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Google Caffeine: Use social media and quality content to get a jolt for your site

June 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, Google formally announced the completion of its new web indexing system cleverly named Caffeine. According to Google, Caffeine provides 50% fresher results for web searches than its last index and is the largest collection of web content the search giant has ever offered.

caffeine Google Caffeine: Use social media and quality content to get a jolt for your site

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

– Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer, Google

This is great for those of us who use Google to search and find relevant results to our most common inquiries. Results will become timelier, more social and rely more heavily on keyword strings, ultimately providing more useful results as newer content can be indexed much quicker and from a much larger base of sites.

Is your SERP spot threatened?

When Google says “fresher” results, what they’re saying is that ranking principles have not changed, but rather rankings are (and will become) more dynamic, shifting to display the latest and greatest (and, therefore, hopefully best) information as a result of being able to reach deeper and more frequently into the Web.

But what about website owners who have come to rely on the steady ebb and flow of organic traffic that a high Search Engine Results Page (SERP) position provides?

Many website owners who have long enjoyed a top spot, or even a high spot, have suddenly found their sites displaced, resulting in a massive dip in organic traffic. And to make matters even more vexing, the position your site is in this month will likely be different from where you find yourself next month.

Which is not entirely new, right? Anyone well-versed in search engine optimization (SEO) knows that it is a never-ending battle. The difference is, ranking improvements and demotions may happen even quicker than before because content that you and your competitors are creating will have a more immediate impact within the results. So if you thought SEO was a wild ride before, hang on.

Of course, your main goal should be to deliver value to your customers and audience. After all, ranking is only a means to an end. And since Caffeine should do a better job of measuring that value, it might start putting some distance between those who do provide quality content and those who are merely gaming the system.

Caffeine makes it more difficult, although not impossible, for sites using black hat SEO tactics to reach and/or maintain a position at the top of the rankings for long periods of time. And while I believe SEOs will always find new ways to game the system, I think Google has made a step forward in terms of providing better-quality results.

How to get a boost from Caffeine

So if you can’t rule Google SERPs by just throwing up an automated page with repurposed content, what should you do? Here’s my advice to website owners who rely heavily on organic traffic:

  • Continually look for opportunities to expand or update the content on your site for improved keyword targeting
  • Re-evaluate your current keywords and always look for opportunities to expand and capture more long-tail keywords
  • Build a site that contains clean code and  a clear site structure
  • Look for opportunities to capitalize on social media as real-time results become more integrated with search results
  • Monitoring your competitors will be paramount as new content brought in by them will be indexed quicker than ever.

So fresh and so clean

I think this transition to providing “fresher” results was inevitable as competition from Bing and the massive growth of “real-time” information from social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have created a need for better, faster, (stronger), search engine results. And from a conversion standpoint, I’d argue that this move could ultimately prove to be more beneficial to ecommerce sites that provide high-quality content, because “fresher,” more relevant results also means more qualified traffic.

Of course, cleaner, less manipulated results will have huge benefits to searchers and real, quality sites alike. Remember that both you and Google are on the same mission: provide the right page to the right user. Oh, and don’t be evil.

Related Resources

Search Marketing: Tips on mastering the latest innovations in this mature category

PPC Innovation: How will Google’s new lead capture extension affect your pay-per-click campaigns?

Optimizing PPC campaigns to boost conversions, ROI

Photo attribution: The Official Google Blog

Google Caffeine: Use social media and quality content to get a jolt for your site

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Get Better Search Ranking Using A WordPress Blog

June 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

wordpress seo Get Better Search Ranking Using A WordPress Blog

I recently gave a presentation on SEO at the Dallas Infomart for the Dallas SEO/SEM Meetup group. The point of the discussion was to highlight how blogs can be used to acquire search engine listings to attract organic search traffic to your business website.

To illustrate the point, I used my wife’s recipe blog as an example since she attracts 50K unique visitors to her blog every month and roughly 75% of that traffic comes from organic searches.

Here’s a full video recording of the presentation

Want to attract 50K customers a month to your website?

