25 PPC Tips For Giving Your PPC Campaigns

To make sure you maximize your ROI but minimize your risk, consider the following.

The Basics

Here are a few things to bear in mind from the outset - and to make sure your campaign is built on a firm base.

1. Know Your Sector

If this is a client, make sure you understand their business as much as possible. Maybe even suggest going through a company training or induction program to quickly get you up to speed.

Check what your competitors, partners, suppliers and customers are doing, and adjust your bids accordingly. Keep a watchful eye on competitors bidding on your brand name and avoid losing potential customers.

2. Start Small, Scale Up

Identify a number of target keyword areas and bid across these. But don’t spread you budget too thin, start off slowly with a restricted campaign and then scale it up.

This helps to test the water across a variety of brand names, descriptive terms and competitive keywords to see which perform best.

3. Measure, Measure, Measure

It’s amazing how many campaigns I’ve seen which have failed to setup basic conversion tracking.

Make sure you put effort into getting this correct from the start. That way you can have a long-term approach, where you can learn average conversion rates and revenues, allowing you to estimate the performance of future keyword bids.

4. Include Plurals

Your PPC platform of choice may automatically account for differing singular and plural forms of keywords, but double-check this.

If not, test which performs better - singulars or plurals - and adjust your bids and ad copy accordingly.

5. Be Logical

The more logical you are in your approach to your campaign, the easier it will be to see what's working.

Give your bids time to come good, as early poor performance may average out over time - but don't send good money after bad. Make sure you use a logical campaign naming structure and organization too, that way it makes it easier if someone else has to help out with managing the campaign.

Managing Your Bids

Keep your campaign in close check and you can make sure it is up to date and giving you the ROI you need.

6. Know Your Target CPA

Depending on your PPC platform, budgets may be set as maximums, averages or some other target figure.

Know how to set yours at a level that suits your overall budget, and make sure you are achieving your target ROI. If you know your average customer value and target CPA’s you can then find the optimum budget to maximize revenue and profit from your campaign.

7. Be Pragmatic

It is easy to expect a massive ROI when you appear up top on a competitive search term, but be realistic.

Not everyone will click your ad, and not everyone who does will make a purchase. As long as your ROI remains positive, that's the main thing. Just make sure you learn from your mistakes and keep things improving.

8. Use Google’s Tools

Google’s tools have improved greatly over the last couple of years. And bidding tools such as Conversion Optimiser can be a great way of ensuring you maximize the performance of a campaign by focusing on bidding for high-quality, converting clicks – as opposed to traffic volume.

9. Use the Search Query Report

Most PPC platforms will offer in-built data reporting, but be sure you can segment paid search traffic in your website's analytics to show the exact keywords which are sending you traffic.

You can then measure keyword performance and by using the AdWords search query report you can find converting long-tail keyword variations to add to your campaign – and likewise, non-converting keywords to add as negative matches.

10. Learn to Adapt and Keep Testing

There are countless other PPC marketers out there with their own campaigns.

If somebody starts fiercely bidding on your preferred keywords to the point that it’s not profitable, refocus your attention and avoid a bidding war. And with all campaigns, keep testing. Small increases to CTR, quality scores and conversion rates can have a huge impact to a campaigns overall performance.

Optimize Your Ad Copy

Keep your message clear and compelling, and your ad revenues should rise accordingly. PPC ads are brief, so avoid confusion as much as possible.

11. Tweak Your Titles

Just like on-page headlines, the titles of your ads are the most eye-catching elements.

Marketers will tell you to "make them pop", so be concise but highlight your unique selling point or special offer.

12. Your Body is a Temple

Ensure your body text is concise, relevant to the terms you are bidding on, and highlights your USP or special offer.

Avoid clichéd advertising phrases and focus on clear descriptions - words are at a premium, so make them count.

13. Be the Strongest Link

Links matter. The URL of your ad is likely to appear in the results, so avoid meaningless numerical page addresses and get those keywords highlighted in bold.

A keyword-optimized URL helps to demonstrate relevancy and could secure more traffic as a result.

14. Identify Your MVPs

The five or ten best performing keywords or ads in your campaign are your most valuable players.

Keep them at the center of your plan of attack, and arrange your broader paid search activities around them. The 80/20 rule is often very true in search campaigns, so find out where your converting traffic comes and ensure you get everything you can out of those keywords and ad variations.

15. Discover the Niches

In the most crowded of PPC markets, there are effective key terms that have been overlooked.

Be original in your bids and you may manage to stumble upon one of these neglected goldmines.

Target Your Ads

Targeting ads is different from optimizing the ad copy itself. Optimization is about driving click-through rates whatever your audience; targeting is about knowing who your customers are, and writing with them in mind.

16. Write for an Age Group

Age and gender are classics of demographic targeting, and are as relevant as ever.

Write for your chosen target demographic and you raise the perceived relevance of your product for those individuals.

17. Judge Your Prestige Level

In advertising copywriting, there's a world of difference between 'value for money' and 'cheap'.

Know which description suits the prestige level of your product, and stick to it for on-message ad copy.

18. Mind Your Surroundings

Knowing your local customer base is important even on the World Wide Web.

Tweak your ad copy for geographical markets, and target those regions in your campaign settings.

19. Vary Your Calls to Action

Just as you target different key phrases, be sure to vary your ad copy accordingly.

A selection of different ad texts gives you the opportunity to see what works for a given bid term.

20. Research the PPC Markets

Targeting does not have to take place within a single campaign.

Different PPC platforms may reach different or specialized audiences; place ads on the most appropriate ad network.

The Next Level

Once you've mastered the basics, it's time to get serious. Here are five of the things that professional paid search campaign managers deal with on a daily basis.

21. Improve Your Landing Page Tests

Learn how to conduct detailed A/B and MANOVA tests, allowing you to tweak two or more variables in your landing pages ad copy.

Quantifiable results will help you to make more informed decisions about campaign changes, so use Website Optimiser and measure every small change to improve performance. Make sure you produce relevant landing pages to support your ads. This way, you can define funnels that guide individuals from being searchers, to prospects, to converting customers.

