Carl’s SEO & Web Design Blog

If you have a web site targeted for the coming holiday sales, here are a few tips for your site:

1. It’s a little late for optimizing a new site for the organic (free) engines for the holidays. If you have an existing site, target your title, description, and page contents to one to three keyword phrases that are used frequently in searching the engines and have a minimum of competition. Second, get as many links into your site as possible. Our seo book has many tips on these strategies and others.

2. Using paid advertising gets you positioned well in minutes (Google’s Adwords) or in a week (Yahoo). Our seo book now has a lengthy chapter on using these PPC strategies to get them working for you quickly.

Order the book today and get your site going today!

For over a year we’ve been black-listing spam hosts. This has been minimally effective - but some changes are in store to increase the effectiveness of our black list. One guy threatened to sue - until we mailed his spam email to his State Attorney General.

We did have two problems, however.

1. We store the spam hosts for the spam and phish we receive in Microsoft Access, then upload the list dynamically to a MySQL database on our host. Later versions of Access (the shipping product for many years) has a bug in it that prevents this from working. Last January we worked with Microsoft engineers to get this working by switching in a dll from an Access version two levels back. Now Microsoft, with one of their “automatic updates” broke this again. We don’t know when or if this will be fixed. So we give you the list now in a static PDF form that we plan to update on weekends at:
   http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/stopspam.cfm.
   Hackers and Botnets can enjoy this free blacklist of illegal operators for their fun and games!

2. The online tool we use to identify these hosts from the spam went down, probably from an attack from the bad guys. The tool is back up in a primitive form (http://www.samspade.org), so we can start trying to process our backlog with it.

We will also expand the ranking of our spam listing page. We’ve had great success in the past by using the blogs to create a blog swarm and build high traffic levels on pages. We will try that with this spam page listing now to get its traffic up.

If you don’t like this, sorry. The Bush Administration has been given the charge by Congress to stop and fine these guys. Apparently they aren’t doing it. Too many geldings and wimpys in Congress and the Administration. (You probably get to vote next month - vote a lot of these out.) The hosts have been treating this like a joke. That leaves it up to the users to stop it.

Join us in this war. Create your own black list and circulate it in through the spam blog comments to the hackers and bad guys. This eventually creates another botnet, but targeted at the bad guys. Get serious.

Thinking of using Google Adwords? A new and updated version of our SEO book is now available at:
http://www.the-seobook.com.

The book is now 256 pages, and the PPC chapter is now expanded with more information for using Google Adwords for successful selling. Why not order it today? If you are thinking of selling something online during the holiday season and you are using a new web site, you’ll need Google Adwords to get the word out by then. Google will have trouble optimizing a new site for any quality ranking by the holidays unless you are using Adwords.

If you have installed Google’s Toolbar on your site, you will see a new menu bar with a PageRank icon at the top. It returns a value of 0-10 for any page you are viewing in your browser. The implication is that the higher this number, the more important your page is in Google.

PageRank is a value based on Google’s early algorithm for ranking pages. The concept was based on the observation of the founders of Google that in various printed research papers certain papers were referenced more than others. If a papers was referenced many, many times by other papers the referenced paper was considered an authority. The more back references to a paper, the more important the referenced paper must be. PageRank borrowed the same concept. The more web pages referencing a given page, the more important the referenced page must be. This early algorithm was patented and used in referencing web pages and defining authority sites. The more pages of high quality linking to your site, the higher your PageRank.

Unfortunately, those creating web pages were soon abusing this algorithm to force ranking on their own pages. To see the problem, try searching Google on failure. Today the algorithm is only one of over a hundred factors that control the ranking of results in Google. Moreover, the PageRank Google does use is calculated dynamically and is actually has a range much, much larger than the 0-10 you see in the toolbar. Periodically the value is reduced to a 0-10 value and projected in the toolbar. This is a logarithmic reduction - in other words, it’s a LOT harder to get that toolbar from 5 to 6 than from 2 to 3. The actual toolbar value, then, is a delayed value, is not based on any specific keyword phrase, and only one of many factors Google uses in ranking your page. It’s not a red herring and is important, but don’t aim too hard for it to the exclusion of other factors.

For good ranking, be sure you are targeting strong keyword phrases, develop your site as an authority on those phrases so that people link to you naturally, keep the site dynamic and constantly changing, and strengthen the interactive elements of the site.

One question I often get is which way should I go - aim for the free or organic search engines or purchase a PPC (pay-per-click) ad in Google’s Adwords, Micorosft Live, or the Yahoo Search Engine Marketing?

The answer is generally yes; that is, go for both. The organic engines are free, but in Google it often takes 6-8 months to position a new site with any level of credibility. The advantage, however, is that’s free (except for your time for the optimization). As a result, your ROI (return-on-investment) is infinite. Traffic can vary with time, sometimes dramatically.

