What effect does the Yahoo! – bing marriage have on traffic?

I ran the traffic stats from Google analytics for the 12 days prior to the change and the 12 days after the change. I compared the visitor stats from both Yahoo! and bing during this period.

I used 3 websites that have no similarities other than they are all established sites that have been around for quite some time and get organic traffic.

Age of the sites:

• 8 years
• 7 years
• 4 years

Server Location:

• Henderson, Nevada
• Eugene, Oregon
• San Antonio, Texas

Alexa Traffic Rank:

• 162,947
• 694,179
• 1,661,606

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.

Daily pageviews per user:

• 9.80000
• 6.00000
• 4.30000

With all of that said let’s take a look at the stats.
 
There was a 17% increase in traffic from bing and a 42% increase in traffic from Yahoo!
 
There was a 9% drop in traffic from bing but a 29% increase in traffic from Yahoo!
 
There was a 32% increase in traffic from bing but a drop in traffic of 5% from Yahoo! One interesting fact about this site is while there was a 5% drop in visits from Yahoo! there was a 19% increase in pages per visit over the same time period. Does this mean that the bing search results are more relevant?
 
Yahoo! Traffic:

• 22% increase in search engine traffic from Yahoo!
• 9% increase in pages per visit from Yahoo!

bing Traffic:

• 13% increase in search engine traffic from bing
• 12% increase in pages per visit from

Even with such a small sampling to this SEO it looks like the bing relevance factor is shining it’s light on Yahoo! results.

The 32% of the search market seems to be close these sites show the bing – Yahoo! search alliance to be bringing close to 30% of the organic search traffic to these sites.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Yahoo! Bing Search Alliance Traffic Report is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Bing and Yahoo! Conjugate Alliance in the US and Canada

With the sheets pulled back all that was left was for the bing – Yahoo! Search Alliance to be conjugated.

Towards the end of last month Yahoo! fully switched to using bing’s technology as the power for its search results in the US and Canada.

What this means is whenever anyone searches on yahoo.com they will get exactly the same results as as they would on bing. The only differences are the interface, navigation, some universal results (except images and videos) and related searches.

But will this bring SEO woe?

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

The organic results appear to be identical.

The Yahoo! footer now sports a “Powered by Bing™” identifier.

It looks as though everything is going as planned by the bing – Yahoo! Search Alliance, so unless something blows up we can expect Yahoo to switch to bing powered PPC ads sometime in mid October.

What this means to us SEOs is that bing is now powering 5.2 billion searches monthly which gives them nearly 32% of the search market share in the US and nearly 9% in Canada. Previous information deduced from the numbers published in the comScore report from June 2010.

Yahoo Site Explorer

One of the largest concerns to SEOs is the effect this alliance will have on Yahoo’s Site Explorer. This tool is one of the best free sources for backlink data. If Yahoo’s Site Explorer goes away it will take many of the popular backlink checkers that use its data with it.

Good News

According to the post on the official Yahoo search blog Site Explorer will remain operational at least till early 2012. 2012 is the chosen date when Yahoo is planning to complete the switch to the bing backend technology.

Once all markets are being served by Microsoft, we plan to refine the focus of Yahoo! Site Explorer, and webmasters should use bing’s Webmaster Center to provide information about their website and its structure.

How is the switch to Bing algorithm affecting your site?

Are you noticing a rise or decline in traffic from bing or Yahoo?

Post your story in the comments.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Bing and Yahoo! Conjugate the Relationship is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Will these Bed Partners Help SEO?

As Bing and Yahoo! get ready to climb in bed together this week I find myself considering the effect this will have on the SEO world.

This is one of those rare occasions when I actually publish two posts the same day.

I received an email from the Microsoft adCenter this morning with the following statements.

This is an exciting week for Bing as we reach another major milestone in the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. This week, Bing will begin powering organic search results on Yahoo! Search for the English language in the United States and Canada.

After this organic transition is complete, Bing will power 5.2 billion monthly searches, which is 31.6 percent of the search market share in the United States and 8.6 percent share in Canada. You can take advantage of this traffic by using search engine optimization (SEO) to complement your search campaigns and boost the visibility of your business.

I find the statement “take advantage of this traffic by using search engine optimization (SEO)” very interesting. It appears that unlike Google the Bing Yahoo! alliance is going to embrace SEO.

Is this the Bing strategy to attack the Google giant’s SEO distain head on with acceptance of the SEO community?

Bing has already launched their own version of Webmaster Tools and they even offer up a page with the title “Search Engine Optimization for Bing“.