22. Find Negative Keywords Via Social Media Monitoring

Set up a social media monitoring service, Google Alerts is fine, and track which keywords are listed alongside your top keywords and brand terms.

This way, you can make sure that anything irrelevant, which you may not have thought of previously, can be blocked using negative matches.

23. Go Global

Target the same keywords in your PPC campaigns as in your on-page optimization and inbound link-building efforts.

This builds on the tip above to help demonstrate to your prospects that the page is tailored to their needs.

24. Schedule Your Campaigns

Schedule new ads for specific dates to make the most of seasonal opportunities and consider budget changes to reflect an increase in search demand and buying intent.

This can also help to keep your campaigns moving when you are out of the office yourself.

25. Keep Things Moving

However well your campaign is performing, there are new audiences to reach and better keywords to bid on.

Article Resource

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5 SEO Tips Against Google's Farmer Update

First, there was the highly-publicized backlash against JCPenny.com over the retailer's aggressive SEO tactics, which included the use of link farms. This was followed shortly thereafter by Google's official release of a significant update to its search results ranking algorithm, dubbed informally as the "Farmer Update" (for its clear focus on devaluing "content farms"). Later, it was revealed to be known internally as the "Panda" Update.

Whatever you want to call it, one thing is clear: Small business owners are clamoring to know exactly what happened, who was affected, and what should be done going forward to make sure they remain in Google's good graces. Here's what you need to know to be successful in your SEO efforts.


1. What was the point of Google's Farmer Update?

In updating its algorithm, Google did not reveal anything markedly new concerning the factors that it likes to see in web pages. Rather, this seems to have been an incremental move in the search engine's efforts to drive users to high-quality sites while devaluing low-quality sites.

Specifically, Google identified and penalized the rankings of sites that copy or "scrape" the content of other sites; sites that have low-quality content; sites that have a high ratio of ads to content; and sites that lack brand trust. To put it simply, Google is penalizing sites that don't provide much value to the user. When I perused the sites that were hit hardest by the Farmer/Panda Update, I was in significant agreement that they were truly not providing much in the way of value to users.

2. What went on behind the scenes at Google to roll out these changes?

It is pretty fascinating to learn how Google actually goes about implementing such changes. Essentially, executives at the company ask real people real questions (for example, "Would you buy from this site?", "Is this content useful?") and then make changes to their algorithm that would "correct" the results.

The important thing to know is that while Google uses real people to help define the traits of high- and low-quality sites, the implementation of the changes is applied algorithmically (in other words, nothing personal).

3. Who were the big losers and winners?

In all of the data we have looked at across our SEO clients' websites, as well as synthesizing a lot of other data out there covering the effects of the update, the short answer is that poor quality sites that have a poor user experience and lack genuine quality content were the big losers (as Google intended.)

There weren't corresponding "big winners", however; rather, there were many small winners. For example, if a site that previously held the No. 1 organic ranking for a keyword fell to No. 20 then, generally speaking, Nos. 2 through 20 all moved up a spot. There were lots of sites that had moderate gains or drops, and you can see a great synopsis of the big movers here.

4. How can I tell if my company's site was affected? Is there anything I can do if I was hurt?

If you haven't noticed anything at this point, then you probably don't have much to worry about. If you are curious if your site was affected in a not-so-dramatic fashion, the website seomoz.org details how you can use Google Analytics to isolate the possible effects of the Farmer Update on your site.

If you were significantly affected in a negative way, there is not a tremendous amount of direct recourse. If you were a large site that scrapes content or is in the arbitrage game—like this one or this one—then I can say with a fair degree of certainty that your fallen rankings were the intended result of this update. If you are a smaller site and not intentionally playing any of the content or ad arbitrage games, then you may be a part of the tiny fraction of sites that can be classified as "collateral damage" of the Farmer Update.

In a few of these cases, you may be able to work one-on-one with Google to "fix" this damage, but having spent a decade in this field, my best guess is that you are out of luck. Your best bet will be to improve your site: Remove any copied or scraped content; add unique, relevant content; reconsider the amount of advertisements on each page of content (ask yourself, Would this look okay in a print magazine?); and drop any questionable link partners. Quite simply, Google has very little economic interest in handing out manual exceptions. We live in a Google world, and we are forced to play by their rules.

5. What should I do going forward with regard to my SEO strategy?

Here is the good news with the Farmer/Panda Update: Nothing really changed. A company's goal today is the same as it should have been prior to this update: To build user-friendly, high-quality websites that are worth linking to because they feature unique, frequently-refreshed content that adds value to a user's experience.

If you were one of the tiny fraction of sites that were implicitly targeted by these changes, then you know exactly who you are. Interestingly we have heard very little public outcry from this bunch: It's time to work on a new business plan. And, yes, Demand Media: You are the mayor of this club. You don't like the label content farm? Fine, you are two baby steps above being a spammer. There, I said it.

But for everyone else, I can comfortably say you have nothing to worry about. Build websites worth visiting and content worth linking to, and you will have nothing but a prosperous future in the Google world in which we happily reside.

Source

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Link Building : Help Your Employee Grow

Find something that will make the job more interesting and help your employee grow. Set aside a certain amount of time each week, even if just an hour, for this project. Here are some examples.

Flextime

Is your link marketer creative? Remember all those link building ideas that were suggested you didn't think would work?

Allow your person to spend a certain amount of time each week to try some out. Many may not work out well -- yet other successful ideas may arise from those.

As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."


Networking Events

Have a person that enjoys socializing? Send them to networking events to meet business people, and to obtain some great links at the same time. These are the type of links that would be hard to get via e-mail or a phone call.

Take them to industry conferences, chamber of commerce events, or any local business networking event. The ROI from links more than justify the cost. Just ask the sites with top three results in competitive fields.

A couple weeks after the conference have them contact their new colleagues. That's when the actual link development begins.

Some might be reluctant to send their main link person to these events for fear of them being recruited by another company. Trust me, if they wanted a new job there's no shortage in the link field! Instead keep them happy, and motivated to stay with you.

