March 18th, 2009
The Short Messaging Service (SMS) from Google sends short, quick, text answers in response to your queries from an SMS-enabled mobile device, such as a cell phone. For example, you can look up phone numbers and addresses of local restaurants, do local phone book searches, compare prices from online merchants in Froogle to those you find in local stores, even look up definitions of words from the dictionary.
SMS has long been a common means of mobile communication in Europe. It has been available in the US for some time, but hasn’t been widely used. You don’t need a phone with a web browser to use Google’s SMS. Since the information is transmitted as text only, without graphics, only the ability to send and receive SMS messages is needed. At present, the service is only available only in English, through major US wireless carriers like AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Your service plan must allow for SMS messaging also. Use of SMS doesn’t generally count against minutes under most plans, but both your SMS to Google and the answer received from Google will typically count towards messages allowed.
Use of the Google SMS service is free at present, though of course users will need to pay any connection and messaging charges from their wireless carriers.
Google SMS can be handy for travel in particular. For example, let’s say you’ve arrived at your hotel, and really have a taste for Chinese food. You may be able to use Google SMS to enter “Chinese food delivery” followed by the zip code of your hotel. Google will return, usually in less than a minute, a list of local Chinese restaurants that offer delivery. This is a nice alternative to looking in a phone book, where you may not know the city, and also is handy for situations where you may not be able to connect to the Internet easily.
About The Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.
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January 19th, 2009
A lot has changed in the way sites are optimized for search engines since last year. For one thing, Google is not the only search engine worth looking into anymore; Yahoo has definitely managed to take away some of Google’s oomph over the past twelve months. Another important change is that the intelligence of the search engine spiders and algorithms has increased dramatically. So without further ado, I will present you with a standard search engine optimizing process.
Keyword Research
Nothing can be done until you know what your target phrases are. Keyword research must be done to find out what people are actually typing into the search engines. For example, do they type in “medical insurance” or “health insurance” more often? Is it worth targeting the keyword “dental insurance”? What do your competitors think its clients type?
Keyword research usually begins by asking the client what they think are good keywords and by looking at your competitor’s Meta tags and text. You then have to brainstorm to find new and related keywords that were not previously thought of. The use of Wordtracker, Overture, and Google AdWords’ estimates is indispensable. If you use the “KEI” offered at Wordtracker, don’t fall into the trap of giving it too much worth. It is a good tool to help discover keywords that have not been exploited by the competition, but the really important number is the amount of traffic each keyword generates. Finally, create a chart to determine the relationship between keywords used. For example, there is no point promoting dental insurance if your site does not offer it.
Texts
The next step is to write the text. Hire a specialized writer to put the text together. Ideally someone who has been trained in Internet writing, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO), or get advice from professional SEOs, marketing experts, and usability experts. Work with the client to get a feel for what is needed for the site. Then use all these skill to put together the delicate balance needed between selling to people, selling to search engines, and making the text interesting/useful to read.
Domain Selection
Once the text is written, come up with a catchy domain name for the site. Try to include part of the keyword in the domain, and to think ahead so that the domain can be expanded into the title. Our site www.gloriousbahamas.com is a good example of a domain with a keyword in it that is catchy and clearly stated. The keyword for that site is “Bahamas real estate”, so having part of the keyword in the domain will help in the long run.
Title and Meta Tags
From the domain name, you can then create a title with the full main keyword in it (such as Glorious Bahamas Real Estate). The title is the most important text on the site. The Meta tags include the description tag, and the keyword tag. The description is what the searchers will see in many search engine results, so it must have the keywords in it and, more importantly, it must sell the site. Write a description that is objective, not subjective. Zeal has some good advice for titles and especially description writing at http://zeal.com/guidelines/style/site_titledesc/. The keyword tag is done just in case some engines still use it (though very few still do), so don’t pull your hair out over it. Just list 10-15 keyphrases and try not to repeat any single word more than three times.