Learning how is simple. You can either request a private coaching session or become an Open Source Marketer Member and choose from over 320+ videos we offer on blogging, SEO, traffic building, social media, and more.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Special thanks to Jill McKeever for letting me share the SimpleDailyRecipes.com success story with the Open Source Marketer community.

Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.

Get Better Search Ranking Using A WordPress Blog

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , ,

Will Optimize Website for Cheetos

May 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

pigeon head Will Optimize Website for Cheetos

Should I optimize my website for Search Engines or market my website to search engines? That’s a big question and I’ve seen lots of confusion in the SEO vs SEM debate. The answer is…”you have to do both”.

Search Engine Optimization is usually seen as a subset of Search Engine Marketing. I honestly prefer to think of them as internal versus external.

Internal
There are many things you can do to make your website more “search friendly”. Google likes blog entries, tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, keyword placement, keyword density, and site maps (plus many many other things). All of these items are on your website and make Google happier when looking at your website. The idea here is to really work your butt kissing valet skills on Google when they show up at your door. Park their car, wipe their nose, complement their spouse and make damn sure their water glass is always full. When the big boy on the block shows up, make it well worth their trip.

External
Just because your own website is chock full of brown nosing goodness, doesn’t mean Google will even deign to send people to your door. Google wants to know that it is sending people to the “right” place, and not just a hole in the wall that talks a good game. There needs to be lots of people (websites) telling everyone how great the place is (hyperlink to your website) in order to be recommended. Each hyperlink is a vote and the more votes your website has the more you will be noticed and recommended. Please remember that not all votes carry the same weight. A vote from your 20 cousins (all named Daryl) isn’t considered as valuable as a direct recommendation from a major news station (or talk show host). Not only that, but you will need to use those same keywords from your optimized website when you go out and start building your constituency. Marketing hasn’t changed as much as people think, it simply started using new tools online.

You want new visitors to your website to find you for the right reasons and you want existing visitors to see exactly what they were looking for when they get to your website. This is a simple concept, but can be very time consuming if you haven’t already figured out your business model and specific target audience.

The objective is not SEO or SEM. The objective is to increase sales, or expose your branding, or relay a positive image. SEO and SEM can move your goals forward, but if you don’t know your real goals, then you’re just throwing your Cheetos to the pidgeons and getting pooped on as they fly away.

Toff Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using Facebook.

Will Optimize Website for Cheetos

Filed Under: Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, SEO Tagged With: , , , , ,

Cut Your SEO Research Time In Half

April 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

market samurai sword Cut Your SEO Research Time In Half

Wouldn’t it be great to get 8 hours worth of value out of 4 hours worth of actual work? I don’t know about you, but that’s an important business goal for me.

Whether I work 4 hours a day or 20 hours a day, I want the time spent to be as productive and useful to my business as possible and I don’t want my tasks to take any longer to accomplish than necessary. To give an example of what I mean, I recently discovered that I could cut my search engine optimization research time in half by using Market Samurai as my primary SEO research tool. That can be a pretty significant chunk of time to any website publisher.

With search engine optimization, it takes time to find keywords, check search traffic, analyze competition strength, cross reference trend information, and gathering information on backlinks counts and anchor link text. Spending time finding each piece of information adds up quickly and that can mean hours of research time that keeps you from doing other equally important things.

Prior to using Market Samurai, I used a collection of SEO tools for:

Keyword Research

Competitor Analysis

Rank Tracking

These are all great SEO research tools and in some situations I do still use one or two of them, but overall I’ve found that I can get faster results using Market Samurai alone.

Instead of using multiple platform dependent tools whose data must all be cross referenced, I use one tool that works on any machine and supplies the information I need in one common interface. I don’t have to jump between tools and spend time working with the way each tool presents information. Market Samurai even does some analysis for me so I can spend more time making business decisions and less time crunching numbers.

So, if saving time is part of your business mindset and you find yourself spending more time than you think you should on researching keywords, assessing competitors and tracking your search engine placement, then take a look at Market Samurai. It will cut your search engine optimization research time in half and then you’ll have time for the rest of your business.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Flip through the presentation I gave for the Dallas SEO Meetup group for a quick look at each of the tools mentioned in this article.

Do what YOU want and get PAID for it!