Study Traditional Marketing

Everyone is looking for that sexy, clever new idea to astonish the world. The truth is most traditional marketing tactics can be applied to link marketing.

If your link person is really into marketing, this is a great strategy. Have your link marketer study more traditional marketing techniques, then figure out ways to apply it to links.

On a tight budget? Have them study guerrilla marketing strategies. That's always a good way to reduce costs.

Their Personal Interest

Another way is to allow them to study successful sites in a field they like. Since they're already interested in the topic they know the sites. They also know the industries well.

Have them study how those sites obtained their links, then figure out a way to apply it to your site. The results will surprise you.

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Why Your Blog Isn’t Getting Any Readers

Boring posts

Going through a boring blog is like reading a comic book or a novel with a dragging plot. Uninteresting or poorly-written articles may be the main reason why people don’t take a second look at your blog. When posts become dull and predictable, your readers lose their urge to return to your site.


Outdated blog posts

Blogs can be considered as magazines, too. A blog’s content should be fresh and regularly updated, to keep the readers’ interests and attention. Many Web users visit blogs because they want to know about and learn new things.

Untidy website

Fill your site with useless ads and disorganized content, and people will surely avoid visiting your blog in the future. People put a lot of importance on the visual appeal and design of the websites they visit often, because these factors also affect a website’s functionality. Cluttered websites tend to repel, instead of attract, site visitors.

Disabled comments

Many people choose to communicate with blog authors by posting comments on blog entries. When the blog’s ‘Comments’ feature is disabled, you’ll lose the opportunity to gain site traffic and potential links that can enhance your website’s SEO campaigns. Blog commenting is one way of expanding your network, because readers, bloggers especially, want to interact and share their ideas with you.

Posting unrealistic content

Many blogs out there are obviously unrealistic and dishonest. Don’t post about your supposed encounters with famous personalities or celebrities just to boost site traffic. Lying would definitely spell doom for your blog’s existence.

Not responding to e-mails or comments

Many bloggers tend to leave their e-mail accounts unchecked, because they focus more on their blog posts. You should remember that not all readers direct their queries on your blog; some prefer to do it by email due to issues of privacy. Whether it’s through email or direct blog commenting, take the time to answer your reader’s questions.

Having a profit-centered blog
Majority of bloggers on the World Wide Web consider their blogs as extensions of their business websites. There is nothing wrong about that. However, business bloggers should remember not to focus solely on profit. Do not over-promote your products and services, because it will only annoy your readers. They visit your blog to learn about you and your services, but not to buy all your products.

More: SEO Updates

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SEO Factors For Improve Search Engine Results

One clear lesson emerges from this list, which has been compiled by people from all over the world in a variety of fields, not just SEO. The lesson is this: If your SEO people aren't talking to your coders or your writers (or better still, supervising them), you're in trouble.


Factors that improve search engine results:

Code

1) Search terms in the "TITLE" tag
2) Search terms in "B" or "STRONG"
3) Search term in anchor text in links to a page
4) Search term in image names
5) Search term in image ALTs
6) Search terms the first or last words of the Title Tag
7) Search terms in the page name URL (e.g. acme.co.uk/folder/searchterm.html)
8) Use of hyphen ("-") or underscore ("_") in search terms in URL (for example, search-term.htm is better than searchterm.htm)
9) Search terms in the page folder URL (e.g. acme.co.uk/search-term/page.html)
10) Search terms in the first or last words in the H1 Tag
11) Search terms in other "H" tags
12) Search terms in the page's query parameters (e.g. acme.co.uk/page.html?searchterm)
13) Search terms (and location) in the meta-description tag
14) XML sitemap
15) XML sitemap under 10k
16) Accuracy of XML sitemap
17) Sitemap folder geo-targeting
18) Index/follow meta tags
19) Robots.txt present
20) URL length
21) Title attribute of link
22) W3C-compliant html coding
23) Video header and descriptions
24) Video sitemap
25) Compression for size by eliminating white space, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate. GZIP can be used
26) Use CSS sprites to help consolidate decorative images
27) No redirection to other URLS in the same server
28) "NOSCRIPT" tags (even though I don't know anyone who doesn't have JavaScript enabled)
29) Geo-meta tags if the business serves a targeted geographic area
30) Relevance of "TITLE" tag to page content
31) Relevance of "META DESCRIPTION" to page content
32) Code-to-text ratio
33) Canonical URL
34) Directory depth
35) Number of query-string parameters
36) Link attributes -- like rel=nofollow
37) Link structure
38) Microformats
39) Mobile accessibility
40) Page size
41) Page accessible
42) Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has)
43) ALT Image Meta Tags (this can be helpful for FLASH elements too)
44) Age of prominent / 2nd level pages

Copy

45) The most important rule of all: plain old simple quality relevant content
46) Keyword density
47) Keyword proximity -- number of words between search terms (less is better)
48) Keyword positions in page
49) Keyword prominence (start/end of paragraphs or sentences)
50) Words in page
51) Page category (or theme)
52) Relevance (to searched phrase)
53) Synonyms to query terms
54) Language
55) Linear distribution of search terms
56) Legality of content
57) Frequency of updates
58) Standard deviation of search terms in the population of pages containing search terms
59) Semantic relevance (synonym for matching term)
60) Rich snippets
61) Rich snippet UGC rating
62) Search term density through body copy (about 3-5 percent)
63) Search terms in internal link anchor text on the page
64) Search terms in external link anchor text on the page
65) Search terms in the first 50-100 words in HTML on the page

Site

66) Length of contract for ownership of domain name
67) Domain registration information hidden/anonymous
68) Site top-level domain (geographical focus, e.g. .com versus co.uk)
69) Site top-level domain (.com versus .info)
70) Sub domain or root domain?
71) Domain past records (how often it changed IP)
72) Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
73) Domain IP
74) Domain external mentions (non-linked)
75) Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools
76) Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools
77) Domain presence in Google News
78) Domain presence in Google Blog Search
79) Use of the domain in Google Analytics
80) Server geographical location
81) Server reliability/uptime
82) PageRank of a page (the actual PageRank, not the toolbar PageRank)
83) The PageRank of the entire domain
84) The speed of the website
85) Reputable hosting company
86) Geo-located results
87) Search terms in the root domain name (searchterm.com)
88) An active Adsense campaign
89) Domain age (older is better)
90) The number of pages on the topic related to the search term
91) Wikipedia listing?
92) Listed in DMOZ?
93) Number of pages within site (more is better)
94) Website size (bigger is better)