Bing’s SEO principles

SEO is fundamentally about creating websites that are good for people. The most basic advice we can give for achieving optimum rank for your site in Bing is to do the following:

• Develop great, original content (including well-implemented keywords) directed toward your intended audience
• Use well-architected code in your webpages (including images and Sitemaps) so that users’ web browsers and search engine crawlers can read the content you want indexed)
• Earn several, high-quality, authoritative inbound links

At least Bing is openly welcoming SEO unlike Google who tries to sweep it under the rug and deny its existence let alone it’s validity.

Will Bing be able to eat away at the hold Google has on searches? I use Bing as my personal search engine of choice and have been since their launch of the “decision engine”.

As time passes we will have more answers to these questions.

As you probably already know I am a Mac guy and Microsoft is well.. Microsoft. They do offer some great webmaster tools especially their web developer tool box but.. they only run on Doz Longhorn and above.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Bing and Yahoo! Pull Back The Sheets is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

The Top Ten Search Engines, Google Search, Yahoo Search, Bing Search… Search Engine List 2010 Version

Google search and Yahoo search, we are all familiar with these but what about the other search engines that are out there?

What is the best search engine?

Even though it is impossible to list all internet search engines, here is a search engine list in no particular order.

• Bing search engine
• Altavista search engine
• Google search engine
• Dogpile search engine
• Yahoo search engine
• Webcrawler search engine

This is by no means a complete list of web search engines. It is just some of the more popular. Rather than just a bulleted list I will give you a list of the top 10 search engines complete with logos.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

Top Ten Search Engines

Google search

Yahoo search

Bing search

Ask search

Metacrawler search

Dogpile search

AltaVista search

AOL search

Cuil search

Kngine search

SearchGeek search

eccellio search

Jawoco search

Business.com search

Answers.com search

Google Blog Search search

Google Spanish search

Yahoo Answers search

Topsy search

Ok so it’s more than ten. There are actually 19 search engines above. The top ten search engines are in there.

Some of these are actual search engines, some are compilers (they use other search engines to compile their results) and others are niche and or language specific. They all do the same job the attempt to return relevant results to the searcher. I have included a Spanish search engine but left out Russian search engines. I did take 2 years of Russian in high school but I have slept since then and remember next to nothing of what I once learned.

As a SEO we must be aware of most if not all search engines our potential traffic might use.

By the way, Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Search Engines: The Top Ten Search Engines is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Microsoft / Yahoo – Search Alliance Will it be Referred to as the Evil Alliance or a Lethal Alliance for Google?

Last Thursday I got an email from the Microsoft adCenter filling me in on some “new” information on the face of pay per click for the future.

I was presented me with the news that all of us in the business knew was bound to arrive. Microsoft and Yahoo are forming an alliance. Well the first thing that came to mind was the evil empire from the movie Star Wars. I thought for a minute and said no that moniker “the evil empire” belongs to Google. I know it is the “evil alliance” yeah, that’s what it reminds me of. It is hard for me to remember any alliance by 2 big players that actually benefited the little guy.

Here is the greeting from the email.

Dear gary,

Microsoft© and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance  in the United States and European Union. This milestone is an exciting step in our effort to give your business a time-saving and cost-efficient way to connect with a larger combined audience of potential customers.

So now we will have MicroHoo! the new unified search marketplace. Here is a sample of what the new logo might look like.

A powerful new choice in search is coming

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is a major initiative between our companies to create a competitive choice in search for advertisers and consumers. The combined scale will assist both companies in speeding the pace of innovation to improve the search user experience, as well as help advertisers get better results and help improve monetization for partners.

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

The Search Alliance Marches On.

Microsoft like the Bill Gates original idea will take a small amount from many of the little guys. (when he sold his first operating system to IBM all he wants is a small licensing fee for each unit shipped) Yahoo will cater exclusively high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers. Where is the plus for us in this? Will this alliance by grouping the bidding arena just drive the cost of the ads for the little guy up?

Will this search alliance be lethal for Google? What will happen with the adwords bids there?

Will this search alliance actually benefit us the little guys? I don’t know like many things in life only time will tell.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Microsoft Yahoo Search Alliance – Evil Empire or Alliance from Star Wars is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Using Google Analytics to Examine Search Traffic from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other Search Engines

When you install Google analytics on your web site you will have access to a wealth of knowledge about all the search engines sending you traffic. Just how you use these Google analytics is dependent upon what you are looking to accomplish.

Today we are going to examine what search engines are sending traffic, how much traffic, and what search terms visitors are using to find you.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)
I have created the following tables using my web site’s Google analytics.

Can We Leverage all these Numbers from Google Analytics?

Where is our traffic coming from?