The PPC engines cost you something, but you are immediately on the Internet. There are other advantages as well. PPC engines such as Google’s Adwords or the Microsoft Live, are excellent places to test your site with various keyword phrases. With Microsoft Live, the cost is low but the traffic will also be low. Google’s Adwords will cost more, but as your traffic goes up the cost goes down and traffic starts at a higher level. In addition, the paid advertising includes multiple tools for measuring how your site is working. Finally, your paid ad is a trusted site to the search engines. A human being has looked at it.

Expect that with either route your traffic will gnerally be higher with the organic engines. Searchers put more trust in the free ads. One top ad I often see in the Yahoo PPC (which drives the CNN advertising) is from a company with very poor ethics and morals. As a result, the Yahoo PPC is really shouting at me that you can’t trust their PPC advertisements. This is less likely in Google, as the PPC cost goes down as the traffic goes up. A corrupt company will not get much traffic. This is not true in Yahoo, where it you have enough money you can buy the position you want.

Why not try both organic and paid? You might even keep two sites - one optimized for the free engines, another for your Adwords campaigns. Remember, unlike with classified ads in a magazine or newspaper, you pay nothing until they click through to your site. You pay for the click-throughs, not the impressions (ad listing).

Branding is very important in web site marketing and the success of your site. A brand is a collection of images, text, symbols, logos, slogans, and design that represent a company or individual. It is so important in marketing that companies often trademark their brands (particularly logos or the company name) to protect the identity of the company. You purchase items at stores, often paying more for a branded product because you know and trust the brand.

This means that in selling a service or product with a web site, your site needs to brand the product or service. If your company is new, you show strive and work toward the branding of your product or service, using your web site to help with this.

Brands protect you from becoming a commodity. So avoid commoditization at all costs.
Sir Anthony O’Reilly, former Heinz CEO

I began to realize this with my own sites when someone mentioned to me that “I was all over the Internet”. I replied that was essential for my business. I had to show I could do it to build trust in those who would be my clients.

The real shocker came when my brother emailed and said a search on my name showed almost 400,000 pages, with my sites at the top. I was even more shocked when I searched on my name and found Google returned just under 4 million pages, and the top five were all referencing me or my sites. Google had essentially branded my name without me even knowing it!

What this means for your web site is that you need to decide how to brand your product or service and how the web site will carry that brand. For example, a city needs to brand their image, and then their web site can carry that image. For my own town of Tualatin, a major Bridgeport shopping center effectively branded the community. It was so successfully, in fact, that land near the shopping center has become very important to other developers. Restaurants and other stores are taking up the name and riding in on the brand, enhancing it further..

One of our specialties is helping people get good listings in the search engines. You can have the best web site in the world, but if nobody knows you are there you have wasted your time and money. We often hear the words from clients “Nobody is visiting my web site. How do I fix that?” Here are the top reasons we see why people don’t get good web site rankings in the search engines.

Weak content on the entrance page.
You entrance page should have a word count of about 300-500 words. This should give you good keyword density on multiple keyword phrases that relate to your topic with no overworking of any specific phrase.

Graphic overload on the entrance page.

The search engines can’t see graphics or Flash for ranking. That splash screen may look cool, but it’s worthless for ranking purposes. For the graphics you do use, be sure to include an ALT tag so the search engines know what it is about.

Weak or few incoming links

This is particularly true with Google. Don’t fuss so much over a good PageRank (some people think it’s a red herring now). Instead, focus on getting good incoming natural links from trusted sites. Major news sites and EDU sites are almost all trusted. I like the story of the guy who sold ads on his site for $1 a pixel. Soon the major news services picked it up and he had links to his site from those stories. Creative ideas like that can spawn a good rank with no work from your end building unnatural links.

Unreliable host

There are some hosts out there that will sell you cheap or free hosting for your site; but all they end up doing is advertising that you are unprofessional and a cheapskate because the hosting is unreliable. In addition, they can’t give you any ranking because the search engines know these domains are bad news. Check the list of bad hosts that have sent us illegal spam at
http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/stopspam.cfm. You will see some big names on the list, like Comcast. We strongly encourage our clients never to use any of these to host their web sites. One client we have used a reliable host but also used Comcast as their connection to the host. Comcast assigns IPs dynamically, and soon an IP listed commercially as a bad IP was assigned to their email. Guess who the client hassled? I spent a lot of time trying to get Comcast to fix this and found them unresponsive. You want a reliable, fast host with good support. The hosting we sell fits this definition.

Using dynamic linking
What this means, in simple language, is that you should avoid any URLS between your pages our into your pages that use URLs that contain special characters such as =, ?, &, or $. Although the search engines are better at processing these than a few years ago, they still spell trouble and cost your ranking.

And if you are looking good in Yahoo and MSN but bad in Google:

Remember the Sandbox

Google puts all new sites in a sandbox or testing area for 6-8 months. There’s no way to avoid this. Spend this time building your links and quality content. Then, when Google wakes up, you are ready. Don’t expect quick high rankings with Google.