Links

95) Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site)
96) Quality of link partners
97) Diversity of link partners
98) Links from good directories
99) Rate of new inbound links to your site
100) Relevance of inbound links -- subject-specific relationship with target page
101) Placement of back-links in page
102) Quantity of back-links
103) Quantity of linking root domains
104) Quality of linking root domains
105) Link distance from higher authority sites
106) Outgoing followed links from back-linked pages
107) Domain classification of linking domains
108) Outbound links with keywords
109) PageRank of outbound link targets

Behavior

110) SERP click-through rate. If your website is ranked No. 1 for "bike shoes" but 90 percent of the traffic goes to the website ranked No. 2, Google will notice and make an adjustment
111) Search trend data
112) Social graph fans (they like/follow you)
113) Social graph fans earned impressions (they talk about you)
114) Social graph fans earned impressions with links (talk about and cite your content)
115) Secondary fan connection citations earned impressions
116) Secondary fan connection citations earned impressions (retweets, likes of friends)
117) Other citations (social media linking)
118) Visits (personalization)
119) Visits (scraped from Alexa)
120) Number of SERP click-throughs
121) Visitors' demographics
122) Visitors' browsing habits (what other sites they tend to visit)
123) Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spikes in incoming traffic)
124) User experience -- "human raters" -- a large number (thousands) of Google employees are there solely to check and manually tweak search results.

Rules for beating Google

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SEO Checklist For Social Media Marketer's

Normally in the SEO world, links are like money in that the larger the bill (more authority), the more powerful it is. So for a long time, most SEOs blew off links from social sites like Twitter and Facebook since they didn't have much direct SEO value because the links are almost always nofollowed [learn more about nofollow]. Now that we know that Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results, it's time to start thinking about how the person in charge of Social Media can start to think like an SEO as well.

Keyword Research

The best place to start is with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You can start by inputting a couple keywords you think searchers will be looking for to find your content. Then the tool will show you estimated (e.s.t.i.m.a.t.e.d.) monthly traffic numbers for those keywords plus others that it thinks are similar. The keywords you choose will come into play as you craft your tweets and Facebook updates, plus when you look at the Title tag and meta description (discussed more below). We ran a test to determine which would get a page to rank faster, lots of tweets, or lots of direct inbound links to a page. As of right now (about a month later) the Tweeted version ranks #1 for "ending hunger sierra leone" while the regular linked to version is lost in the shuffle. Although we still have more analysis to do, and more tests to run, this is a pretty big indication that tweets can influence rankings (possibly) more than links!

Social Segments For Tracking

Before you even get started on your campaign it's important to have your tracking all set up. You probably already have a specific way you're tracking URLs (more on that below) but what about setting up an easy way to see all "Social" traffic at one time. About how to Segment Social Traffic in Google Analytics it will walk you through the steps of setting this up.

URL Shorteners

When determining which URL shortener to use remember that you want a shortener that will do a 301 redirect from the short URL to yours. That way you can keep as much of that link juice flowing to your own site as possible. Also, be sure to use one that gives you some analytics about clicks and such, like bit.ly.

Content Easily Linkable

As a master in getting your content shared on the social networks, have you also thought about ways to build direct links to your content as well? I know for me personally, we saw a spike in social sharing once we (finally) added sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon. But what about adding widgets and embeds to help build links to your page/site.
Canonicalize

SEOs use to make sure that the search engines only see one URL for a specific page. For social sharing this is something to think about when you're setting up the tracking for your social shares. Whether you use Google Analytics tracking, or get tweets from an RSS feed, you're going to have URL tracking variables appended to the URL.
Rel=Canonical Tag

Using the rel=canonical tag you'd point this at the URL without the tracking coded added to the end. Using the example above,


if your tagged URL is:

http://seobiginners.blogspot.com/2011/01/create-content-link-bait-seo-tips.html

Then the rel=canonical looks like this:

link rel="canonical" href="http://seobiginners.blogspot.com/"

301 Redirect

Many SEOs will claim that this is the "proper" way to do it, and most likely is. Unfortunately it's not always the easiest to implement especially if you're in charge of Social Media and don't have quick access to the dev team.

Page Load Time

Can your site handle the load if the campaign goes viral? Obviously you're going to make sure that the site won't buckle under the pressure of all the awesome social traffic you're sending it's way, but what if it slows it down? You could have an infographic that takes a long time to load, or unnecessary JavaScript slowing you down.

Title Tags - Use Keywords

Remember earlier in the checklist you did a little research to see which keywords would be most beneficial to use? Now it's time to put them into play! It's too easy to use fancy shmancy titles in your social content because it's a bit catchier than a typical "optimized" title. But there are a few things to remember: 1. The Title tag is thought to be the highest on-page ranking factor and having your keywords toward the beginning of the title is best. 2. If your social efforts can help get a page ranking in Google, that title tag is going to show up in the results and

Description Meta

The meta description isn't going to help with getting a page's rankings but in the social world it's often times the text that is automatically pulled into a social site. The best example is Facebook. When you add a link to your Facebook wall, it automatically pulls the title tag, meta description and let's you choose an image. Think of the meta description as a way to entice users to click on your link whether the user is searching on Google or checking out a page you shared on Facebook

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Create Content Link Bait - SEO Tips

Why Is It Go Viral?

The main reason that the articles go viral because they offer something of value to a large proportion of the population. It's usually something that people feel they can not be without, and with how social media works, all links to automatically share content that spreads like a virus, hence the name "viral".