Checking the traffic sources we see that Google has sent us 2,070 unique visitors so far this month, followed by 384 direct visits (these are from visitors entering the URL directly into the browser or using a book mark). Google Images has sent us 129 visits followed by Bing with 109 visits and Yahoo with 82 visits. As you can see from the Traffic Sources table we are also getting traffic from twitter and LinkedIn.

What search engines are sending us traffic and how much traffic are they sending us?

From above we learned that the search engine sending us the majority of our traffic is Google followed by Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Ask, Alltheweb, and Lycos. The search engine labeled “search” in the table is the rest of the search engines combined. Alltheweb, and Lycos together are only responsible for 6 unique visitors.

What search terms are our visitors using to find us with the search engines?

While “SEO blog” is at the top of the list this doesn’t necessarily mean that it is actually the most popular topic bringing visitors to our site. There have been 1,233 search terms and/or phrases that searchers have been using to visit our site. Just by examining the top 20 search strings we can see that “droid” has been responsible for 61 visits. To use your Google Analytics properly you will need to examine them wide and deep to extract the answers to the questions you have.

Analyzing the Analytics

We have just been looking on the surface of the information available. If you add the “% New Visits” into the mix we will really start getting to the value of this information. Google brought us 2,070 visitors but only 94.59% of them are new visitors. This tells us Google has brought us 1,958 new visitors this month. While Bing is only responsible for 109 visitors 107 of them were first timers. Yahoo has brought us 82 visitors, 77 of them new. AOL has brought 26 visitors and only 22 of them have been new.

Now lets throw in the “Pages/Visit” column into the mix. Google’s 2,070 visitors have viewed 2,504 pages, that boils down to 2,369 pages being seen by first time visitors. While Bing has sent only 109 visitors they have viewed 157 pages and 154 of them were viewed by new visitors. Yahoo’s 82 visitors have viewed 106 pages and 99 of them by new visitors. AOL while only bringing 26 visitors they are responsible for over 53 page views.

As you can see from the above examples each search engine brings it’s own brand of visitor. While Google is bringing the lion’s share of the search traffic the visitors don’t spend as much time or visit as many pages as Bing, Yahoo, or AOL. AOL is bringing the most return visitors per visit as well as the most page views.

How much information do you want to glean from your Google Analytics?

How much time are you willing to spend finding that information?

Is the information you are looking for worth it?

These are the questions I ask myself when I delve into the analytics world. You can spend hours, days, weeks, and even months working with analytics and still not have anything more valuable than you had when you looked at them and decided to dive in.

Late,
Gary Pool

Search Engines – Google Search, Yahoo Search, and Bing Search is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

SMX Advanced 2009 Seattle – SEO Track – SEO Ranking Factors In 2009 Laura Lippay

Post from Search Engine Optimizician.
On and off-the-page factors that influence web search, what remains useful and what new signals are growing in importance. [Part 2 of 3]

Laura Lippay
Dir. Technical Marketing
Yahoo!

Laura Lippay is the Director of Technical Marketing for Yahoo! Media, where she and her team are responsible for determining monetizable SEO … Laura conducts regular SEO training at Yahoo and has been a speaker at Search Marketing Expo and Search Engine Strategies conferences. Prior to working at Yahoo!, Laura was the SEO specialist at CNET Networks, where she helped develop the in-house SEO program. Previous to CNET, Laura was manager of interactive media (loosely subtitled The Goddess of Chaos and Harmony) at The Linus Group, a Bay Area marketing firm. And before she got into the online space Laura traveled the country as a performer for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Laura’s presentation was titled “This Ain’t Your Mother’s SEO – Shed those grandma panties and take on the new number one ranking factor”.

She iterated that SEO was much more than code tweeks and/or traditional ranking factors. Laura continued by explaining what successful SEO was and wasn’t.

Successful SEO isn’t only:

• Meta tag optimization
• Affiliate networks
• Gobs of inlinks
• Keyword density
• Proper H1’s and H2’s

Successful SEO also includes:

• Being viral
• Having Buzz
• Getting linked to and bookmarked naturally
• Being your own linkbait

Yahoo we uses Rand’s SEO Ranking Factors with a small modification.

Yahoo Property case study

• Yahoo Property in competitive vertical worked with SEO regularly
• Started working with SEO in wireframe process
• Built in 90% of the recommendations for their redesign

Upon relaunch the search traffic spiked and fell drastically.

The questions that were not asked were:

1. What is it going to take for us to outrank our top competitor (a current category killer) in search results?
2. What product features would create buzz around the product that would in turn influence higher rankings & search traffic?

There was no upfront SEO Strategy for the product.

• What options are you offering to your visitors?
• What added value does your site have for your visitors?
• Are there any social benefits offered by your site?
• Can visitors become site participators?