New Content
Now we come to the meat of today’s search engine optimization. So far, we have not discussed anything new or original. It is the same strategies that have been used since I first got into the business of SEO in 1998. Today, with smarter engines, a site needs to be something that is cared about. A site has to grow, develop, and expand as if it were someone’s baby. Gone are the days when you could build a site, get good listings, and then forget about it as it brought in the traffic and the dough. Take care of your site by adding useful content to it on a regular basis, and then the site will gradually grow from a few pages to dozens of pages. Not only will this make the site seem more alive - radiating with the healthy glow of a developing child - but it has the added benefit of increasing the amount of content the site contains, and thus increasing the amount of keywords found within it. For example with www.canada-health-insurance.com we add pages with more details about dental coverage or pages with details about government coverage for each province. Every month there are new pages, so that every time the spider comes back to visit, it spends more time at the site reading new content. This is one half of the key to getting good listings in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Link Campaigns
The second half of the key is getting good sites to link to your site. Going after web sites with related content, sites with good authority in your web site’s field, and sites that are “popular” are the priority. Getting only reciprocal links is not the goal, getting the aforementioned sites to link to you because you have good, valuable content is the goal. Sites that do reciprocal linking usually have hundreds of links on their link pages and these will add very little value to your site. Don’t waste your time with reciprocal linking. Only link to a site if doing so will increase the value of your site in the eyes of your clients.
A link campaign is a lot of work, and it involves a lot of frustration and rejection. You have to approach bigger sites and sell the value that linking to your site will bring them. For every 20 sites you approach, you will be lucky to get one to link to you. You have to be persistent, consistent, and determined.
Conclusions
Optimizing a site is no longer something you can do and then forget about. For a site to succeed in the search engines today, it has to constantly be changing and growing either in content or in links, and ideally in both. It has to appear that the site is the life and soul of its creator, and that somebody cares enough about it to pay attention to it. Because after all, if the creator doesn’t care, why should the search engines?
About The Author
Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce marketplace, and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc. (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/). He has been researching and developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field. Contact: shawn@redcarpetweb.com
shawn@redcarpetweb.com
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October 9th, 2008
You finally have a website and you are ready to sit back and let the visitors start rolling in. How does that saying go? “If you build it they will come.” This may be true in Hollywood but certainly not true in the case of your website. You need to constantly work at improving your site to ensure that your website achieves a decent search engine ranking. This is a process that doesn’t happen over night but with some concentrated effort you can get better search engine rankings. Here are some tips on getting to the top of the search engines.
- Keep your design simple! Avoid gratuitous uses of flash, images/graphics, and special effects. As cool as these effects are, they hinder or sometimes block the search engine from seeing your sites content. Whenever possible use external elements (stylesheets and javascript). Less code cluttering up your page means search engines can find and index your content easier, leading to better search engine rankings.
- Research your competition and choose your keywords carefully. Keyword phrases tend to be more effective. For example: use “Toronto real estate web design” instead of web design. This could mean the difference between competing with 6 million websites or 100 thousand.
- Make sure your web pages include good meaty content of at least 250-300 words per page. Search Engines analyze the relevancy of your page/site based on the content. Your keywords should be represented in your content - if your keywords are not represented, either you have chosen the wrong keywords or you haven’t thought out your content properly. Search engines like sites that change their content regularly so find ways to keep your content fresh but the message clear.
- Use Meta tags (title tag, description tag and keywords tag) properly and use different Meta tags on each page of your site! Make sure your title is relevant and between 50 and 60 characters. Your description should not exceed 150 characters and should summarize the content of your page. Most importantly make sure the words/phrases in your keywords tag are represented in your content.
- Use alternate image tags. Besides being a good design practice, alternate image tags help the search engines verify the importance of the images on your page. When appropriate use your keyword choices in your alt image tags.
- Avoid using only image based navigation on your site. If you are using images as links to your other pages, make sure you absolutely use alternate image tags. Ideally you should also include text based links somewhere on your web page as well. You see this quite often in the footer of some web pages although you can always include test links in the content of your pages as well. Text based links help the search engines find ALL your pages not to mention they make your site more assessable. If your site is complex you should include a site map to help your visitors and the search engines find their way around your site. If you are using a sitemap put the link near the top of your page so that the search engine finds it quickly.
- Use heading tags and bold to emphasize your keywords. Don’t over do this! If you have chosen your keywords properly, your keywords should already be in weighted areas of your carefully written content.
- Do NOT use auto submit services to submit your site to the major search engines. As long as you have incoming links to your site from a site that has been indexed your web site should automatically be indexed. If you need to submit your website to a search engine do it manually and only once.
