Got What It Takes To Own A Web Site?

Should You Own A Web Biz? Here's How to Tell.

You read about the success stories and figure if those two teenagers can make a million on the web, so can you. Sorry, ain’t necessarily so – even if you’ve been in brick-and-mortar retail for a decade or two, the rules are different, the dynamics are different, marketing is different. It’s like comparing apples and applesauce. Sort of the same but not really.

So, here are a few questions to ask yourself before you decide to launch the next Amazon or YouTube. BTW, honesty counts. Don’t fool yourself as you answer, and no, this will not appear on your permanent record.

1. Are you ready to learn a new technology?
Actually a lot of new technologies. For instance, are you wiling to learn how to send out an auto-responder series and what that’s going to cost? Do you know what an auto-responder is??

The commercial web is a vicious, dog-eat-dog marketplace and if you’re going to compete, you’ll have to learn everything from keyword density to content management systems. Are you ready? If so, move on to question number two.

2. Do you have the time to run an online business?
A lot of new site owners picture a site with affiliate links and Google AdWords that magically draws traffic and returns pretty much a nice passive income each month. Ah, if only it worked like that.

But how are you going to get people to your site? They won’t find you on Google or Yahoo. You’ll be listed on page 121 of the search engine results pages so before you see some of that “passive” click-through cash, you have to get traffic to visit your site.

Think you can devote the time to run an online business? You can if you’re retired or a stay-at-home parent, but what if you put in long days at the office? Will you be eager to get to work on your real business – your online business? If your answer is yes, please move on to the next question.

3. Do you have the financial resources to grow an e-business to profitability?
The web is the last bastion for the do-it-yourself entrepreneur. However, there are expenses involved in launching and overseeing a cyberstore. There are web hosting costs, marketing costs (marketing should account for 60% of your initial capital outlay), the cost of inventory, shipping and so on.

You can get started on a shoestring and maintain a website for less than $7.00 a month – and that’s with a web host that offers a full bag of tools and a lot of other freebies (like free domain registration). But once you’ve launched, you have to market and, if you want traction quickly, you’re going to have to spend money to make money, just as you would in any start-up business.

4. Do you have access to support?
‘Cause you’re going to need it, unless you’re already a “behind-the-curtain” online commerce veteran. Sources for support?

Your kid probably knows more about computer security than you do. Your spouse may have a penchant for writing great sales copy. Your neighbor is a techno-whiz. There’s also tons (yes, tons) of information on the web – all free. Hey, reading this isn’t costing you a penny.

If you try to go it alone you may be overwhelmed by the learning curve. While you’re learning about keyword generators you’ll also be learning about content architecture, site navigation, product placement, affiliate programs and on and on.

The point is, you can learn all this stuff quickly – it’s not rocket science – but, at least in the start up phase, put together a list of sources that can support the effort. And don’t forget tech support.

You want access to U.S.-based tech support from your web host (when your server is down you’re out of business), the manufacturers of your business system, whether a single computer in the spare room or an ever-expanding network of work stations, and, of course, you want access to tech support or vendor support from the companies that produce the products you sell.

5. Do you like working with others?
You may be working alone at home but as an e-biz owner you are anything but alone. If you do it right you’ll be contacting wholesalers, drop shippers, customers, tech support personal and on and on.

An online business quickly becomes a part of your social network. You’ll make lots of e-friends and you’ll never be alone – even when you’re alone taking care of baby #2. Scared yet? No? Good for you. We’re almost to the finish line.

6. Do you have patience?
No matter how good you are, no matter how much of an SEO/SEM expert you are, success is almost always an evolutionary process with each new generation or iteration producing better and better results.

That means that you spend a lot of time on webmaster sites and designer blogs learning the minutia that’s now become such an important aspect of your site’s success. If you expect to turn a profit within the first week or two, it’s not going to happen. However, if
you can hang in there and overcome setbacks (all part of the game), your chances for success increase significantly.

7. Are you self-motivated?
When the alarm clock goes off and you’re faced with commuter traffic, you’re motivated – motivated to get to your desk at work on time. Working for someone else provides external motivation. You show up at work on time every day because you have to.

Not so when you run your own business. Sleep ‘til noon. Go see a movie or watch your stories on TV. If you aren’t motivated to get up, grab some coffee and log on in your PJs, you may have trouble getting down to business everyday.

The successful web entrepreneur can’t sleep. Her mind is racing and she’s at the computer at 3:00 AM – and loving it. You’re going to need that level of commitment, that drive and motivation to be one of the web success stories. No matter how many “How to Make a Million Bucks on the Web” books you read, you still need “the right stuff” to pull it off.

You have to be motivated to work long hours, to study new trends in web design (more interactivity, please) and to sit there over another cup of highly caffeinated coffee analyzing your site’s metrics.

And you know what? You’re going to love every second of it. Go for it and may success greet you on Digital Boulevard.

Need some help getting started? It doesn’t cost a ton of cash to start an on-line business. Drop me a line or give me a call. I’ll get you off on the right foot and follow through to site profitability. Let me teach you how to market your site yourself and save a lot of $$$>

Whoever Said, “There’s No Such Thing As Bad Press” Was An Idiot!: Reputation Management

 

YOU'RE AN IDIOT!!!

Whoever said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” was certainly not talking about the world wide web. Today, more than ever, disgruntled consumers can trash your product and/or your site using blogs, forums and on-site reviews! That’s right, take a look at Amazon’s product pages. You buy something, don’t like it, you can write a review that will appear on that product page. Now that’s useful information.