Two Common Types Of Link Bait Post

Some items are so good that attract the reader's attention immediately. An example of an article is a list of posts. These are the steps that are easy to read, and generally to provide solutions to problems, or because things are necessary. Examples of the list of post titles are the "Top 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins" or "5 ways to increase RSS subscribers. Purpose of these news articles is to attract attention, which is the need of these things. When they come The article is divided into a list of easy to wear.


Make Your Articles Stand Out

When I first guest post on ProBlogger, I would write an article that I knew to be referenced in the future. I wrote about styles of blogs, and I made sure to create an in depth article. Thus, the messages link bait should not be list items or controversial articles. They may simply be articles covering a topic in depth, and as another blogger can refer in his own observations in the future. You can see all the time among bloggers and site owners who link to Wikipedia articles. In order to post stand, you should write a detailed post, and covers the most important criteria for the subject. Break the sub-article and the reference lists, and other materials, wherever you want. The most important part of the resignation of the original. If you write me-too-mail, you probably will not get answers, not to mention the incoming links.

To Use His Influence While Remaining Original

Let me emphasize that. Get out of your way to be original. Once I created the banners for free some of my regular readers to show my appreciation for their loyalty. It took only five hours of my time designing these ads, but I knew they would appreciate the effort over a long period. I did not intend to get inbound links of the motion were an unexpected bonus. These articles really different to my attention, and easily turn me into a normal player. The person who prepared an article is not lazy, and it took a bit 'to make a valuable resource for someone else. They do a quick post just to have a link to the bait. And if their goal was to get your bait, they did it right, taking the time to do valuable.

Make An Effort Style

When I talk about style, I'm not saying go out and make sure your socks match. When I talk about style, I'm talking about how you present your articles. * Do you want to break them pictures of what you wrote? * You are using the tags H1, H2 and H3? * Want to change the color of the header tags look different than the text of this article? * Do you have a video or audio seem to keep up with the Jetsons? * Does the style of your social media accounts to look at your blog? * Are you a casual list of this kind to make your point? There are several ways to go about creating style for your brand. The lesson here is: do not be lazy. If you take your blog seriously, it presents a unique way, while they can simultaneously perform maintenance, your readers can expect.

The Competitions Are Not Just For Traffic

Have you ever held a contest on your blog? They are usually used to attract traffic because everyone who enters the contest to promote it. But disputes also generate a lot of incoming links through this promotion. Take for example a competitive position of the user. You'll probably have many links to various articles in this competition, rather than one at the competition itself. Each poster invited to actively promote their article on as many sites as possible and social media sites and blogs that they own or with partners.

The Art Of Link Baiting

Editorial content is easy to link bait. It is an art form, but any blogger can do it if they just apply science and avoid laziness. Make sure you're not being selfish by searching only the links. Instead, work hard to create a valuable resource that others can not resist.

What advice can you share your experience with writing a successful link bait content?

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Yahoo To Close Old Product Lines

A Yahoo billboard in Times Square, New York - A Yahoo billboard in Times Square, New York | 2009 Getty Images


Yahoo to close the old product lines

A small piece of Internet history, long overshadowed by giant Google is about to disappear into the sunset.

Yahoo (YHOO-Q16.38-0, 13 -, 78%) to quickly extinguish Altavista, fast search engine, which is popular in 1990, means-ends, and many other products it contains.

The information contained in the social networking site popular Twitter, MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier, an online community of bloggers that Yahoo bought in January 2007, and the sum is more than $ 10 million (U.S.). MyBlogLog is a Yahoo-off products, including personal photo screen webcast and Mr. Marcoullier Yahoo posted online.


The news comes a day after Yahoo announced that its employees began a new round in a series of layoffs that have occurred over the past two years. It plans to cut about 600 jobs, or 4 percent of its workforce.

______

Cuts

Some products Yahoo Inc. plans to phase out, according to presentation slides leaking today.

AltaVista

Now-obsolete search engine, a popular day before coverage of Google was cemented. Yahoo acquired when it bought Overture Services Inc., the parent company in 2004 1630000000 dollar (United States) is a cash and shares.

Delicious

A site that helps users organize their favorite sites. del.icio.us Inc. was acquired by Yahoo in December 2005. At that time it had about 300,000 users.

Buzz Yahoo!

A new aggregation site where users can post links to news articles, and prioritize what seems most visible on the page by recommending specific links.

MyBlogLog

Founded by Eric Marcoullier who leaked slide on Twitter Yahoo Thursday. Bloggers social networking site was bought by Yahoo in January 2007 for a reported amount of over $ 10,000,000 (U.S.)

AlltheWeb

Another also-ran in the Google dominates the search engine owned by Yahoo buying Overture in 2004, also owned by AltaVista.

Yahoo! favorites

Another service, organize favorite sites bookmarked links to the user.

More Info

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Fastest Growing Search Engine

Although the slow start and a number of industry experts forecast that Bing might not be able to make a significant impact on the market share of Google Bing finally seems to realize, at least in the U.S. market, where it won almost 11% market.

These new Bing made the search engine the fastest growing in America with a massive increase of 22% from July to August in the number of people using the search engine. Microsoft engine continued to search for new features pioneers who generated a large amount of media coverage, and finally proposes some users away from Google.

Although Google has been trying many new features have little to do with the evolution of research and the few people who were released, and the efforts by Bing. However, despite the impressive progress made by Microsoft, Google is still king of Internet search with a market share of 65% worldwide.

The next step for a good news for users of web Bing, United Kingdom - which tends to personalize the search based on research that users of different countries use different search engines. Bing many features and marketing budgets have increased in the creation of a U.S. service impressive, but at the expense of leaving the UK with less innovation Bing has become famous. This may explain why Google has a much larger share of 90% of the UK market.

It's an interesting development of a SEO point of view and something that the industry will keep a watchful eye on the future, when Microsoft starts to clear his views on the UK market.

Meanwhile, Google has recently unveiled its "Fast Flip service allows users to read quickly and effectively in an online news magazine format page changes. He also announced a plan to micro-transcation its service Online news, the company is unlikely to let Microsoft keep all of the innovation itself.

However, if Bing can continue to attract users and up to its promise to provide a national search, we saw the first serious competitor to Google's throne forever.