Cut Your SEO Research Time In Half

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How Much Search Engine Traffic Should I Have

January 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

How much search engine traffic should I have? This is a question that I hear a lot. Some people want to know how to get more Google love and some are concerned that they are to dependent on search engines for traffic. As far as I’m concerned, the graph below shows a great example of how much search engine traffic you should have. Less than everything else.

analytics traffic sources How Much Search Engine Traffic Should I Have

Now before you get all twisted up by the 4.92% slice of search engine traffic, keep in mind that these are relative percentages so the size of the Search Engines wedge depends on the overall amount of traffic you’re getting to your site. In some cases 4% equates to a a significant amount of search traffic. It’s kind of like having only 2% left of a tera-byte drive. That 2% is still a respectable amount of space. So 4% doesn’t always mean small.

The key point to consider is that search engines are fickle. Yes, visitors from search traffic are actively looking for products, services, and information about specific things, but we have to keep in mind that if an algorithm change means those searchers can’t find your site, then it doesn’t matter how targeted they are. You need to have more than one source of traffic, preferably sources that don’t change drastically overnight. If all your traffic comes from search engines then you are depending on them for all your walk up business. This can be a bad place to be.

A better mixture is to build up links from several website traffic sources like what’s shown in our graph above. With more traffic coming from referring sites and direct traffic you are less likely to have your overall traffic numbers drop suddenly, because you are less dependent on changes in the Google Caffeine search algorithm.

To be honest, I would rather see larger numbers for referring sites than direct traffic because that would mean that the site is being seen as an authority and other sites are likely pre-selling the visitor before they arrive on the site. That said, there are benefits of direct traffic that might not be obvious at first glance, such a visitor loyalty and responsiveness. These are harder to measure, but they offer the greatest amount of value.

Here are just few ways that you can increase your links from referring sites

  1. Be the first to link to other sites. This will put your site on the radar of other site owners and they will be encouraged to check out what your doing and possibly link back to your content in their own articles.
  2. Comment on other blogs. Leave good comments that add to the conversation that’s already going on. Don’t play know it all, but do write as much as you can to add value. If you say more than the author, that’s okay as long as you do it in a spirit of contribution and not one of “look at me”.
  3. Write guest posts for other blogs. Website owners are continually looking for new content. They either have to write it themselves or they have to pay to have content written. If you contribute an article, then will be more than happy to link back to you as credit for your contribution. If the article adds value for the reader then this is a win win win situation for everyone involved.
  4. Use social bookmarking sites. The excitement around these sites has mellowed a bit, but they are still good for getting click traffic to your site. As with all things in the social space though, keep in mind that you’ll get more value out of social bookmarking if you’re being social in the process. That means adding friends and being sure to bookmark their stuff as well.
  5. Use social media sites regularly. Honestly, I see social media as a stronger form of marketing than anything we have ever seen online. If Facebook made search a prominent part of their offering I believe they would give Google something to worry about. But, that’s another article all together. Just remember that people use social media to share things and that’s exactly what you want people to do with your website.

If you are getting most of your traffic today from Google, or Yahoo, or even Bing, then great. You’re doing a great job. The search engines have found you and you must be doing something right because that’s translating into website visitors. Now, spend some time building on the other sides of the house. Start a campaign to build up your incoming links, or look for some cheap forms of paid traffic. Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you balance out that pie chart so that if the search engines sneeze, your visitor traffic won’t catch cold too.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Do what YOU want and get PAID for it!

How Much Search Engine Traffic Should I Have

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , ,

Simple Search Engine Optimization Tips

October 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment

keys to seo Simple Search Engine Optimization Tips

Are you getting at least 100 new visitors to your blog everyday?

If not, it may be that your blog is not optimized for the search engines, which is where people begin their search for products and services online.

Some “search engine experts” would have you believe that search engine optimization requires a lot of advanced techniques to rank well. But the truth is that even a little simple optimization can go a long way.

Here are five things you can do right now, on your own, to make sure your website is optimized for the search engines.