 

Of course, you can also write a rave of some product but either way, Amazon leads in customer reviews – a good thing when the reviews are good, the death knell when they’re bad.

What many site owners don’t realize is that bad press can hurt you with lower search engine rankings so it’s not something you want to ignore.

What happens if a dissatisfied customer is talking trash about your site all over the w3? Or worse, what can you do about a competitor who posts slams and slander on blogs about your horrible customer service and overblown prices. Well, it isn’t easy (a good reason to always keep the customer satisfied) but there are things you can do to make a bad situation better.

Ask Nice
Let’s say someone’s posted a slam of your site on another site’s blog. One thing you can do is contact the site owner, explain your side of things and ask that the blog entry be removed. The site owner may take pity and do you favor. On the other hand, if that site owner is your #1 competitor, chances are he’ll rub his hands with glee at your misfortune. But it’s worth a shot.

Tell It Like It Is
Make positive posts about your site to counteract bad press. There are plenty of sites today that let you tell the world about who you are, what you do and why you’re the best choice. Checkout aboutus.org and post the positive. There are other sites that give you a chance to show your best side.

Social Book Marking
Not only is this a great way to spread the word to counteract bad press, it’s a great way to increase site traffic for zero dollars. Sites like del.icio.us enable you to create an account after which you can post pretty much anything you want – a great way to counteract bad press from other sources. Social book marking is a significant aspect of the new Web 2.0 drive to build a more interconnected online community and every webmaster should take advantage of social book marking sites, like craigslist, to tell the world just how great his or her site is.

Build Your Own Blog
Blogs help sites rank better in the SERPs. It’s fresh content and it’s easy to add a blog to your site. First, see if your web host offers blogging software as part of the toolbox some hosts provide to their clients. The better ones do. If not, visit squidoo.com. Here, you can create your own site blog. Make entries, acquire free content from sites like goarticles.com, upload product pixs and make a name for yourself – a good name!

Your online reputation can be crushed by a few negative comments posted on blogs and forums. The w3 is partially driven by the gossip factor so counteract the bad gossip with positive, helpful entries on your site blog. It’ll make a difference.

Become an expert
Yahoo and Google both have features that allow people to post questions which “experts” then answer. Experts are volunteers willing to share their knowledge and experience with the world.

Do you have a specialty? One related to your web site? If so, sign on as an expert in that area and establish your creds.

Write, right?
If you can write a few articles about aspects of your business, industry, services or products, you can syndicate those articles, each of which will have an arrow pointing right back to your site. This is a great way to build links. Even more, if you write enough of these articles, you come to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

So, how do you go about syndicating? There are websites that provide free, downloadable content to websites with the stipulation that the link back to your site must appear along with the article. Get a few dozen articles out there and you’ll soon discover that you have a lot more inbound links than you had previously.

Add your site to directories
Google has a directory (based primarily on the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org). Yahoo maintains a site directory. Even Microsoft maintains a small business directory. Once you’ve launched your site and it’s been indexed, you’re eligible to seek inclusion in one or more of these directories. It’s a good move to boost web site credibility.

Track your reputation
This is so cool. Google offers a free Alerts service that notifies you every time your site’s name comes up – anywhere on the world wide web. Blogs, forums, press releases – Google covers the entire digital landscape and reports back to you each time your site is mentioned. The free service covers the top 50, most relevant results. If you want to go deeper, you can subscribe to Google’s Alert services which will deliver the top 200 most relevant mentions of your site (or you or your competition). It’s the easiest way to keep track of your on-line reputation – and what the competition is saying about you.

The Power of SEO
Search engines like Yahoo and Google rule the web – at least the commercial aspects of the web. If you have a commercial, on-line business, the better optimized your site is for search engines the better you’re going to rank on the search engine results pages.

There are about a million books that’ll tell you how to improve your site’s SEO and lots of free articles to show you how to improve your page rank (PR). If you have the time and the inclination, read as much as you can about current SEO practices and tactics to discover ways of improving your site’s page rank.

If SEO isn’t your cup of tea (too many numbers) hire an SEO professional to optimize your site for search engine spiders. This involves a number of factors and may also cost a few bucks. Additionally, it may take up to six months to actually see any significant results. But, if all else has failed, hiring an SEO expert may be the only way to go to regain your search engine status.

Fast Track to Good Press?
Sorry, there is no fast track to undo negative press in search engine results pages, whether it’s deserved or not. It’s a process but a worthwhile one, especially if you’ve spent a great deal of time and money to build up your e-biz.

However, the faster you get to work on article syndication or getting your site listed in a directory, the quicker your reputation will improve.

Things move quickly across the web and a bad reputation – whether true or not – is not going to help your site or your business. No, you can’t eliminate the problem of bad press but you can go proactive and generate some good press to counteract the negative.

The key is to move quickly and decisively to protect your hard-earned reputation.

Five Negative Search Engine Ranking Factors: BAM!

 

ARE YOUR CLIENT SITES GETTING THROUGH TO SEARCH ENGINES?

Webmaster and hosting blogs are jam-packed with hunches, guesses and opinions on Google’s ranking factors. The most powerful search engine in the world has been dissected, desiccated and analyzed by hundreds of experts and still controversy reigns.

 

Some of the more contentious issues include: server accessibility (get a good web host), quality of site content, domain extensions of sites linking in and outbound links to lower ranking sites. The experts can’t seem to agree on what counts in these areas.