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SEO Tips - The Difference Between A Like And A Link

Always remember that any search engine algorithm is nothing more than a giant bean counting machine. Indeed the nature of any algorithm is to attach numeric values to real life functions so as to calculate a real life result. Hence we have Google. Google places a huge percentage of its ranking result value on inbound links to a website. And for the longest time Google placed no ranking value on links which blocked search engine travel by using a “no follow” code.

Enter into this equation social network websites with their generalized likes and dislikes system. If 100 million people all “like” World Cup Football on Facebook, surely websites promoting matches should rank highly in searches. This is the basis of factoring social network data into search results.

Twitter and Facebook preferences are set up as No Follow links, sort of links to nowhere. But obviously the demographic value of these “likes” must be counted. Google and Bing are both now ‘said’ to be placing a small countable value on No Follow links.

The implications for SEO are enormous. This sets a baseline value for any link. Where, in the past a link was specifically lowered in value to its proportionate share of overall ranking power, now (if this is correct) every link is worth a little something. Take a look at your site changes over the last six months. You may discover that sheer volume of links seems to have supplanted quality. The revaluing of No Follows may be the cause.

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SEO Tips - The Most Popular Organic SEO Columns

We’re fortunate enough to have some of the most brilliant minds and SEO practitioners writing for us here at Search Engine Land, and as I’ve run through the data on our most read stories, I’ve been consistently reminded just how amazing our talent pool is in this industry. The quality of our contributors’ advice, their keen insights and depth of experiences are so well respected across the industry and across the globe, that they deserve another look as we close out the year, and look forward to an even more productive 2011.

Look for more stories and features by these authors and new contributors alike in the coming year, as we’re refocusing our efforts on driving even higher quality content for the search industry.

Methodology note: I’d previously set an arbitrary minimum of 1,000 pageviews to make these ‘best of lists’, but in 100% Organic, arguably one of our most popular columns overall, our writers consistently blew that away, so I decided just to take the Top 20 from the year to date. If you have the time, I highly recommend going back through the archives for more great stories like these.

For More

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Microsoft Upgrade To Bing Search Engine

From maps to movies, mobile to travel, Microsoft's search engine just got a major facelift.

At an event in San Francisco, the software giant announced a wealth of upgrades and improvements to its search engine Bing, Microsoft's answer to Google's popular search tool. The cornucopia of updates touches on a variety of different areas, from local enhancements to Facebook integration to changes to the mapping functionality.

Most of these upgrades and feature enhancements will be available today or later this month, reported industry blog Search Engine Land.

The features being unveiled include:

Facebook integration: Bing is bringing “like” data into core search across all queries. Search results will now show which links on the search engine results page have been “liked” by a person’s Facebook friends. This feature will show what a person’s friends “liked” on the main results page and will be different for each user.

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Improved mapping features: Bing Maps will add mpas of venues such as shopping malls and museums, transit directions, and more.

Check-in function: Share your current location with friends and family via Facebook, foursquare or Windows Live Activity Stream.

Bing Vision: Bring an object into the [camera] viewfinder, hold it still and Bing will detect text and present a highlighter tool to select words for a search. If the object has a barcode, Bing will instantly return product results. Search for a nearby business listing by pointing your camera at a landmark.

Microsoft has been struggling to make the well-reviewed Bing search engine more popular with users, Dow Jones reported. Launched in June 2009, Bing had 11.8% of the search market in November, up from 11.5% in October, a spokesman at data tracker comScore told the newswire. But Google had nearly two thirds of the market while Microsoft partner Yahoo had 16.4%.

Satya Nadella, who runs engineering at the Microsoft's Online Services Division, said Bing has grown for 19-consecutive months and now has 90 million users, Dow Jones said.

For all the details, see Search Engine Land.

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Yahoo To Use Bing Search Engine In New Deal

Microsoft and Yahoo have finally finalised a deal that could go a long way into helping Bing achieve a foothold in the browser market. The deal has been ongoing for around 6 months now, but this week both parties have finally agreed to the terms which will see Bing powering Yahoo’s search for the next ten years in exchange for Yahoo! Selling advertising.

In a joint statement yesterday, the companies explained their belief that their deal would lead to increased competition in search: “Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.”

However, Yahoo will still remain Bing-less for the time being, as regardless of the deal between the two companies, it still has to be checked about by both the US department of Justice and the European Union to make sure no anti-competition laws are being broken.

However, it seems likely that such a deal will go ahead.

Bing and Yahoo combined will account for nearly 10% of all worldwide search if the partnership goes ahead, according to the latest figures for worldwide search engine usage. Meanwhile Google accounts for around 85% of worldwide usage – still a huge figure.

The statement concluded: “Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”

Source

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Google, Yahoo, and Bing, the masters of SEO

Most webmaster IT development types are well aware that results from Yahoo search are now delivered by Microsoft’s Bing. Many have gone so far as to rename the collaboration Microhoo. What many internet marketers may not realize is Yahoo and Bing are still competitors. Yahoo only makes money when people use their engine to search and then click on an ad. They keep 88% of all revenues generated on their site. Yahoo also no longer carries the expense of maintaining data centres around the globe. It is a most profitable arrangement. Still, if people stop coming to Yahoo there will be no profits and soon be no Yahoo. This raises the thought that even search engines need search engine marketing.

Much in the way a television station announces upcoming programmes, Yahoo lists their own features and cross promotes them with interlinking. They go to great lengths to write search engine friendly dynamic content for all of their inner pages. In short, Yahoo employs major search engine optimisation. Yahoo engages in dynamic link building and on page optimisation so as to increase their position in search engine results and across the internet. For as much as the major search engines deride SEO, the truth is they invented the process and are the masters of the SEO universe.

The other day, Google ran another one of their engaging and entertaining doodles. The Flintstones were honoured for their 50 years of full colour service to humanity. The depiction was quite brilliant and gave one a lift every time Google was used. Similar success has been met by Google with hundreds of these little drawings. Other than doodles Google remains its white background, “nothin’ to see here folks,” search engine self. The Yahoo homepage serves as a portal for sports, mail, weather and a hundred other favourite pursuits. Bing falls somewhere in between with some beautiful high end photography and a few promotions listed on their page. All three of the major search engines have unique marketing approaches so as to hopefully gain market share. Whether they print a doodle or a picture of an astronaut or a listing of football results, they are all optimising their pages so as to draw a result… just like we do.