  1. Page Title – Make sure to use relevant keywords within the title tag of each page of your blog. The title tag is the first thing a search engine discovers about your site. The keywords you use in your title should be carefully chosen to describe what your page is about.
  2. Meta Tags – Be sure to inlcude a useful description in the description meta tag that’s located in the head of your document. The meta tag is still used by some search engines as the description that will show up as part of the search engine listing. Completing the description tag doesn’t take very long and it’s a good way to exercise control over what appears to searchers in the search engine listings.
  3. Use H1 Tags – Make sure the headline of your blog post is displayed within an H1 tag. The H1 tag is considered a notation to highlight important parts of your webpage. The search engines use this to determine which parts of your document are emphasized. The headline of your blog post is different than the title of your document, so don’t confuse the two things.
  4. Post Titles – Also, ensure that the headline of your blog post includes keywords relevant to your post topic. Be careful not to overuse keywords though or the search engines will think you are keyword stuffing, or trying to game the system. Just be sure to use keywords when it makes sense, and make sure your titles are friendly for your visitors.

    5. Tip: If you use run a WordPress blog, a good SEO WordPress plugin is The All In One SEO Pack. It gives you the ability to tweak the page description, page title, and associated keywords.

  5. Write For Humans First – Most importantly, when writing articles for your website, be sure to write for the human reader first and the search engine second. For example, don’t just use the word “player” when you could be more descriptive by saying “music player” or “MP3 player”. Just make sure that your keywords don’t disrupt the flow and meaning of your sentences. Including the same keyword in back-to-back sentences can be very distracting for human reader and can be something a search engine can penalize you for doing. So be natural in your writing, but use relevant keywords where they make sense. This will make your articles work for both search engines and your blog readers.

A good free SEO analysis tool for analyzing your website can be found at WebsiteGrader.com. Website Grader measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

For more information on ways to optimize your website for the search engines, check out the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Remember, even a few simple changes can make a world of difference for your blog. Just be sure you cover the basics first.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Simple Search Engine Optimization Tips

Filed Under: Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, SEO, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , ,

Whats More Important Web Design Or SEO

October 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Should I optimise my new website for SEO or is the design more important? This question is sure to raise some lively discussion but depending on who you ask will determine the actual answer you receive.

A graphics design specialist will suggest in a high percentage of cases that the web design is the priority of course. And let’s be honest without that visually attractive to the eye design a possible client will navigate away from your site within the blink of an eye or so they have you think. But then that raises the big question of how did they find your site in the first instance?

The basic web design criteria or curve goes along the lines of web design is laid out using clients brief ..website design looks visually appealing let’s go for it. Needs some content ok, Take the text from our existing old site…..site gets published and time passes but no traffic!

And then more time until eventually perhaps many months later the situation is either so bad or the company are having to invest in adwords that finally search engine marketing company gets called in (or somebody gets intrigued by one of those SEO e-mails that seem to hound webmasters these days), and before you know it you are on a 6 month search engine marketing campaign to try and get noticed by the search engines.

Is this the fast road to success? The thousands of website owners that have been through this exact cycle will certainly argue that it most definitely is not as this launch and pray web development criteria delays any websites success by unacceptable periods of time, and even more frightening  results in thousands in lost profit, turnover and ongoing prospect capture.

I don’t think that any web expert would argue against the fact that the search engines don’t rank on the visual aspect of web design but with minimal attention to search engine optimisation so often this initial chance to make the best impact when the website first gets indexed is totally wasted, if all the search engines find is a badly optimised site with minimal regard paid to any SEM requirements or keyword capture.

With only a little extra investment spent on pre development SEO ,for example keyword research and optimisation gives an worthy return on investment as invariably when the site goes live and gets indexed it will achieve a far better SERPS position from the very start and it has been known for pre-optimised websites to hit a page one result straight away.

To find out more about search engine marketing visit Southampton SEO Services .

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , ,

Affiliate Programs – Can You Too Take Advantage of Them?

September 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Are you looking for possibilities to earn money without even leaving your house?. By now you should know that the internet is exactly what you need to do so. If you do not know that already, this is the right time to change that. Since Internet was developed, lots of people have changed their lives and and began earning money just from home at something called an Affiliate SEO Program.

Ok, so there are not just Affiliate SEO Programs out there, there are programs about any product you can only imagine, so you can choose who to work with. Isn’t it fantastic? You can now work for whom ever you choose!

If you are not familiar with what is it, an affiliate program is chance you can use to make money online. Possibly, you won’t quit your job the same day, you have to ensure affiliate programs work. However, if you are a hard worker, you will soon want to quit your current job and start working for yourself.

Working from home is its own great reward. No traffic on your way to job, you do not need to get up early if you do not want to and certainly more free time to do something you like. The most important, you can spend more time with the family – that is the main reason people start working from home.

What SEO Affiliate Program Is?

If you want to find it out you will first need to know what an affiliate program is. An affiliate program is actually marketing. You will choose a {product`product or service} you want to back or market. You will, before you start doing any type of marketing, first sign up with that company to let them know that you will be working for them. They will then give you a number and a link to place on your site.

An SEO affiliate Program works pretty much the same, the difference is you will be promoting Search Engine Optimization services provided by  an SEO PPC Company What you do does not change. For your marketing activity, you will be receiving a percentage of SEO price that customers are going to pay to agency you work for. This job has a great potential, because you do not need to only work for one company – you can work for many different ones.

making money and doing it from home has never been more profitable as it is with Affiliate Program for SEO. Do the things you love doing, and choose who you work for!

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , ,

SEO Help and Advice

September 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

There are many webmasters that are confused to why they can’t get good rankings in Google. I decided that I wanted to provide you with seo help so that you will understand how you should really be building links. When I began my first website, I was questioning why I couldn’t get my website to the first page of the search engines. Later on, I realized that I needed seo help and that all my links barely had any value.

 

The first links that I got were all from dofollow blog pages that had high page rank. Then, I would post a relevant comment on the page with my links in a signature. Since all of the pages had a high page rank, I figured that I would be able to easily move up the search engines for my targeted keywords. After waiting a few months, I realized that the links were not going to help as much as I wanted. The blogs had no relevance to my links, so they weren’t receiving much link value.

 

There will always be someone trying to misguide you about search engine optimization. Originally, I thought that Google updated the index every three months. Now I realize that it is updated constantly and that my links were just worthless. People complain about being in a sandbox when they first start a site, but it’s really just bad seo tactics.

 

To rank well, you will have get a good amount of relevant backlinks. If you have links on pages that are not relevant to your website, then it’s not going to do much for your rankings. Make sure that you put the keyword that you want to rank well for in your link. This is very important because Google is based on a link algorithm. If you continuously build backlinks to your site that are on relevant pages, you will notice great rankings.

 

In the long run, you will be trusted more by search engines and you won’t need seo help anymore. It took me a long time to understand how to properly optimize my websites. The experts never like giving away the full truth because it makes you a competitor.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

BannerMarketingOnline and AdWords which one is for me?

August 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment
by Tom Thompson

This article describes common differencies between BannerMarketingOnline.com and Google AdWords technologies:

1. Google Adwords is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement technology where you pay when someone clicks on your ad link. In some cases it’s good, but when you choose right keyword for you, you suddenly discover that you are only one of buyers of keyword and in order to get click to your link you should pay up to 70$ per click (for some keywords). With BannerMarketingOnline.com technology you only pay for owing keyword for full year and you, and only you will be shown as a result of search for your keyword.

2. In Google Adwords campaign you have to constantly compete with other companies and raise price for your keywords. Sometimes your ROI can be negative and you should be high professional to get positive results. With BannerMarketingOnline.com you just need to set url for keyword and get ready for getting traffic to your website.

3. Your advertisement budget can vary in Google Adwords, depending on keywords and number of impressions that you choose. BannerMarketingOnline.com has fixed flat price for any keywords that you choose. Only traffic will vary, so only thing that you have to worry is to choose right keywords for your business.

4. When someone searches for your keyword, BannerMarketingOnline.com already displays your website in IFRAME so it means that people already can see your website, without clicking on ad link (not many people like clicking on ad links).

5. Finally, Google Adwords works only with Google Search Engine, when BannerMarketingOnline.com works on All Major Search Engines, plus hundreeds of other partner websites with search features!

I’m using both technologies, cause I think they’re both good in their way, but you can decide which model is best for you.

About the Author:
See this product in action on demo, and then order keywords for your company.
Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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