Entrepreneurial marketing - Compete on innovation
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SEO
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Monday, 27 October 2008 06:56 |
 Google’s Maile Ohye adviced on how to rank well in Google: content and inbound links are most important, and in that order.
In her post, Ohye extols the virtues of naturally gained, editorial inbound links and directly denounces links appear “spammy,” or not “merit-based.”
 One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.
Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.
Ohye then offered four bullet points on how to earn merit-based links, paraphrased below:
- Start a site-related blog, writing or video, research or entertainment.
- Be interesting. Be a teacher. (Hey, that should be a recruitment slogan for a College of Education somewhere! I’ll sell it to ya for the bargain price of $500,000—if a private school, just $10,000, since as a non-government institution you can’t just print the money you need.)
- Participate in the community surrounding your industry—social media, blog comments, user reviews.
- Provide useful products or services.
Content, content, content, a little participation, and the links will come.
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SEO
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Tuesday, 14 October 2008 06:16 |
.jpg) It is vital to have your business show up for searches conducted locally. Here's why:
According to the 2nd annual Local Search Usage Study (2008), conducted by comScore, the first sources used are
- Search Engines (31%),
- Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%),
- Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%)
- and Local Search Sites (11%).
This represents a change from last year’s study, which ranked Print Yellow Pages first (33%), followed by Search Engines (30%).
Why is local search important?
Search engines know your and your clients location when you perform a search. This is because your computer 'transmits' an IP address, and the IP address has information about where you are based. The system isn't perfect, but works well overall.
How do you get your business found for local searches?
It is important that you have content pages which have the keywords for your products and your location close together. E.g., if you are selling plumbing services in Dallas, make sure that you target the keywords 'Plumber in Dallas'. Targeting ZIp codes is equally important.
Google Webmaster Tools also allows you to include your site and associate it with a geographic location. This will enable Google to serve your website to a related search by someone in your area.
Register your site with local search sites.
Register your site with Google Maps.
- Make sure your business is listed correctly by using Google’s Local Business Center. When you register your business, Google will send an activation code to your mailing address (snail mail). You have to return to the Business Center and provide that code before your listing will be accepted. Once you do this, Google says it’ll be up to six weeks before your listing is added. You can continue to use the Business Center to update your business information, add a new business, etc.
- Sign up for a Google AdWords account and create an ad campaign targeted specifically to your local area. This will allow your ad to appear only (in principal) when people in your geographic area are using Google; it won’t show up when someone across the country does a search for the keywords you’re bidding on.
- Only after you’ve done 1 and 2 on this list are you able to create a Local Business Ad. This is essentially an enhanced version of your AdWords ad. As Google explains:
- The ads display in two parts: a highlighted listing in the search results column and a map marker that expands to show additional business details when the user clicks on the ad title or the marker itself.
- In other words, your AdWords ad gets some extra attention in both the left column (the search results) of Google Maps, and on the map itself. Use the link earlier in this paragraph to learn about Local Business Ads.
- One other opportunity that may be coming in the future is a click-to-call advertising service. Google is currently testing this.
- At minimum, make sure your business is listed in Yahoo Local and that the information is accurate. You can do that via the Local Listings Center — look for the “Local Basic Listings” option, which is free. You’ll need a Yahoo account to do this. The submission process is fairly straightforward, and takes place completely online. When you’re done, Yahoo says your submission will be reviewed for inclusion within 3-5 business days, and invites you to check your submission status at the Local Listings Account Center.
- Also at the Local Listings Center, you can sign up for either a “Local Enhanced Listing” or for a “Local Featured Listing.” Both of these services will add enhancements to the Local Basic Listing, and perhaps best of all for many small businesses, both services are flat-fee — making it easier on your current and future budgeting.
- Yahoo Search Marketing offers Local Sponsored Search, a pay-per-click advertising option that lets your target your ads in the geographic area(s) of your choosing. And you don’t have to have a web site because the program includes what Yahoo calls a “locator page” that displays all your pertinent business and contact information.
- Like Google, Yahoo is said to be testing a click-to-call advertising service.
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You can add your business listing through MSN’s Local Listing Center. When you begin that process, the first step is to check if your business is already listed. If not, the process to add the listing is simple. In addition to the basic business information, you’ll be able to add additional web page URLs, email addresses, as well as business hours, payment methods accepted, a tagline, up to 10 photos of your business, and more. After you’ve submitted a new business listing, MSN Local will send you a confirmation code by snail mail. The last time I did this, the confirmation letter arrived in about 2-3 weeks. You’ll need to enter the code back into the Local Listings Center to activate and confirm your business submission.
- At the moment, MSN’s pay-per-click advertising service, AdCenter, does not supply any paid ads into Windows Live Local. Instead, the paid listings are supplied by Superpages.com. While Superpages.com does offer free business listings and pay-per- click advertising, my guess is their relationship with Windows Live Local will come to an end as soon as AdCenter is ready to provide paid listings for local searches. If you want to advertise on MSN Local’s Live Search Maps, you’ll have to decide if you want to wait for AdCenter to be ready or to sign up now with Superpages.com and switch later when MSN does.
Get your site listed on CitySearch.
CitySearch is a major provider of local information for sites including MSN, Ask.com, Expedia.com, Ticketmaster.com, and many others.
 As a small business owner, you should make sure your business is listed — and listed correctly — in CitySearch. Start by searching for your business. If it’s there, click through to your profile page. In the lower right of the main content column (under your business information) you should see two links — one inviting you to edit the listing if it belongs to you, and another inviting you to “suggest a correction” if you see something wrong. (see below)
That first option is somewhat of a misnomer; you cannot simply claim your own listing and edit it. The only way to take control of your own listing is to open an advertising account with CitySearch. The second option — “suggest a correction” — can also be used to add a new listing for free.