- Research and gather external links from sites that are relevant to your own. If your site is promoting health food a link from a human resources site will not help your website rankings and may actually penalize your site.
To get better search engine rankings you need to keep it simple, natural and use your common sense. Don’t try to trick the search engines as this can often result in getting your site banned or dropped from the index.
Remember, it can takes month for your optimization efforts to pay off, but when they do you will enjoy better search engine rankings!
© 2005 Tanya Beaudoin o/a Office on Demand, All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in its entirety, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify Mrs. Beaudoin as to where the material will appear.
The attribution should read:
“Tanya Beaudoin, B.A. owns and operates a Web Design Company - OOD Web & Graphic Design Studio - that specializes in e-solutions and graphic design (including web design, search engine optimization and internet marketing products like e-stationary and newsletters). To learn more about getting better search engine rankings, please visit Tanya’s web site at http://www.officeondemand.ca
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October 7th, 2008
There’s an assumption that the higher a ranking or positioning you have with major search engines; the more people will beat a path to your web doorstep. But based on my experience, that’s simply not true! There’s another factor that is just as important and may actually drive more traffic to your site.
This big secret is frequency: The number of times your name appears when someone enters a key word in a search engine. I believe that the more times you appear in a search, the greater the likelihood of someone actually clicking through to your site.
How do you get frequent listings in search engines? Write quality content articles.
I’m an investment advisor and a while ago I started a second web site (www.successful-investment.com) to promote my weekly mutual fund newsletter, capture potential prospect names and house a library of my published articles.
To get people to the site, I naturally wanted to move up in the search engine food chain. I did the usual meta tag things, but that didn’t cause my rise in the rankings. What did cause it surprised me.
One of my first articles (”Do lifestyle funds provide greater security?”) was submitted to some 30 article banks and web sites. Many of them reprinted it, which increased the number of appearances of my name associated with the topic. Since many of these sites were already ranked high on the search engines, I rode on their success.
Searching Google for “Lifestyle funds” produces over 3 million results. On the first page of results my article is listed four times, on the second page three times and on page three it’s listed three times, and so on. If you were searching this term, with that much presence you would not likely overlook me.
In addition to generating hits on my web site from potential clients, my frequent listing in search engines yielded another benefit: I was invited to CNNfn’s Hollywood studio to discuss my article “How to evaluate load vs. no load mutual funds.” They found me by searching Google for “load vs. no load.” That produced almost 5 million results and on the first page my article appears three times, on the second three times and on the third three time as welland some included my company listing. I was an authority!
In the past six months I have written and published 17 articles with the key search terms being part of the title. I pretty much get similar results with all of them. Why? I believe quality content is a key.
My core business is “personal investment management.” If you search that on Google you will get about 11 million results. I currently rank number 8. And that’s among the ‘who’s who’ in investment management, companies that invest big bucks to manipulate getting high rankings on search engines.
Can I improve on that? Probably not by trying to manipulate positioning, but definitely with frequency. And that comes from writing articles.
Now, maybe you like this idea but think you can’t write quality articles. I’m not a writer, but my articles get picked up by e-zines and article banks all the time. How does that happen? It’s actually simpler than you think.
There are two aspects to writing; 1. the actual content and 2. the writing style. If you’ve been in business for any length of time you have a wealth of information that you take for granted but others would love to know about. You should be able to write a 300 to 800 word article about your product or service area. Don’t worry about the style; just write quality content that will be helpful to your potential customers.
Although my writing skills are pretty sharp because I do a lot of writing, I would not consider them to be on the same level as a professional writer. So I have a second secret to success.
One of my clients is an award winning Hollywood writer and he “enhances” my articles. It’s usually not a lot of work, but at times I need a better transition from point A to point B. Since the content is clear and basically organized, he doesn’t have to spend any time researching or “doing the heavy lifting.” He can devote his attention to enhancing the quality of the presentation, and that doesn’t take long or cost much.
[If you need help with writing you may contact Laren Bright (punster@earthlink.net) and tell him I sent you.]
I think you will find that writing articles becomes a lot easier once you have that kind of assistance. It certainly became stress-free for me when I didn’t have to worry about form and could concentrate on my long suit: content.
It’s hard to beat the results that my articles have produced for me in terms of exposure, Google rankings and new clients. Given these facts I propose that frequency beats positioning anytime. Try it and see if it boosts your rankings and your business.
About The Author
Ulli Niemann is an investment advisor and has written about methodical approaches to investing for over 10 years. He is stepping out of his comfort zone to write about different areas in which he has gained experience that can assist others. You can reach him at: www.successful-investment.com
ulli@successful-investment.com
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October 7th, 2008
Indulge me for a moment.
Forget that Google is a search engine. Just for a moment, imagine it is a style guide. A very different kind of style guide.
Instead of this particular style guide being written as a static book by an expert or two, it is written by studying the searching and browsing habits of hundreds of millions of web users.
Get the idea? Not a search engine. A style guide. A constantly evolving style guide that works from its insights into how people use and read web sites.
A style guide that puts the visitor first, puts their needs ahead of the academic opinions of experts.
A style guide that automatically rewards sites that serve their readers the best.
If we study Google not as a search engine, but as a style guide, what does it tell us about how we should write our web pages?
>> 1. Make the subject of each page absolutely clear.
As visitors arrive at your site, regardless of the entry page, the first question in their minds is, “Am I in the right place? Will I find what I want here? Can I achieve what I want to achieve here?”
Fortunately, the web page format gives us a title, headlines, first paragraphs and subheads we can use. So it makes sense to use them to make it abundantly clear to our visitors what the page is about.
We’ll do this for our visitors. But, because doing so helps our visitors, Google will reward us.
>> 2. Make your home page short text clear
First-time visitors to your home page are unlikely to be able to achieve their objective through that page alone. So you need to write short text that will quickly and clearly let them know if you have what they want deeper in your site, and how to get there.
This means using the right words in your headings, subheads and short descriptions. It means anticipating the words and phrases most visitors will have in their minds and will scan for. It means understanding which words and phrases best correspond to your visitors’ needs.
Write these headings and short descriptions with your readers in mind and, once again, Google will reward you.
>> 3. Make your text links relevant and descriptive
A text link that says, “More…” or “Click here” or “Learn More…” tells the reader nothing about the destination page.
Visitors scan your text links in the same way as they scan headings, subheads and short text. So provide them with clues. If you have an interior page about a weight-loss hypnosis service, write a link that says something like, “More on weight-loss hypnosis”.
Do this and you’ll be helping your readers a great deal. And yes, Google will reward you for your efforts.
>> Concluding thoughts…
By all means use a traditional style guide. They are great for getting your grammar right and choosing the right words. That said, many of them conflict in their recommendations as to the correct online terms. To some, a web site is a web site, to others it’s a website.
But back to Google as a style guide for a moment. This whole exercise, this make-believe about Google being a digital, interactive style guide is all about the importance of writing for your readers.
Yes, what I have been talking about it using the correct keywords and phrases in the appropriate places.
However, too many people write their pages with Google as the primary audience. I think that’s the wrong approach. You get a clunky text flow that, intuitively, feels wrong to the reader.
Instead, write with a clear understanding of what your readers need. Do this and you’ll find that the best keywords fall into the right places with an appropriate frequency.
And Google will reward you.
Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author and speaker. You can access all his newsletter articles on writing for the web at his http://www.ExcessVoice.com site. You’ll find articles and resources on how to make money as a freelance writer at http://www.FreelanceWritingSuccess.com
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September 25th, 2008
For beginners, link exchange campaigns can be a minefield of problems. For example, here is a question I was asked:
“Hi Andy,
I have noticed that a lot of sites that request a link exchange from me may have a PR 5 or 6 on their home page and when I click through to the links page there is a PR 0. This is very disappointing and I don’t exchange with them. Should I reconsider this practice or am I right in thinking they are doing something to prevent PR from passing to their links pages?
Best Regards,
Troy”
There are many things to consider when exchanging links.
The above question asks whether you should consider linking to a PR 5 site when the links page is a PR 0.
What are your thoughts on that?
The question you should ask yourself is “Why does the homepage have a PR5 and the links page a PR0?”.
There can be a few different reasons for this.
Reason #1 - the links page is new and has not had a PR assigned to it in the Google toolbar (that does not mean it has no PR, just that the toolbar has not been updated to reflect its PR).