Build those links
Incoming links from quality sites are VERY important in Google. Build good links over time in a natural process.

Want the longer list of why your site isn’t ranked? Order our SEO book!

Why not add a link to your home page to help get your visitors back again? It’s easy. The visitor clicks the link, which adds your URL to their Favorites.

1. First, create a backup of your current page.

2. Now add the bookmark function at the end of your current page. If we put it here you won’t see it, but you can use View | Source on our home page in your browser and see it near the end of the code as the bookmark function. Copy the function with the starting script and /script tags to the bottom of your home page.

3. Edit the URL and title of the title to match your web site.

Now put a text or image link on the page where the HREF is:
“javascript:bookmark()”
There’s an example of a text link on our page, but you can also use an image link.

4. Now save the home page and upload.

5. Test it and verify it works.

You can see an example on our home page.

Adding a good blog to your web site, in many cases, can dramatically increase your web traffic. We’ve seen it work. Let’s look at the strategy here and related costs.

First - the direct costs are almost zero. You can use an open source and free blog such as WordPress for many hosts. It’s also easy to install and use. Support is provided through a forum. You’ll have lots of people trying to spam your blog with unrelated comments, but you can add the free Karma 2 spam filter that takes out almost all of the spam at the host level.

As far as indirect costs - to make a blog work takes time. You’ll see from the strategy here it takes lots of time for both writing the blog and researching to write it.

This author posts in three blogs and comments in others. You may feel that what you have to say can’t have much effect in the cyberspace with over 19 million blogs out there now. Quite the opposite. Let’s take an example how it works. I got ripped off by Vonage, a VoIP company, for over $8,000 dollars when they dropped my business line in transferring it from Qwest. A quick search on Google using “vonage problem” +blog showed they were ripping a lot of people off. Letters to Vonage, Better Business Bureau, FCC, FTC, SEC, Federal Attorney General, and a lot of others had no affect. If fact, it seems the Administration arm of the Federal government has rolled over and died.

As a starter, we put our primary correspondence online with a page on our business web site. Anyone can read and see for themselves how bad the situation at Vonage and the Federal Administration is. Then we scanned Google again and located all those blogs about the problems at Vonage and added our comment to each, with a pointer to our web page. In a short time (no Google sandbox stopping this) we received many emails with others verifying what we had experienced and the traffic on the Vonage web page we created zoomed to the stratosphere. We posted the testimonies people sent us online with our page.

Reports of the problems at Vonage have now been reported in the Wall Street Journal (6/8/2006, page D1), and the stock price has dropped to less that half of the price when the IPO was launched a few months ago. Vonage is dying. It’ll be much like Enron, however, only with less noise. A lot of people will be left holding their losses because the Bush Administration did nothing.

The point here is that one person can create what is known as a blog swarm. The effect snowballs through what is referred to as the tail of the blog. The total traffic in the tail of the blog is far more that that of any major blog that gets those high traffic counts.

Want another example? For years the Southern Baptists has been run by a political force of old wineskins. In June of this year, the Southern Baptist bloggers scored a major victory by getting their candidate to win the election in an upset victory. Check it out. How much change takes place is still up in the air, but the bloggers have started it. There are lots of similar stories. Our blogging e-book has a few more. Get your own copy.

Blogs make your site dynamic, and you’ll see your blog posts showing up in the Google index within days if you already have a strong site. To make it really work, however, you need to visit the other blogs and comment there, pointing to your blog posts and pages.

Two big words of caution, however.

1. Stay on-topic. Over 99% of the comments coming into our blogs are killed at the host and the IPs black listed because they are trying to sell perscription drugs, casino games, and fake rolex watches.

2. Make sure your facts are right and the writting has good grammar and correct spelling. One bad fact can destroy your entire argument.

For more information, see our SEO book.

If you’ve been using Google Adwords, you’ve may have noticed a sudden jump in your cost per click. It wasn’t imaginary - Google is putting more emphasis on the quality of your landing page in calculating your minimum bid. There was, apparently, a lot of Adword spamming regarding the landing pages. People would click through to the landing pages only to find a page of Adsense advertisements or ads on products unrelated to the click-through keyword phrase.

Google was using humans to evaluate the landing pages, but now (as of June) started using a special spider to check Adword landing pages for spam. If you’ve seen your click prices jump by $5- or more, you’ve probably been Adword spamming. It’s a dramatic jump in PPC price if you are being flagged for Adword spamming.

The bottom line here is simple - optimize that landing page as if it were a page for the organic engines. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t click the user to a landing page full of Adsense ads.

• Don’t click the user to a common page for an affiliate product you sell. Your page should be unique.

• Have a privacy statement on the page.

• Have your real address (not a PO Box number) and phone number on the landing page.

• Don’t put your email address there, but you can use a form and give them the option of sending you their questions.

Need more tips for that landing page? See our SEO book. Remember that now a strong, strong landing page can get your traffic up and your cost per click down.