
in the top five search results. In this case, Google ignores
TLD unless you tell it otherwise. Affiliateblog.info will come
up before us because their pagerank is higher (that's a
discussion for another day). So if you think getting near the
top of the organic search results is more important than having
someone type your name directly into the address bar (and you
very well could be right), then grab yourkeyword.cc or
yourkeyword.to. I've done it, and I've suggested it to others.

Once the user comes to your site the name just needs to be
memorable enough so they type it in to get there the next time.
Or they may forget and Google you again. I do it every day. No
matter how great your name is, if the content is lousy they
won't come back anyway.

So should you buy a domain name? I don't know - I bought this
one. And I made honorable mention in the Domain Name News for
the price I paid ($2500). I bought the name because I liked it,
I liked the number of incoming links to it, and I felt
comfortable paying for it. I've never paid more than a couple
hundred dollars for a domain otherwise, and I have more than
200 of them. My favorite by far is Blozzo.com, which I just
bought for $25. I have a pretty terrific idea in mind for
Blozzo too.

I would try to come up with my own name before I bought someone
else's. Here are some tips:

1. Try to go with a .com. It's the name everyone associates
with the Internet. Any other Top Level Domain (TLD) like .org
or .net is just going to confuse people, unless it sounds
better than the .com. For example, if you are about networking
or a network, a .net is more natural. If your site is
informational, you should use .info if it sounds okay. One of
my favorite $10 domains is seosecrets.info. I think it sounds
good. Hands down the most ingenious use of a TLD is
del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site. The use of the .us
TLD is absolutely brilliant.

2. Leave out the dashes and meaningless numbers. If it's a
choice between this-domain.com, thisdomain123.com and
thisdomain.net, take the .net. No one remembers to put the
dashes or the numbers in, unless they are an integral part of
the name like studio54.com or e-books.com.

3. Use the fewest letters possible to describe what you do. I
own Purple Monkey Media Group. Purplemonkey.com would have been
perfect. It's taken, of course. Purplemonkeymedia.com was not. I
grabbed it. I could have taken purplemonkeymediagroup.com, but
it would have been too long. Remember, every additional letter
is a potential typing error.

4. If you have a domain name that needs to be reinforced, get a
good logo and sprinkle it liberally on your web site, along with
some slogan that will reinforce the name in people's minds. You
would be surprised at how inexpensive this can be.

5. If you can save a few bucks with your own domain name or by
buying a cheaper domain name, do it, and use the money to get
yourself placed higher in the search results or Adsense
placement.

6. If you can't come up with a descriptive domain name, go the
other way. Depending on your site's focus, pick a memorable
short name that will stick in people's minds, get a great logo
and include the name prominently in your advertising and
marketing. It's called branding, and it's tried and true.

7. Ask your wife, friend, boyfriend, husband, dog, lawyer,
associate, Mom, Dad, cousin, uncle, Police Chief, blog writer.
They're smarter than you anyway, and they are going to be the
one looking for the site, not you. Some of my best ideas have
come going to or from somewhere with my wife and just
brainstorming.

Here's the bad news: it may take you a while to come up with
the right name. There's more good news though - in the real
world most domain names sell for $1,000 or less.

Can't get started? - Go to a site that sells domain names, and
put in a word that describes your business. See if the name is
taken (it probably will be). Open your word processor or go to
thesaurus.com and put the word in. Get a few more words. Check
those. If there's a .com available and it looks good, grab it.
If not, add the word site or blog or online to your word, and
see if that works. Don't wait. If you think it might be
useable, spend the $9.00. I came up with blogduck.com. I liked
it. I decided to think about it some more. Someone grabbed it
that afternoon. Just chisel loose the nine bucks (or less) and
buy the domain.

If you want something a little more sophisticated there are
several sites that are good for helping you come up with a
name, like DomainsBot (http://www.domainsbot.com) and
Nameboy (http://www.nameboy.com).

If you draw a blank, go over to Sedo (http://www.sedo.com) or
Afternic (http://www.afternic.com) and see what's for sale.
Search for a word that describes what you think people will
associate the name of your site with, and see what pops up.
That may give you some ideas.

These sites and more can be found in Tools section of
http://affiliateblog.com.

Domain Name Journal (http://www.dnjournal.com/) tracks domain
name sales. Going there is always fun.
================================================================
Matt DeAngelis runs http://affiliateblog.com. Matt is the former
Chief Technology Officer of Modem Media, a pioneer in the
Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution,
Matt devised the technology behind ad campaigns and online
presence for a good portion of the Fortune 100.
================================================================

Copyright © 2006 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.

Search Engine Optimization and Valid HTML

2006-03-22T12:18:00.000-05:00

Valid HTML is important - right? We are told every day in the website owner community that valid HTML code is the 'right' way to build your website. Valid HTML allows for greater accessibility, cross-browser compatability, and can even possibly help your search engine rankings.

But then again...

I decided to test whether valid HTML can actually help your rankings in Google. A lot of website owners talk about how their non-compliant websites do well in Google and how their complaint sites may not be doing as well. The implied suggestion here is that Google either simply did not care about errors in HTML, or even more extreme, that Google preferred non-compliant websites - a charge that would certainly be puzzling if it were true.

A Sneak Peak at Results - Google Preferred Invalid HTML?

The results of my test surprised me. Not only did I find that Google apparantly does not give any preference to sites with valid HTML, Google actually seemed to prefer the sites with blatant errors in their code.

Think about this - if Google does give preference to websites with errors in their HTML, then it would actually benefit you to program errors into your website (as far as the SEO is concerned). Now I am not ready to accept that as a valid conclusion, but the results are what they are. With these conclusions staring back at us, I though it necessary to publish the methodology and results, and open up the topic for discussion.

Setting Up the Study

As we all know, Google does not rely on any one factor to rank a website. As a result, a website could be horribly optimized in one aspect of their website, but still reach the top of the rankings because they are well optimized elsewhere. This makes testing individual aspects of SEO tricky.

In order to determine whether valid HTML was actually a factor that contributed to your ranking, even in the smallest of ways, it was necessary to isolate every other aspect that could possibly influence the ranking of a website. To do this, I looked to do the following things:

- The keyword density had to be identical
- The page size should be identical (just in case this effected the crawlability)
- The competing websites should be newly registered domains, all registered on the same day (removing age of site from the equation)
- The competing websites should be hosted on the same server
- Inbound links should be identical and from the same site so as to avoid different link weightings
- The links should have identical anchor text
- Since all the links would come in to the same site, link order might affect rankings - this would need to be neutralized
- The content should be identical so as not to influence the rankings in any other way (possible poison pill - I'll explain later)

The only difference between the two sites would be that one would be made with valid HTML and the other would be made with obvious, and significant, errors in the HTML.

My initial thought was to have just two competing websites both trying to rank for the same non-sense keyword (the keyword would be one that currently has no rankings in Google). The idea was to get a snapshot of how Google initially ranked the websites. But there was a problem.

To read more on this subject, click here.

How SEO and SEM can help your website business

2006-03-03T13:31:00.000-05:00

(SEO) Search engine optimization and search engine marketing (SEM) are two important ways to promote your business to online customers. SEO requires making your site search-engine-friendly, and SEM involves targeting potential customers by purchasing relevant keyword ads on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Alta Vista.

SEO: There are many ways to optimize your site so that search engines will list your site higher in their rankings. Start with the following:

* Links from other sites: Search engine spiders move from site to site across the Internet by following hyperlinks. The more high-quality and high-trafficked sites you have pointing to your site, the more important the search engine will think you are. Make sure to register your site with directories such as Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org).

Use proven SEO tools to get high Google rankings.

* Internal links: Make sure your site is well-organized and easy to navigate. A site map will help visitors - and spiders - nawigate your site.

* Metatags: Metatags are hidden HTML directions for Web browsers or search engines. They include important information such as the title of each page, relevant keywords describing site content and the description of the site that shows up when a search engine returns a search. Make sure your metatags accurately describe your content.

* Keywords:Spider likely words or phrases that users might type into search engines to find your site. Make sure your content contains those!words or phrases, and include them in the title portions of your site and in relevant content.

* Search engine optimizers: Businesses often enlist the help of optimizers who specialize in improving the visibility of their clients' sites. Among other things, they'll register your site with major search engines, list it in the appropriate directory, write optimized content for your site and recommend changes to your site architecture.

SEM: The more targeted your advertising, the higher your ''conversion rate.'' Conversion rate refers to the percentage of ads that actually convert to sales or some other desired action (such as registration). One way to ensure that your prospective customers are qualified is to buy ads according to specific search engine keywords that a user might submit. For example, if you're selling a Minolta 60X digital camera, buying the keyword ad ''Minolta 60X digital camera'' will most likely give you better results than buying the keyword ''camera.''

Some terms get bid up quickly - for instance, you'll pay a lot more for a technology keyword than a knitting keyword. SEM, however, has a higher conversion rate than other online marketing methods, so it can still be a cost-effective route to take.

Make sure you have compelling ad copy luring people to your site. Provide a call to action to prospective customers to encourage them to click on your link. Also, make sure that you send prospective customers to a targeted page on your site. Your home page will convert fewer customers than a page describing the exact service that you promote in your keyword ad.

You generally pay for keyword ads on a cost per click (CPC) basis. Review the keywords you've purchased to ensure you're getting a good return on your investment. If not, try a different word or phrase. You can also try different ad copy or landing pages on your site to see what's more attractive to prospective customers.

Companies offering CPC programs include Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, FindWhat, Kanoodle, Entireweb, Industry Brains and LookSmart.

Entireweb Express Inclusion

Once you've exhausted your SEO and SEM options, there are a couple of other routes that will produce results. You can put together an online ad campaign by either buying advertising on sites that appeal to your demographic or trading ads with other sites. In addition, you can send out e-mail newsletters. Encourage customers to provide their e-mail addresses so you can contact them with useful information and promotions.

About the Author: AllBusiness.com is a leading online resource offering advice and solutions for growing businesses. AllBusiness.com includes how-to articles, forms and agreements, directory listings, product comparisons and more.

SEMPO Facecs SEM & SEO Industry Problems

2006-02-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

SEMPO (The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) represents the Search Marketing industry's attempt to develop a unified voice.

The Search Marketing industry is young, and awareness of what SEMs do is poorly understood by the public at large. When the major media do write something about this industry, the coverage is often sensationalistic. A recent example was a Newsweek article offering to take its readers "inside the shadowy world of SEOs." Another example was Wired Magazine's story entitled "How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet" which predicted an apocalyptic battle of "search giants against scam artists in an arms race that could crash the entire online economy."

While sensational stories on the sneaky antics of blackhat SEOs, click fraudsters, and search spammers might sell lots of magazines, they don't accurately describe the overwhelming majority of the people in this business, who behave ethically, run sensible companies, and are genuinely passionate about Search's promise for marketers.

To combat such misperceptions, and to increase awareness and promote the value of Search, SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, was formed in August of 2003. Currently, SEMPO's memberships consists of some 286 SEM and SEO firms, both large and small, in-house search marketers, and search professionals at publishers making it the Search Marketing industry's most influential trade group.

SEMPO's 13 board of directors are elected each February, so Mr. Frog thought it would be a good time to inspect the platforms of each of the 22 people hoping to claim a spot on its board. By studying these platforms, he hoped to get an inkling of what SEMPO feels are the industry's greatest challenges for 2006.

Issue #1: Putting Search on the Marketing Map

While the majority of candidates agreed that SEMPO has made good progress improving the search industry's image and raising its profile among marketers, several acknowledged that much work remains to be done. Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman of Did-it Search Marketing and current SEMPO chairman, noted that "even with the fantastic growth we have enjoyed, paid search and SEO are nearly invisible in the upper echelons of major corporations."

In a similar vein, Sara Houlebek, former Chief Strategy Officer for SEM firm iCrossing, stated that SEMPO should be "courting brand marketers to encourage a line item for SEM within the annual budget" and "reach beyond the industry to influence brand marketers who have yet to establish a line item for SEM." Echoing this view was Acronym Media's CEO Anton Konikoff: "The time is right for SEM to move beyond being a niche market and take its place as a fast-growing and proven contributor to the global advertising ecosystem."

Issue #2: Continuing Research

Several candidates stressed the importance of SEMPO beefing up its research products, the most important of which is its annual "State of the Search Industry Report" issued each December.

SiteLab's co-founder Dana Todd called for SEMPO to conduct "more focused studies" capable of developing more granular data than permitted in its annual survey. Sara Houlebek noted that developing "year-on-year data will be critical to assessing the value of SEM," especially in terms of evaluating the long-term ROI of organic SEO.

Also stressing the importance of SEMPO's role as impartial research was Enquiro President's Gord Hotchkiss, who called for the organization to "leverage current research being done so that SEMPO can act as a driver of primary research." Noted Zunch communications Chairman and CEO John Sanchez, "these studies add value to the membership and also help to bolster the image of the organization as a whole."

Issue #3: Searching for Standards

Although SEMPO does not consider itself a standards-setting organization, or one whose role includes awarding a "Good Housekeeping"-style seal of approval to its membership, several candidates clearly wanted SEMPO to do more in the area of defining the outer limits of industry behavior.

Red Dog Interactive's Director of Search Marketing Paul S. Breummer wrote, "I would like to spearhead a process that will allow the search marketing industry to continue increasing its value, authenticity and integrity by identifying standards and supporting ethical business practices. I would also like to set a process in motion to authenticate and demystify organic SEO because I believe too many marketers ignore this valuable strategy at their peril."

"SEMPO needs to help develop neutral standards for marketers to evaluate potential agencies, benchmark campaign success and overall best practices," wrote Global Strategies International's Bill Hunt, a view echoed by Spidersplat Consulting's Senior Consultant Alon Y. Cohen: "I'd like to see SEMPO become known as the main arbiter for SEO/PPC/SEM-related complaints. (It might even) have a profile with number of complaints similar to what the BBB (Better Business Bureau) has."

Issue #4: Continuing Outreach

Several candidates suggested new ways for SEMPO to expand its influence by providing more hand-holding for its constituents, who can already avail themselves of extensive educational resources at the SEMPO website's "Learning Center," an area providing online Webinars, articles, editorials, case studies, and a lengthy list of links to SEM-oriented Blogs, discussion forums, and offline resources.

Wrote PRWebInternational VP Mike Jolly: "I would like to see SEMPO create a pool of members that are willing to act as mentors trying to grow their own businesses. This mentoring process could continue via audio downloads, teleconferencing, and monthly messages focused on the quality growth and professional development of SEMPO members."

SEMPO Looks Ahead

Overall online advertising is still in its infancy: according to the Online Publishers Association, less than 6 percent of media advertising dollars are allocated to online channels. As media spending shifts, the need for a group to serve to give the Search Marketing industry a coherent voice grows greater. As noted by Sara Houlebek, "the engines' recent forays into video, mobile and radio suggest that as all content is digitized and served based upon a consumer-initated action (akin to a keyword query), SEMPO will have an opportunity to influence a much larger trend." And as Kevin Lee notes, we are entering a world where "the public, and even the government, needs to understand the Search Engine Optimization Company."

If you are not yet a SEMPO member, you may want to consider joining this group of influential search professionals and making your voice heard.

About the Author:
Mr. Frog is a leading Search industry visionary. Mr. Frog is a member of the Did-it Search Marketing team which accompanies him to most major marketing conferences.

Getting Traffic with SEO: Content or Links?

2006-02-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

An article by one of our favorite authors, Joel Walsh. It is a simple concept but one that need to be brought up from time to time. Search engines love content. It is their sole purpose to find as much of it as they can and then decide its relevancy based on search terms we enter. Should SEO companies focus on Content or Links?

Simply having keyword-optimized pages of content on your site won't rank you high for competitive search engine keywords–that's a fact of life. But keyword-optimized content can really bring in the traffic for low-competition and unique keywords. The low-competition and unique keywords are typically longer multi-word variants of the keyword. For instance, instead of “search engine ranking,” “ranking for search engine traffic niche keywords.”

If you have lots of pages of optimized content–and you optimize well–all the search engine traffic from these low-competition keywords will really add up. Plus, you'll usually get more repeat visitors and type-in traffic, too.

Just picture this realistic example of traffic-building with content vs. ranking-building with links. Company A invests $5,000 for link-building in order to rank for a competitive keyword. Company B invests the same amount, only in content. Company A and Company B: each start out on equal SEO footing: equally old websites with the same amount and quality of content, same content management systems, the same PageRank and quantity, quality, and relevance of inbound links.

Company A's research reveals that $5000 is just the amount needed to get on the first page of Google for a target keyword that should deliver 100 unique visitors per day if the site ends up in the first position. They dutifully get inbound links optimized for that keyword, following all SEO best practices. Three months and $5,000 later, the site is stuck somewhere toward the bottom of the second page of Google search results for the target keyword. Six months later, they've actually sunk a bit lower in the SERPs. The good news is that the site is getting some traffic from the links built and from the lowly search engine position, but nowhere near the 100 visitors/day they were hoping for from search results.

Company B, meanwhile, had content written around a long list of keywords with little or no competition in the search engines, using up-to-date search engine copywriting techniques. They've been enjoying a growing stream of visitors to their site almost since the first page of content was added. Three months later, the site's search engine traffic has grown by a hundred unique visitors per day, or 3,000 per month. Moreover, Company B's repeat visitor traffic has also jumped. Type-in traffic has increased, presumably as visitors forward the URLs of useful pages to their friends. Page views are up, too, not only from more repeat visitors and type-in visitors, but also from first-time search visitors staying longer and browsing more pages. Six months later, the website's content has built a loyal following on the net, generating even more repeat visitors. The search engine traffic is as good as it ever was.

What happened?

---
Big Oak Can help you avoid these pitfalls and write your entire website using SEO techniques that don't overpower your site's message.
---

Pitfalls of Link-Building for Search Engine Ranking

Company A thought it had a fairly sure thing: build enough optimized links for the keyword, taking care not to trigger search engine penalties. Yet as they've discovered, there is no sure thing when it comes to search engine rankings:

· Over-optimization penalty minefield. The search engines, particularly Google and Yahoo!, are very risk-averse when it comes to ranking sites well for competitive keywords. On the whole, they are perfectly willing to risk dropping several good sites from top rankings in order to try to keep one bad site out. They are constantly tweaking their algorithms to identify sites whose link structures are not indicative of a quality site. In the process, plenty of good sites with good SEO also get swept up. This risk of failure is the inherent risk of SEO. True, most of the time, a good site with good SEO does move to the top. But in a large minority of cases, quality goes unrewarded.

· Competition and the moving target. As Site A was moving up the search engine results for its competitive target keyword, so were the other sites. There is no rest for the victorious when it comes for SEO. The top sites for highly competitive keywords are constantly building new optimized links. That's why any SEO effort has to aim to do at least ten percent better than the site currently in the position it's targeting.

· Lack of keyword diversity. Too often, websites with modest SEO budgets (and $5,000 is modest when it comes to a competitive keyword) aim for just a few keywords. Given all the potential pitfalls of an SEO campaign, you need to be going after ten or more target competitive keywords, and at least another ten related but less competitive keywords. That way, failure for a few keywords won't scuttle the whole project. Meanwhile, search engines look for diversity in targeted keywords, so you get much more out of targeting a larger group of keywords. If you can't afford to do this, you're really better off not going after competitive keywords. Sure, you might get those rankings. But what happens if you've spent your budget and still have little to show for it?

Meanwhile, the fundamental advantage of pursuing low-competition keywords is that, by definition, it's much closer to being a sure thing.