Source

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Google And Bing Away From The Search Engine Algorithm

Both Google and Bing are racing the clock to incorporate social network input into their search results. What they may not realize is that those results may become irrelevant before they can complete the adjustment. For at least a dozen years the expression “Content is king” ruled the internet. The premise being that the formulas by which the best websites relevant to a topic were chosen used a heavy weighting based upon the amount of and quality of words on a page. Suddenly we are to disregard this factor and focus on a new one. That factor is context. Now context is supposed to be King. This is not so much for search results as it is for advertising. Social network sites have made SEO agencies keenly aware that the objective is to sell products, not merely rank high for keywords.

A case in point is our recent study of clicks for the term, word document recovery. We work hard to rank for major keywords such as recover deleted files and data recovery. But it turns out that the customers most ready to buy software are specifically looking for lost Microsoft Word Docs. Consumer preferences as shown on social networking sites make this type of data easy to spot. Sites like Facebook don’t need an algorithm to make this determination and can deliver results strictly from their in house pool of paid advertisers. If one can deliver sales simply by buying targeted ads without the time delay of SEO for organic search, SERPs become unnecessary.

All of this should make SEO companies working to deliver high rankings on free natural search, incredibly nervous. Yahoo has wisely segued away from search, drifting further into the portal business. Facebook is pushing hard to make your Facebook home page your computer’s homepage. Google and Bing had better come up with a hybrid solution fast or they will be left behind.

Source

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Google Adjusts Algorithm To Exclude Black Hat SEO

Google adjusts contextual portions of algorithm to exclude Black Hat SEO

In our “Just so long as you spell my name right,” department we reported that a few days ago Google closed a major Black Hat SEO loophole. It seems that quite a few scam websites had taken to encouraging complaints about their products. Many websites selling fraudulent and low quality goods actually did so purposefully so as to generate link bait publicity which resulted in thousands of news stories being written. These in turn resulted in links to the site which Google, not taking the links in context, then used to give credence and power to the site. This in turn resulted in more fraudulent sales and so on.

It would appear that the adage, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” was ringing true and paying off handsomely. Google execs and techs upon reading about this quirk, quickly got to work and adjusted the contextual recognition of their algorithm so as to reflect a preponderance of negative publicity and red flag such websites.

We have at times been engaged to help honest website owners counter bad publicity unfairly placed on the net by jealous competitors. It comes as a twist and a surprise that much of that negative commentary may have actually helped bolster those same sites. All of this points out that SEO is in many ways a massive public relations endeavor. If one can just start the little snowball rolling down the hill, great things might happen.

Source

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Super Solutions For The Robots.txt

Use robots.txt can prevent effective inbound link

The only thing about using robots.txt to block indexing of search engines is not only that is quite inefficient, but may also reduce the flow of inbound links. Locking a page using robots.txt, search engines are not indexing the content (or links!) Page. This means that if you have inbound links to the page, the link juice can not flow to other pages. It creates an impasse.


While inbound links to the blocked page is probably some benefit to the general area, this value inbound links are not used to their full potential. You missed an opportunity to convey a certain value link internal page blocked in several important internal pages.

3 Big Sites with Blocked Opportunity in the Robots.txt File

*1 - Digg.com

*2 - Blogger.com or Blogspot.com

*3 - IBM

Super Solutions to the Robots.txt

Great site, for example above, we have covered the wrong robots.txt file. Some of the scenarios were not included. The following is a list of effective solutions to maintain the contents index of search engines with no link juice to lose.

Noindex

In most cases the best alternative to robots.txt robots exclusion meta tags. By adding "noindex" and make sure it does not add 'nofollow' your pages will remain in the results of search engines, but will link value.
301 Redirect

The robots.txt file is not a place to list the old worn pages. If the page has expired (delete, move, etc) is not only the block. Redirect this page through a 301 to replace the most relevant. Get more information about redirecting the Knowledge Centre.

Canonical Tag

Do not block your overlap since the versions in robots.txt. Using the tag canon to keep the additional versions of the index, and consolidate the link value. Where possible. Get more information at the Information Centre on canonization and use the rel = tag canon.

Password Protection

The robots.txt is not an effective way to keep the information confidential at the hands of others. If you have confidential information on the Internet, password protect. If you have a login screen, go ahead and add meta tag "noindex" page. If you expect a lot of incoming links on this page for users, be sure to link to some of the most important pages of internal login page. This way, you pass through the link juice.

Effective Robots.txt Usage

The best way to use a robots.txt file does not use it at all. Use it to report that robots will have full access to all files on the site and to control a robot in the sitemap.xml file. That's it.

Your robots.txt file should look like this:

-----------------

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

-----------------

Bad Bots

"Robots and instructions for the robots.txt file," which means that there are robots that do not follow the robots.txt at all. So when you do a good job of keep away with a good, you are doing a horrible job to keep away from "bad" against. In addition to filtering to allow access only to the Google bot Bing is not recommended for three reasons:

1. The engines change/update bot names frequently.
2. Engines employ multiple types of bots for different types of content.
3. New engines/content discovery technologies getting off the ground stand even less of a chance with institutionalized preferences for existing user agents only and search competition is good for the industry.

Competitors

If your competitors are warned SEO in any way whatsoever, they look at your robots.txt file to see what they can discover. Say you are working on a new design or an entirely new product and you have a line in your robots.txt file that disallows bots "index" it. If a competitor appears, check the file and see this folder called "/ newproducttest" when they just won the jackpot! Better to keep it on a staging server, or behind a login. Do not give all your secrets in a small file.

Handling Non-HTML & System Content

* It isn't necessary to block .js and .css files in your robots.txt. The search engines won't index them, but sometimes they like the ability to analyze them so it is good to keep access open.