Register with Yelp.
 Yelp is a growing entry in the local search arena, and follows in the Yahoo Local approach by including user reviews, but goes beyond that with other social/community-style features. Their goal is to develop a strong and active user community, which in turn should lead to more user reviews — all of which makes Yelp more valuable as a local search tool. Yelp began in San Francisco and is expanding out from there. Many smaller towns and cities have only a few user reviews, but the San Francisco city page shows the potential for this combination of local listings and an active user base.
Do a search for your business name and zip code to find out if you’re already in Yelp’s system. On the bottom of the search result page, you’ll see a red button titled ADD BUSINESS which leads to a simple form where you can add your business.
When adding your business, you can even rate it from one to five stars. But don’t get too excited about thinking you can spam the ratings — only registered users can rate, and every rating can be traced back to the person who submitted it. Not a perfectly spam-proof system, but probably good enough. During the sign-up process, remember to take advantage of the profile system. Your profile should be an advertisement for your business. This way, as you take part in the Yelp community, other users will be exposed to your business via your profile.
Yelp also offers paid advertising in the form of enhanced listings and featured placement in search results. Their web site offers few details about how these programs work, but they do invite business owners to complete a contact form for more information.
Other important places to go and register for local search:
You could also consider:
You can do more:
Perform local searches on Yahoo, MSN and Google. You will come across many sites that specialize only in local businesses of a certain area and type. List your business and web address there as well.
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SEO
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Thursday, 02 October 2008 08:00 |
There are many more than 5 but here are the top 5 mistakes as we see them.
1. Not having proper content.
Content is KING. Many people just fill a page with keywords or keyword phrases falsely thinking this is going to help their rankings. Search engines have come along way from the old days, which was just a few years ago. Now they see pages filled with keywords and keyword phrases as an attempt to spam their search engine, which they do not take kindly too. You should build the content for the people viewing it. Search engines read your page exactly the way a person would. Use up to two not more of the same keywords or phrases that people will use to find your website but make sure it makes sense to your website. The idea of making a page short an sweet doesn't cut it either. The more good meaningful text the better. You need to have at least 200 words for each page. And remember each page matters to all of the major search engines.
2. Using Flash or Frames to build your website.
Yes, it looks good. But no, search engines can't all read them (Google has some limited capability to read Flash). It's complicated enough for a search engine to spyder a website in HTML let alone read Flash and work through frames. Now, it's not a problem using small amounts of Flash in a website but not for the body text or the navigation bars.
3. Text in graphics.
Many designers and novice use text graphics or navigation buttons so they can use that special font that is oh! so cool. But search engines don't have eyes and they can't tell what the graphic says. Your best off using plain text or at least use the <alt> tag for your graphics description.
4. Proper navigation and page names
Since most search engines follow the navigation links from the index page it's important to have it structured to easily search your website. Most website use what's called a tree set up. Everything starts at an index page, the trunk, then branches out to a primary subject, then each primary subject branches to secondary subjects and so on. It's important to have a link to each primary subject through out the website this gives the search engine easy access without having to return to the index (home) page. Google along with others include the page name as part of the search. So to add to your ranking it's important to name each page for a keyword or keyword phrase. Don't leave it Home or Page2 (I know we did on our site, but we've optimized each individual page for the search engines - in fact, at this stage, optimization is still a work in progress - it is our second day out of BETA after all).
5. Improper links
Asking people to link to your website just to get links is fruitless. Search engines have learned that this is how websites cheat to get a better ranking and they've taken steps to correct this. They look for links that are relevant to the website. They look for one way links (those that do not link back to the website the link came from). They look for links from what's known as link farms which in their eyes is a no no.
If you can refrain from making these 5 critical mistakes, you can avoid being invisible on the web. And while you may still need search engine optimization to obtain top rankings in the top three pages of searches on your important keywords, you first need to make sure you're not condemned to page 1001 by these five critical errors.
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SEO
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Sunday, 25 May 2008 13:18 |
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Aaron Wall reports that his .info domains disappeared from the Google index for a full day, a clear indicator that some domain extensions could be hurting your ranking. He analyzes why this could happen: - 2008 prediction from Matt Cutts "A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations."
- GoDaddy has a 99 cent sale on .info domain names.
Marcel Feenstra highlighted this issue on LockerGnome: Filtering out all .info domains just because some of these domains are being abused is, of course, far too draconian a measure, and I don’t think it’s what Google intended. It would make much more sense if they filtered out, say, .info domains that had been registered less than a year ago and that didn’t have some minimum number of “trusted” backlinks.
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SEO
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Saturday, 24 May 2008 15:24 |
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Link baiting entered a new area last week when Lyndon Antcliff had success with a fake story being picked up by some mainstream media sites as well as social news sites. Controversy erupted over the tactic, and now it likely will go into a second cycle after Google's Matt Cutts has suggested that Google might penalize pages that don't disclose stories are fake. Lyndon Antcliff commented on statements that his fake news report is immoral: I have little interest in discussing the ethics of linkbait, as far as I am concerned if it works and results are achieved then do it.
Writing fake news stories for link baiting purposes could be the latest form of spam the information industry will have to battle. It is concerning that more and more members of our society abandon ethics in their job and instead adopt an attitude that the goal justifies the means. This is a worrying hollowing out of our culture where value is no longer something we share and strengthens us all. Creating fake news stories is nothing more than robbery - everyone is the poorer for your gain. Are you here to make money by providing a valuable service to others, or are you here to make a quick buck by telling others a bunch of nonsense?
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