This case is easy to spot. Look at the URL of the links page. Then go to the homepage and View the source of the homepage in a text editor (from the View Menu in Explorer, select Source).
Do a search of the source for the links page filename. e.g. if the links page is called links.html, search the source code for links.html.
If you find a link on the homepage to the links page, chances are the links page is new and has not had time to be assigned a PR in the toolbar yet. In this case, I would consider the link to this site.
You could also go to the Way Back Machine: http://www.archive.org/
..and type in the links page URL. If the Way Back Machine has no record of it, it may be new (though it is possible to prevent the WBM from caching your site).
Now, before we move on, check that link to the links page in the source again. Make sure that there is no dynamic linking going on. While it is not always easy to spot, the introduction of the “nofollow” tag in recent months, has meant that many non-techie webmasters have been able to create dynamic links, quickly, easily, and without much technical knowledge. If you see the word “nofollow” in the link HTML pointing to the links page, then this webmaster is not passing PR to the links page. In fact, worse than that is the fact that the search engines wont even find and index the links page.
This is a case of one webmaster trying to cheat you out of PR. Don’t link to them.
Reason #2 - Links page is not being linked to, or is linked to using a dynamic link.
If you do not find a link to the links page on the homepage of the site, or the link uses one of the forms of dynamic linking, then I would not recommend you link to that site. The links page will get no PR, and wont even be found by the search engines, so you get no benefit. It is possible the links page does have a link pointing to it from another page, but let’s look at that as a separate issue.
Reason #3 - links page is buried deep in the navigation of the website.
Some webmasters bury the link to their links page deep within their site, so that the only way a search engine spider will find the links page is by following 3 or 4 links from the homepage. When this is done, very little (if any) PR flows to the links page. Again, I would not link to a site like this. You wont get much benefit.
Reason #4 - Multiple links pages bury the page your link is found on.
On some websites, there are so many reciprocal partners, that links are often split across 10s (or even 100s) of pages. For a search engine spider to find the page you are on, it would require following link after link on these links pages until it reaches yours. Again, by the time it gets there, very little (if any) PR will have flowed to the page your link is one.
For points #3 & #4, my advice is simple. Start at the homepage, and see how many clicks it takes you to navigate to the page your link is on. If it is more than 2 clicks away, think carefully about exchanging links. You may not get much out of the deal.
Reason #5 - a sneaky one here. Check for a robots.txt file on the site that is requesting the link exchange. If there is one, make sure that there is no command that disallows the spiders from accessing the links page. This is a technique that will prevent the search engines spiders from visiting the links page, so no PR, and no benefit, is passed to your site. This is a definite one to avoid.
Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO internet marketing newsletter.
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September 9th, 2008
When shopping online for Link Management Software that can help create and automate your links directory, some important features that you should look for are as follows:
The software should,
- Create the links page based on your own template.
- Allow addition or removal of links at the click of a button and have the links page rebuilt.
- Allow webmasters to submit their site.
- Notify you when a webmaster has submitted their site and give you the option of accepting or rejecting their submission. .
- Automatically check whether link partners linked back to you.
- Help to automate the process of finding new partners.
- Be easy to install.
The key to success for a website or online business is good search engine ranking. All of the major search engines use link popularity to determine how well a site will rank so the more high quality, relevant links that lead to your site, the higher it will rank.
There are a number of link management software scripts on the market but the one that I really enjoy using is
LinkMachine. This is a relatively new link exchange management software that does not require an mySQL database and is very extremely to install. This software makes it very easy to find and contact quality link partners, generate custom link pages that match your site, and keep track of reciprocal links. LinkMachine automatically updates your link pages the instant they’re changed - no uploading required. Link exchanges increase a site’s targeted traffic, search engine ranking, and sales.
LinkMachine finds hundreds of popular, relevant sites to potentially exchange links with. Invite the webmasters of these sites to exchange links, using LinkMachine’s fast e-mail templates. Generate custom link pages that perfectly match the look of your site. And keep track of each reciprocal link to your site.
LinkMachine is a Php application that runs on your web server. So it can automatically update your link pages the moment a change is made - no need to upload files each time a new link is added.
There is a free 10 day trial and a 30 day money back guarantee.
Ken Austin
Install LinkMachine Free
Take your internet marketing to new heights
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