All the above questions deal with creating “BUZZ”.

You can use SEO spam for just about everything but a GREAT product.

The more competition you have, the less you should rely on traditional SEO tactics and more on creating a Buzz-worthy product in order to rank well in search engines.

Are the top mindshare sites also the sites with the highest rankings? For the most part yes.

SEO will not cure a bad product.

The big picture

• The best ranking factor you can have is a hot product
• Make the Product Mgr and anyone involved in strategy one of your best buds.
• Before building SEO into a product be sure to ask:
  • What will it take to be a category-killer?
  • Exactly what do I need to build into my product to outrank my competitors? (It is probably not just inlinks and good titles.)
  • Don’t just follow SEO basics: plan, strategize, then build with SEO compliance in mind.

If your site’s product or service has very little competition the “Buzz” factor will be less important for one that has tons of competition.

My takeaway from this presentation not only is content “King” but there is a new “Queen” in town and it is your great “Buzz-worthy” product, like it or not.

How “Buzz-worthy” is your product or service?

Will it live up to the expectations of the Social Networks?

Late,
Gary Pool

SEO, Yahoo!, and Social Networks is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Keywords Research Tools Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter Will All Help You Stay Ahead of the Curve

Post from Search Engine Optimizician.
The key to staying ahead of the pack when it comes to keywords is trends and Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter will help you accomplish that task.

SMX Advanced 2009 – SEO Track – Keyword Research Artistry

Gab Goldenberg

SEO ROI

Non-Traditional Keyword Research for Better-Than-Traditional ROI

How To Listen For Keywords

• Find UGC sites with deep content and read
• Use SEOmoz’s TermExtractor Tool
• Compete and SpyFu, Very valuable
  But both suffer from “Broken Telephone Syndrome”
• Go direct buy, trade or barter with Indirect competitors, Bloggers, Non-profits
• Some people give away their top searches data
• All you need to do is look for what’s popular
• Analyze the competition

Taylor Pratt

Search Marketing Specialist nFusion

Advanced Keyword Research

• Search volume
  How often a keyword is searched for each month?
• Relevance
  If a user would click-through to your site, will s/he find what s/he’s needs?
• Competition
  Realistically, can you rank in the top 1-3 results for the keyword?

Research Tools

• Raven SEO Tools
• Google Adwords Tool
• Google Suggest
• SEOBook Keyword List Generator

Analytics

• Long tail organic & paid keywords
• Internal search
• Referrals
• Top content

More

• Yahoo! Answers
• LinkedIn
• Facebook groups
• Twitter
• Forums
• Product reviews

Christine Churchill

President, KeyRelevance
Analytics

Tips to Expand Your Keyword Galaxy

• Tie Search Results into Analytics
• View Search Queries in Analytics

Keyword Trend Tools
Looking at Trends Gives Insight into the Mind of Searcher.

• Google Trends
• Drill down on location
• Google Hot Trends
  reflects what keywords are searched on specific day
• Yahoo Buzz
• Facebook Lexicon
  Tool to follow trends in words in Facebook walls
• siteVolume
  visually tracks how often word appears in social media sites

Twitter Keyword Tools

• Twitter Search
  provides real time search results and trending topics
• Twitscoop
  shows trending topics in real time
• TweetVolume
  allows head to head comparisons
• TweetBeep
• Twhirl
• Tweetdeck

Wikipedia Tools

• Wikirank
  shows and plots Popular Trends on Wikipedia
• Wikipedia Article Stats
• Wikipedia Stats Output
  gives insight into traffic potential of a term
• VisWiki
  visual intuitive interactive interface to Wikipedia
• EyePlorer
  visualizes relationships and uses both English and German versions of Wikipedia

Google’s Search Options offer a variety of options like the Wonder Wheel and related searches.

Tool Synergy
Use tools in combination to gain more insight

Things to Remember

• Use a variety of tools, and use them in combination – No keyword tool is perfect
• Look at trends in keyword usage, much has changed in the last year
• Monitor brand and keywords on social media sites

There are plenty of keyword tools available out there and some of them even offer a combination of tools in one place for time saving use like NicheBot.