Advantages of Web Content SEO

· Greater certainty. Not only is a page of content extremely likely to bring in search engine traffic—unlike the similar investment in links—it won't suddenly disappear. The sites linking to you might stop anytime, or do something to stop links' passing search engine value (such as adding the “nofollow” tag or switching to a search-engine-unfriendly content management system).

· Cost. Traditionally, copywriting has been more expensive than link-building. But that's changed. As “nofollow” link-Scrooge-ry becomes more and more common, and as paid and reciprocal links get downgraded, the real cost of obtaining quality links increases. Meanwhile, the copywriting market has increasingly adapted to the needs of search engine marketing. To get a search engine visitor, you don't need a Pulitzer-prize winning essay or a killer sales letter. You simply need highly focused, readable, keyword-optimized, information-packed pages of around 250 words each—and more and more copywriting and SEO firms are delivering this service cost-effectively. Blogs, meanwhile, let you and your employees add content easily. Bulletin boards (modified to be search-engine-friendly) let site visitors add content, too. In fact, “natural content” from blogs and bulletin boards is now much more viable than natural link building.

In conclusion, when you look at SEO, don't forget that your number-one goal is not to rank high for a certain keyword, but to get more search engine traffic. In some less-competitive sectors, high rankings may still be a realistic and effective proposition. But increasingly, ranking high for competitive keywords is no longer the best way to get traffic.

About the author: Joel Walsh is a professional in the fields of copywriting and SEO who has recently launched UpMarketSEO.com, an SEO company

Need help with your SEO Copywriting, call Big Oak today.

Adding Credibility to Your Website

2006-02-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

How to add credibility to your web site
The Stanford University compiled a list of 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research and on several studies about that topic.

The Stanford list confirms the recommendations we gave in previous issues of this newsletter and the tips that are available in the marketing tips section in IBP. Although the information in the Stanford list is not new, it is still very important if you want to be successful with your web site.

Why is credibility important?
Credibility is crucial if you want to make money with your web site. Your web site visitors must have trust in your company. It's pointless to spend a lot of work on getting visitors from search engines if these visitors don't convert to sales.
The Stanford guidelines for web credibility:

Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
Show that there's a real organization behind your site.
Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.

• Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
• Make it easy to contact you.
• Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
• Make your site easy to use -- and useful.
• Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently).
• Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
• Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

What does this mean to your web site?
Make sure that your web pages are optimized for human web surfers before you start with your search engine optimization activities. Your web pages must be appealing, credible and convincing.

If done right, getting more visitors means getting more sales

When you're sure that your web pages generate sales, optimize them for high search engine rankings. Focus on people first, then on search engines.

If you have convincing web pages, getting more web site visitors means getting more sales. These web site promotion tools help you to get as many visitors as possible.
http://www.axandra.com

Make Sure Your Articles are Being Published

2006-02-05T21:33:00.000-05:00

There are a few software directory software programs in the marketplace. Some are great, some are good, and some stink to high heaven, for the writer and for the website owners.

In an ideal world, all article management software would be easy-to-use for the webmaster. Also in an ideal world, the submission process would be fast and easy for the writer. But, this is not an ideal world.

In today\'s article hungry marketplace, there are literally hundreds of websites where you can submit your articles.

[b]Three Types of Article Directories[/b]

There are three kinds of article directories:
[b]*[/b] Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint
[b]*[/b] Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reading
[b]*[/b] Article Directories Inside of a Website, with Articles Available for Reading

With these different kinds of directories, you will find different categories of webmasters. This distinction is more important than you think.

[b]*[/b] Corporate Owners
[b]*[/b] Independent Online Business Webmasters
[b]*[/b] Hobbyist Webmasters

Personally, I own two article directories. One has nearly 2500 articles in it, and the other has nearly 5000 articles in it.

Both of mine are of the first type, Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint. But, I am not a corporate owner. I am an independent online business webmaster.

The reason why the type of owner is important is that the type of owner will determine where your articles will be published today AND tomorrow.

Corporate owners have a bottomless supply of web server space available to them. In the corporate category, these directories are the most important:

[b]*[/b] http://www.ezinearticles.com
[b]*[/b] http://www.goarticles.com
[b]*[/b] http://www.ideamarketers.com/
[b]*[/b] http://www.uniterra.com

[b]Directory Owner Budgets[/b]

Most new article directory owners have a small budget for web hosting, and therefore, they have a limited amount of web server hard drive space.

Most of these new directory owners have jumped into their website with both feet hoping to cash in on their Google Adsense revenue.

After a few months, the truth will crash them into the wall.

On http://www.articles4reprint.com, I have more than 4500 articles live. I have another 1000 articles pending my approval. Generally, it takes 30 seconds to approve one article. So, the articles currently pending on this site will require an investment of another 8.5 hours to bring up-to-date. One day a couple of weeks back, I spent 19 straight hours approving articles on this site. I am not going to stop taking submissions to this article directory site, but it does require a lot of my time to maintain.

Perhaps I am exceptional. I will spend the hours required to approve articles, but will the next person?

I started this site with a basic account. I have had to upgrade my web hosting package three times to be able to continue accepting articles to the site. Will the next person make this kind of commitment?

The payoff for operating a website like this one is the Adsense revenue developed from hosting such a wide range of content on the website. In the case of the http://www.articles4reprint.com website, I am currently generating only $40 per month on my Adsense account. Will the next person consider this a fair trade of time for money? Likely not.

[b]I Know This Is My Business, But Don\'t Take My Word For It[/b]

At various times, I submit articles to various directories. The distinction of \"at various times\" is actually important. Websites that were accepting direct submissions from me six months ago are no longer accepting submissions from anyone.

Writers want to believe that they can just crank out hundreds of articles, generating hundreds of links back to their websites. Sometimes they can, and at other times, they cannot.

--

Big Oak SEO can help with your article writing and writing your press releases. It is part of our SEO strategy for each and every customer.

--

It comes down to this. Every website where I submit articles has a human moderator at the other end of the transaction, and they have the right to choose what materials they will use and what materials they will not use. Each webmaster can also consider whether the time required for the approval process will help their bottom line.

These big article directories no longer accept articles from anyone. Also shown is the last date an article was added to the site.

[b]*[/b] http://www.article-emporium.com/ - December 2005
[b]*[/b] http://www.articletime.com/ - December 2005
[b]*[/b] http://www.learnthis.info - August 2005
[b]*[/b] http://www.family-content.com/ - May 2005
[b]*[/b] http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ - April 2003

Many smaller directories have also stopped taking articles. In most cases, the websites show that they accept articles, but you never realize that they are not printing your articles until you look or until you hit the Submit button on the Submission Form. Or, you can continue submitting to them, never realizing that you are wasting your time, until you go to search the website for your articles.

http://www.articlefinders.com says that they have a monster backlog and they are not taking new articles until they get caught up.

http://www.marketingtroll.co.uk seems to indicate that they are still accepting articles, but they have not published a new article since May of 2005.

Folks, I could go on forever. I could literally show your hundreds of directories that seem to be accepting articles, but they have not published any new articles in months or years.

Generally, Mailing Lists on the Major List Servers Deliver Better Results

Article distribution email groups on Yahoo and Google generally provide good results, but they fall into disuse almost as frequently as web article directories.

Here, I will show the subscriber count of the Article Distribution Group, the last time an article was published through the list, and the URL for the list.

[b]*[/b] 1003 – September 2003 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublisher/
[b]*[/b] 560 – September 2001 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublish
[b]*[/b] 2002 – December 2000 - http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives
[b]*[/b] 752 – June 2005 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeWrites
[b]*[/b] 474 – December 2000 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The-Article-Depot
[b]*[/b] 465 – August 2003 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WriteQualityContent

The following article distribution group is active, but there is no moderator to review your posts:

[b]*[/b] 1390 – June 2005 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise (the only people who can submit to this list are those who were not moderated at the time the list owner disappeared.)

[b]In Conclusion[/b]

If you are distributing your own articles to a house list, check back from time to time to make sure that they are actually using your articles. Always verify your results. Don\'t waste your time submitting articles to people who will not even look at your articles.
This article was found at Site Reference.

Why Reciprocal Linking Works For Promoting Your Website

2006-01-27T12:37:00.000-05:00

Why Reciprocal Linking Works For Promoting Your Website

Article by Dirk Johnson, LinkStrategy.com

The first question you have to ask and answer about whether to embark on a reciprocal link exchange program for your website is "why". After all, it's work, time and money. It has to stand up to business analysis. I've been doing reciprocal linking for websites since 1996. In that time, I've seen this work evolve from one that was primarily a way for niche interest, hobbyist-oriented sites to reach out to each other, to one that is now a business function, often driven by the need for quality traffic exchange, and good search engine results.

Web Promotion Before Google

Before Google came along and put the focus on link popularity, only the savviest businesses were running link directories and pursuing links with other relevant sites. Most businesses ignored reciprocal linking.

The prevailing wisdom was that a business website should not link out to anyone else, if they could help it. The concept was that you should capture visitors, hold them hostage, and never, ever cooperate with anybody else. This has been proven wrong.

What's interesting, though, is that the purpose and linking methods that worked well for those niche sites in the pre-Google days still work well today. It is important to keep this in focus, as there are now a lot of people out there who are trying to do this work using misguided methods, for misguided reasons.

Why Link?

First and foremost, linking should be pursued as a branding function of your business. If other websites that are relevant to your business are running link directories, and offering to list yours for free, then it makes sense to get your site listed. In as many of them as possible. That is just basic Common Sense 101.

In order to get these links, the accepted protocol is to first list the other site on your site, then make the request for a link, using the proper method of submission (via email or online form, if one is provided). This work is specifically termed "directory-to-directory reciprocal linking".

"Linking should be pursued as a branding function of your business."

Before people started playing games with PageRank and Alexa rankings, and other tangential matters related to linking, most linking took place between sites within relevant realms of interest. Asking for links outside of your realm was not only rude, but it was almost always a waste of time. Relevancy was the primary criteria, and as long as there was some sound reason for the exchange, and each webmaster approved of the other's site, it was done. It's a private exchange between two willing parties, and it should not be judged by others.

The Linking Challenge

The challenge here is that there is a lot of data management work involved in managing directory-to-directory reciprocal link exchanges. So when search engines started to reward sites that had links, the search engine optimization (SEO) crowd, which had largely ignored linking, suddenly needed them in order to succeed.

The SEO crowd began to devise all manner of strategies that were designed to allow them to get the results they wanted, but with as little linking work as possible. We've seen theories that only links from pages with PageRank (PR) 4 and higher were "worthwhile". People claimed that un-reciprocated links were "hurting" your rankings through "PR-leakage", a concept that has been proven to have no merit. There's even more bizarre stuff out there, but you get the idea.

Over time, it is becoming clear that the websites that have ignored all of these complex theories and still treat linking as a branding function of the business, whereby they simply continue to pursue relevant links with quality sites, are still doing the best with the search engines. I see this all the time. Traditional linking with quality relevant sites works. Sites that link with quality sites relevant to the same industry get the double benefit of having their sites listed in as many relevant locations as possible, thus getting quality traffic directly from the links, while enjoying considerable search engine benefits.

The Long Term Commitment and Payoff

Treat this work as a branding function of your business. One that never ends. Commit to it, with tools, a budget, and dedicated human resources that will do it properly. Look at it as a long term necessity that really does pay dividends.

It may not be the easiest thing to manage, but many website owners consider reciprocal linking to be the single most cost-effective marketing investment that they have made in their sites. There are other ways to get links to your site, such as the outright purchase of links, or the pursuit of content citations back to your site. But on a cost per link basis, directory-to-directory reciprocal linking is a very favorable investment, when done properly.

Google has risen to the top of the search engine world, in a large part because their algorithm that takes linking into account. It is highly unlikely that they will turn their back on it, and recent indexing changes at Google have only further supported traditional, honest linking practices.

On a more fundamental level, linking is the very foundation of HTML. Which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. The term Hypertext specifically refers to text that is linked and "active". That is, you can click on it in an HTML browser, and the browser will take you to that location on the World Wide Web. The attraction of text-based linking was the founding reason behind HTML and the World Wide Web. Prior to that, people using the Internet had to enter their destinations manually using arcane codes. HTML and browsers made it easy to navigate the Web.

"Traditional linking with quality relevant sites works."

It's very basic, really. The World Wide Web is a new and unique medium. It is a computer network, based entirely on links between pages. The more links you have, the more opportunities you have for people to visit your website. Links are literally the currency of the World Wide Web.

All of this comes down to choices. As it stands right now, those who make no effort to link their sites in some way will only continue to fall further behind their competitors. Since directory-to-directory reciprocal linking is the most cost effective way to get this done, then it should be very high on your list of necessary tasks, if you are serious about promoting a commercial website. It goes with the territory.

Dirk Johnson has been managing link campaigns since the mid-1990s, and writes for various sources on web promotion and linking. His advice and commentary is regarded as "expert through experience." Dirk's approach to linking has been more traditional in scope, treating it as a branding function, and not a search engine optimization function. He operates LinkStrategy.com www.linkstrategy.com.

Article Writing for Google Links

2006-01-25T21:01:00.000-05:00

Take Advantage Of Google's Linking Algorithm To Maximize Links To Your Site

Links to your site are one of the key components of Google's PageRank technology. With a high page rank, you get higher position on the search engine results page, resulting in more visitors to your site and improving your chances of earning a living online.

As the founder of articlemarketer.com, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that writing articles results in a ton of links to your site. Of course it does.

But there's a trick to it.

Many of the internet marketers who submit free reprint articles go about it all wrong. They fail to take advantage of Google's linking algorithm and they lose some of the power of their articles.

What is Google's linking algorithm? 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the googlebots are spidering the web, seeking out content, classifying and indexing the billions of web pages available to web surfers.

This results in a standard "Bell Curve" of links to your article around the web. A few links begin to appear within a few days, rising to a peak at about 8-10 weeks, and then tapering off over time. That's the Google linking algorithm at work.

Over time, Google eliminates many of the links generated by a given article. Some call this the Google "Duplicate Link" penalty. I wouldn't call it a penalty. It's just the way things work on the web. And with a clever approach, you can take advantage of it.

You can keep your links high using the Article Marketer Bonanza approach. Our authors use it all the time. That isn't to say that you can only use it if you're an articlemarketer.com subscriber. I'm giving you the approach here and now, absolutely free. You can use the Article Marketer Bonanza approach if you use phantomwriters.com, Article Announcer, or even if you submit your articles manually.

What is the Article Marketer Bonanza approach?
The Article Marketer Bonanza approach keeps your links high by taking advantage of the Google linking algorithm. Google wants fresh content and they begin to "penalize" (although I still wouldn't call it a penalty) you when your content becomes stale. With the Article Marketer Bonanza approach, you never rely on stale links to drive new traffic.

Article marketing is just like every other form of advertising. Coca-Cola and McDonald's don’t run just one television commercial and expect a continuing stream of customers to buy their products. Of course, they have the benefit of zillions of dollars and the resources at their disposal to continually buy new commercials.

Your resources are a bit more limited. You have less money and fewer people. Time is of the essence. That's what makes the Article Marketer Bonanza approach so successful.

Most internet marketers can produce a quality article in about an hour (it took me exactly 27 minutes to write this one.) That includes spell checking and everything. But let's say it'll take you more than twice as long to write 500-700 words on your favorite topic.

Write a few articles. How many? Let's say you write 3 articles. If you write them and submit them all today, Google's linking algorithm will give you a few links over the next couple of days, a lot of links over the next 8-10 weeks, and then they'll taper off. It's like turning off the faucet.

The Article Marketer Bonanza Approach – Step by Step:

Bonanza Step 1: Submit one of your articles today. This allows the algorithm to begin working. Watch your links increase.

Bonanza Step 2: Submit the second article next week. Google goes to work on that one. You just added several new links, and you're not near the peak yet. Now you've got two articles climbing the charts.

Bonanza Step 3: Submit the third article the following week. Again, Google gets busy. More links on top of the growing links from article two, which have been added to the large number of links that are already pointed at article one. You've set things in motion.

Bonanza Step 4: Ok, it's been three weeks, it's time to write a few more articles. Set aside a few hours and capture your wisdom on paper.

Bonanza Step 5: Submit your articles, one per week, over the next three weeks. You've now got six articles in the market place, and you haven't yet reached the peak. Your link count is going crazy.

Bonanza Step 6: It's now week 10. Your first article is dropping off the charts as Google "settles in" on the links it'll keep. That's ok because article 2 and 3 are holding your link count high, and you've got three more climbing the charts.

Bonanza Step 7: That's all there is to it. You keep submitting new content and Google rewards you with a permanently high link count. You can keep this going indefinitely. Your link count will never drop.

Depending on how prolific you are as an author, you could submit your articles faster – two or three per week. If you love writing and you write articles on several topics, you could submit new articles every day. You'll always have new fresh content bringing new links to your site

SEO Helpful Strategies for RSS Feed Promotion

2006-01-20T09:21:00.000-05:00

With so many strategies in the SEO world, using RSS Feeds can often be overlooked. This article on RSS Feeds can help you understand how effective RSS can be towards the SEO and Internet Marketing of your site.

Top 6 Strategies To Put Your RSS Feed Promotion On Steroids

As I wrote in one of my previous articles, the orange revolution has begun. RSS is here and it has taken the internet by storm. The number of webmasters becoming a part of this online revolution is growing on a fast pace.

The reason is, RSS feeds have proved to increase traffic in a big way. And creating your own RSS feed would surely be a step towards tapping in a new source of traffic.

However, just publishing your own RSS feed and waiting for miracles to happen won't work. In order to get those most wanted subscribers, RSS feeds need to be promoted and marketed in the right way. With a good dose of quality traffic directed towards your feed, long term subscriptions will definitely start pouring in.

The following 6 ways will not only help you get the word out about your RSS feed but also help you retain a fresh flow of targeted visitors to your website.

Strategy #1: Create an individual webpage for your RSS feed

The most important part of your promotion should be creating a webpage dedicated to your RSS feed. Since RSS is still new to most of the online users, you can give your readers an introduction and explain how beneficial it is to subscribe to your RSS feed.

You can also have a small FAQ section about RSS here answering any questions and doubts your readers might have. Most of the time, the key here is to give your potential subscribers more than one option to add your feed. Different subscription options like "My Yahoo!" "My MSN" and "Newsgator" allow your visitors to add and subscribe to your feed with their own convenience.

Strategy #2: Add the Auto-Discover code to your RSS feed webpage

Browsers like Mozzila Firefox have added a lot of new features in the past few years and made browsing a different experience. One of the good features offered by Firefox is subscribing to RSS feeds.

That's right, it acts as an aggregator and lets readers add feeds directly into their browser. The browser automatically detects RSS feeds on the site and asks the user, while he's surfing the site, if he or she wishes to subscribe to the feeds. In other words, it makes it very easy for users to centralize information of their choice.

However, for Firefox to detect your feed on the webpage, you need to have the "Auto - Discover" code on it. So that the browser can automatically detect the feed, alerting the user.

Simply include the following code in the <head&rt; section of your web pages:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_YOUR_RSS_URL"&rt;

This should set you up for some automatic subscriptions to your feed!

Strategy #3: Write and distribute articles

Writing and distributing articles is a well known and a very respected method of driving traffic to your website. It has been effectively used by thousands of webmasters over the years to bring in some quality visitors.

Therefore, it's an excellent idea to promote your RSS feed through articles written by you. There are many benefits that you'll experience once your start writing your own informative articles. First of all, you'll be recognized as an expert in your field. Secondly, you will gain the trust of your readers even before they subscribe.

Your article doesn't have to be very long in length. It can be anywhere between 500 -1000 words. A "resource box" in the end should follow your completed article. The resource box usually is a short bio of the author. Here is where you can promote your RSS feed and give a link to it, explaining about it in brief.

Once you are done with the article, you can go ahead and submit it to online article directories like ezinearticles and goarticles. You can also go ahead and contact individual ezine publishers for publishing your article, as they are always on a look out for fresh content.

It's really not a big deal to write an article on the web. If you know your expertise, then I'm sure you can come up with an article worth reading.

Strategy #4: Submit your RSS feed to directories and search engines

Submitting your RSS feed to online directories will certainly draw in visitors who are actually interested in what you offer. In the past few months a lot new directories have come up. For example, Syndic8 and 2RSS are thriving with thousands of RSS feeds on different topics with many more being added daily. Your feed can very well find its place in these ever growing directories.

There are even feed specific search engines like Feedster, which index only RSS feeds. These search engines get visitors who are searching for RSS feeds on a specific. So getting listed in them could convert to more targeted traffic and give your feed a good subscription rate.

These niche directories and search engines always tend to bring out the best out of your promotions. They don't cost you anything, so are definitely worth a try!

Strategy #5: Promotion through email

Promoting your RSS feed via email is one of the most under - used methods. However, email promotion for your RSS feed usually yields in a higher subscription ratio.

If you are already running a newsletter, then you should consider including a section introducing your readers to your RSS feed. Since, RSS is growing rapidly, you can expect a large number of your email subscribers turning to your RSS feed.

You can also strike joint venture deals with other ezine publishers and swap ads promoting each other's RSS feeds. This can mutually work wonders for both the publishers. You can even try promoting your ezine on the "thank you" page of your email subscription or your joint venture partner's page.

Lastly, don't forget to promote your feed in your email signatures. As your day-to-day correspondence can get you new subscribers for your feed.

There are many creative ways you can use email to promote your feed. You just need to come up with your own, which compliment your business in a positive way.

Strategy #6: Update your content regularly

Keeping your RSS feeds fresh and updated is very important if you want repeat visitors and new subscribers. Just like content oriented websites are updated regularly, content-wise, your RSS feeds are no different. RSS is meant to deliver new and up to date information, as it directly goes to the aggregators.

Your readers really don't have any reason to be subscribed to your feed, if it doesn't deliver new updated content. RSS feeds aren't just meant for new visitors but also your old subscribers. You have to keep it updated for people to keep coming back to your feed.

On a finishing note, RSS feeds are an absolute way of turning the cards in your favor when it comes to building traffic and a loyal subscriber base. You need to keep on experimenting with new promotional methods and test new marketing techniques.
That's all it would take to put your promotion on steroids!

by Mustafa Khundmin

--

Please contact Big Oak SEO if you would like help implementing an SEO strategy on your site using RSS Feeds and other useful SEO techniques.

Google has a new Challenger, Microsoft Search

2006-01-14T09:40:00.000-05:00

While Microsoft has its faults, here at Big Oak we like what the MSN Search Engine is doing. It is the new Google and maybe beating Goolge at its own game. MSN search results reward more for content than links and with so many people cheating to get links, content can often be the better judge. We'll see how this all plays out, but you have to like the fact that MSN is keeping Goolge and Yahoo! on their toes.

--

Microsoft is planning to release an assault on the search advertising industry this coming June, according to the Associated Press. Pulling from the Chinese research leg of the company, the Beast of Redmond aims to add highly targeted and contextual next-generation search marketing technology to its weapons cache to continue its bout against the new nemesis found in Google.

Being in the shadow of another company is certainly not something Microsoft is used to. Sure, Sony gave the software company a proper thumping with PlayStation 2, a hard lesson that propelled an aggressive dropping of Xbox 360 gamer bait in time for Christmas. "In time for the holidays" was a strong left hook to Sony's chin before the tech giant could throw out the monstrously high-tech PlayStation3. Microsoft is hoping an early attack put a crack in Sony's glass jaw.

Microsoft's new plan of action smacks of a similar counterattack strategy. In the search marketing business, it's been a losing battle for second place. Not realizing the early importance of search technology, Gates and company outsourced their afterthought to Yahoo!'s Overture Services. As their share of the search market has gone from bad to worse, dropping by as much as eight percent in recent years, that strategy has proven ineffective.

Though some have speculated a stronger relationship with Yahoo! is forthcoming, the relationship is scheduled to come to genial close in June. It appears that's when MSN will make its push for at least second place, if not able to over come a strong memetic force in Google.

The AP reported that 25 percent of sponsored links come from Microsoft's recent testing of adCenter and that in June that percentage will grow to 100.

Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled its adCenter Incubation Lab, shortened to adLab for the time constrained, a joint-effort between MSN's adCenter and Microsoft Research that has given way to a state-of-the-art laboratory in Beijing. adLab has "a mission to research and incubate advanced technologies for MSN adCenter, designed to provide advertisers with rich targeting capabilities based on audience intelligence information and give consumers a more relevant online experience."

That relevant online experience includes advertising across several platforms from blogs to search to video all aimed at targeting a precise audience. Microsoft demonstrated some of these technologies at their recent adCenter Demo Fest.

" These prototypes hold the promise to change online advertising dramatically in areas such as paid search, behavioral targeting and contextual advertising. Also shown were projects addressing areas of incubation in their earliest stages of investigation, such as ad bar-code readers, social network mining, and video and large-display ads," said Microsoft in a statement.

The adLab team in Beijing consists of letters-after-their-names scientists with specializations in data mining, information retrieval, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, auction theory, visual computing and digital media.

One of the more interesting highlights of the adLab was the discussion of video hyperlink ads that detect products shown on TV and allow an instant referral to information about the product.

So basically, as Mike Meyers is making fun of product placement in Wayne's World, a Doritos hyperlink could appear in future syndicated showings, taking would-be customers to information pages as well as where Doritos can be bought.

"The exciting work being shown at adCenter Demo Fest and the new Microsoft adLab reflects Microsoft's commitment to innovation in the field of ad products," said Tarek Najm, general manager of adCenter at Microsoft.

"The Microsoft team of top researchers in this field is unsurpassed and certain to produce compelling advances that will impact and ultimately change the game in online advertising."

And if they can make good on those promises, the game just might be changed.

About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

--

If you would like to help your search engine rankings in all the search engines, please contact Big Oak SEO.

Basics of Search Engine Optimization

2005-12-22T22:44:00.000-05:00

Have an SEO question? It is probably answered in this article. If it isn't give us a call and we'll do our best to share our knowledge with you. I have an SEO question.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of
people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few
questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ
article in the hopes that it will help people understand the
basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole
domain.

Q: Why are Search Engines Important To Me?
A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The
only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2%
of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users
click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the
Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.

Q: How Do Search Engines Decide on Their Rankings?
A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a
high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high
ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search
engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their
search results by sending out 'spiders' or 'robots' which
'crawl' (analyze) your site and 'index' (record) its details.
Complex algorithms are thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gifhen employed to determine whether your
site is useful and should be included in the search engine's
search results.

Q: Can't I Just Pay for a High Ranking?
A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like
Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more
traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words,
their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a
good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived
search engine.

Most search engines these days return two types of results
whenever you click Search:

* Natural/Organic - The 'real' search results. The results that
most users are looking for and which take up most of the window.
For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of
links to sites with content which is related to the word you
searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant
and important they are.

* Paid - Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make
their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their
ad whenever someone searches forhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gif a word which is related to
their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural
search results, but are normally labeled "Sponsored Links", and
normally take up a smaller portion of the window.

Q: How Do I Get a High Ranking?
A: There are four main steps:

Step 1 - Use the right words on your website.
Step 2 - Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours.
Step 3 - Use the right words in those links.
Step 4 - Have lots of content on your site & add more regularly.

Q: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
A: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of creating a
website which is search engine-friendly. This means:

* Using the right words in your copy.
* Using the right words in your HTML code.
* Structuring your site properly.
* designing your site properly.

For more information on these 4 elements, download our free
SEO Secrets' eBook (http://www.divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm).

Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a
high ranking, 'Link Popularity'.

Q: What is Link Popularity?
A: Think of the search engines as a big election. All the
websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website
are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the
more important it is, and the higher its ranking. Link popularity
is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.

Links to your site tell the search engines how important your
site is. They assume that if it's important enough for a lot of
other sites to link to, it's important enough for them to
display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most
important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links
you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.

Q: Are Some Links Better Than Others?
A: Yes! The ideal kind of links are those that:

* come from relevant sites (sites which use the same keywords);
* come from important sites (have a high ranking);
* include your keyword as part of the visible link text;
* include varying link text (not the same link text each time);
and
* come from a page that links to few other sites.

When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of
these conditions, it says, "Hey, this site must be credible and
important, because others in the same industry are pointing to
it."

Q: How Do I Get Lots of Links Back to My Site?
A: There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are
dubious (like auto-generation software, and sites set up by
webmasters simply to host links to their other sites) and I
won't be discussing them here. Others, like those discussed
below, are legitimate.

* Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories (and other free
directories)
* Check where your competitors' links are coming from
* Article PR - Write and submit articles for Internet publication
* Swap links
* Partner websites
* Pay for links

For more information on these methods, download our free SEO
Secrets' eBook (http://www.divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm)

Q: What Do You Think is the Best Way to Get Lots of links?
A: Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters
publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline.
With article PR, you don't have to pay for the link, you
determine the content of the page containing the link, you
determine the link text, and the link is more or less permanent.
A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each
time is another link back to your site!

For more information, read How to Top Google with Article PR
(http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm) or visit
ArticlePR.com (http://www.articlepr.com).

Q: How Do I Write a Good Article PR Piece?
A: See - How to Top Google with Article PR
(http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm).

Q: How Do I Get a High Ranking Using Free Reprint Content?
A: See - Get a top 10 ranking without paying a cent
(http://www.divinewrite.com/Top_Ranking_Free.htm).

Q: How Long Does It Take to Get a High Search Engine Ranking?
A: A long time! It's impossible to say how much time you'll
need to spend generating links, but you can be sure it'll be a
while no matter which method of link generation you use. You
just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking.
Even then, you'll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to
the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Q: What is the Google Sandbox, and is It Real?
A: The Google Sandbox theory suggests that whenever Google
detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a
period while it determines whether your site is a genuine,
credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the
creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose
other than to boost the ranking of some other site).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but
there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically
proven its existence.

Q: What is the Google Dampening Link Filter, and is It Real?
A: The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests that
if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or
thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may
sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering
your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but
there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically
proven its existence.

Q: What SEO companies Should I be Wary of?
A: Be wary of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results
in a given timeframe, especially if they won't expand on their
methods for generating links back to your site.

Q: What Tools Can You Recommend?
A: There are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The
following are just selection. All tools are free unless otherwise
indicated.

* Backlink checker
* Backlinks by IP address
* Link Popularity Tool
* Number of links required to rank
* Google Alert

* Google Sitemaps
* Google Sitemap Generator<
* Google Toolbar

* Indexed Pages
* Keyword Analysis (Nichebot)
* Keyword Analysis (Overture)
* Keyword Analysis (WordTracker - Paid)
* Keyword Difficulty
* Keyword Identifier
* Keyword Density Measurement (Simple)
* Keyword Density Measurement (Complex)
* Plagiarized Copy Search
* Traffic Rank
* Search Engine Rank
* SEO Report
* Top 10 sites for a keyword by no.
of backlinks and age
* Top 10 sites for a keyword
* Spider Simulator

Q: I'm Confused About All the Terms Used in SEO, Can You Help?
A: See our SEO Glossary
(http://www.divinewrite.com/seo_glossary.htm).

Q: What is Keyword Analysis?
A: The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing
a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to
rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis.
Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge
of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.

Q: Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?
A: Theoretically, no. But I wouldn't risk not doing it -
especially as it's free. As soon as you register your domain
name, submit it to Google! Even if you haven't built your site,
or thought about your content, submit your domain name to
Google. In fact, even if you haven't fully articulated your
business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to
Google.

Q: Should I submit my site to the search engines more than once?
A: No needhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gif. Although some of the search engines allow you to do
this, there's really no need.

Q: What are directories and should I submit my site to them?
A: Directories are websites (or web pages) which simply list
lots of websites and give a quick description of the website.
Some are free and some require you to pay for a listing. Free
directories are useful because you get a free link. However,
the links aren't worth that much. Paid directories can be good
if they're relevant, but they can cost a lot in the long term,
so choose wisely.

One essential directory for any website is the DMOZ Open
Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.com/add.html).

Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter (http://www.divinewrite.com)
and article submission specialist (http://www.ArticlePR.com).
He is a director of article PR company Article PR
(http://www.ArticlePR.com) and also of copywriting studio
Divine Write (http://www.divinewrite.com)

If you have more questions, please give Big Oak a call: 1-804-741-6776 or visit our web site at http://www.bigoakinc.com.

Linking Strategies - The Search Engine Perspective

2005-12-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

One of the major session tracks during day 3 of the 2005 Chicago SES
was devoted the art and war of linking. In my last two articles, the
SEO/SEM perspective towards linking campaigns was discussed
thoroughly. However, the final installment of the linking sessions
featured representatives of the all the major search engines.

Have reciprocal links worked for you? How have they worked as part of
your site strategy? Tell us more at WebProWorld.

Speaking at the Detlev Johnson-moderated track were Kaushal Kurapati
of Ask Jeeves, Charles Martin of Google, Tim Mayer of Yahoo, and
Ramez Naam of MSN Search.

While the session was being billed as the Search Engine Q and A On
Links, the speakers each took turns giving a short presentation
before they took questions from the audience.

Admittedly, the audience questions consisted of the standard "should
I engage in a reciprocal linking campaign," which seems much like the
content you come across in the major SEO-related forums. However,
while the search speakers did not really reveal anything new, the
went a long way in confirming the information I delivered from the
previous linking sessions.

Each speaker informed the audience to focus on producing quality
content; using solid, keyphrase-based words in a link's anchor text
(as opposed to "Click Here"); avoiding link farms and purchasing
links (a topic neither side, the SEO and the search engine reps will
never agree on); and making sure that you don't obsess about
backlinks.

Instead, and much like the SEO/SEM perspective, the search reps want
site owners to focus on producing quality content, which will help
ensure these pages will be linked to.

One piece of information I'm pleased to divulge has to do with image
links. Both sides of the search industry advise against using image
links because the search engines cannot follow them.

However, if you are going to use image links, both Kaushal Kurapati
of Ask.com and Greg Boser of WebGuerilla suggest including the link
anchor text inside of the images alt tag. This will allow the spiders
to follow and credit these links.

Looking at these linking sessions as a whole, the main theme, at
least from my perspective, revolves around the production of quality
content. By doing so, your site can be viewed as an authority in the
field being targeted, which will help in the acquisition of passive
links, something the engines seem to be placing more value on as it
is.

There is, however, more to discussed here. Because the session was on
a time limit, not all of the audience questions were answered. In
order to accommodate the crowd, the search engine reps hung out
afterward and continued to answer questions.

As with past conferences, normally, the bulk of these audience
members gravitate to the Google rep, in this case, Charles Martin.
After yesterday's session, I'd say Martin has an idea of how the
conference life of Matt Cutts goes.

Because of the recent chaos caused by Google's notorious Jagger
update, I wanted to get Martin's thoughts about whether or not Google
treats links differently with a post-Jagger index and algorithm in
place.

Martin stated that Jagger was a name provided by the search engine
crowd, not Google themselves. Concerning how Google weights and
evaluates links in a post-Jagger world, Martin answered yes and no.
Some links are treated differently while some are not.

by "jeanatluri"

MSN becoming a better search engine than Google?

2005-12-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

Is MSN Search Becoming a "Better Mousetrap"?
by Jack Spirko

Is MSN Becomming a Better Search Engine Then Google? It is an old cliché, "build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door". Looking back at the history of the search industry there is no better proof of this then the success of the internet search giant Google but are they now being beaten at their own game? Possibly, let's look at how Google got to where they are, what has happened since they became the "big dog" and what their most recent algorithm changes mean for web users and Google's competitors.

First let's start with why Google became "the search engine". In the beginning of search engines there were a ton of players some you may remember and some you may not. Some survived and others died off and many of the small fish were eaten up (bought out) by their brothers as the big three and came to control the vast majority of the search market. Google came out of this with the biggest chunk by far of that majority, it didn't hurt that for a while they were actually providing the results of their competitors (it was not that long ago that Yahoo was simply a mirror of Google's results) but there was something more at the core of their success.

Keep in mind that as this war was raging the internet was really still quite young and there were a lot less sites online even say 3 years ago then there are today. Take that back 7-8 years when the net was really starting to grow and Google first launched in 1998. At that time people where not yet doing a ton of "buying" online they were more in the information gathering world. You really have to think about what it was like just a short time back. People were quickly moving to looking up any question, concept or piece of information online and for a huge number of people it was a brand new experience. Further when you started trying to find sites about "monarch butterflies" or "classic muscle cars" or "fine cigars" there were actually a lot less sites out there then there are today about what ever subject it may have been that you were looking to learn about and people were hungry for new information.

During that time since buying was less of a factor people honestly were looking to find sites built by John and Jane Doe about what ever subject they most enjoyed. Chat was a relatively new thing, blogs were unknown, forums and news groups were a new concept for most surfers and most new web surfers thought AOL was "the internet". Yes we have come a long way in 7 years to say the least. Into this world came Google as just one of many search engines but Google was different! How so seems to have been forgotten by many. It was not the plain look of Google with out weather stats and scrolling news that made it become the huge player it is today it was functionality and its ability to help users find sites they failed to find on the other search engines greatly expanding the available information that users were actively seeking.

Over time the word got out, people started to use phrases such as "go google it" instead of "look it up online" and soon Google clearly had the better mouse trap and the cliché became reality as the world indeed beat a path strait to the Google door step. During all this time people began to actually buy things online, Google introduced contextual ads and an empire was born. All was not well in the Google world though because internet marketers started to effectively do something that we today call search engine optimization and very soon after search engine spamming became a reality and a real problem. Almost at once Google started to move toward not just judging on page text and factors but looking at links to one site from other sites.

Optimizers didn't give up though reciprocal links became all the rage of course people still continued to tweak content and the "Google Dance" became a fact of internet life and a selling point for those offering search engine marketing services. Optimizers would take an action, Google would react and that brought us clear through to today. Over time the value of links has grown enormously all while the value of the actual content on web pages has decreased a great deal. So, what do we have today? A Google that I personaly consider broken, a Google that so values links and the anchor text in them that is now lists many pages for terms that are not contained anywhere on the site at all. Clearly when this is the case the user experience must suffer.

Yet this is only part of the problem for the Google user today. There is one more factor that made Google so successful in the beginning and that seems to have been lost on just about everyone including most "SEO Experts". This little factor is the speed of indexing and listing of new sites. Google seems to be addressing this with their SiteMaps program but that applies to fairly technical site owners who know how to create an XML map and register it with Google. I guess in time most templates and WYSIWYG editors will start to create them automatically but there are millions of sites with out XML on them and there probably will always be millions of them. In the beginning Google had the hungriest spider on the web indexing new content so quickly that once you had your main site indexed any updating at all would get you spidered every few days to two weeks maximum even if you were a new site that today would be labeled a "PR0" and "in the Google sand box".

Today anyone monitoring the big three search engines can tell you MSN is currently in the old Google pattern of indexing new sites with record speed and revisiting existing sites so fast it is almost scary. MSN seems to be finding pages almost as fast as we can upload them; recently I honestly had 15 new pages of content indexed one day after uploading on a brand new site with no XML feeds of any kind and this site had only been online for two weeks total. In short if you put a new site online and compare the reactions of the big three in most cases you will have the following results. Google will index it the slowest (unless you get a link on say a PR7 site), Yahoo will get to it a little faster but stall in indexing all the pages (perhaps to push paid inclusion?) but put out a few decent links and MSN will have the whole thing indexed in a week or two. Then the real key is if you are doing any updating and additions MSN's spider will keep coming back very often to do updates.

Of course as an SEO Specialist, I like the fact that MSN indexes my client's sites quickly and that it still assigns a lot of weight to "on page factors" which I can easily control but if you look at this situation only as a optimizer, you miss the real important factor about what MSN is doing right in indexing quickly and giving reasonable weight to on page factors. Simply put if you are looking for the most diverse content and specifically new content on any given subject right now you will find the least dominance by giant corporations and the most relevant, new and useful content on MSN. Now if you take nothing else from this article understand the following point.

"People do not go online on a daily basis to buy things any more then they listen to the radio daily to buy things. They go online for information and entertainment and search engines have become the means to find those resources. When they then need to buy something online they generally use the search engine that most often helps them find entertainment and information for daily use to begin looking for the item they want to purchase. Google succeeded in drawing the most visitors due to its' ability to connect people with information and entertainment not for its' ability to sell products".

So why is this so important? Because it was speed of indexing and the ability to show users the most relevant content that made Google the choice for people who wanted to be educated or entertained and today it is MSN that is providing the most up to date and in most areas, the most relevant information. MSN also currently has the biggest problem with spam, however if they can gently correct that with out placing too much weight on anchor text I think MSN will have a real winner on their hands.

To conclude let's go back to the radio analogy so the full ramifications of up to date, accurate and relevant organic search results can be understood for the power they have. For a radio station advertising is NOT the "product" they are selling. The real product is the information and entertainment that they provide and that is what gives them a base of listeners. Once they have that base of loyal listeners they can then sell advertising as a source of revenue. Many things drive listeners to choose a station such as the music they play, the DJs they have or the advertising the radio station does for itself. Yet what makes any station successful is simply the number of people that tune in and listen on a daily basis.

In the search engine world it is the organic listings that are the "product" all the "sponsored listings" are just that, advertising. So just like in the world of radio the search engine that provides the best product will in time get the most users and as they do that the value they can offer to their advertisers goes up and there fore so does the amounts they can charge and the number of advertising slots they can sell.

Only time will tell if MSN can truly capture as much or even more of the search market then Google but their growth is quite impressive so far. In July of 2005 MSN Search had about 12% of the total search market, as of December of 2005 that number grew to about 22%. That is almost a 100% increase in only 5 months. So it does indeed seem that MSN is at least currently on the right path toward one day becoming the "better mouse trap".

About This Author:

As a the head of search engine marketing services for MasterLink a Dallas Web Design Company, Jack Spirko and his team are responsible for overseeing internet marketing services.

What Linking Techniques are Relevant with Google

2005-12-05T20:39:00.000-05:00

Insightful article concerning Google's suspected plans concerning link relevance after the Jagger update.

Relevant Linking With Post-Jagger(naut) Google

Since the last Google dance reciprocal links lost some of their magic. Before, their very existence ensured high search engine rankings. But Google rocked the world (wide web) when it began to evaluate the relevancy of those links. Many high-ranking sites woke up to find themselves suddenly plunged to the bottom of the list, replaced by newer, seemingly less important, sites. Why? Relevancy.

Google found that its own value as a search engine was being threatened when too many searches resulted in returns of little or no relevancy. Realizing how damaging this was, it set out to re-align the universe, or at least the web. And with good reason.

Since the birth of the internet, links have been its cornerstone. That was the entire point of the internet: For computers at various locations (initially colleges and government locations) to be able to "link" to each other. As it became available to the general public, relevancy became an issue, but only as an organizational tool. With the introduction of commercialization, a sudden boom created a demand that a general organizational tool be developed. And search engines answered that need. So, in essence, search engines are all about relevancy.

But until recently the progamming tools available to analyze these links was limited. They could only see "x" amount of links and whether they were in-bound, out-bound or reciprocal. While they had the capability of analyzing millions of sites in a few minutes, they lacked the programming to break down the results, until recently.

The result?

Those who worked so hard to create massive link directories (also known as linkfarms) on their sites in order to force their rankings up find, instead, all they've "harvested" is link graveyards. And, though it's painful for them, it is necessary, too.

But the motivation of those marketers in search of massive amounts of links is understandable. Because, to them, link relevancy equates to promoting their own competition. Who wants a link that may, in some way, pull traffic away from their own site? While that may seem possible, the truth is that is not necessarily the case.

Understanding link relevancy, without linking to the competition, is the key to successful reciprocal linking today. So what IS non-competitive reciprocal linking.

Say, for example, a site sells baseball equipment. They link to every other baseball related site-- that DOESN'T sell equipment. Little league sites, major league fan sites and sites for adult league baseball.

But it could also, strictly speaking, move on to other sports equipment sites. And, because baseball is a game and "games and toys" go together, it could link to other toy sites, especially outdoor toy sites and still be considered relevant on another level.

Taking that one step further, because baseball is a popular sport for kids, it could also link to school-related sites. Then, backing up again and exploring the avenue of adult league baseball, it could link to businesses that typically support those leagues: restaurants and bars, for instance. And, unless that baseball equipment league sells uniforms, it could link to sports-uniform sites. The list goes on and on. And all of those sites are relevant in some way to baseball equipment.

This is, of course, a lot more work than simply linking to every other willing site. But there is a twofold bonus in this. Because, not only will 10 well-related sites linked together do much more for rankings in the search engines, the actual direct links will be much more active themselves, producing high-quality traffic that will lead to direct sales.

One of the most important factors in understanding the internet is that it has become, like the real world, "worlds within worlds," (niches) or a place where whole sub-cultures can happily co-exist without touching any other sub-culture. Yet the magic of the internet is that we are not confined to, nor defined by, any one sub-culture.

About This Author:

Marige O'Brien works as a writer, web designer and internet marketer. Her website, Tracker Mo's Den (http://www.trackermo.com), is a collection of some of the best affiliate programs and internet marketing tools available. And, for the most part, the links on her website are all relevant to that.

Big Oak SEO can help with your linking strategies and more importantly help you with your online web marketing strategy.

Web Directories Increase Site Traffic, Helps SEO

2005-11-28T09:49:00.000-05:00

Making web directories and their one-way links to your website has always been part of Big Oak's SEO plan, but with recent changes in Google's search engine it has become even more important than ever.

The Value of Web Directories
by S. Housley

Web directories are an important component to search engine positioning. Directories come in all shapes and sizes, some are generic, while others are highly specialized. Directories, are defined as categorized topics or collections of information organized into a tree like structure where categories are used to define each groups association.

Large directories like Yahoo tend to have general themes and may charge for listings. While smaller niche directories like http://www.finance-investing.com offer free listings and profit from advertising revenue or pay per click models like Google AdSense.

Being listed in a directory not only brings in targeted traffic, it provides a one-way link from a website with similar content. Directories are generally highly ranked in search engines, and are considered well respected resources, two traits that are desirable in link partners.

While smaller directories that focus on a specific niche might generate less traffic, the quality of the traffic from a niche site is usually highly targeted and will be superior to that generated from general search engines.

If you are selling fire alarms, traffic from yahoo will be less qualified than traffic from Alarm Tools, http://www.alarm-tools.net . Most visitors to Alarm Tools will have a genuine interest in alarms and alerting systems. The nature of highly specialized directories result in visitors who have a serious interest in the directories theme, or a at the very least an interest in a theme related to the directory.

As a result, web publishers need to make a conscience effort not to ignore the value of directory listings. Regardless of their size, a related niche directory listing can be extremely valuable.

Many directories offer sponsorship opportunities. Vendors can optionally purchase sponsorship to increased their exposure with a bold listing or top category listings.

Determining a Directories Value
It is difficult to assess the value of directory listing, as there is an obvious advantage to a listing of a closely related theme directory that is difficult to measure and quantify. In general, webmasters can use common web guidelines to determine the popularity of a directory and assess the directory link's value.

To assess the value of a web directory, consider the PageRank of the webpage where the link placement of your site will occur. The PageRank is indicative of how important Google may find a specific page. Another reliable third party measuring tool is Alexa. The Alexa ranking provides insight into how popular a website is. In general, a link from a web page containing a PageRank of 5 or higher is considered very good. A link from a site in Alexa's top 100,000 is also generally very desirable.

Compare the following two directories' Monitoring Tools http://www.monitoring-tools.net and RSS Specifications http://www.rss-specifications.com . Monitoring Tools' main page has a PageRank of 5 but most internal pages that contain links have low page ranks and the overall Alexa ranking of the site is over 650,000. While RSS Specification's claims a main Google PageRank of 6 and subpages all contain a minimum of a 5 for PageRank, the overall site is ranked 32,000. Clearly if you are in the syndication business, RSS Specification's would be a very desirable link partner, while you would have to weigh the cost benefit and position of a link from Monitoring Tools.

To determine a sites PageRank without downloading the Google Toolbar, use the following online tool from RustyBrick http://www.rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php . A website's Alexa ranking can be found by entering the URL into Alexa http://www.alexa.com .

It is recommended that PageRank and Alexa ranking be only used as a guide when determining a directories reputation. It is important not to get too caught up in either Google PageRank or Alexa Ranking as webmasters can use "tricks" to artificially inflate their numbers.

The bottom line, links from directories that are small but niche, can provide quality web traffic.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for FeedForDev http://www.feedfordev.com an RSS component for developers.

Big Oak SEO can help with your submission needs and help drive more website traffic to your online store. Let our search engine optimization skills and techniques make your business more profitable.

SEO Tip - Checking Backlinks to Your Site and Your Competitors

2005-11-19T09:37:00.000-05:00

Checking Backlinks in Google (how to find out "Who links to my website?")

How do I check who links to my website? How do I check who is linking to my competitor's website? You can do both exactly the same way: Simply type this into the Google search box: link:http://www.sitename.com/

This works the same way in both Yahoo and MSN.

Want to save time?

Try this to save some time. In Google's search results they combine and cluster backlinks from the same site. You can quickly scan most of a websites backlinks by increasing the number of search results appearing on the search engine results page by following this simple tip:

A typical google search string looks something like this:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=
navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=adsense

Inserting &num=100 at the end of the search string will increase the results showing on the page to 100. Your search string will look like:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=
navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=adsense&num=100

Now you can look quickly through your own backlinks and your competitor's backlinks as well one hundred at a time, rather than the standard ten. Remember, knowledge is power and SEO is all about knowledge, especially knowing who is linking to your competition and why.

Let us help increase your knowledge and your search engine rankings. Visit Big Oak, a Virginia SEO Company

Google Sitemaps Become More Useful for SEO

2005-11-18T08:39:00.000-05:00

While I have debated the usefulness of Google Sitemaps, I believe Google is finally making this tool something more than just an unproven novelty.
--
This just in: Google sitemaps is finally a useful tool. When Google launched sitemaps in June of 2005, they predicted that sitemaps would either be an enormous success or a colossal failure. Up to this point, sitemaps looked as if they were going to be that colossal failure. The system simply did not offer enough benefit to website owners for the amount of work required to put together and maintain an XML sitemap.

But it seems as if Google sitemaps is going to get new life. Google upgraded sitemaps to be far more powerful than before. Sitemaps is no longer a tool to simply get your website indexed, it is now a useful tool to quickly find problem areas on your website that might be hurting your ranking or indexing.

View Improvements to Google Sitemaps
There are several improvements to Google sitemaps. You can see them by going to their website. Here is a list of their new features.

Errors on Your Website

No Actual Sitemap Required

A Significant Change in Attitude Towards Website Owners

A portion of this article was found at Site Reference.

I am always in favor of Google helping us understand the mysteries of their ranking system, if you need help in your understanding of getting better rankings on Google, visit Big Oak SEO for more information.

Best Selling, Hottest Christmas Toys for 2005

2005-11-16T16:33:00.000-05:00

What Are the Best Selling Christmas Toys This Year?
Discover this year's best selling Christmas toys - of every possible type...

Without annual best selling Christmas toys lists, buying toys for Christmas would be much more difficult, don't you think?

Christmas is, after all, for 'kids,' and kids ARE all about toys, especially at Christmas! And don't 'kid' yourself -- THEY don't need best selling Christmas toys lists to know what 'all the kids' are going to get this year.

There is nothing that can compare to the joy of watching a child's face light up on Christmas morning when they open the best selling Christmas toys that have been lovingly chosen for them by family members. Sure, we also buy clothes for kids, or educational whats-its, or furniture and accessories for their rooms, perhaps, but the best gifts of all - especially in the eyes of the children - are toys!

And one of the absolute joys of the Christmas season is helping to make their dreams come true. They've written their letters to Santa, they've been good (okay, well, how about good 'enough?') and they've got that wonderful childhood anticipation thing going on now - how can you resist?

According to all the child development experts - the world over - toys are essential for a child's normal development. Well, that's no surprise, is it? Toys - whether it's the old favorites or any of the wonderfully imaginative new best selling Christmas toys that surface every year - are FUN. Toys are creative and colorful, and often unpredictably humorous - in short, toys have all the ingredients of fun and joy that children need every day. (And quite often, whether the toys are billed as educational doesn't really matter so much - children who are playing with toys ARE learning, every minute).

But, as any parent knows, shopping for best selling Christmas toys every year is NOT necessarily fun. Fighting the traffic, trying to find a parking spot within a mile of the mall, then fighting through the crowds - only to find that the toy section in every single store looks like a circus (and that's just the frenzied staff!) - is not something to look forward to, ever. Add that to all the other adult stresses at Christmas, and you've got a recipe for high blood pressure, NOT fun.

So don't do it. :)

Treat yourself to some online shopping this year, and you'll find that shopping for best selling Christmas toys for your favorite little people will finally be as much fun as playing with them is! On this site, we've tried everything we know to make it totally easy for you to find all the best selling Christmas toys you'll need - of every type you can imagine, and for every age group!

Reprinted from http://www.bestsellingchristmastoys.com/

Please visit our favorite online toy store for all of your Christmas Toy Shopping

Local Search Should Be Part of Search Engine Optimization

2005-11-14T15:05:00.000-05:00

The web may be for the world, but it is also for the customer across the street. Local searches account for much of the business being done on the web, don't ignore it when optimizing your site for the search engines.

Are you ready for local search?
Google's upcoming service Google Base (see news below) shows a clear trend: search engines try to make their search results and ads as targeted as possible.

Search engines want to customize their results for the individual user based on the interests and the local region. It's likely that local search features are going to become more important than it is today.

Why is local search important to your business?
Local search is the most important trend in search marketing. According to latest estimates, 20 percent of all searches are locally oriented. As you probably know, Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have started their own local search services to attract people who use their PC instead of the yellow pages to find local services.

Research firm The Kelsey Group forecasts that the local search market will be worth $3.4 billion in five years. This is a huge opportunity for all small businesses with an Internet presence.

How do you optimize your web pages for local search?
If you want to be found for local searches, you should include the name of your city and your region in the title tag of your web pages. If possible, include your full postal address in the footer of your web pages so that search engines can assign your web site to a special area.

There are also a variety of new meta tags for local search engines. Add these local tags to your web pages so that search engines can find out the location of the company, the zip code and the city name. For our company we entered the following:

<meta name="city" content="Richmond">
<meta name="state" content="Virginia">
<meta name="country" content="United States (usa)">
<meta name="zipcode" content="23233">

With these tags, local search services can even direct visitors to the exact latitude and longitude of the company location.

The benefits of local search are clear: it allows you to find customers in your area who are willing to purchase from your company. It's a fast growing market with a lot of money.

You should make sure that your web site is optimized for local search so that your business can benefit from this trend.

Reprinted from www.axandra.com.

If you need help marketing your site on the web, for national and local clients, please contact us at Big Oak

How to stop Blogger Comment Spam

2005-11-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

We all hate it spam, we all hate Blog Comment Spam. So how do we stop it. Well, unless you want to turn off the ability to post comments, you can't.

But you can curb it and stop all but the most determined spammers. And most spammers go for the easy fix, so if they can't post quickly, easily and with automated tools you will probably have very little problem with Blog spam after doing these tweaks that Blogger allows you.

Login to your blogger account and then choose the Settings tab. Then choose the Comments section of the site. From there I recommend the following choices.

Backlinks set to Hidden
Comments set to Show
Who Can Comment should be set to whatever you feel comfortable with to start.
Show word verification for comments? set to Yes
Enable comment moderation? set to Yes

AS you can see, you can now choose to moderate your comments via either email or from blogger.com.

After enabling comment moderation in the Settings - Comments section of Blogger, users can choose whether they want to moderate by email or not. Comments go under a Moderate Comments tab. Multiple comments can be published or rejected by clicking checkboxes next to comments before making the choice to publish them or delete them.

It is good to see new tools to help prevent spam, without cutting your blog from outside communication. Who knows? This Blog thing might catch on after all.

Is Reciprocal Linking a Valid SEO Strategy

2005-11-02T11:02:00.000-05:00

We have been asking ourselves this exact question. Now we reprint a very telling article with examples that seems to back up our own assumptions that reciprocal linking is on its way out.

--

Are Reciprocal Links Dead?

If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.

The latest ‘Google Dance’, nicknamed ‘Jagger’, has caused major concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine’s listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening and see what we could learn.

We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google’s Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time of this writing.

By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of Google’s actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser’s ‘link:’ command. G only reports some of the links to your site, not all.

Here is what we have seen:

Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking site.

As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G’s actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure.

But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in G’s archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of ‘aging’ process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no longer appeared ‘relevant’.

The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.

If your web sites have suffered from the latest ‘dance’, you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.

During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.

This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.

We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness.

In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent.

We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool’s game we are sure to lose.

Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings.

It’s something to think about.

About the author

Will Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware, software and web development experience. He has sat on the ANSII and ISO standards committees, been a speaker at major technical conferences in the US, Europe, China and Singapore and has written numerous articles on various technical subjects. Visit Web Stats Gold for more articles and information on web analytics. You may contact him at will@webstatsgold.com
--

Indeed this is food for thought. At Big Oak we have been tailoring back our recipricoal linking efforts and this confirms our own suspicions that this SEO tactic is on the decline. While we still feel it has importance in terms of SEO, it is now our fourth option, behind directory submissions (both paid and free), Press Release writing and submissions, and article writing and submissions.

Google Bowling: Sabotaging Your Competitors

2005-10-26T14:13:00.000-05:00

In this article I couldn't agree more with the author. Google's seeming indifference to those business owners who rely on the web for their livelihood has reached scary porpotions.

Google Bowling: How Competitors Can Sabotage You; What Google Should Do About It

Have you heard about the latest 'sport' in dirty online business? It's called Google Bowling and it represents a gaping flaw in Google's system that allows your competitors to sabotage your site to the point of getting it banned or penalized.

This can't happen, right? I mean, Google would have us believe their algorithms are not easily manipulated and that your rankings are safely under your (and their) control. But in fact there's a chink in Google's armor that can have massive consequences for any web business unfortunate enough to have aggressive and unethical competitors.

Here's the loophole, explained

It all began with Google's aggressive attempts to curb link popularity manipulation by penalizing sites that purchase site-wide text link ads to get lots of incoming links in a hurry. (eg: If the ad selling site had 1,000 pages, the advertiser's link would instantly be on 1,000 pages.)

Google began filtering sites that indulged in this kind of linkage and either penalized or flat-out removed the site from its database. Bad news for that business. Excellent news for their competition. Can you guess what's coming next?

Certain scoundrels began thinking: 'If buying site-wide text link ads en masse will get my site into hot water with Google, why not buy them for my competitor's site instead? Then just sit back and wait for Google to solve my number one business headache... the competition.' (Cue evil laughter sound track.)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Google Bowling. Simple. Devious. Devastating. And not just in theory; it's really happening out there.
Related Articles

* Web Site Promotion: Incoming Links Can Increase Web Site Traffic
* Google's Aging Delay for New Sites
* Free Listing in Google using Wordpress
* How To Weather Google Algorithm Changes
* Linking With A Millstone

Here at eTrafficJams.com, we are hearing from a lot of businesses whose sites once enjoyed great rankings (ours included) and now don't even show up in Google for their own company name.

A small loophole has turned into a devastating black hole, sucking in and wiping out countless quality websites in the process. And it just may be their competitors sending them into the abyss.

Is your head spinning yet? I mean, it was bad enough knowing that with every Google update, your business may go up or down in the rankings depending on the whims of the Google geeks. But now add into the mix the fact that your competitors also have a hand in your search engine health and wellness... well, Houston, we have a problem.

Although this would be a fortuitous time for me to suggest that the solution to this problem is hiring a reputable SEO firm to watch over your rankings, I shall resist the temptation. Instead, I'd like to offer Google - as if they're listening - a simple solution to this nasty problem.

Right now, Google hands out either rewards or harsh penalties for linking strategies - good rankings to reward good linking techniques, and penalties, such as the now-infamous sandbox, to punish un-cool, manipulative linking practices. But there isn't any middle ground.

I say why not create a neutral response... a filter that simply ignores questionable links, neither rewarding nor punishing them?

1) Innocent victims of Google Bowling don't get hurt.

2) If the dubious links actually were perpetrated by the business at the receiving end of them, Google would exclude those links and the site would gain nothing. It would simply be throwing ad money out the window (unless, of course, it was buying site-wide ads in vehicles that generated relevant traffic). And

3) Google's reputation for delivering accurate and fair search results would be restored.

Google needs to do something soon to plug this loophole, not just for the immediate relief of its users but for its own credibility

Although being 'Google Bowled' by a competitor and having your site removed from the database could ruin a small business, the consequences for Google could be just as dire. If chatter picks up that Google's results are easy to manipulate and consequently inaccurate, users may be scared away to other search engines.

Fewer users = fewer clicks on ads = lower revenues. Well, I don't have to spell that out for the financial wizards at Google.

But just think: a few stories on the big TV networks, say on MSNBC (*cough* think Bill Gates' MSN Search, a major Google competitor), revealing how the new sport of Google Bowling is sweeping the nation... well, the average user at home may start to have doubts about Google and maybe decide to try out Yahoo! or MSN Search.

Is it really that far-fetched to speculate that someone like oh, I don't know, Mr. Gates, might take advantage of this situation to solve his number one business headache... the competition?

So I suggest a simple solution to Google's link bowling problem: neutralize suspicious links so they are neither helpful nor harmful. Problem solved. Sorry, Mr. Gates.

Michael Pedone Founder, eTrafficJams.com, a search engine optimization company specializing in getting targeted, eager-to-buy traffic to your website. Free SEO proposal for your site http://www.etrafficjams.com http://www.etrafficjams.com Blog - http://prs10.blogspot.com

Big Oak SEO Client Blogs

2005-10-22T00:11:00.000-05:00

Sillyasstoys.com
Children's Online Toy Store, featuring unique toys for kids of all ages.
Children's Unusual Toy Blog (unusual-toy-store)
Child's Toy Blog

QuietHeadphones.com
Offers Noise Isolation Reduction Headphones
Noise Reduction Headphones Blog
Noise Canceling Headphones Blog

GroteApproach.com
Employee Performance Management Software and Consultation
Employeee Performance Management Blog

BellabluMaternity.com
Maternity Clothing
Maternity Clothing & Pregnancy Blog

Danforth Diamond
Diamond Engagement Rings and Fine Gold Jewelry
Diamond & Jewelry Advice Blog

Exhibit Deal
Trade Show Displays, Booths and Exhibits
Trade Show and Marketing Blog

Deep Linking and Hosted Marketing Pages

2005-10-17T19:44:00.000-05:00

What a great idea, and one that we have been trying out ourselves. Creating entire pages to swap links in and supplying content to other sites to link to you are wonderful ideas. As link marketing becomes more competitive we shall see how things chagne in the SEO world.

--

The problem with Search Engine Optimisation is that every body does it. Whenever a new technique gets into the public domain, it soon becomes overused. As the SE industry is itself becomes more and more competitive, increasing the pressure to deliver relevant, quality results, the search engines quickly devalue it for their algorithms, in order to maintain the credibility and usability of their search results.

Linking is a case in point. A central factor to “relevancy”, inward/outward links contribute significant weight to page rank and overall search ranking. However, as linking is now both hackneyed and abused, the SE’s are damping or reducing the weighting attached to certain types of links. As they become more sophisticated, the SE’s are able to differentiate between links for their relevance both to the page they are on and the page they point to.

This has in turn led to a renewed emphasis on quality content – useful, unique, timely, fresh – and links that fit into this new paradigm are given more weighting than those that don’t. Not only are link farms out, but links on so-called resource pages, even when properly categorized and sparingly placed (not more than 100 per page) are being penalized. The SE’s, unable to fully differentiate between organic link building, and software-enabled, cookie-cutter link spamming have tweaked their algorithms to consider the context in which the link is placed. The factors being considered are:

· The number of links on a single page – for “quality links” not more than 5.
· The link to text ratio – the fewer links per quantity of text, the higher the link quality.
· The link relevance – both to the content of the page the link is hosted on, and the page it points to.
· The keyword focus – this should be as narrow as possible both to channel maximum ranking weight to the links, as well make for a readable, useful page.

This brings up the meat of the issue. In order to benefit from inbound links, it is becoming necessary to alter the way in which they are obtained and placed. Two alternative methods are coming into vogue, and now is the time to take advantage of them before everyone gets on to the bandwagon.

One of them is a variation on the reciprocal linking theme – “Deep Linking”; the other is a form of article syndication – “Hosted Marketing Pages”.

Deep Linking

Deep linking is where you as Webmaster, link to another site directly from an article or relevant webpage, rather than from a typical link
directory or “resource page”. You then request a reciprocal link in exchange, back to that specific page, or any other that you nominate, specifying your required anchor text.

To give effect to this strategy, carefully peruse the targeted sites, and establish the pages to which you would like a reciprocating link. They should be relevant and complementary to your own page. If necessary, compose new articles/pages just for this purpose, but many site owners will have in archive many pages/articles that can be dusted off and re-used.

This strategy will have the following benefits:

1. Improves the chances of a successful link swap because you are not hiding the reciprocating link in a rarely visited “resources page”.

2. As a variation on the general link-swapping theme, it proves that you indeed have carefully assessed the target site for right fit with your own, getting the reciprocating Webmaster more eager to link with you. You are then much more likely to get a positive response to your link request.

3. Allows you some influence on where and how your own link will be placed, unlike in traditional link exchange, because you will have “optimized” the reciprocating link favourably to the linking partner, and established on which specific pages you want a link from, and the anchor text for the link.

4. Ironically, because you can reduce the number of links on your traditional links page by moving many of them to your deeply linked article pages, it boosts the link popularity of the remaining links. This increases the value, and credibility of these links as honest recommendations from you, generating traffic from them to the link partners.

5. This type of link is much more targeted, as it is directly relevant both to the page it is displayed on, and the one it points to. Properly optimized the traffic it obtains will be predisposed to the subject matter, enhancing site conversion for both linking partners.

6. You are able to build page rank for pages other than your index page.

Hosted Marketing Pages

Hosted Marketing Pages are nothing new in and of themselves. Essentially they are highly optimized articles on specific topics that contain equally optimized links pointing back to the relevant page on your own site. They may contain sales material for your own products and services, or they may be of a more general nature.

What is new is that you apply to have these pages/articles hosted on another, highly ranked web site, in return for a fee. This is essentially Search Engine-friendly text-link. It is SE-friendly because the links are contained in a highly optimized and relevant page, and therefore get around the link damping that search engines are currently engaged in, due to link purchasing.

The following benefits accrue to you:

1. Such pages/articles will serve as a magnet for targeted traffic pre-qualified traffic, as they are optimized for your keywords. They thus serve to boost your site conversion ratios.

2. Since the links they contain are also highly optimized, and wrapped around keyword-themed content, those links will be categorized as “quality links” thus boosting the link popularity of the pages they point to (your own). This in turn gives a fillip to your search rankings.

Hosted Marketing Pages are also termed Pre-selling Pages or Content Hosting because they are very similar to affiliate pages/sites in that they serve to pre-sell your site’s services or products. You retain much more control on content than in an affiliate situation; there is no qualifying action necessary to trigger your payment for the hosting of the article, and of course affiliates, typically, will not have done the high level, tightly focused optimization that such a page entails.

The two approaches are fairly similar in that they are both about an article-embedded, optimized-links strategy. They differ in that Deep Linking is reciprocal linking or link exchange and is therefore free, while Hosted Marketing Pages is a service you would have to pay for. It however offers the advantage of giving you greater control over your web copy, as you would retain the copyright to your own material. Because a fee is involved, you are much more likely to find sites willing to engage ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifn this kind of link trading.
Hosted Marketing Pages also offer more valuable one-way links, while deep linking is a link swap whose value for search engines is lower.

Whichever method suits you, backlinks are too valuable a traffic generation and site promotion technique to leave to the vagaries of search engine changing algorithms. Jump in and be one of the early adopters, and gain valuable exposure before the rest of the web catches on.

For more details on these two revolutionary linking and traffic-generation methods read Jack Humphrey's"Power Linking 2: Evolution"

--

For help with your search engine marketing, link management campaigns contact Big Oak SEO today (1-804-741-6776).

SEM Company Dumps Link Buying

2005-10-14T17:35:00.000-05:00

In this article by David Utter, he has found an SEO company I certainly admire. They have sworn off link buying and I hope others follow suit. I have never had full confidence in this practice and this is step in the right direction.

--

David Utter
Staff Writer
Published: 2005-10-14

The strategy of purchasing text links on other sites to improve rankings within search engines may be having a negative impact instead.

British search engine marketing firm Site Visibility disclosed in a press release that it won't be buying any more text links. Further, they plan to prevent existing links they've purchased from impacting a site's ranking.

The rise of Google, Yahoo, and other search engines has made high ranking a priority for online businesses. Many companies have responded to the need for better search engine marketing with an array of strategies to garner better placement.

One factor impacting a site's ranking has been the number of inbound links to a site. Firms like Site Visibility would purchase inbound text links to sites on other sites. As the number of links increase over time, a particular site would be lifted in search engine results.

Site Visibility said it is taking this action to avoid endangering its clients from being penalized by the search engines. The usual penalty for sites that try to overaggressively game the system is to be banned from the search engine instead.

It will be interesting to see how many other SEM firms may follow suit. The company's John Everton, search engine marketing account manager, wrote more about the company's decision in the statement:

"While we do not believe that our link purchasing has ever negatively impacted search engine results, we have decided to change our approach and take a pro-active move towards helping search engines maintain natural search results." He goes on to add, "As an ethical search engine marketing company it is important that Site Visibility is seen as a business that only adopts SEO techniques that are considered ‘white-hat.' Any border-line search engine marketing practices are eventually picked on up by the top search engines and in our market we cannot afford to take risks with our client's brands and websites."

Big Oak SEO Newpaper Article

2005-10-13T20:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess we are officially a real SEO company. Our local Richmond, Virginia paper The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote an article about us in the Sunday business section. Excerpts are below:

TECH NOTES: 'Optimizers' can raise profile of your Web site

JEFFREY KELLEY
POINT OF VIEW

Oct 9, 2005

To get a sense how fast the Internet is changing, have a quick chat with Shell Harris.

He and pal Chris Alexander started Big Oak Inc. as a Web development company almost two years ago, and now the company barely does any Web development.

The sites they made looked great, clients told Harris. But no one could find the pages, and some Big Oak customers would rarely get business.

As sites popped up all over the Web, Harris needed to find a way to get his client's sites seen.

He began reading up on search engine optimization, or, sans the jargon, the way to make a firm's Web site get listed higher when it's Googled (a term used these days to describe surfing on any search engine, Google or not.)

Nowadays, development accounts for just 30 percent of Big Oak's work, and most of that comes from design on the Discovery Channel Store site.

The rest of Big Oak's work is in tinkering with programming codes to help companies make their sites more visible. It is now promoted as a search-engine optimization company.

"We're far busier than we were when we were doing Web design and development," Harris says, "not from the standpoint of only doing the work, but keeping on top of all the different things you need to do. It's unbelievable."

He's in a changing trade that is becoming more competitive by the minute, constantly updating code and keywords within the text to rank client pages higher.

Unless a business has a strong local presence, firms are as good as dead without a Web site.

"You're cutting off a whole marketing arm if you're not using" the Web, Harris said, and search-engine optimizers such as Big Oak can help business owners make the most of their digital domains.

But be wary.

Big Oak's Harris fire off a few tips for choosing a search-engine optimization company:

# Earmark enough in the budget. Even the smallest clients will need to have at least $5,000 over the course of a year.

The price, Harris said, goes toward upkeep of the site and keeping competition at bay. "They have to see more money," he said. "They have to see more sales when you try to convince someone to spend $4,000 or $5,000 on Web design."

Rule of thumb: The larger the company and more competitive the industry, the higher the monthly bill.

# Be sure you can pull a return on investment from the site. "Or what's the point?" Harris quips.

# Make sure the site development is done on site at the marketing firm, or at least know where the work is being outsourced.

The search-engine optimizer will work with clients' intellectual property, Baldwin said, so you never know who is seeing it or if the Web work is shipped overseas.

"You can't really have a good relationship unless you're talking to the people doing the work," Harris said.

# Ask to see the client work that the search-engine marketer has done. It will let you know if the model works -- or if the company uses unethical practices.

Does the marketer practice keyword stuffing, where sites use misleading words that don't represent the advertiser well? Or do the sites use cloaking, a "bait and switch" technique where the pages trick search engines into getting a higher ranking, but the actual site's content will have nothing to do with the actual search?

# Check to see if the company has a way to track who is visiting your site and what they are buying.

300 Years for Google to Index World Information (Internet)

2005-10-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

Schmidt: 300 Years To Index It All
By David Utter

Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to a question at a conference about how long it would take to index the world's information.

Taking questions during an appearance at the Association of National Advertisers in Phoenix, Mr. Schmidt disclosed it would take a pretty long time to get all the information in the world into Google's server farms.

CNET News noted his comment in a report. "We did a math exercise and the answer was 300 years," Mr. Schmidt said. "The answer is it's going to be a very long time."

Out of the estimated 5 million terabytes of global information, Google's only got around to about 170 terabytes after its first 7 years of existence.

During his talk, he extolled the virtues of online advertising, and noted he was a skeptic about their potential when he took the job as CEO. He made the most critical point to the audience, as the report notes:

Advertising is increasing on the Internet and cable television, and showing modest to no growth in newspapers and magazines, Schmidt said. "The cost per revenue dollar of online ad systems is so much lower than" for offline advertising, he said.

Mr. Schmidt has definitely found the value in Google's online advertising model now, since the company's non-traditional IPO and subsequent trading have pushed shares to more than triple their first price.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stop Chasing Away Customers! Bad Copy Is Your Worst Enemy

2005-10-08T18:37:00.000-05:00

If you are in need of good copywriting, please contact Big Oak SEO. We specialize in writing great copy for human beings and search engines alike. Give us a call at 804.741.6776 or visit our website for more information. We write articles, press releases and websites. Having well-written content can mean the difference in a sale or a confused browser.

We have posted an article from Meredith Pond which further backs our point.

Every day, more and more of us begin new online business ventures, hoping to make a better living or just a little extra on the side. And every day, more and more of us fail.

This may seem like a negative attitude, but unfortunately, it's the truth. The Internet is a great place to do business, but finding real success is like finding a needle in a virtual haystack. So what's the problem?

To be honest, the more I surf the Web, the more bad writing I see. I can't tell you how many sites I've visited that feature boring, disorganized, or almost incoherent copy. And let's face it: if your website can't communicate your marketing message in an exciting, informative, and professional way, you're not going to sell much.

If you think the way your website or other marketing materials read just isn't that important, think again. When you're trying to sell online, through the mail, or with email, written words are all you've got.

If you walked into an electronics store to buy a computer and found their salespeople unhelpful, uninterested, and untrustworthy, would you buy? Of course not. The same goes for your website or sales copy. If someone is reading your homepage and finds your writing sloppy, boring, or skimpy, they're not going to buy from you.

First, make sure you have ENOUGH copy to explain your product or service. If there just isn't enough content, people won't have the information they need to make a decision. Skimpy or sparse sales copy will drive people away faster than anything else.
Related Articles

* Web Copy - What You Should Know First
* Making A Good First Impression
* Headline Failure Equals Profit Failure
* The Best Advertisement For Your Business
* Good Landing Page Design Tips

Next, be careful! When writing your sales copy or website, don't just rush through to get it over with. A lot of people hate to write, but we're talking about your only interaction with customers here. Even minor spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, or awkward sentences can add up to a gaping hole in your credibility--and your profits.

Third, get excited about what you're selling! You don't have to hype it up to the rafters, but you do need some enthusiasm. Your writing can be exciting and motivational without loosing its credibility. If you don't get excited about your product, why should anyone else?

These are just the basics, but remember: the way your sales copy or website is written can literally make or break your chances for success. If you have a hard time finding the right words, can't spell worth beans, or need a little help in the exciting department, don't be afraid to ask for help from a friend, associate, or professional. When words are all you've got, you need to make them count!

Author Meredith Pond has been writing successful marketing copy since 2000. Web pages, sales letters, articles, press releases, ads, you name it! Don't let your writing scare away potential clients! Good writing can save your business, and it's more affordable than you think! See http://www.CheapWriting.com.

Thank you for taking the time read this article. If you are interested in taking your site to the next level in sales and readership, please visit http://www.bigoakinc.com and we can show you how.

Search Engine Marketing Research Findings

2005-10-04T21:06:00.000-05:00

This is a great article. I am in complete agreement with the statements made here. If more SEO Firms followed these findings what a better Internet world this would be.

This research attempts to obtain business firms' views on search engine marketing. It gives valuable implications to both business and search engine marketing firms.

The research collects findings from 121 Hong Kong trading firms involving in foreign trade through telephone interview. Also, a separate focus group was held with 8 marketing managers and 1 search engine optimization (SEO) specialist. We believe the implications also apply to other geographical areas.

We have extracted part of the results to present in this article.

1. Employed SEO service or Exercised SEO Before?

103 (85%) respondents reported that they have neither employed any search engine optimization service nor self-exercised any search engine optimization service. However, 18 (15%) respondents pursued some sort of search engine marketing including search engine submission to search engine optimization.

2. Importance and Concerns of Search Engine Marketing/Search Engine Optimization

A rating scale of 1 to 5 was employed, with 5 means Very important and 1 means very unimportant. Respondents reported that they perceived that search engine marketing could be a cost-effective method to help them get new overseas customers (rating 4.7).

Respondents also considered the following factors whether they would use a search engine marketing firm: 1. Pricing (4.6), 2. Deliverables (4.8), 3. Guarantee Clause (4.0), 4. Ranking against rival firms (4.7), 5. Possibility to get to Top 10 ranking (4.1), 6. Chance to increase response rate (4.8)

3. Paid for Performance Search Engine Marketing

This question has an explanation about the meaning of paid for performance search engine marketing. The question includes pay-per-click and paid-for-inclusion plan.

Again, a rating scale of 1-5 was employed, with 5 means Very important and 1 means very unimportant.

The respondents expressed that they concerned the possible high cost (4.8), potential fraudulent clicks (4.9), delivery of message to right persons (4.7), and time required to manage the campaign (4.2).

4. Understanding of Search Engine Optimization

This question asked about their knowledge of search engine optimization techniques. Respondents were given 3 choices: 1. Yes, 2. No, 3. Don't know.

31 respondents perceived that the major task of search engine optimization was adding keywords in Title and Meta Tags while another 62 of them were not sure about the answers. 108 respondents did not know link building was an important factor that could help them improve search engine ranking. Interestingly, 72 respondents believed that program ¡§submit to 1000 search engines¡¨ could increase their website traffic. 101 respondents did not realize that content analysis and improvement measures such as keyword density ratio and keyword proximity ratio played a role in search engine optimization.

In general, most respondents believed that they did not possess sufficient knowledge on search engine optimization.

5. Focus Group

Another 8 marketing managers were invited to a focus group interview. 4 of them had experience in employing search engine optimization firms, and another 4 considered using search engine optimization services but finally had not taken action. An SEO specialist was acted as a moderator in the interview.

In the interview, they generally agreed that search engine marketing could help them to generate business leads. For those who did not use SEO service expressed that they abandoned to pursue as they could not make up a decision. First, they were not familiarize with how to achieve good search engine ranking. Second, the pricing scheme offered by different SEO firms varied greatly from US$19.99 to US$5,000 up-front fee, and some also required US$500 to US$5,000 monthly service fee. However, the SEO firms could not express clearly the deliverables that clients could obtain and they also refused to clearly explain the methodologies that they would use. These facts made the interviewees very difficult to persuade their boss to use SEO service.

In addition, the interviewees expressed that they feared that SEO firms would require many website changes, and some changes like keywords stuffing in Alt Tag or put too many texts and too little graphics in web pages make the site looked unprofessional.

Another point made by interviewees was very interesting. For those who have employed SEO firms, some of them perceived that they were being kept in the dark as they did not know what the SEO firms were actually doing! When they scrutinized the changes made by SEO firms, they found that the SEO firms have just written some keyword phrases in Alt Tag, Title Tag and repeated them in Meta Tags. Then, the SEO firms only ran reports for them in the subsequent months and asked them to wait for the results. Finally, they found that they had not got any extra traffic from keyword phrases suggested by SEO firms while the SEO firms claimed that they had achieved more than what was written in the guarantee clause (e.g. 20 Top 20 rankings in major search engines). Only 1 interviewee felt satisfied to the chosen SEO firm. This was because they knew the deliverable, got desirable number of top rankings, and a piece of link exchange software and they could continuously manage link building themselves after the project end. The SEO firm also provided suggestions for them to maintain ranking afterwards.

Also, participants voiced out that they also wanted to know their search engine rankings against their rival firms.

6. Implications to Business Firms

In general, it was a consensus that search engine marketing could help to generate new business leads. However, it was not a simple activity. Most business firms lacked the knowledge and tempted to use an SEO firm. However, quality of SEO firms varied. In order to select a good SEO service, business firms should define clearly their objectives. E.g. some firms might simply define that they wanted a better ranking than their rivals or that they wanted a better conversion rate. Then, it was suggested that the business firms talk with the SEO candidates and try to differentiate which one was more knowledgeable. Moreover, business firms should discuss with the selected SEO firm in order to get an agreement on the number of deliverables and project schedule.

From the research findings, many business firms were yet to optimize their websites. That means if you first optimize your website, you could have an advantage over your rivals in search engine exposure perspective.

7. Implications to SEO firms

SEO firms should spend time and clearly explain to clients the SEO techniques and methodologies that they would use. Some SEO firms might fear that they would expose their ¡§top secret¡¨ techniques. However, you could not get business if your clients could not understand the SEO processes and failed to persuade their bosses. In addition, SEO firms should apply optimization techniques with a consideration of usability of websites. Do not make the site look silly or unprofessional. Also, clients would not mind your using of optimization software such as Webposition Gold and they do want to know how you would serve them.

SEO firms should assist clients to devise a measurement matrix for the campaign. This helps the decision maker to make judgment and explain to his/her colleagues and boss. Clients would feel more comfortable to do business with you.

Moreover, SEO firms should define clearly what would be delivered to clients and the delivery schedule, e.g. how many ranking reports, keyword research result, etc. In addition, SEO firms should contact clients frequently and report the progress. Clients would then understand that you were indeed working for them and you could help to set or adjust their expectations.

Finally, SEO firms should offer assistance for clients who want to terminate the relationship and to maintain rankings themselves. The idea looked ridiculous but the clients would be satisfied by such offer and would probably recommend you to other firms. After all, clients who ceased to work with you might be due to many other reasons but not your performance. Why don't you give them another ¡§candy¡¨ and maintain a good relationship?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author: Jimsun Lui - http://www.agogdigital.com
Jimsun, from Agog Digital Marketing offers Search Engine Optimization service including English and Chinese search engines. AgogDigital.com also owns Chinese website promotion portal and is developing an advance Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software

Jimsun Lui has done a wonderful job of putting this information together and I'm very confident it will be of use to all search engine optimization companies who take the time to read it.

Search Engine Advertising Choices

2005-09-29T17:01:00.000-05:00

Search advertisers are offered two basic marketing models, paid-ads and free organic ads.

While there are advantages and disadvantages to both models, one clearly stands out as a better advertising option than the other. Why is it then that advertisers from small business to mega-corporation tend to show higher interest in the more expensive and least effective of the two?

Most SEOs speculate that advertisers understand paid-advertising better than organic placement. As much of search marketing is conducted in-house and optimization is a learned-skill, corporate marketing departments lean towards the very simple model of paid-search. Organic search engine placement continues to be perceived as a nebulous service that can take time to show results. On the other hand, paid-ad placements tend to show up minutes after they are established and bidding one's way to top spot is relatively easy.

With search ad-spends sometimes topping five or six figures per month, many SEOs shake their heads at businesses that refuse to invest a much smaller (generally low to mid four figure) sum on organic optimization. Ranging from small to mega sized operations, the number of paid-ad advertisers that ignore organic optimization seems to be growing.

Over the past three years, independent research has consistently confirmed that search engine users tend to click on the center column organic (free) ads far more often than on paid ads. Earlier this year, search marketers benefited from a number of published studies that clearly demonstrate the higher value of organic placements. While the results of this research is easily available to all, traditional and tech media stories tend to focus on paid-search advertising.

Two studies that made an enormous impact on the search marketing field this year are the Eye Tracking research conducted by Enquiro CEO Gord Hotchkiss and a whitepaper published by Lisa Wehr, CEO of OneUpWeb titled, " Target Google's Top Ten to Sell Online." Gord's study shows the basic F (or triangular) shape search user's eyes tend to follow when examining search results. Lisa's study found that search users are up to 6X more likely to click on the first few organic results as they are to choose any of the paid results.

A third study, " Accurately Interpreting Clickthrough Data as Implicit Feedback " , released earlier this week by Cornell professor Thorsten Joachims looked at the links users found on search engine results pages and questioned why they choose which link. The results show again the importance of high organic search engine rankings. The researchers asked subjects to perform searches and looked at which results they viewed, which they clicked on, and what happens if those links are mixed up.

The Cornell study found that search users tended to view (look at) the first five organic results with a high percentage of them (approx. 2/3) viewing the top two listings with 42% of them selecting or clicking on that link. The number of search-viewers halves to approximately 1/3 of users viewing sites appearing in positions 3, 4 and 5. The numbers drop to about 1 in 10 users tending to view the 9 th and 10 th placed sites.

When a search user views search listings, it doesn't necessarily mean they click on those listings. In this context, to view means to examine. Users tend to examine the text used to phrase the reference link as well as the descriptive paragraph appearing beneath the link before deciding to click on it. This is especially true for the smaller number of searchers who view listings found in the 3 rd to 10 th positions as users who examined those listings tended to spend more time on the results page before choosing the link to click first. In other words, 1/3 to 1/10 of users are conducting preliminary research by seriously reading the text used to phrase the results before clicking.

This finding was backed up in another part of the Cornell study that showed when the same Top2 results were reversed, the text used in the link and description had a notable influence on which link the user clicks. The research found that when results were switched around, 34% of the users would still click on the site ranked in first place, even when they had seen the now #2 site there earlier.

In his Alertbox review of the Cornell study, Jakob Nielsen succinctly notes, " If users always clicked the best link, then swapping the order of the two links should also swap the percentages, and this didn't happen. The top hit still got the most clicks."

These findings led the research team to suggest there are two biases playing out in the minds of search engine users. The first is the Trust Bias, which leads the searcher to believe that a site ranked in the number 1 position is there because it must be the best reference for that keyword. The second is the Quality Bias, which considers the text used in the results to determine which is the best site to choose from.

For search engine marketers and more importantly, search engine advertisers, there are two glaringly obvious implications.

First of all, it is extremely important to be found at the Top of the search engine results. Being in the Top10 is likely sufficient for many businesses but the sites getting the most business are found at the top. To further these findings, Gord and Lisa's research clearly shows that searchers are choosing organic placements over paid-ads.

Secondly, the copy used in your Title tag and site content has to be more compelling than that of your competitors. Search users are reading before clicking. If they have to make a choice between three sites that are all perceived to be equal (those in the 3rd to 5th positions), they will almost always choose the one with the most topically relevant descriptive text and link-copy.

Put together, the results of the three studies show that search engine users are able to tell the difference between paid and free listings and tend to trust the free organic listings more than they do the paid ones. The studies also show that search users, while still tending to put a higher bias on the Top5 results are becoming sophisticated enough to seriously consider descriptive copy before choosing to select a link. In other words, the search users are starting to make what appears to them to be the wisest choices when selecting search advertising. The advertisers are advised to do the same.

About the Author:
Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198

Has Traditional Web Site Optimization (SEO) Outlived Its Usefulness?

2005-09-28T09:58:00.000-05:00

We agree with most of this article from Ron Scott. While traditional SEO methods have become less important, such as link swapping, all the methods still hold value. We do agree that press releases are a great way to market and have been doing so for the past year with our own clients. The results have been spectacular in terms of marketing the site for low cost. Give us a call (804) 741-6776 or visit Big Oak SEO to see how we do SEO...right way!

When it comes to internet marketing, traditional web site optimization (SEO) still stands as the holy grail, but an increasing number of small and medium sized business owners, facing the prospect of high SEO fees, are just now beginning to turn to an alternative promotional method that is generating consistent and quantifiable results at a fraction of the cost.

LOS ANGELES, CA (PRWEB) September 17, 2005 - The cost of SEO, at least when it comes to highly competitive keyword phrases, is prohibitive for all but those with deep pockets.

"Matt Hocken, of Interactive Marketing, Inc., estimates that one can expect to pay upwards of $50,000 - $100,000 a year to secure top ten Google placement for a highly competitive keyword phrase like 'life insurance' or 'debt consolidation' and that's obviously out of the question for the small to medium sized business," Ron Scott, Fast Track SEOP's senior publicist reports.

Even the cost for placement using less popular keyword phrases can be high.

"A Houston publicist recently paid $5,000 to get her website optimized for a small number of obscure keyword phrases that Overture reports are cumulatively generating fewer than 200 inquiries a month. Not told that 50-75% of those searches are being routinely conducted by webmasters, SEOs, and website owners checking the current status of their websites, she's now wondering if she'll ever recoup the expense," Scott says.

So what s the alternative? Pop-ups? Pop unders? Banner ads? Email? Not hardly.

Unlike an organic search engine optimization program that can take months and even years to start showing results, internet press releases start generating interest the day they are published.

"A properly optimized and distributed press release will typically generate 50,000 - 100,000 actual reads the first week it goes on line," says Scott.

According to Scott, unlike traditional press releases, 98% of all internet press releases are read by consumers and B2B prospects.

"Originally, press releases were the exclusive domain of the Fortune 500 and were directed to the mass media, but not any more. Small and medium sized businesses have discovered that they can deliver their messages directly to a broad (national or international) or highly targeted (local or regional) audience on the internet and, thereby, eliminate the tedious process of media placement," he says.

Scott points out that the value of an internet press release promotional strategy doesn t stop there.

"Press releases can also be optimized for organic search which enables those who find their newly published websites residing in Google purgatory, the opportunity to secure top ten rankings in a week or less," Scott says.

To illustrate the value of the internet marketing strategy, Scott points to a release he prepared and distributed on behalf of a little known manufacturer in New Zealand.

"The first 30 calendar days, it generated 133,686 reads, drove over 25,000 visitors to their website, and generated 100s of inquiries from B2B prospects all over the world," he says. "Since that sampling taken at the beginning of June, the release has generated an additional 42,443 reads and a commensurate level of traffic and inquiries. "It's the gift that keeps giving," he says.

Has traditional web site optimization outlived its usefulness?

"For most of our clients it has," Scott says.

To introduce business owners to the comparative value of an internet, press release promotional strategy, Fast Track SEOP offers free, online introductory webinars four days a week. The company, a full-service internet public relations firm, has developed an online training program that enables business owners to manage their press release promotional campaigns in-house. To learn more visit www.fasttrackrankingandplacement.com.

For more great articles, check out our seo articles.

Why Google Blog Search Matters to Your Business

2005-09-28T09:16:00.000-05:00

According to Google, Google's Blog Search is "Google search
technology focused on blogs". It includes search engine
results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com
community, but across the blogosphere at large. You can
access it at http://www.blogsearch.google.com/

What the Big Deal Is
A lot of people have probably heard about this extra
version of search Google has added and are greeting it with
a big yawn, particularly since it's still in Beta. So what
is the big deal, anyway?

The big deal is that the top search engine in the world,
which was already paying particular attention to blogs in
regular search results, seems to make a subtle statement
with the introduction of blog-specific searches.

Blogs are important enough to warrant their own special
level of search, and not just as an advanced search option,
but in their own search engine.

If search engines are paying attention to blogging that
closely, you should be too -- if you want better search
engine results.

Current fans of blogs will be able to search the freshest
results so that they can see what is being discussed right
now - information that is often as fresh as the news, and
draws upon sources that the media-at-large either doesn't
have ready access to, or interest in.

So to those with even the most obscure interests or
hobbies, a blog search powered by a top search engine gives
ready access to fresh information on any subject that
someone can blog about.

And if a blog doesn't yet exist on these narrow themes? You
can be the one to start the discussion.

Why It Matters to Your Business
Speaking of the media, this is likely to become one of the
many tools that a journalist in the know would use in order
to research a story, or to find out more information about
a company, directly from the people who use its products or
services.

Technorati, is at present, arguably a better tool, but it's
just not as well known as the Google brand. If you're a
power searcher, you already know what Technorati is. But
the key thing to understand is that most consumers - even
B2B consumers - aren't as deeply involved in the internet.

But even those folks know what Google is.

There's an even more obvious advantage to this specialized
search.

Google Blog search has the unprecedented potential to bring
the mainstream surfer into blogging, even more than Yahoo's
RSS Headlines pioneered the start of making RSS mainstream
about a year ago. Why?

While many of your clients will fall instantly in love with
RSS, it's more fair to them to present its possibilities in
a format that's easier for them to digest. It's not as hard
to explain a blog - and if you can't, you can simply tell
them it's a more frequently updated part of your existing
site.

When Google's Blog Search is brought more to the front in
coming months, if your site gets into position to be
visible when more of the internet population becomes
blog-happy, then the traffic potential for your site may
prove to be enormous.

The proper use of one RSS feed in one of my content
management systems doubled my traffic, with most of the new
users coming from Yahoo, this time last year. Another feed
increased my daily traffic another 75%, and brought me
additional return traffic as well.

At the time the margin between Yahoo and Google was wider
than it is today -- so the potential increase from being in
Google boggles the mind.

How to Get Listed
According to the Blog Search Help Page:

"If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and
automatically pings an updating service (such as
Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also,
we will soon be providing a form that you can use to
manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven't
picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information
on this."

This means that if you're already blogging - and
responsibly pinging, you're probably already listed.

If you haven't been blogging, you're in luck. This special
brand of Google search is still in Beta, so if you get
moving now, you still have enough time to start getting
into position. And since the search currently seems to be
focused on freshness and relevance, if you keep up the
blogging once you start, and you keep your theme narrow,
you could still dominate your niche.

Do It Today
The mantra for blogging before was that, proper blogging is
a sure fire way to increase traffic, as well as build
stronger ties to your end users or clients, not to mention
that it is the simplest of the many implementations of RSS.

Now, with all three major search engines paying more
attention to both RSS and Blogging, you can get spidered
more frequently, get more of your pages indexed more
deeply, and be included in more searches.

You have absolutely no time to waste - if you're not
blogging already, you need to get started quickly. Many
webmasters are hesitating because they haven't been able to
find a blog system that fits well with their site, or find
the most popular tools too sophisticated for their needs.

There are literally dozens of free resources to help you
decide between the standard systems that were originally
built for the personal blogger, and the more robust
solutions that are aimed at the medium-sized or corporate
company - but that's another article.

Whatever you chose, the important thing is to get started
blogging today. You'll be missing out on targeted traffic
from the most dominant search engine, from the most
sophisticated surfers today, and sooner than you know it,
the mainstream web.

Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the co-owner of Leveraged Promotion,
which provides many solutions for companies who prefer to
out-source their online promotion needs. At
http://blog.leveragedpromotion.com you can find out more
about how RSS, Blogs and Podcasting can increase your
online visibility.

Google Plans to Alert Site Owners of Potential Problems

2005-09-22T21:49:00.000-05:00

There is some great news for website owners who fear they may
have been penalized by Google. Matt Cutts, the owner of this
quickly growing blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/) and
employee of Google, confirmed on his website that Google is
piloting a new program which will proactively alert website
owners of potential problems on their website.

This is definitely exciting for website owners who do not know
if they have been penalized, but it should not be taken for
something that it is not. Keep in mind the following points:

1. This is a pilot program. It is not a full fledged program
that guarantees everyone will be contacted who has been
negatively effected. Chances are, you will not be contacted at
all.

2. It is an automated program. Google will not have any one
person sending out these emails, but a bot that will have to
'discover' your email address. If it can't find one, it will
try to guess an email address. If you are good at protecting
yourself from spam, you may not get a message from Google even
if they want to contact you.

There may be a day in the not-so-far future where Google is able
to contact legitimate website owners who made an honest (or
maybe not so honest) mistake. That day is not here yet, so the
responsibility is still that of the individual website owner to
make sure they have a legitimate website in the eyes of Google.

Google Sitemaps

2005-09-19T12:20:00.000-05:00

Introduction: If you are interested in using Google Sitemap or have dipped your toe in the Google pool, this is an excellent article to give you some additional knowledge.

Having a Google Sitemap just got better! Not only does the search engine company check your sitemap, but now they give you feedback! The new feature was quickly noticed by many users of the service recently as a way for Google to alert the webmaster about possible problem pages that they have had trouble indexing.

I had the wonderful experience of getting to know this service first hand when I logged in to Google Sitemaps to check on the status of one of my many sitemaps. Along side of the address for the sitemap, there was a link with the anchor text "verify". This helps Google to know that you are the actual webmaster for that site and is a wonderful addition for security.

Once you are verified (which is a simple process of creating a page on your root directory that they will see) you are able to see the stats for the site index. Often times, you won't see anything in the stats area, but if you have recently updated, redesigned, or deleted certain pages that Google has in its index, you have a good chance of seeing something there. Google will tell you about possible errors in the indexing process such as pages that are not showing, or pages that they can't see.

You might already be familiar with the new Google Sitemap Program, but if you aren't here's a quick synopsis. The Sitemaps program is a new offering from the Google family and is currently in beta testing.

The goal of the program is to allow Google to see the complete sitemap or a sitemap of frequently changing pages. This is extremely helpful if you have links that can't be reached by the Googlebot when it's indexing your page due to things like Java script menus and such. The codes on a page that prevent the bot from viewing your site ultimately hinder you in the search engines.

So using the XML standard coding language, which is easy to understand once you get the hang of it, you create a log of the various pages on your site and tell Google some attributes about it such as the overall priority of the page, how frequently you alter the content, when the page was updated last, and of course its location.

This will give Google the overall picture of the layout of your site and does help in getting the pages indexed for greater relevancy. There are protocols for the creation of the sitemap so it's best to read all the information completely at the Google Sitemaps website at http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

About the Author

John Wooton Author and Creator - The SEO Journal Blog Step by step tips on effectively mastering the search engines http://seojournal05.blogspot.com

As with everthing in the SEO world, there is no "one thing" to guarantee success, but added up all the "little things" make you a success. Google's Sitemaps is just one more little thing that will help. If you have a large amount of pages, it should be seen as a neccessity.

Google Offers Advice for Penalized Websites Using Black Hat SEO Tactics

2005-09-16T11:06:00.000-05:00

Google have confirmed a pilot project to "open up communications" with webmasters they feel are breaking their guidelines. Emails are being sent to selected websites flagged for removal from the Google index. In the comments of this post, Google's Matt Cutts said "Google is trying out a pilot program to alert site owners when we're removing their site for violating our guidelines. JavaScript redirects are the first trial, but we've also sent a few emails about hidden text, I believe.". He went on to add "Personally, I think opening up a line of communication to let webmasters know when we're taking action is a really good thing--a site owner doesn't have to guess about what happened".

Discuss in the Search Engine Forums

Read more about Google's Pilot Program

If this is legit, and I believe it is, it could go a long way to getting rid of the unethical search engine optimization (SEO) tactics that many business owners don't know their SEO company is doing. More posted as news is available.

Searching for Telecommunications Equipment and Networking Hardware Is Made Easier by New Website

2005-09-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

First Point Incorporated’s new website makes finding new and used communications equipment easier for Telcos and dealers

RUCKERSVILLE, VA,
September 8, 2005 – First Point Inc. is pleased to announce the launch
of their redesigned website offering telecommunications equipment and
networking hardware. The new site, located at http://www.firstpointinc.com,
provides expanded search functionality and regularly updated equipment
specials and price breaks. First Point hopes new and repeat customers
find the site to be a helpful tool when purchasing telecom equipment
and computer networking hardware. “Our new site will better serve our
Telco customers as well as dealers. It will allow everyone to search
for the parts they need and review our special pricing on equipment,”
explains Mike Fielding, vice president of First Point.

First
Point is a comprehensive source for voice and data communication
systems, stocking over 110 manufacturers. With such a large inventory,
it is important to give customers several ways to search on the website
for the product they require. Customers should find the Part Number
Search helpful as it will allow customers to enter in a part number to
view the part’s description and quantity in stock. And Fielding adds,
“The new site is not meant to cut down on our customer’s ability to
talk with our outstanding customer service representatives; they are
still available by phone. So whether the customer is looking for one
part, 10 parts or a complete system, our customer service reps are
there to answer any questions”

The new website also features
selected manufacturers such as ADC, ADTRAN, Carrier Access, Cisco,
Kentrox, Lucent, Nortel and Tellabs (AFC); these companies represent
First Point’s most popular product manufacturers. First Point actively
pursues partnerships and strategic alliances with their manufactures.
They are an ADTRAN Connectivity Partner and a value-added reseller for
several manufacturers, most notably Tellabs, Kentrox and Telco Systems.
And, as always, First Point provides products from these and many other
telecommunications and networking hardware manufacturers at outstanding
prices.

About First Point Inc.:

First Point Incorporated
is a leading value-added reseller of new and used communication
equipment and networking hardware. With a wide variety of parts in
stock, First Point sells equipment from ADC, ADTRAN, Carrier Access,
Cisco, Kentrox, Lucent, Nortel and Tellabs (AFC) as well as many
others. New parts carry the manufacturer’s warranty and
refurbished telecom equipment is backed by First Point’s
no-questions-asked, one-year warranty. First Point is also a surplus
telecom distributor helping customers recover revenue from surplus
telecom equipment through trade-in, consignment and purchasing.

Company Contact:
Mike Fielding
http://www.firstpointinc.com

Press Release Contact:
Alyssa Duvall
http://www.bigoakinc.com

Is DMOZ Dead?

2005-09-14T12:56:00.000-05:00

DMOZ in 2005

By Search Engine Articles and Press Releases - September 12, 2005

by Phil Craven - WebWorkshop

The original concept of DMOZ was excellent for its time. The DMOZ site's "About" page makes these statements about the concept, and about the reasons for the directory's creation:

"Automated search engines are increasingly unable to turn up useful results to search queries. The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory sites can't keep up with submissions, and the quality and comprehensiveness of their directories has suffered. Link rot is setting in and they can't keep pace with the growth of the Internet."

"The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th century. Just as the Oxford English Dictionary became the definitive word on words through the efforts of volunteers, the Open Directory follows in its footsteps to become the definitive catalog of the Web."

But things have changed a lot since DMOZ began in the mid 1990s. Since then, Google came along with very relevant search results, and they were kind enough to show the other engines how to produce such relevant results. That caused dramatic improvements, to the extent that top search engines have been able to provide very relevant search results for some time, and they provide a lot more of them than DMOZ is able to do.

The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory sites still can't keep up with submissions, but their backlogs are small when compared with DMOZ's massive backlog. According to reports, there are over a million site submissions that are waiting to be reviewed, and delays of several years between submitting a site and it being reviewed are not uncommon. The backlog problem is so huge that many editors have redefined the problem so that it no longer exists. To them there is no backlog, because the submitted sites are not there to be reviewed. They are merely a low priority pool of sites that they can dip into if they want to, and some of them prefer to find sites on their own.
Read the rest of the article

Children's Online Toy Store Announces Expansion of Educational Toy Offerings

2005-09-08T22:34:00.000-05:00

Additional unusual and unique toys added in response to the beginning of the school year.

RICHMOND, VA, September 8, 2005 –- Sillyasstoys.com is proud to announce the expansion of their online store toy store specializing in unique and unusual toys. The number of toys and games on the Website has quadrupled since the site launched in October 2004–growing to over 570 products. Most recently over 75 new items were added in response to the start of the school year.

"Our newest products reflect the changes in toy buying that occur in August and September," remarks Dave Luebke, owner of Sillyasstoys.com. "When kids return to school, parents tend to purchase educational toys to stimulate learning. We also see a shift toward sports-related games since kids are playing on their schools’ teams and practicing at home and on the weekends. As it gets cooler outside, versatile toys that allow kids to be physically active inside and outside become popular so we made sure to include indoor and outdoor toys in our new items."

As fall approaches, parents look toward buying toys with an educational component to help their children adapt to being back in school. One of the educational toys that follows this trend and has increased in sales over the last month is Owl Puke. As unappealing as that sounds, Owl Puke is used as a teaching tool because owls swallow their small prey whole and then regurgitate the indigestible parts. Each owl "pellet" contains the fur and bones of the owl’s prey–typically a mouse, shrew or small bird–allowing children to examine and reconstruct the skeleton. As many parents know, kids get interested when they are able to explore and get hands-on experience. Owl Puke helps children learn about owls, the food chain and animal anatomy.

Another way to interest children in the natural sciences is through toys that let them learn more about insects. Educational toys, such as Ladybug Land, Butterfly Garden and Triassic Triops, give kids insight into the lifecycle and habits of bugs and other creatures. Each Ladybug Land kit comes with a coupon for ladybug larvae, a habitat for them to live in and a guidebook about lady bugs. Butterfly Garden gives kids the chance to watch the transition as a caterpillar matures, changes into a chrysalis and then emerges as a butterfly. Parents are fond of this kit because the butterflies can be released into the outdoors once they appear. Another kit that provides kids with the opportunity to “grow” their own pets is the Triassic Triops kit. These prehistoric creatures are in suspended animation until you add water and then they spring to life and start growing. How quickly they grow depends on how much light and food they receive.

As the seasons change, parents and grandparents look to buying athletic toys and games that can be played both indoors and outdoors. A new item for the fall that appeals to this is the new toy, Kick It Stick It. This air puck hovers on a cushion of air above smooth surfaces allowing kids to hit it around in the driveway or on the hardwood floors in the den. The puck has an outer rim that protects furniture and walls making Kick It Stick It safe for indoor play. "We’ve had a lot of parents tell us that when it is raining their kids will take the Kick It Stick It down to the basement and hit it around. It’s given the kids something active to do instead of watching TV," Luebke comments.

Since the online toy store’s inception, the staff has continuously been on the hunt for new items to bring to their customers. "We have picked up new manufacturers in order to find and stock more unusual toys for Sillyasstoys.com. But we are also selective. We play test each item we sell to make sure they are fun and that they work in the way they are supposed to," explains Luebke. The Sillyasstoys.com team is currently gearing up for the holiday season. They are observing the trends and play testing demo models so that they can add the hottest toys and games to the site in the coming months.

About Sillyasstoys.com
Sillyasstoys.com is dedicated to providing unusual and unique toys and games not found in mainstream stores. They strive to stock only the finest toys that pique children’s interests and excite their imaginations. Founder, Dave Luebke, is also the owner of Dave's Comics Inc., a brick-and-mortar comic and toy store located in Richmond, Virginia, which has been going strong for over 23 years.

Contact:
David Luebke
http://www.sillyasstoys.com
Phone: 804-282-1919

Press Release Contact:
Alyssa Duvall
http://www.bigoakinc.com

What is Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization gone bad)

2005-09-05T10:54:00.000-05:00

Black hat practitioners tend to see search engine optimization as a war, and search engines as the enemy to be beaten by all means fair or foul. White hatters tend to view search engines as allies, who can help drive business to their clients’ sites.

Cloaking
When website or web pages are set up to display different content for a search engine spider versus a human user. Cloaking delivers one version of a page to an Internet user and a different version to a search engine. The cloaked page is packed with keywords and phrases that the website wants to be highly rank for so.

It is done by cloaking programs that compare the IP address of the requesting party to a database of known IP addresses from specific search engine spiders. If the IP address matches one on the list, it serves a page that was specifically written for the search engines.

There are good reasons for cloaking as well, such as targeted advertising, but if you are trying to manipulate your rankings in the search engines then your site could be penalized or banned.

Spamming (Keyword Stuffing)
“Stuffing” long lists of keywords into the content and the code on a page that makes the page unreadable. Ever seen a web page with a very awkwardly written first paragraph where a certain word is repeated ad nauseam? Here's an example:

"We sell the best father's day gifts for father's day. If you like to celebrate father's day we can help with the best father's day gifts for father's day."

It’s obvious that the page is trying to rank well for “father’s day gifts.” This is keyword spamming or stuffing but it is just the tip of the SEO iceberg; there is probably keyword stuffing happening in the code: in the meta tags, invisible text, alt tags, title tags, comment tags, etc. If the word or phrase is repeated too often Google can place a filter to reduce the site's rankings or simply ban the site.

Hidden Text
If text or links are invisible to the website visitor but can be seen by search engine spiders then they are considered hidden.In the past people would simply make the text too small to read by using a 1 point font or make it the same color as the background. Now that search engines have built in algorithms to combat that, spammers are using cascading style sheets (CSS) to hide text or using DIV tags set to not display text on the page. It is boils down to this: it is considered hidden if the text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can be seen by search engine spiders.Search engines can easily spot this today so it is best to avoid it altogether.

Doorway Pages
Pages that solely exist to rank well in the search engines. Sometimes these pages are ugly, containing paragraph after paragraph of meaningless text. Most the time doorway pages are orphaned pages meaning they are not part of the site’s regular navigation.

A black hat SEO firm may use software to generated doorway pages. They plug a few keywords in and the software proceeds to generate pages where much of the content is duplicated from other pages on the site except they swap out the keywords.

Redirect Pages
Keyword-stuffed landing pages that quickly redirect to the real page. These pages don’t necessarily contain content that any human would be interested in. They are meant to show up high in search engine results pages (SERPS). When you click on one of these pages from the results, you are redirected to another page–usually a high-pressure sales page. In other words, the page you click to see is not the page you actually get to read.

Sneaky redirection pages are set up in groups. They target similar and related keywords or phrases. The only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same family creating a false sense of related linking. The redirect can be automatic, done with a meta refresh command or through other means such as mouse moving while on the redirect page.

Duplicate Content or Websites
Setting up multiple websites with the same content or having several pages on a site with essentially the same information but different keywords inserted here and there. You see the duplicate content method a lot with travel-oriented sites. A "template script" is written then regional terms, such as state or city names, are swapped out on each page.

Linking to Unrelated Sites or Bad Neighborhoods
Link campaigns are good thing when done correctly; we would say they are a necessity in today's SEO world. But linking to bad neighborhoods is a sure way to lose your ranking. If you aren't careful about who you are linking to you can easily disappear overnight. Basically, while you may be ethical and do everything right, linking to someone who isn't can be considered guilt by association. Always verify your links to other sites. Make sure they have page rank and are indexed by Google. Avoid linking to any sites that use spamming techniques to increase their search engine rankings. Regularly checking outbound links from your site and removing any offenders is a good idea.

What does Google say?
"Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users," Google says, and they list some bullet points on avoiding being banned.

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Don't send automated queries to Google.

Don't load pages with irrelevant words.

Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Finally…

Any SEO company can use these techniques to boost a client’s rankings and more often than not it will work, but sooner or a later a search engine will catch it or a competitor will report it and then you have to start all over. It is best to do what is right for the client and their customers. Ultimately that is what will bring them back.

Take the time to choose the right SEO company for you.

Build SEO Links & Web Traffic with Content Distribution

2005-09-05T10:47:00.000-05:00

Many website owners and SEOs (search engine optimizers) believe
that trading links is the most effective way to build the
hundreds of links necessary for good search-engine ranking. But
there's another way to build links that deserves your attention:
content distribution.

A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links to your
website is to distribute content, usually articles, for other
websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the
backlink is included in an "author's resource box," which is a
brief "about the author" paragraph promoting the author's site.

Content distribution has usually been thought of as a website
promotion strategy rather than an SEO or link-building
strategy. But there are good reasons for adding content
distribution to your SEO toolkit.

Read more about content distribution

Quietheadphones.com Expands Sale of Noise Reduction Headphones to Schools

2005-09-01T08:14:00.000-05:00

Noise canceling headphones are being used in schools to help students concentrate.

RICHMOND,http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
VA (PRWEB) August 22, 2005 -– Quietheadphones.com is pleased to
announce the expansion of their market to include public schools. Since
the website launched in November 2004 Quietheadphones.com has
experienced healthy growth selling their noise canceling headphones to
consumers. Recently the website began receiving inquiries and sales for
their noise reduction headphones from schools.

“We have had consistent sales to consumers looking to block the sound
of noisy neighbors or needing silence in order to concentrate at work,”
explained Lee Blue, founder of Quietheadphones.com. “Audio engineers
and recording artists have purchased the noise canceling headphones for
professional recordings because they prevent sound from bleeding into
live microphones when they are recording. It was just within the last
few months that we realized schools can utilize the headphones for a
variety of uses.”

Recently a Virginia Public school needed noise canceling headphones for
their language lab where students listen to foreign language CDs to
improve their language skills. “The school was looking for headphones
that would isolate the student so they could concentrate on their
language CD and not hear what other students were listening to. They
purchased several of our headphones and have had very good results,”
noted Blue. The Quietheadphones.com noise reduction headphones not only
block out background sounds when an individual is wearing them, they
also keep in the sound or music being listened to so no one nearby is
disturbed.

There are several other uses of the noise canceling headphones in the
school setting. Most notably school bands and music teachers can use
the headphones for a variety of applications including: enabling
students to hear their own instrument through the din of the other
musicians and allowing students to hear what is being recorded through
a soundboard. The EX29 Extreme Isolation headphones have a 3.5mm plug
for use with portable music devices, iPods, etc. They also come with a
1/4 inch gold platted adapter for use with sound boards and other audio
equipment. School nurses and other officials who administer hearing
tests will find the headphones helpful in assessing student’s hearing
without the distracting sounds found in the school environment. Blue
said, “We hope that, with the beginning of the school year, we can
continue to serve schools and provide them with a great product.”

About Quietheadphones.com

Quietheadphones.com is dedicated to providing noise reduction and noise
canceling headphones at a competitive price. Their customer service is
responsive and goes the extra mile to make sure each customer is
pleased with their purchase.

Noise Reduction Headphones Reviews

Company Contact:

Lee Blue

www.quietheadphones.com

Email: e-mail protected from spam bots

Press Release Contact:

Alyssa Duvall

www.bigoakinc.com

Email: e-mail protected from spam bots

# # #

Search Engine Optimization Strategies

2005-09-01T08:05:00.000-05:00

1) Title Tag - The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO
technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title
tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web
page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should
have it's own title tag.

2) ALT Tags - ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the
images didn't show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the
visitor what it's about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the
ALT tags, but don't over do it because you could get dropped in the
results or even worse banned for life!

3) Link Popularity - Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool
out of all them. Most search engines don't even consider web sites if
there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site.
Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it
comes to getting your site a good ranking. Your keywords should be in
the links you get and keep the keywords short. When you receive
requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with
them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

4) Keyword Density - This is also vital and should be used with
research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag, once
in the heading tag, once in bold text, and get the density between 5%
to 20% (Don't over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and
high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and
in the last one.

5) Page Size - Your web page's speed is important to your visitors
and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to
spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your
web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

6) Rich Theme - Search engines are looking at themes more and more.
Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep
the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that's related
to your market and link them out to other related content on your
site. Try to get 200 web pages or more.

7) Web Site Design - This is also important, if you want to get
indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages
should validate and be usable in all of today's leading edge
browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines
dislike them both a lot.

8) Insite Cross Linking - This will help you get all of your web
pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more
than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related
quality content across your site. This will also help build you a
better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link
back to your home page and your main service(s).

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Solutions

2005-08-28T13:46:00.000-05:00

While being a SEO company sometimes puts us at odds with the pay-per-click machine we must admit they are helpful in starting a business on the web. Instant search engine visibility and control of your investment are two good reasons to try it out, until SEO efforts begin to show results.

Major Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

Google AdWords

Perhaps the largest and best known of all the PPC opportunities is
the Google AdWords program. With this program you will see a
significant increase in traffic. the downfall is that due to it's
popularity the cost-per-click can be very high for competitive
phrases.

Overture - $25 Bonus

If there is a rival in PPC popularity then it's with Overture. Again,
you will witness a good increase in traffic however like with
Google's AdWords program, the cost-per-click can be very high.

Secondary Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

ExactSeek

This one isn't really a PPC but rather an annual subscription. You
choose your keywords and pay a flat rate ($12/yr) and you'll be
listed in the Sponsored Listings on Exactseek and 40+ other
directories. Beanstalk first purchased a listing when it was only
ExactSeek and found it well worth the money, with the added power of
the other engines and directories they've added it's a great deal.

Enhance (Formerly Ah-Ha) - $25 Bonus

Significant increases in revenue can be realized with this PPC
engine. In the first week of testing this engine we saw significant
increases in both traffic and revenue from the test site. They are
currently giving away a $25 bonus for those who open accounts with an
initial deposit of $50.

GoClick

While this engine doesn't seem to provide a ton of traffic it
certainly seems to deliver in ROI. In our trials on this PPC engine
we did not see a large jump in visitors to our site however they have
a low CPC (cost-per-click) starting at just $0.01/click and because
of their secondary classification they do not have the popularity
that leads to high bid amounts. For ROI this is one of our favorites.

Kanoodle

Depending on your industry this PPC engine can produce the highest
number of clicks of all the secondary engines. Great traffic and
relatively low bids make this a great engine choice.

ePilot

Of all the secondary PPC engines that I we have tested and used
ePilot seems to provide the most consistent high traffic. After
Kanoodle it would definitely be the most highly recommended of the
secondary PPC engines.

While there are certainly more pay-per-click search engines and options these are some of the major players out there now. More nich pay-per-click search engines exist and can be used to your benefit. The key is to track your results and make sure you are putting your money in the right one.

Is ALT Text Important with Search Engine Optimization?

2005-08-18T12:29:00.000-05:00

I have recently read an article by acclaimed SEO Expert Robin Nobles on the subject of ALT text. As always, Robin has given us the facts but tempered them with reason. You can find an excerpt below and a link to the full article below.

How Important is ALT Text in Search Engine Optimization?
By Robin Nobles (c) 2005

For years, search engine optimizers have included their
important keyword phrases in ALT text for images, feeling
confident that many of the search engines considered the
contents of ALT text when determining relevancy.

The big question is, has this changed?

Yes . . .

None of the Major Engines Considers ALT Text When Determining
Relevancy

According to research by expert SEO researcher Jerry West of
WebMarketingNow (http://www.webmarketingnow.com) and Search
Engine Academy (http://www.searchengineacademy.com), at the
present time, none of the "Big Three" search engines (Google,
Yahoo!, nor MSN), considers ALT text when determining relevancy.

West explains, "Over the last six months, we have seen a trend on
our testing servers that shows that using ALT text for SEO
purposes has not only diminished, but adversely affects the
rankings in the SERPs. It is clear that search engines continue
to catch up to "SEO tricks" that are intended to improve search
engine ranking while damaging the visitor experience. The
American Disabilities Act (ADA) has strict guidelines as to what
your site needs to contain in order to be ADA compliant. I
garantee you, they do not look favorably at ALT text that has
been keyword stuffed.

Read the Full Article

Keyword Density - How Much Is Too Much?

2005-08-17T22:44:00.000-05:00

Keyword Density or Frequency

A lot of experts think around 3 to 10 times per 100 words on
your page is enough. I prefer around 1 to 2 keywords or phrases with
a 8 to 12 percentage of the total page.

A good rule of thumb when creating your optimized page is to read the content out
loud. Have someone else listen if it helps. If it "sounds" like you have forced too many instances of the
keyword phrase or you are obsessed with whatever you pages about, chances are good that you need to remove a few or better yet, use other ways to say the same thing.

There are basically two main aspects of keyword optimization. First,
you want to select optimal keywords to target in your web pages.
Second, you want to include these keywords in an optimal manner to
show the search engines that your pages are relevant to the keywords.

Almost all major search engines gives weight to words located toward
the top of your page. So it is a good idea to place your keyword
phrase at the top of your page in a useful way and keep marketing in
mind as you structure this opening paragraph.

Keep in mind that people will be reading your page. Real people, not just spiders, so make the content viable and market to your customers.

Keyword Selection and Analysis Tools

2005-08-15T11:53:00.000-05:00

Here are some tools we use when researching relevant and targeted keywords and phrases for our clients.

Look for the top 20 to 30 of the collection. Please note that the count may differ with various websites
since the amounts of search traffic they get vary. So take the count
results from only a single site.

Overture tool Pages

(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion)

Wordtracker tool [recommended]Pages

Google Sandbox ToolPages

(https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox)

Espotting ToolPages<br>
(http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp)

Related Pages

(http://www.related-pages.com/adwordskeywords.aspx)

After using these tools we begin to figure out the level of competition and amount of effort needed to rank you site for the keywords you have chosen. How much time and attention your competitors have put into their SEO efforts also fits into the equation.

Duplicate Content & Search Engine Penalties

2005-08-12T16:28:00.000-05:00

A lot has been made of penalties for duplicate content, but as long as it is judged to be duplicate content for legitimate reasons, there should be no penalty. You ask, what constitutes a "legitimate" reason? For example, if your goal is to expand from a US market and you want to target a new market in the UK, then a sister site with duplicate content and alternate spellings (color, colour, aluminum, aluminium) may be a necessary adjustment. It may be best to set these sites up with a region domain, expanding from "stuffyoucanbuy.com" to "stuffyoucanbuy.co.uk." This would be considered a legitimate excuse for duplicate content.

More can be read here

Writing a Press Release for Search Engine Optimization

2005-08-10T15:59:00.000-05:00

Writing A Search-Engine-Friendly Press Release

Press releases can contribute to an increase in search engine positioning for your site. Treat your releases like you would a well-written SEO-friendly web page. Make sure you keep these things in mind:

Have a specific focus.

Write copy that targets this one topic.

Use keywords and key phrases liberally.

Make sure you keywords are in your title.

Press releases, by nature, incorporate each of the elements used with good search engine copywriting. That makes them the perfect addition to your site.

Adding your press releases to your site is very beneficial and turning them into optimized pages that draw in additional, qualified traffic only makes good sense. When you write your next press release, try following these two steps:

Choose keywords that can be easily included in your release.

Incorporate keywords into your headline where possible.

With this in mind you are not only promoting your site to your readers but the search engines as well.

50 Million Americans Visited Blogs During the First Quarter 2005

2005-08-10T08:13:00.000-05:00

We all know what they say about statistics, but just in case here is Mark Twain's quote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

- Autobiography of Mark Twain

First Comprehensive Study of the
Actual Online Behavior of Blog Visitors Now Available

RESTON, Va., Aug. 8,
2005 – comScore Networks today released a report detailing the scale,
composition and activities of audiences of Weblogs, commonly known as
“blogs.” The report, which was
sponsored in part by Six Apart and Gawker Media, found that nearly 50 million
Americans, or about 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population, visited
blogs in Q1 2005. This represents an
increase of 45 percent compared to Q1 2004.

Other key findings of the Behaviors of the Blogosphere report
include:

§
Five
hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in Q1
2005, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each

§

Of
400 of the largest blogs observed, segmented by eight (non-exclusive)
categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by
"hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women

§
Compared
to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to
live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed
connections

§
Blog
readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and
they are much more likely to shop online

“The fact that we found 30
percent of the online population to have visited blogs clearly underscores the
commercial importance of consumer generated and driven media,” said Dan Hess,
senior vice president of comScore Networks.

“It’s noteworthy that while the blog audience is already quite large and
growing, its demographic composition relative to the total population will
appeal to many marketers.”

Google PageRank 10 Sites

2005-08-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder who the PR10 sites belong to. I found a site that shows them and updates it when Goolge updates ther PageRank. Check out Search Engine Genie PageRank(PR) 10 Sites.

How useful is this? Not every unless you can convince them to link to you, but it is fun and interesting to see who sits at the top of the PageRank mountain.

I find it very curious that Microsoft has an interior page ranked a 10 but not their home page.

Some other interesting drops from the PR10 eshelon:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/

http://store.apple.com/

http://toolbar.a9.com/

http://www.stanford.edu/

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/

http://www.yahoo.com/

http://www.intel.com/

http://www.msn.com

http://www.whitehouse.gov

One other note of interest, Google lost most of their pr 10 pages and now most of them are PageRank 9 as well. At least we know Google isn't playing favorites. ;-)

What are Meta Tags? Do They Help SEO

2005-08-07T21:13:00.000-05:00

Meta tags are tags placed in the head portion of the HTML page and are intended to provide certain information to browsers and search engines such as description, keywords, copyright and other unessential information.

Their format is: META NAME="tag name" CONTENT="value"

The following meta tags are most often mentioned in connection with
SEO: "description", "keywords", "robots" and "revisit-after".

META NAME="description" CONTENT="the description of your page"

You can use this tag to add a descriptive summary of the page's
content. It will not help you to achieve better rankings in Google and will do very little for it in Yahoo!, but if the keyphrase that was searched on is in the descritpion tag Google and Yahoo! will use the content of your "description" meta tag when your site is listed in their result pages. Using this as a marketing device would better serve you than trying to stuff your keywords.

META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="your keywords"

This tag is ignored by Google, but some search engines pay some
attention to it. Do not stuff keywords here either as it won't help and can hurt you in some cases. Separate your keywords
using blank spaces or commas - it makes no difference unless you are submitting to directories. Some directories will read your site and request commas and some request spaces. I would do commas without a space.

The tag is optional.

META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="10 days"

This can be set at 15 days, 7 days, 1 day or whatever you like. Many
webmasters add this tag to their pages in the hope that it will force
a visiting spider to come and re-crawl the page at a frequency of
their choosing. It does nothing of the kind. Most spiders simply
ignore the tag, and many interpret it quite the other way, which
is: "Do not come earlier than instructed". If your pages contain this
tag, remove it.

META NAME="robots" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW"

This tag tells the spiders to index the page and follow all the links
that can be found on it. This is true by default, so there is no need
to add this tag.

Use META NAME="robots" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" if you do not
wish the spiders to read and index this particular page.
Use META NAME="robots" CONTENT="INDEX,NOFOLLOW" if you do not want
them to follow the links on the page.

Big Oak SEO can help you attract more targeted customers and more revenue. Visit our site today to see how search engine optimization can help you.

Blogs: Good and Bad

2005-08-05T13:07:00.000-05:00

What is a good business blog? Clients like to know if they should blog and what
is a good blog if they decide to blog at all. Sounds like a Dr. Suess book, doesn't
it? So, what is a good blog? I decided to take a look around and see what constitutes
a good or a bad blog. If you agree or disagree, please post. As with most things
on this blog it has a SEO slant with a
hint of Internet Marketing bias.

The Good Blog

Useful, timely, well-written information with a cohesive theme and style

Writing in a personal, yet professional, first-person style

Provide easy opportunities for feedback on your postings

Reply promptly to comments and feedback. Show your readers you are active
on your blog.

Clean and well-structured design. The purpose of the blog is to provide
information, make it easy for your reader to do so.

Concise posts with clearly evident points and conclusions

The Bad Blog

Incoherent, irrelevant"ramblings" on a variety of topics

No opportunity for notification - bad.

Providing corporate information that should be on your website such as testimonials,
press releases and other pure marketing efforts

Long posts without focus that become a soap box for your personal issues

This list is short and concise because creating a good blog is actually a task
based on common sense and crisp writing. This is one area where your company
can shine. The list of bad blogs far outweighs the list of good blogs. A small
amount of time and effort can reap rewards for your company, big or small.

Most Searches in Search Engines Use Two Words

2005-08-03T21:18:00.000-05:00

I just read a small article by David Utter at Search Newz that intrigued me. Mr. Utter posted data from www.onestat.com that reveals some very helpful information about your typical internet searcher. In other words we have been given some insight into the mind of how our customers search.

One of the biggest obstacles in SEO is convincing the client to target keywords and phrases they might not agree with. Often the topics of which keywords to target turn into which keyword to target. The education process starts by us explaining to the client that targeting one keyword is foolhardy and a huge waste of our time and their money.

An example: A potential client asked if we could rank them for the term toys. We convinced him that toys could lead to many results that would be of no use to him. Cat toys, dog toys, other kinds of toys not fit for a G or PG audience as well as his own types of products, children's toys.

An now that I have used three paragraphs to get to my point, here it is. People searching on the Internet use more than one word. They most often use two words. This is substantiated by a study done by OneStat.com.

OneStat.com reports that two-word searches rate just above three-word searches, 29.6 percent to 27.55 percent. The figures they show for July 2005 are an average of searches done over the last two months.

"Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo can drive a lot of traffic to a web site. It is important that a webmaster or SEO expert knows what kind of search phrases they have to use to drive more traffic to a site," said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com, in a statement.

Remember specific is good on the Internet and targeted is even better. Two-word searches are wonderful, three-word searches are even better and four-word searches are sale waiting to happen. So don't waste effort for a keyword unlikely to bring people to you Internet door, focus on the phrases that will bring sales to your business.

Local results provided by search engines point customers in the right direction

2005-08-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

Local customers know where to find local businesses...the Internet. Through search engines and directories, the Internet provides a quick and easy place to choose a local merchant or business.

Just because the Internet is worldwide doesn't mean local businesses can't benefit from having a website and a presence in the search engines. Realizing the benefits of local searches Google recently launched “Google Local.” This feature allows searchers to enter in their zip code and search using keywords. When the results are returned they provide the address and phone number of the businesses. Google and MapQuest have partnered to provide maps and directions to the locations that are returned in the search. Yahoo, AOL and MSN also have local capabilities.

The Kelsey Group and ConStat have found that 70% of US households use the internet to shop for local products and services. http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/5319.asp

More and more people are turning to search engines and online yellow pages to search for local companies. A website allows for business owners to provide more information about their products and services than a full-page ad ever could.

An important update to make for your site is adding your physical address to your site pages, in the footer perhaps. This will ensure that the search engine's indexing spider or bot pick up the address for inclusion in the search engine. Search engine optimization (SEO) is also important so that not only is your address being pulled for inclusion in local results, but your site is found for the correct terms that describe your business. SEO can be performed on an existing site or as part of the development of a site.

Why PayPal is Good Thing for Internet Commerce

2005-07-30T16:06:00.000-05:00

We recently ordered some chairs for our offices. One chair in particular was ordered from eBay and paid for from our paypal account. I am a big fan of paypal was it lets new web businesses accept credit cards and test the waters, so to speak. They charge a very fair rate and you only pay when you make a sale. A better deal is hard to find on the web.

The chair ordered on EBay has yet to arrive and it has been over two months. I am quite certain it will never arrive and the person we ordered from has yet to provide a valid tracking number or insurance information for our chair.

PayPal to the rescue

I filed a claim with PayPal and they have acted as the intermediary and should be issuing me a refund on the money used to pay for the chair. Just another solid reason that PayPal is a sound choice for internet commerce.

While we have listed other options on our site as PayPal alternatives, we do have complete faith in PayPal. I'll update more once this has been resolved completely.

Website Design - Choosing Your Colors Wisely

2005-07-29T11:46:00.000-05:00

When designing a website we choose colors wisely. Remember, colors convey emotions and emotions can heavily influence your decision-making process. Your choice of colors for your website should mirror the message and/or feeling you to hope to communicate to the viewer. Let's take a look at some colors and what they mean to you and your website.

Blue - the color of stability

Blue is a color of peace, harmony, tranquility, health, coolness, confidence, loyalty, conservatism, dependability and technology. Blue is a safe choice for most uses. It causes the brain to send off 11 chemical tranquilizers and is a wonderful calming color. It is a preferred color for corporate America, but avoid using blue when promoting food and cooking because blue suppresses appetite.

Negatives: Depression, coldness, obscenity, conservatism and winter

Red - the color of passion

Red is the color of passion, strength, energy, fire, love, excitement, speed, leadership and power. When using red in your website design it is best to us it as an accent color. This color does not usually work well with greens or purples of the same intensity, causing a vibrating effect on the eyes. It is a perfect color for 'Buy Now' or 'Click Here' buttons on Internet banners and websites as it attracts the eye.

Negatives: Danger, fire, blood, war, anger, stop, revolution, radicalism and aggression

Yellow - the color of ideas

Yellow can convey sunlight, joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, wealth (gold), summer and hope. It is the brightest color and intellectuals love yellow. It takes more chemicals in the eye to see the color yellow. Websites targeting older people should look at other colors as yellow can make them feel anxious or angry.

Negatives: Cowardice, illness, hazards, dishonesty and avarice

Green - the color of nature

A Big Oak favorite, as you can tell, green implies movement, nature, spring, fertility, youth, environment, money (US), good luck, safety and generosity. It is the most restful color for the human eye and it can improve vision. Green works well as an accent or secondary color. Use green to indicate safety when advertising products that may be considered dangerous, such as medicines. Olive green, one of the greens on our site, is the traditional color of peace.

Negatives: Inexperience, envy, misfortune, jealousy, illness and greed

Orange - the color of energy

As you can tell from our site, this is another of our favorite colors. Orange conveys creativity, confidence, balance, heat, enthusiasm, flamboyance and playfulness. Orange increases oxygen supply to the brain, producing an invigorating effect, and stimulates mental activity. It is highly accepted among young people. Orange is very effective for promoting food products and children's products such as toys.

Negatives: Warning, danger and cheapness

Purple - the color of nobility

Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes wisdom, dignity, independence, power, nobility, luxury and ambition. According to surveys, almost 75 percent of pre-adolescent children prefer purple. Purple is a very rare color in nature leading people to consider it to be artificial.

Negatives: Cruelty, arrogance, mourning, profanity, exaggeration and confusion

Beige and Gray - the color of neutrality

As neutrals, they can be used in combination with almost all colors and still work well visually. Lighter hues of each make for good readability and backgrounds, but you must use hints of bright color or else you website can lose any visual pop or visual interest. Gray works well in office environments and promotes productivity and stimulates creativity.

Negatives: Apathy, dull, drab, monotonous, somber and smoky

Brown - the color of reliability

Solid, reliable brown is the color of earth and is abundant in nature. It implies simplicity, reliability, earthiness, comfort and durability. Be careful as brown can be perceived in much the same way as beige: dull and drab. Men are more apt to say brown is one of their favorite colors. Maroons go well with this color and speak to professionalism, like rich dark leather.

Negatives: dirty, drab, sad, boring and unwanted

Black - the color of sophistication

Black speaks to power, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery and style. Black can make color burst from the web page, especiall if it is a bright color. It is a natural classic color and never goes out of style. Too much black can darken a mood and affect emotions very easily. When designing for a gallery of art or photography, a black or gray background can be used to make the other colors stand out.

Negatives: Death, unknown, fear, dark, sad, threatening, wicked, morbid and dangerous

The color of success

We take every part of our design process seriously and few things are as important as your choice of colors for your website. Colors have a larger impact on your viewers than any other part of the design and can affect your site's success. Color is immediate, emotional and memorable. If you have a website, try this simple test. Look at it for a few moments and write down the feelings and words that come to mind. If your colors aren't telling you the same story as your content it may be time to look at changing your color scheme. Big Oak can help with website design and search engine optimization