* To restrict robot access to non-HTML documents like PDF files, you can use the x-robots tag in the HTTP Header.

* Images! Every website has background images or images used for styling that you don't want to have indexed. Make sure these images are displayed through the CSS and not using the tag as much as possible. This will keep them from being indexed, rather than having to disallow the "/style/images" folder from the robots.txt.

* A good way to determine whether the search engines are even trying to access your non-HTML files is to check your log files for bot activity.

Robots.txt High Impact Solutions

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SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) For Multilingual Sites

Factors To Consider

The Internet has really opened doors to international trade, enabling us to reach a global audience like never before. English is often cited as the language on the Internet. But consider this: 75% of the world population does not speak English.

Multilingual approach is essential if the company provides services to international customers and consumers. But it is equally important to optimize your site so that search engine. The following is a list of things to consider if you have translated, or if you want to translate your site.

Countries where English is the official or primary language:

Country Specific Domains

Country specific domains, and any help www.mywebsite.co.uk www.mywebsite.fr improve your ranking in local search. The disadvantages are that they are expensive and difficult and tedious to maintain. Go to specific areas, if resources permit.

Subdomains & Subfolders

Only one domain name. You can invest in this multi-lingual content. So, for example www.mywebsite.com / FR for French and www.mywebsite.com content / en content in English, etc. The advantages are that it is much easier and cheaper to manage than country-specific domains and can create the impression that the goods or services are far reaching, and therefore successful.

Keywords

Does not directly translate keywords. Users in different locations can write different things when looking the same products / services.

Key tip: carry out local keyword research!

One Page, One Language

Do not put two different languages in parallel on the same page. This confuses the search engines that will not go down well. It may also confuse the readers.

Automated Machine Translations

Translation of an automated machine offers an inexpensive way to build multilingual websites. However, beware: Because of its poor quality, Google can see the machine translated content as spam and may penalize the ranking of the website. If you use machine translations which provide the relevant pages are not indexed by search engines.


SEO for Multilingual Sites

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Google News : Google Search Update AS Google Instant

Google is a snapshot of new research that shows the best results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get search results faster. Our idea was that the skills of these people slowly, but easy to read, generally less than 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (one tenth of the time!) If you want to see another part of the page. This means you can scan a page of search results as you type.

Google Instant Video

The most obvious change is that you get the right content faster because you do not need to type Thurs arrest the entire research period, or press "Search". Another change is that we see the results as you type help to better define the word to try to give immediate feedback. Now you can customize the search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. Over time, we may wonder how to find previously worked in another way.

 For More Info Go: Google Instant

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Joomla being SEO Friendly

Joomla is an excellent CMS, but when it comes to search engine optimization, you need some time to tweak it the way it needs to be. I have spent lots of time doing it and would like to save your time. So I compiled a little tutorial for Joomla SEO

How to make Joomla truly SE friendly?

This is not an exact tutorial, so you are doing it at your own risk. I am just posting what has worked for me and what not.

1. Think about SEO from install on

Firstly you will need to install some extensions, to prepare Joomla to be serving URLs the right way. We will use SEF patch, openSEF and Joomap.
Important: Do it immediately after installing a fresh copy of Joomla.

2. Install Joomla SEF patch

This will patch Joomla core and enable you to add keywords and description in every menu and content item of your site. It will also make titles show the correct way. That’s what Google and other SE want! File is located in our Webmaster Center. Instructions and Homepage. (Takes you to Joomla At Work)

3. Install openSEF component and make it work

1. Enable it. Site > Configuration

 

 Go to SEO and Click Yes for Search Friendly URLs.

    2. Change .htaccess from integrated SEO to 3rd party SEO

    3. Install openSEF. Go to Installers > Components

Select your file from hard disk, Upload and Install.

For troubleshooting go to this forum.

4. Configure OpenSEF with these instructions.

OpenSEF will basically rewrite your internal Joomla like urls to external that are SE and User Friendly.
Here is a video how to configure openSEF.
IMPORTANT: Once you launch your site, DO NOT CHANGE your content item names and category names, because your URLs will also change. And this breaches Google’s guidelines and WILL, I repeat WILL hurt your rankings.

So make sure once you set your urls and content to leave it that way for good.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT THING: If you will be using components, check if there are OpenSEF extensions for these components. This will make these components SE friendly too. Check this great forum about this matter. I use Docman and it has been producing me lots of junk urls. Installed extension and now works GREAT!

5. Install Joomap

Joomap is a next step to Joomla SEO. It will create a sitemap for your site and a XML sitemap that will feed Google spider. It automatically creates XML file every time a new item is added.

1. Download it from our Webmaster Center .
2. Enable it by creating a menu item which points to this component.
3. Configure it by going to Components> Joomap

Configure which menus you want to include in the sitemap.

4. Configure the way it will display information; you can even exclude items or categories.
   
   

5. And the important thing: Submit your XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps. You will find your sitemap address in Back-end Administrator in Joomap settings. Once you enter it into Google, it will automatically pick up changes.

Be careful: set your live path in configuration.php in joomla with www before your domain. Also make it the same for Google Sitemaps. They have to be the same or Google will show errors in your sitemap.

6. Joomla Seo and Content:

Make sure to delete all unused content items and menu items by default Joomla installation. Clean it so you won’t have problems later.
Each URL needs to have proper Meta tags for Joomla seo (keywords, description), title and consistent use of H1 and keywords in text. Thanks to SEF patch, you can now manually configure each page Meta tags.

7. OpenSEF Friendly URL tweaking:

Once you click on all your links site wide, OpenSef will compile a list of Search Friendly URLs. Because of Joomla Nature - it produces several duplicate ids and id items, you will have to manually set only one URL to be used, and set others off. Don’t delete them, just turn all cases with the same external URLS off, just leave one to be used. I don’t know why, but sometimes it worked only if i selected case with id and itemed in the name of internal url, instead of those having only id in the name of internal URL.
Here is a video how to manage URLs with openSEF .

Conclusion

Joomla CAN is SEO friendly. That is what worked for me. If you have any suggestions or comments let me know.

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