NicheBot is the major keywords research tool I use it offers:

• Google Keywords Tool
• WordTracker Keywords Tool
• Keyword Discovery Keywords
• Yahoo! Related Digger
• WordTracker Thesaurus
• 1-Click LSI Keywords
• WordTracker 4-in-1
• Google Keyword Cruncher
• Site Keyword eXtractor
• SEMRush Total Espionage (beta)
• The Count Collector
• Typo Locator X
• Keyword Analysis X
• WordTrend Comparisons
• NicheBOT Live Trends
• Keyword Density 2-in-1
• Keyword Ranking
• ROI Calculator
• Find Niche Products
• NYT Article Search X (beta)
• Keyword Discovery 9-in-1
• KD Monthly Charts

Late,
Gary Pool

Google – Yahoo – Facebook – Twitter Keywords Research Tools is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

A Full Day of SEO

Tomorrow I will be attending my third straight SearchFest. Once again this year SearchFest 2009 is being held at the Oregon Zoo’s Cascade Crest Banquet Center. The SEMpdx SearchFest is the premier Search Engine Marketing conference it the Pacific Northwest. Last years SEMpdx SearchFest ’08 was spectacular and this years looks even better.

SearchFest presents multiple learning tracks, workshops, and panel sessions that provide direct insights into the most up-to-date strategies and technological advancements in search marketing.

This year the SEMpdx SearchFest sports an all-star line up:

• Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land
• Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
• Vanessa Fox, Nine by Blue
• Marshall Simmonds, New York Times
• Neil Patel, CrazyEgg
• Riona MacNamara, Google
• Laura Lippay, Yahoo!
• Matt McGee, Small Business SEM
• Greg Hartnett, Best of the Web

The morning starts out with a keynote by Danny Sullivan followed by my most difficult decision of the day, whether to go to the session on Blogging:

• Rebecca Kelley – SEOmoz
• Heather Lloyd Martin – SuccessWorks
• Stoney deGeyter – Pole Position

or attend the Small Biz/Local session:

• Mary Bowling
• Matt McGee – Small Business SEM
• Greg Hartnett – Best of the Web

Are you going to be in attendance? If so I will see you there.

If not visit tomorrow to find out which one I have chosen.

Maybe I will even blog live from the floor?

Late,
Gary Pool

SearchFest 2009 – The Who’s Who of the Search Marketing World is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Yahoo is going to Give Me Eight Hundred, Twenty Thousand Great Britain Pounds

That’s one million two hundred eighteen thousand and twenty eight US dollars according to x-rates.com’s currency calculator.

$1,218,028.00

Christmas

I had better start my Christmas shopping now! I’ll be able to put plenty of gifts under the Christmas tree this year. We can listen to Christmas music, send plenty of Christmas cards, and sing Christmas carols.

Here is the POOF PROOF!

This is to inform you that you have won a prize money of Eight Hundred, Twenty Thousand Great Britain Pounds (£820,000,00.) for the month of  December  2008 Prize   promotion which is organized YAHOO AWARDS  & WINDOWS LIVE.

Yahoo

It has to be from Yahoo look at the logo and it even contains a link to the Yahoo! home page.

Did you know that…

YAHOO collects all the email addresses of the people that are active online, among the millions that subscribed to Yahoo and Hotmail and few from other e-mail providers. Six people are selected monthly to benefit from this promotion and you are one of the Selected Winners.

I’ll bet you wish you a were as luck as I am?

What? You are! You got one of these emails too…

I just hope Yahoo has enough money to pay everyone.

They will give it to me as long as I don’t tell any one…

This email is supposedly from Dr. John Gerri and he sent his authorization signature.

Scams

Just what will the scammers think of next? Is anyone naive enough to give them all their personal information including their bank account info?

This email is supposedly sent from Yahoo. Don’t all of the Yahoo employees use email addresses from earthlink and gmail?

Would you like to see this email in its full glory?

Please take my sarcasm as it is intended, “tongue in cheek”.
Don’t get burned by the scammers this Holiday Season.

Late,
Gary Pool

Story of Yahoo, Christmas, and Scams is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Ranking on google

I hear “I want to rank high on google” a lot from new clients.

What do you do if you have 44 keywords in your meta keyword tags and you are only in the top 500 search results on only one of those keywords and that is only in two search engines?

By the way neither one of the search engines are google.

You need to start with your best ranking terms.

Well you do keyword research and figure out what keywords and keyword phrases are really worth optimizing for. You start with the most valuable and work your way through the rest of the choices.

Keyword Research – Writing Copy

Once you have all your keywords and keyword phrases selected you can begin organizing them into theme related term categories. Now you take each of these theme related categories and create outlines for your copywriter to create your web site content. When you need a seo/web-site-content.html”>freelance writer that’s OK, you can write the content your self If you have the time. It is just a matter of which you have more of time or money. If you have more time than money give writing your own copy a try. If you have the money it is best to hire a copywriter. Or even better yet give me a call and I will handle everything for you. 503-616-4SEO (4736)

late,
gary pool

Ranking in Google | I Want to Rank High in Google is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Tip 8 of my Top 10 Tips and Tricks for building a search engine optimized (SEO) website from the ground up is Submitting to Search Engines (or not).