SEOmoz is a great site for information from the ecommerce digi-sphere. Here, you’ll find some of the best information written by some of the most knowledgeable SEO professionals. Sure, there’s bound to be bias and debate, controversy and even the occasional name calling, but it’s all good.

In compiling its lists of positive, controversial and “known” negative ranking factors within the Google search algorithm, SEOmoz.org queried 31 well-known experts on their opinions and one thing is certain: no one individual has it all figured out. The ranking factors employed by the Googlistas change as Google’s math geeks and coders build ever-more sophisticated algos designed to provide more raw data and more pertinent data from spiders.

The Top Five Negative Ranking Factors
So what do the cyber-pros identify as the most negative ranking factors within Google’s current algorithm? They’re listed below but note, take these Google negatives with a grain of salt.

It could all change tonight while you sleep.

Negative Ranking Factor #1: Googlebots can’t access your server.
If the site is down for more than 48 hours, which is often the case with low-rent web hosts located half-way around the world, a site’s Google ranking drops like a stone.

If your host server is down a lot, search engines don’t want to recommend the site to visitors who will see a 404 error message that the site is unavailable and can’t be accessed.

The solution? Find a host that delivers not only a 99.9% uptime but also has local tech support, backup emergency generators and multiple layers of server side security. You’ll spend about $7.00 a month for quality shared hosting. Double that amount for quality dedicated service if cross-server attacks are a concern. Don’t let a few bucks a month keep your site from higher rankings. It’s just not cost effective.

Note: Server availability as a ranking factor is one of the most contended topics among SEO professionals who spend much of their time trying to out-think Googlebots, so even the experts can’t agree on this one.

Negative Ranking Factor #2: Duplicate or Similar Content.
Most experts do agree on this one.

Repetitious content is a stone-cold killer. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pick up a useful piece of syndicated content of interest to your readers. The warning, here, has to do with site text. A programmer can always upload a syndicated article. However, body text should change from page to page, providing a more useful visitor experience.

Of course, duplicate content can be tagged with a designation, but too many of these “do not enter” signs is also a negative ranking factor. Bots want to be able to crawl pages and when you keep them off of critical content pages, it’ll have a negative impact on your SERPs ranking on Google.

Negative Ranking Factor #3: Links to low-quality sites.
SEO survey contributor, Lucas Ng, sums it up nicely: “Linking out to a low quality neighborhood flags you as a resident of the same neighborhood.”

It’s not just about links and plenty of them. It’s more about the quality of the links on a site. So, link up to sites in nice neighborhoods. On the web, Googlebots know you by the company you keep.

Negative Ranking Factor #4: Links Schemes and Links Selling.
Google’s algorithm employs probability modeling in determining bought-and-paid-for links, which doesn’t always equate to an accurate view of a site’s actual linking activity. Even so, Googlebots make assumptions programmed into the algorithm.

A site with a broad menu of links to diverse sites won’t fare well come spidering time. These links farms are easy for bots to spot. The key to avoiding being mis-indexed by Googlebots is to avoid too many links, try to link to higher-quality-more-visited sites and never buy or sell links. It could mean another web site fatality.

Negative Ranking Factor #5: Duplicate Title/Meta Tags.
Search engine algorithms employ numerous filters to identify everything from questionable links to duplicate content that appears on numerous site pages. The same thing is true of a site’s HTML code. Too many duplicate title tags and duplicate meta data can hurt you.

Survey participant, Aaron Wall, stated, “If a site does not have much content and has excessive duplication, it not only suppresses rankings, but it may also get many pages thrown in the supplemental results.”

Bots read code and if the same title tags show up on page after page, if title tags don’t match page text, or if meta data is cut and pasted into every site page, these crawlers take offense according to some experts.

However, there’s another whole school of thought, here. Many SEO pros and site designers believe just the opposite is true – that title tags on each page create numerous entry points to a site, and because each page is indexed separately, the site maintains a larger presence on SERPs.

The key appears to be in the duplication of inserting repetitive title and meta tags. If the content doesn’t change on a particular page, that page doesn’t call for yet another title tag. However, when topics and functions do change from page to page within a site, title tags do help spiders identify the page’s purpose and do provide greater site access to potential visitors.

What NOT To Do With This Information
The wheels are spinning, aren’t they?

You and a million other site owners are weighing negative ranking factors and the impact these factors have on their SERPs position on Google.

Forget it. Let it go. The time you spend trying to reverse engineer your site to appeal to the perceptions of a collection of 31 SEO professionals would be better spent on search engine marketing – promoting to humans.

Oh, sure, you can migrate your site to a host with a much improved uptime and, in this case, you should regardless of what Googlebots like and dislike. You should migrate, not because bots will like you better, but because your customers will like you better when you’re there when they need you.

Same with cheesy links. Disconnect from garbage sites, links farms and any site that ranks lower than your site in page rank (PR). That’ll take five minutes of your time and it’s something you should do, again, forget the bots, do it for your site visitors seeking to further their web searches through links on your site. Help out site visitors because it’s just good business.

But, if you’ve got duplicate content on site, perhaps as RSS feeds, content syndication or hosted content, it seems counter-productive to remove this useful information from the site. Bots recognize these ephemeral links and their time-saving value to visitors by providing good content all in one place, even if it does appear on a few other sites.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned here. Lesson #1: Even really smart people who study the activities of Googlebots under controlled conditions can not agree, ultimately, what negative ranking factors are programmed into that passing Googlebot.