Search engine submission is how a webmaster submits a web site directly to a search engine. While Search Engine Submission is often seen as a way to promote a web site, it generally is not necessary. Because the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN use crawlers, bots, and spiders that eventually would find all by themselves most web sites on the Internet.

There are two basic reasons to submit a web site or web page to a search engine. The first reason would be to add an entirely new web site because the site operators would rather not wait for a search engine to discover them. The second reason is to have a web page or web site updated in the respective search engine.

When I entered search engine submission in to Google I get 10,600,000 results.

You would think with over 10 million results submitting your site to the search engines would be a positive thing. Years ago you would have been right thinking that. Search engines don’t live in the past, at least the ones we care about don’t.

The top search engines tweak their algorithms almost daily and adjust them weekly. If your site is found by the major search engines (the big three are Google, Yahoo, and Live or MSN) the rest will find it also. This is what SEO is all about staying up with the search engines and trying to stay a half step ahead of them.

If the major search engine finds your site on their own it (your website) receives more value than it would if you have to tell them about it. For the sake of clarity let’s say the search engine can assign a maximum value of 100 search love points to a site. All together now “the search engine can assign a maximum value of 100 search love points to a site”. If they find your site on their own you can receive a maximum of 100 search love points. If you have to bring it to their front door you can only receive 80 search love points maximum.

Let’s just take a look at the search engines position…
If this website is really of value wouldn’t I be able to find it without it being brought to my door step? If this site had real value wouldn’t there be a link from another site I have already visited to it?

Doesn’t this argument make sense? This is why it is better to NOT submit your site to search engines through the front door. You need to find ways to have it brought to their attention without waving a flag and yelling “HERE I AM, OVER HERE, I AM RIGHT HERE!”

Are you thinking “Is getting another site to give me a link the only way to get my site found without submitting it to the search engines?” Actually no! You can submit your site to directories which we will deal with next time or now with Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer you can have Google and Yahoo bring it in the back door.

Both Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer allow you to add a meta tag or page to the root of your site which they verify. This verification process will also get your site on their radar. Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer give you access to some very good tools for your websites SEO.

Give it some thought and I’ll bet you can come up with other ways to get your site on the search engines radar without delivering it your self. Most blog comments allow a link back to your site. Maybe if you can find a blog that deals with the same subject and post a comment you could get a very relative link back to your new site?

Still want to submit your site to search engines? There are plenty of outdated tools and software out there that would be more than glad to take your money to help you do so. Make sure if you are resubmitting your website you have also changed your sites content too.

Now that you have chosen whether or not to submit your site to the search engines you are ready to move to Tip 9 Submitting to Directories (free and paid).

late,
gary pool

Top 10 SEO Tips and Tricks | Submitting to Search Engines (or not) Tip 8 is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

I will be part of the SAO Corvallis SEM Hot Seat panel this Thursday, Nov 8, at the new Iovino’s Restaurant (in Renaissance on the Riverfront) in Corvallis.

I was trying to do my homework and look up what pages Google had for one of the sites. Using the “site:sitename.com” search and BOOM! Google drops a bomb on me.

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

Google you SUCK!
What good is a search engine that won’t let you search?

An automated or computer virus searches like me. Google get a clue! I just switched to Yahoo and everything was up and working like it should. Now I can continue.

If you are or happen to be in the Corvallis area this is a very informative event and it will save you a trip to Portland.

The event starts at 5:30 with social networking and food, then at 6:15 the ’30-Second Mike’ lets tech business folks share news about their company. At 7:50 we will start with announcements and the sponsor’s talk. Then at 7pm we will start the Hot Seat. Each website in turn will be brought up on the screen, the site owner will briefly describe what their basic issue is about the website’s performance, and each panelist will have a turn to comment 2-3 minutes on the site. After each panelist has spoken, if there is time, the panel can continue collaborative discussion about site, or take questions from the owner or audience.

late,
gary pool

Google Sucks is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Keyword research is the backbone for REAL SEO.

Ever wonder how much keyword research is done with the search engines?

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz gives us a little insight with his post.

An Exhaustive List of Search Engine Based Keyword Research Data

Keyword research is very time consuming and it takes a great deal of SEO understanding.