Lesson #2: (And the most important lesson du jour) Don’t try to outwit a Googlebot. Don’t rebuild your site to mitigate negative ranking factors. Take the obvious steps by going with a reliable host, cutting links to unattractive sites and so on, but don’t spend time reverse engineering your site based on the opinions of SEO pros.

Spend your time promoting your site to humans. Do it ethically. And over time, your site will receive an improved rank on Google’s SERPs – guaranteed.

Guaranteed? You betcha. “Length of time a site has been up” is one of the positive ranking factors. The longer you remain hooked into the web, the higher your Google ranking.

It’s just a matter of time.

 

Need some juice for your site? Squeeze me at my website and let’s get some traffic on your website. It’s always a Webwordslinger gig.

Bot Traps: Why You’re Not on the Web

Search Engine Spider Traps, Oh My!

It shouldn’t take more than 48 hours to first pick up notice from a bot, aka spider. Yahoo claims to scour the web every 48 hours. Google says it could be up to two weeks before one of its crawlers can get to you. You can speed up the process (or so web lore claims) by submitting a site map to Google, Yahoo and Inktomi, in effect, providing an invitation to crawl and notification that your site at least exists.

However, despite repeated invitations, you’re still invisible to all search engines – even the ones to which you submitted the URL according to the search engine’s wishes. The problem may not be that search engines avoid you. In fact, they can send crawlers daily. But if those bots get trapped on your site, they never gather data and report it for indexing.

Bots aren’t bright. They often get stuck in distant corners of a site. Sometimes, they can’t even get past the homepage! Trapped like a spider in a mason jar. No wonder your site hasn’t received the search engine recognition it so richly deserves.

Bot Traps and How To Avoid Creating Them
Bots follow links wherever they may lead. This permits these bits of program to move around with some direction rather than bouncing from one page to another, from one site to another. So, by using embedded text links in body text, you direct the crawling activities of bots.

These same links may also lead a bot into a trap from which (sniff!) there is no escape. So, when developing intra-site linkage, remember that bots may end up where you don’t want them. Let’s look at some common bot traps and how to avoid trapping crawlers on site.

Robot Speak
In many cases, you can redirect spiders from specific site pages so they avoid the pitfall. Using HTML Robot tags, a programmer can direct spiders away with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

A robot meta tag defines the path a bot can and can not take. Off limit or restricted access pages are sometimes called ‘arguments’ because, in fact, bots want to crawl everything. It’s their raison d’etre.

This command is recognized by all major search engines. It’s used to tell bots NOT to index a page and, so, all pages with a noindex command are left unindexed.

tells bots to ignore all links that appear on that page. This is important because it’s an effective means of directing spiders away from traps.

informs the bots not to use dmoz.org to generate title tags for individual pages. In other words, don’t send another bot to classify site content. This is critical since the Open Directory Project serves as Google’s default directory. Yahoo also employs elements of dmoz.org to supplement its own, proprietary directory. As such, this robot meta tag applies to Google and Yahoo.

only applies to Yahoo, telling bots not to use the Yahoo Directory to generate title tags.

only applies to Google which, unless told otherwise, will generate description tags based on site text. Again, by defining acceptable practices for spiders, you increase control over how your site is indexed. Knowledge is power.

is recognized by all search engines. Pages identified as noarchive will not be cached, and therefore, will not appear in the cache view offered by Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask and other popular search engines.

Through the judicious and calculated use of robot meta data, you define what bots see and don’t see, and how what gets spidered can and can NOT be employed by an SE index.

Parenthetically, some SEO pros believe that overusing robot meta tags raises suspicions on the part of bots, and indeed, these meta data are used by unscrupulous site owners to ward off spiders and subvert the relevance of SERPs.

Any SEO practice can be overdone and quickly detected by algorithm-driven alarm bells. However, using these directions prevents spiders from falling into unintended traps throughout your site.

Log-Ins
Pages that require a log in (user names and password) can easily stymie a crawler. The bot may be able to enter the closed door without finding another link to the outside web. In fact, much of this “keyword protected” content may never be indexed – and this is the meat and potatoes of the site.

If the log-in appears on the home page, this may limit crawler access to the rest of the site, and putting a robot command on the home page is not good SEO practice.

HTML Frames
Frames are design elements that enable site developers to display more than one web page in users’ browsers simultaneously. There are vertical framesets and horizontal frame sets identified by the tag. Framesets are used to define a set of rows in the case of horizontal framesets and columns in vertical framesets. Values determined by the programmer define the actual size of the frame that appears on the site’s presentation layer.

Frames are used by designers to create web pages that contain a great deal of information with links to deep site locations. Thus, the frame attracts visitor attention and encourages drilling down deeper into the site.

Bots can become trapped in frames, which are often “dead-ends” – not to humans but to bots. Visitors won’t necessarily interact with site frames. Crawlers will, and in that case, they enter but never leave – and this page remains unindexed.

Cookie-Restricted Pages
When you visit a website, you pick up a cookie – a short burst of code that contains on-site activity, “remember my name on this computer” information and other “you-based” data.

When visitors to your site show up, you may deposit your own cookie in a jar – a cookie that allows access to some pages but not to the “for-pay-password-protected” content. Again, these are one-way, dead ends for spiders who can get in but may not find a link out.

URL Session IDs
Totally confusing to spiders and, in fact, including session IDs as part of the URL may actually hurt you in rankings. How?

Each time the site is spidered a new URL is generated for that session. Each time, the bot indexes the new URL, which contains the same content as the URL with an earlier session number, your site is slammed for duplicate content. In fact, the inclusion of session IDs in the URL creates site entropy – ongoing, self-perpetuating disintegration until the site reaches inertia and stops moving at all.

Session IDs in URLs not only traps spiders in a tangled web of what appears to be repetitious content, each time the site is indexed, the same complaint draws the same conclusion: lower and lower page rank. In this case, consider yourself lucky if the bot becomes site-bound. At least you aren’t losing ground.

Can Your Site Be Saved?
No problem.

Google offers complete diagnostics as part of its Webmaster Tools features. You can view your site the way Googlebots see it. Google will provide detailed stats on crawling activities over the lifetime of the website, and surprisingly, many sites have not been completely indexed because of errors detected by bots but undetected by site owners. If you haven’t run these analyses on your site, take some time today to do that.

Log on to your Google account, go to Webmaster Tools and click on Diagnostics. You’ll see an overview of crawling activity, a list of errors and problems encountered by Googlebots (including the date the problem was first detected). Google also provides the latest results of its Content Analysis and Mobile Crawl for content intended specifically for use on mobile cell phones.

You May Not Even Know What’s Wrong Until You Ask
You can read all the SEO blogs, hang out at SEO bars and spend the day tweaking your site, all the time scratching your head over why your site hasn’t been indexed. Or completely indexed. You want to know why all of your site promotion has led nowhere.

It may be as simple as an undetected, unintended spider trap. Your site sees bots but they become trapped in frames or log-ins. The use and positioning of these commercial site staples may well keep your site invisible to search engines and to all of those potential visitors who use search engines.

That’s all of us.

The Death of Search Engine Optimization:10 SEM Hot Tips

 

R.I.P. SEO

This is going to come as a shock to the ever-expanding commerce industry, but SEO is dead. It’s at least circling the drain. Yes, it’s heresy, I know, but so much of this sector of the economy is based on out-dated methodologies and myths. The reason? This whole world wide web thing is less than a generation old and a lot of great minds are finding new ways to use this resource.

Distance learning, great use of the web. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) – ideal and a real money-saver. And yes, search engines that provide the road map and address of the sites we’re looking for. No, search engines won’t go away though they are in a state of flux, transitioning from directories to owners and developers of content (YouTube-Google, Yahoo-Microsoft, etc.) They’ll still be useful in directing users to relevant sites – the prime objective of a search engine – increasingly intuitive, more relevant SERPs.

But here’s the ‘but.’ You can max the optimization of your site, you can optimize for conversion ratio, page rank, links popularity, site monetization – lots of different ways to optimize a web site. However, the usual outcome of this SEO and SEM optimization is that the site moves up a few million places on the Google ladder, so now, instead of appearing on page 126 of the SERPs, the site is now parked on page 15. Do you drill down to page 15 when Googling?

No one does. If you aren’t on page one or two, your site’s a digital corpse. You aren’t going to get organic SERPs traffic because, even with all the optimization, your site is still buried. And you’re out an obscene amount of money optimizing your site for spiders. You want to know how picky these spiders are and how, the smallest thing can harm your site?

Webmaster blogs have been seeing threads from site owners concerned about keyword stuffing in headers. And this is a major subject! “Do I lose Google points if all the words in my headers are keywords?” This is the discussion. Don’t believe it? Here’s the thread:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2008/02/keyword-and-keyphrase-abuse-guidelines.html.

And there are lots more like it. Now, this isn’t an indictment of blogmaster Chris Knight, who runs one of the best webmaster blogs online. Instead, it’s an indication of the level of arcane gobble-de-gook SEO aficionados use to improve site performance. Keyword stuffing in headers? Why aren’t we focusing on more important matters like links popularity, PPC ads, syndicated content, directory submission, site map submission and other topics that, in this day and age, are more critical to site success than the keyword density of your site’s headers and here’s why: (Shocker alert)

If you’re a small site, a visitor is much more likely to find you through a link from another site or a directory or a blog post than through SERPs.

Nota bene: This does NOT apply to sites that appear at the top of the search engine heap organically. If you’re number three below the sponsored links, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, but treat it like a house of cards. You could be “riding high in April, shot down in May,” with creds to Frank Sinatra. And not change one thing about your site. Nothing.

The algorithm geeks at Google, Yahoo and Inktomi are constantly tweaking their formulae to deliver better results to users. (Google is also a content provider now, as well as “just” a search engine – the search engine.)

So what’s the point again: you can optimize ‘til the cows come home and still not see organic search results. That means the importance of site connectivity, authority, stickiness and other SEM factors increase significantly in value as SEO decreases in value. If your site doesn’t deliver organic results, what else are you going to do but market the heck out of your site?

The Ascension of SEM
There’s a lot of confusion between SEO and search engine marketing, or SEM. The simplest and most important distinction is that SEO strategies are designed to appeal to search engine bots. SEM is designed to draw in visitors and convert them to buyers and, ultimately, repeat buyers – your road to commercial success.

SEO = mindless, letter string gobbling spiders

SEM = motivated human beings interested in making a purchase regardless of how they found your site.

Search engine marketing has become more significant as the importance of SEO has declined. And the trend is bound to continue. There are like a gazillion sites and more competition coming at you every day.

SEM Suggestions
Okay, so how do you do this? Here’s a good starting point. Actually, 10 starting points.

1. Blog other sites with intelligent, insightful, thought-provoking posts. Be sure to sign you name in full (no chipnerd521) and a link to your web site. This is a pretty potent synergy because it places your site within reach of someone you just impressed with your insightful post. Note of warning: DO NOT SPAM BLOGS. Blogmasters don’t like it. Keep your post on target and don’t use the post to promote your services. Your post will be deleted ipso facto.

2. Do NOT use PPC. At least when you first start out. You don’t want to worry about click fraud, keywords, bids and tracking all those costs. Use PPC as a last resort, a one-last-throw-of-the-dice-thing, or when you’ve achieved some success and are looking for ways to expand site promotion.

3. Exchange content with other site owners whose sites are similar in topicality. This provides fresh, green content and a link. Gotta love those links.

4. Submit your URL to general and industry- or topic-specific directories. All are free except Yahoo which nicks you $299 a year for a listing in their directory, still well worth the price.

5. Syndicate content to build an expansive web of in-bound links. (There’s plenty of information in previous blog posts on content syndication.)

6. Establish the authority of your site. This takes time and is usually determined by the number of site owners who point their visitors to your site. That means good content, good advice, good prices and so forth.

7. Use social sites like FaceBook and MySpace. More and more businesses are using these social networking sites. Another word of caution: those who frequent these sites aren’t keen on commercials so keep your social space interesting.

8. Sign up to become an expert on Yahoo Answers. (BTW, Google Answers has been retired – a missed opportunity if you haven’t already sign up.

9. Volunteer to become an editor for the Open Directory Project, assuming you know something about your topic. If you aren’t an expert, or you’re new to the subject, track the posts at www.dmoz.org until you understand what’s going on.

10. Finally, post good, informational content on your site. You can use a blog to keep things simple and encourage visitors to contribute comments (free content, site owners). Blogs also build repeat traffic – repeat traffic that often turns in to sales.

So, today we mourn the passing of SEO as a key to site success. Indeed, we are all thankful for the guidance search engines provide in bringing us the most obscure information in under a second.

But as a tool you can rely on to grow your small, online business to success, SEO is dead. Spend your time and money getting hooked into the web community through links, links and more links.

That’s SEM in its purest form.

Google Gadgets: Learn From The 800-Lb. Gorilla

GOOGLE: THE 800-LB. GORILLA

You want Google to love your website. This search engine alone accounts for 46% of all searches so when you consider that there are virtually thousands of search engines (granted, many topic specific), controlling a 46% share of all search engine users makes you “the cat that everybody’s rapping ‘bout.” And they are.

The webmaster community and Google don’t always get along and that’s understandable. For most webmasters, Google is a prime source of site traffic but if there are too many obstacles to Google success, of course there’s going to be feuding between search engine and those professionals who rely on search engines for their livelihoods. Every time Google tweaks an algorithm, some sites gain, some lose ground – and the reasons are rarely clear.

So, Google put together Webmaster Central, a blog for site owners to post gripes, offer suggestions, identify glitches and otherwise interact with the people behind the search engine. (We can only assume there are people behind Google. Verifiable proof is slow in coming. The entire company could be bot-run for all we know.)

The Google Webmaster Blog and You
Google knows it must keep site owners happy and who or whatever is running the company recognizes the need to interact with professional SEOs, SEMs, coders, designers, graphic artists and every new technology that takes a giant leap forward such as remote site syndication (RSS) that changed the way information was distributed over a weekend.

So, this is where you go to ask questions and get answers from other site owners. Google answers. From regular users like you – the owner of a small, once active site that has mysteriously disappeared from Google SERPs overnight. What happened? And how are you going to pay the rent if your e-store has disappeared from Google’s ever-expanding index?

Posting to the Webmaster Central Blog is a good place to go for quick answers from real people. And that usually means you’ll get an answer you can actually understand rather than an earful of techno-babble from some chip head.

This is also the place where Google introduces new features for webmasters. Just a while back. Google let loose improvements to iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools.

Here’s how the Googlistas explain it: “After our initial release, we saw clear interest in the gadgets, and plenty of suggestions for improvement. So we’ve spent the past several weeks working on various areas. The biggest improvements are probably for those of you with more than one site: when you add a new tab of gadgets, your gadgets will now default to the site you were viewing when you added them to your iGoogle page. Additionally, gadgets now retain settings as a group, so if you change the site for any gadget in a group, the next time you refresh that page, all the gadgets will show data for that site. And gadgets now resize dynamically, so they take up less room.”

Functionality has also been improved with the addition of Top Search Queries for your site, very helpful in refining a keyword list. “The data from the Top Search Queries allows you to quickly pinpoint what searches your site appears for and which of those searches are resulting in clicks,” according to Google.

Other new features that improve site performance analysis include a smart, geo-targeting function. This enables you to create several site skins for regions around the world if you choose. This geo-targeting gadget also produces a map overlay of where your visitors are coming from – right down to street level if you’re only seeking local business or referrals. Your site may be hot in Australia but bombing in the UK. There’s got to be a reason. This Google gadget helps isolate what’s working where, by region, with incredible specificity.

And if you’d like Google’s opinion of your numbers and your conclusions, click on Analytics Help Center for a ton of Google-centric info. All good in determining what Google likes and dislikes about your site.

Another tool from Google is the URL Remover. You log on to your administrator’s console over coffee and scan through your stats for the overnight, and you discover that your “Content by Title” section – a back office only function – has been inadvertently Googled, indexed and displayed on Google SERPs, giving anyone (including competitors) more than a quick peek at your business. They can read everything because it’s been spidered and indexed.

Using the new URL Removal Tool, you can quickly remove those private pages from Google’s index and tell spiders that this information is off limits as in DO NOT SPIDER.

Google Webmaster Help
This is one very cool tool. One that is certainly bookmark-worthy.

Google Webmaster Help provides tips and suggestions for improving your site in the eyes of what Google calls “benevolent Googlebots.” Hey Boys, those bots ain’t so benevolent if they mis-index my site because of your messed up classification taxonomy. Even so, when you have as much influence over online success as Google does, you get to call your bots “benevolent” even if they are mindless snippets of programs that chew through letter strings.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good, useful information here from the people who make the algos. So, it’s worth a visit just to see what’s new, what’s working and what you should do about your precipitous loss of PR when you changed the home page text. Something Happened. And this is the place to find out what.

The Google Webmaster Help section also has a very robust, informed community able to answer FAQs from other site owners. You don’t have to wait for Google to get back to you. Ask an SEO or other web professional using the Webmaster blog for fast facts fast.

Today, there are 107,738 messages, questions and answers on crawling, indexing and ranking; 14,019 posts on the new Google gadgets listed above, so you see that these help pages see a lot of activity and should be a part of your daily web scan.

Go To the Source
Google sets the rules and no matter how strongly these rules are debated among site designers, SEOs and other web professionals, the rules are the rules. One way to stay current is by joining the regular online discussions that Google offers. You can check the schedule of upcoming discussions and mark them so you don’t forget. It’s a great way to meet the Googlistas and your counterparts who are trying to figure out how to perform better in the search engine sweepstakes.

Visit webmaster blogs like the one you’re reading now, especially targeted at those just venturing into ecommerce. Some webmaster blogs are highly technical (more for coders than site owners, actually) while other webmaster blogs provide information on everything from digital selling to site design tips.

But if you want the skinny – the unvarnished truth – go to the source. Go to Google and become a member of the Google webmaster community. Download the free Google analytics and join in with companion site owners to let Google know when a problem arises.

With Google controlling almost half of all searches, it’s good business practice to learn what Google wants.

Intuitive SERPs

Search engines, as we know them today, will soon join the heap of outdated technologies along with 8-tracks, VHS and DVD. Why? Because search engines collect data on our browsing habits and produces unique results pages based on our past browsing histories.  

If I type in “dogs” as my query word, I’ll get everything from pet stores to the history of the basset hound. And, if I’m using one of the growing number of Chinese search engines, I’ll come up with some recipes, as well. Unfortunately, my broad query provides thousands of results, often requiring me to refine my search to whatever it is I’m looking for. “Dogs” as a query just won’t cut it.

However, that search engine will have in its database a long history of my queries. The SE will know that I order dog chow on-line in bulk and will (1) bring up outlets where I’ve previously purchased dog chow and (2) offer a few hundred SERPs of similar sites to those I’ve frequented in the past.  

Amazon employs this approach to a more “intuitive” search engine my scouring my buying history and offering “MY RECCOMMENDATIONS.” So, my Amazon home page will display different products than those shown on your home page. Very convenient and obviously very effective.

So, the days of the “throw anything out there and let the user decide” will soon come to an end, at least as the default mode. Of course, you’ll always have the option of “SHOW ALL.” This will change the fundamentals of how users search.

Looking for a specific item or type of item. Personal search.

Want the full spectrum? Search all.

Getting Found By Spiders, Bots and Crawlers

“Hey, I’m back here – on page 63!” 

You’ve got a good site, you’re selling a good product or providing an important service and you still show up at the bottom of page 63 of the SERP (search engine results page). You’ve got a problem – a recognition problem. Your best, potential customers or consumers don’t even know your cyber hut exists. This is not a good problem, but a problem that can be solved, or at least mitigated.

You need to be found, or your site does, actually. So how, exactly, do search engines find your little bit of digital real estate. Well, there are lots of ways but let’s start with the most common, and coincidentally, the least expensive – as in free!

Search Engines – Powered Up For Success
There are hundreds (yes, hundreds) of search engines on the www. Some, like Google and Alta Vista are free. You submit the appropriate information and your site will be listed for free. Of course, your site will be buried on page 63 of the SERP, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Then, there are PPC sites – pay-per-click sites that nick you for every click they generate leading a potential customer to your cyber store. Yahoo is the best known of the PPC sites. Yahoo (in its usual fashion) has set off on its own path to search engine development, breaking off a once-promising partnership between Google and Yahoo – a good thing for us. The more competition among SEs, the better the quality of search results.

Directories – Get Proactive; Get Noticed
As a newcomer to cyber town, you should also consider registering your site in directories. There are open directories, like the aptly named Open Directory Project (DMOZ), in which volunteer editors search the www for interesting, helpful sites and then catalog each site for inclusion under one of many subject headings.

Then, there are smaller, more targeted directories where you can list your related site. For example, there are directories for charitable giving sites, sites of legal firms and so on. In fact, there are directory sites for just about any business or service you can imagine.

There are also association sites with outbound links, community directories, interest groups, political groups – many specialized directories that will list you for free – as long as your site is somehow related to the directory. If you’re selling the better mousetrap, it’s a sure bet your site won’t be accepted on a national jewelers’ directory. There has to be some connection between you and the subject of these topic-driven directories.

When you register with any of these SEs (free or PPC) and directories, in addition to the usual contact information, you’ll also provide a list of key words – words and phrases that a potential customer might enter in conducting a search for a site just like yours. Your selection of key words is critical to the success of your e-biz. Enter inappropriate or off-target key words and you’re not going to get the visitor traffic you’d get if every key word were dead on the money. In fact, there are a variety of assessment tools top site design firms employ to help you develop a tight, targeted key word list for submission to search engines and directories.

Key words often have to be adapted to specific SEs. You might use one set of key words for a search engine like Google, which covers the entire universe, and a completely different set of key words for an industry directory where most searchers already know the technical terms, model numbers, etc. of what they’re looking for on a site like yours.

Let’s say it one more time: It is essential to the success of your on-line business to develop a list of on-the-money key words to make sure your site is, well, on the money.

Spiders and Creepy Crawlers
Submitting your site to search engines and directories is a great way to start building site visibility. Moreover, they’re all proactive steps – steps you can take on your own.

However, there’s another way to increase your site presence on the www – and that’s to get spidered by a crawler, which sounds pretty bad but, in fact, is pretty good. A search
engine ‘crawler’ – software that crawls (and ‘reads’) pages of various sites, stores the content data on your site and reports it back to the mother ship – the search engine index. Once this happens, restrained congratulations are in order. You’ve been discovered – maybe.

You see, a crawler (or spider) has one mission – to gather the content data on millions of sites and send that info back to the SEs index- a massive amount of stored data. Google maintains a +1 billion-page index and it grows every day. So, now you type in a search word at Google, Google scans the 1 billion pages in its database and delivers the SERP for your review. All pretty straightforward, right?

Wrong! Each search engine uses its own, ‘Eyes Only’ formula to assign weight to various search criteria, which in turn, determines your placement within the SERP. And if you aren’t on the first page or two, you might as well be working out of Mongolia. Typical users don’t look beyond the first two pages. It’s a busy world.

That’s where spidering comes in. You see, spiders don’t just crawl the web randomly like, well, like spiders. No, this is smart software we’re talking about here. Spiders follow links from one site to the next, based on the assumption that the links are, somehow relevant to the site from whence the link originated. If you’re selling snowshoes, for example, and you have an outbound link to a local ski resort, the spider will follow the link and crawl that site.

That’s why links – quality links – are so important. Why? Well, if you’re selling snowshoes and the spider follows a link to Mom and Pop’s Ye Olde On-Line Candy Shoppe, oops, that’s a garbage link – a link that isn’t helpful to your snowshoe customers. The result? You lose points in that search engines PR calculations.

There are sites, affectionately referred to as ‘link farms’ that are nothing more than sites providing in- and out-bound links. Spiders hate link farms because they diminish the quality of search results. The newest search engine algorithms place a much higher value on quality links – especially quality links pointing to your site.

If people in your area of commerce believe that your site would be helpful to their customers, the SE is going to rank you higher, based on the assumption that quality sites link to other quality sites.

An SE spider can do wonders for your PR (PageRank), moving you up in the SERP rankings from page 63 all the way up to page 6. Of course, getting spidered in and identified as an ‘expert page” (one other sites send their visitors to) will do wonders for your ranking.

But you can’t stop there. It’s a dog-eat-dog cyber world in which we exist. That’s why so many other factors enter into getting found and moving on up. Search engine optimized (SEO) text that’s spider-friendly plays a key roll. The quality of content is another important factor. In fact, there’s a checklist of do’s and don’ts that form the basis of search engine marketing (SEM). So, before you build a single pixel, or reserve a single gig of space on your host’s server, put together a business plan that includes SEM in the budget.

Why? Because if you spend all of your initial capital on building a good looking, visitor-friendly site, you won’t have the necessary cash to hire an SEM professional to deliver the traffic that will make your site profitable.

editor@webwordslinger.com

SEO Voodoo

Before you write that big check to some SEO poobah who’s just sold you a bunch of SEO snake oil consider the following salient point: SEO is NOT a science!

 

 

With legitimate hard sciences you can measure, compare and contrast and draw conclusions. Not so with SEO. The numbers change by the minute. So do the yardsticks. When search engines first hit the scene in 1994, keyword HTML tags and keyword desnity were the top determinants of page rank.

 

 

Then, all the yokels got on board, stuffed keywords everywhere, thus diminishing the value of the SERPs. So a new set of criteria are developed – one that won’t be so easily circumvented. Inbound links. The more inbounds from quality sites (sites that rank higher than yours) the higher your site ranks.

 

 

Problem is, there are very few rules in this game of “Who’s Tops?” There are no axioms (a=a). There are now laws, though there are plenty of ways to shoot yourself in the foot by using black hat or gray hat tactics.

Want to learn more about what the experts feel counts for and against websites. SEOmoz.org regularly publishes it’s ranking factors based on input from SEO experts.

Consistantly, there is no single rating factor that all practitioners of the SEO arts agree. NOT ONE.

So, all SEO pros are guessing at what search engines are looking for, just like you.

And because SEO lacks empirical data, you can be sure that you’ll be hearing excuses from that high-priced SEO about why you’re site is still buried in the backwash of SERPs.

Later,

Paul Lalley

editor@webwordslinger.com

The Slow Death of SEO

There are lots of people earning good livings selling SEO services and, to an extent, SEO still has relevance. 48% of my site visitors find me through Google so I listen up when the 800-pound gorilla sneezes.

But here’s the thing, more then half my site visitors find me through other means – usually links from other sites. This off-site marketing has significantly increased my web presence in a few months and, more importantly, has generated new business for my company.

Yes, SEO has its place for accurate and complete indexing within search engines but bots and spiders don’t buy stuff and they never request services, no matter how good you are.

I think new site owners would do well to spend at least 50% of their starting budget on post-launch marketing. After that, adjust accordingly.

Paul Lalley
editor@webwordslinger.com