Keyword Research Data from the Engines:

• Search Term Counts
  The numbers are not always accurate, but they can be, at the least they will give you some idea
• Intitle Counts
  intitle” at Google & Yahoo! provides results with the pages where the spacific term is used in the title tag
• Inurl Counts
  inurl” gives you the results that contain the target term or phrase in the URL
• Inanchor Counts
  inanchor will show only those pages where the target term is actually in the anchor text
• Intitle, Inurl, Inanchor Combination Counts
  The combined intitle, inanchor and inurl gives you a really good idea of how many pages are actually targeting an exact term or phrase
• Blogsearch Counts
  Blog search data is great for identifing hot topics or keywords in the blog world
• Related Terms
  Many engines offer “related” terms, including Google, Yahoo!, Ask & Vivisimo
• Common Usage & Phrase Combinations
  The * character can give you a good idea of what terms or phrases usually precede or follow a given term or phrase
• Frequency of Recent Usage
  TheGoogle date search operator, you can find how many times in the past day, week, month or year
• News Saturation
  Both Google & Yahoo! News are great places to do a bit of digging

Besides the list above there are many other tools used for keyword research.

• NicheBot
  They claim to help you drive Highly Qualified and Highly Targeted Traffic to your Website. A great keyword research solution and you can try it out for 2 weeks for only $1.
• Wordtracker
  I used this one until I found NicheBot. They have a free version but it takes a lot of time to use it.
• Google
  Even has a keyword research tool. It is free also.
• Key Word Discovery
  You can subscribe from just $49.95 per month.
• SEO Book
  Aaron Wall advertises it as The Coolest Keyword Research Tool Today! It is free
• Overture now owned by Yahoo!
  The original keyword research tool. I don’t know how much it is supported these days.

This is just a short list give me some more of your favorites.

late,
gary pool

Search Engine Based Keyword Research is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

As a follow up to a blog post and discussion Scott Hendison and I had a few days back I am posting some more research information I have discovered. This all started with a post by Scott “Is Yahoo Selling Out“. I found something I thought was very interesting.

What bothered me was:

Did Vintage Tub buy the organic #1 position? No where in the results, except for the paid ad, is the word antique associated with the site ranked #1 in the organic results. Now I did a little research and I couldn’t find “antique tub” in any anchor text pointing to the vintagetub.com site. It appears you can buy a #1 non-paid listing on the big “G”. Google didn’t even use “nofollow” tags either.

Now I did a little more research and what I found is very interesting. While both Yahoo and MSN or what is now Live included the same site in their results, they both listed the vintagetub.com site #2, they actually listed different pages than Google. The pages Yahoo and Live listed actually had the word antique in them.

Yahoo lists vintagetub.com #2 and #3. Vintagetub.com also isn’t listed #1 or #2 in the paid search listings either.

MSN (Live) lists vintagetub.com #2 and adds a supplemental listing. Vintagetub.com is actually listed #1 in the paid results on Live.

This is really interesting to me. Yahoo and MSN actually list the same page in their results. The page asp/edu_ antiques.asp is listed #2 in Yahoo and #2 – supplemental in the MSN results. Neither MSN or Yahoo list the vintagetub home page in their results other than paid results. Google does not list the pages with the actual words in my search in their results, just the home page. I am going to refrain from making any deductions however, I do find this really mind boggling.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Google -Yahoo – MSN – the search engine dance? is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

In response to Scott Hendison‘s blog post “Is Yahoo Selling Out”. Scott talks about how Yahoo removes the tinted box and leaving out the words “sponsored” for the search “special k”. They are also listed organically at #1. The listing actually has the URL “specialk.com“. Now yahoo is giving the paid search results in a way that it isn’t real evident that it is paid results but It appears to me Special K did actually earn the #1 organic listing.

Google does their own version of it too but more stealth. Now Google didn’t remove the sponsored link identifiers but…

Did Vintage Tub buy the organic #1 position? No where in the results, except for the paid ad, is the word antique associated with the site ranked #1 in the organic results. Now I did a little research and I couldn’t find “antique tub” in any anchor text pointing to the vintagetub.com site. It appears you can buy a #1 non-paid listing on the big “G”. Google didn’t even use “nofollow” tags either.

My questions for Google:

• Can you buy the #1 organic listing?
• How much does it cost?
• What kind of a adWords account will get me a #1 organic listing?

This could save me a lot of time! Sign me up.

Well Scott, it looks like both Yahoo and Google will sell out if the price is inviting enough.

It looks like it is possible to buy your way to the top of the natural or organic listings on Google.

Late,
seopdx/gary-pool.html”>Gary Pool

Can you buy a #1 organic listing in Google? is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

SMX Advanced Seattle, Washington, June 4, 2007

SEO, Meet SMM

SEO has a lot to gain from SMM, social media marketing. Getting your content into the major social media sites does more than provide an initial traffic jump. It can generate links or provide rankings you might not be able to tap into with your own site. In this session, SMM essentials that SEOs need to know.

Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works Inc.
Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant, Stuntdubl
Neil Patel, Author, Pronet Advertising

Rand Fishkin – Social Media Marketing vs. Viral Marketing

Web 2.0 sites and approach these sites in the desire to be part of the community. We make the Yahoo, MSN, and Ask communities work for us. This now extends to social media to leverage them for success.

• Rule the search results
• Link love.
• Traffic
• Influence the traditional media

Places you can use the above list:

1. YouTube
2. Wikipedia
3. Yahoo! answers
4. Yelp
5. LinkedIn
6. Flickr
7. Craigslist
8. Facebook
9. Amazon – blogs, lists
10. MySpace
11. Technorati
12. Judy’s Book
13. Newsvine
14. CitySearch

How well does this work?
SEOMoz has 724,200 links and a PR of 7 since launched in October 2004.

Neil Patel

Unwritten rules:

• don’t do self promotion
• add biased information
• ask friends for vote

Users will accuse you of spamming your link on all the front page stories and call you out on it.

Neil’s golden rules:

• Add tons of friends. If you submit a piece of a content and plenty of people vote on it, that means they’re interested in the stuff you’re submitting, so become their friends.
• Participate in the community. Get involved with the people who leave their AIM screenname or email in their profile
• Become a top user. You can submit stuff and get away with it. People will vote on your stuff and you’ll succeed
• Use their features against them. If they give you tools to become friends, become friends with them.
• Create a social brand. Don’t use the name like "neilpatel" all over. People might recognize you

The StumbleUpon tool and the ability to send a link to your friends that forces them to visit your page.

If you want to succeed, do what’s ethical. Develop your brand don’t jeopardize it. Think long term. Social Media isn’t a quick fix, it’s a long term strategy.

Todd Malicoat

The benefits to strategic linking with social media:

• control over
  • anchor text
  • body copy
  • theme
• opportunity for links from trusted sources
• Rankings
• traffic
• sales go up
• Squidoo

Invisible nofollows
With Digg, sometimes the links won’t follow at all.

Spam is determined by intent and extent – Size matters

• link buying vs. strategic placement
• doorway pages vs. landing pages
• social media spamming vs. social media optimization

Strategies: build reputation neighborhood which is good for reputation management, build hubs (e.g. Squidoo) with social media links, maximize the use of anchor text, and looking for social media sites.

Reputation neighborhoods sign up to everything you can find, test them and see which rank, if they are good, link to them. Build a neighborhood of sites and interlink them.

Build a hub – you can use MySpace…

Test social media sites for link value find out if the site is indexed.

1. Is the site indexed?
2. Is the page indexed?
3. Do these pages rank?
4. How many links?
5. Does the page pass on link juice?

Testing methodology:

• run a site:command on similar pages on the site
• build on the social media site filled with nonsense
• link to another nonsense page

Conclusions – Benefits: know how to use the tools.

• size matters
• intent and extent also matters
• use strategies
• experiment

Cindy Krum

Social Media for Brand Awareness

Why is social media important to your brand?
Ubiquitous adoption of web technology means your customers will demand a higher level of interaction with your brand.
Social networks have an undeniable power.
Radical transparency is the new public relations nirvana.
Social network advertising is expected to triple by 2011.

Secure your social presence:

• Research relevant social networks
• Create your own social sites
• Look for niche/vertical sites
• Blogs and forums.

Wiki sites.

• Identify existing networks for your brand and industry
• Have a strategy
• Who gets social profiles?
• Brand – products – company icons

Use social profile portals to your brand. You want people to be part of your community and to come back. Keep the information fresh and current.

Manage multiple social profiles in centralized locations. Use remote photo hosting instead of hosting on multiple sites. Leverage email functionality, blogs, and billboards.

SEO your profiles:

• use traditional SEO best practices
• focus on brand keywords
• interlink profiles to your brand sites
• initiate friending campaigns
• drive traffic to the profile/s

Empower brand evangelists – give them great stuff:

• widgets
• profile layouts
• graphics
• desktops/wallpaper
• videos
• podcasts
• special deals

Starbucks gives out a widget. You can add MySpace profiles and you can invite people to drink coffee with you. LOST also – staying on top of the buzz about the show.

• Embrace convergence
• leverage existing marketing efforts
• send TV/radio/print traffic to profile pages
• link to commercials on your profile pages
• link to information/press about the campaign from the profile

Social Network offline traffic:

• host meetups offline
• offer in-store only coupons
• use social profiles to integrate on and offline brand interaction

Social Network online traffic:

• create a social media section on your site
• link it from your homepage
• encourage visitors to add you as a friend
• promote all the cool stuff you’re giving away on your profile

Maybe I’ll see you at SMX Advanced in Seattle today!

late,
Gary

SMX Advanced | Social Marketing | SEO | MySpace | LinkedIn is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician