Changes

There have been a lot of changes introduce by Google recently and specifically in the last few weeks. At this point I haven't really got to grips with exactly what changes have taken place, but there will be an impact, it seems, on paid posts and articles.
From what I have seen so far, there seems to be an implication that Google will 'require' paid posts to somehow be easily distinguishable as 'adverts' rather than unsolicited opinion. On the other hand, programs promoting paid posts have always preferred posts to NOT be specifically identified as paid adverts.

Now, it's worth noting that Google are not the Police, and have no rights to tell anybody how they should behave on the internet, however, they are allowed (currently) to discriminate against your website in terms of how it appears in their own search results - and it just so happens that Google is quite a big player in this field!!
I am not sure how this impacts on other search engines as most of them tend to follow Google anyway, but I will be interested to explore some new search engines, and I will be looking closely at the impact of the changes and reporting my findings on this blog.

SEO - off site techniques

The off-site SEO is a bit of a minefield, but bear in mind that you can get position one without any offsite optimisation if your keywords are 'niche' enough...
Getting links is possible from one of four methods that I can think of, and be aware that there is a value in a link whether or not anybody ever sees it or clicks on it. Search Engine 'bots' will see the link regardless of whether it is seen by your potential visitor, the bot will also take note of what is called the 'anchor text' ie. the words that are highlighted, for instance I might use the words SEO genius to link to my blog that deals with website building, search engines et al... having anchor text with specific keywords is considered key to off-site optimisation.
These are the different links you might have:

• Directories: Getting yourself listed in directories is fairly easy, there is even software available to help to automate the process, still painstaking, because most directories allow a certain amount of automation ie. the software populates categories like 'description' 'keywords' 'URL' and 'Title' etc,,, for you - you still have to add them by hand - or pay someone to do it for you... Some directories make a charge, others are free - I prefer the free ones! - it may be a risky process as some sites are blacklisted by search engines and it may have a negative effect if you get yourself listed on one of the 'bad neighborhoods'. An indication of a 'good' site would be whether the site is 'cached' by Google or whether it has any 'PageRank' (the google toolbar will tell you this or a browser SEO plug-in such as the one I use on Google Chrome).
• Paid links: many people get a company to find websites that will insert links for money - blogs often carry 'sponsored posts' or 'reviews' from which they get a small one-off payment. Other will use networks and forums to offer sponsored links directly to site owners and bloggers - invariably, they will request a specific anchor text - in fact they will often have three links in each post which has to be a minimum length (100 words, 200 words etc.). Google do NOT like this, and will punish sites that they find are doing it - the cynical person might argue that is because Google like to be paid for their own 'sponsored links' in search results - I think ultimately the monopolies commission may take a dim view of the way that Google controls search results, and 'punishes' sites that try to 'compete' with paid search engine entries (a company can legitimately pay Google to appear in position 1, but will be 'slapped' for paying someone else to try and achieve the same result..)
• Link exchanges: I can't possibly keep track of how many times I am asked to place a link on a site in exchange for an external link back to my site. It is important to realise that Google recognises a link exchange, and treats them accordingly eg.. If you link to 'joes carpets' and joes carpets links back to you, the link won't be as effective as when joes carpets links to you and you do not link back ie. if you get 'one way' links to your site, your site grows in 'authority'. So most webmasters indulge in what is called three way linking where the link that comes back is from a different site. The danger is that the link you are offered in exchange is possibly valueless, and unless they are in the same niche as you, there is little point anyway. This is the dilema then, your competitors are in the same niche, but they're not going to link to you... Your suppliers may link to you, you may get colleagues or consultants to link to you, but you can spend a lot of time asking for links and will rarely get anyone take you up on it...
• Ghost sites: which brings us nicely onto the last point, if you can't get sites to link to you, make your own... create a site which to all intents and purposes has content that is liked to yours, has all the right keywords and is optimised... then start linking words into your site - ideally picking up on anchor text. don't forget that you are not really trying to drive 'traffic' to this site or even to your own site - it is ONLY the link that is important - as long as you can guarantee that the site is 'crawled' and 'cached' by google, then the bots should automatically attribute authority to wherever those links point - and these are 'one way' links, nothing comes back the other way. Of course you can take this further and make more ghost sites which link into this ghost site, thus bumping up the authority down the line...

That's about the long and short of it, you can use searches to find out what your competitors are doing, there are supposed 'formulas' for keyword density and all that, but I think content should be 'organic' and should flow naturally rather than be made to fit into a formula that may or may not have an impact. At then end of the day, Google is looking for cheats, so don't go looking for short-cuts. Build good sites with good content, everything else should stem from that starting point.

SEO - on site techniques

On-site search engine optimisation techniques include:

• Content: keyword stuffing up to an optimum point, variation of keywords to cover similar and related terms - at the end of the day, 'content' is supposed to be what it's all about...
• Tags: the traditional stuff such as 'keyword' tags and 'description' and 'title' are used by some search engines, and importantly may show up in results - in SEO terms having a page which has the title tag 'homepage' or even worse 'untitled' is a major crime worthy of public flogging.
• URL's: - using keywords in a URL seems to me to be one of the easiest way to get your point across - apart from your 'index' page, other pages should be richly laden with keywords. Don't call a page 'methods.htm', instead call it 'methods_for_making_money_online.htm' or some other title that includes your target keywords and search terms.
• Pictures: may not be an obvious optimisation tool, but it doesn't do any harm to get yourself into 'google images' and the theory is that this could have an impact on standard searches (but of course no-one actually knows..). Therefore, to be on the safe side, every picture can have it's own title tag - which should have keywords where possible and also, each picture filename should reflect the content eg: the file should not be called 'IMG000345.jpg', when we could call it 'portable_music_device.jpg' or other more descriptive title.

[Note that spaces are a bit of a pain when using browsers, so I tend to use underscore instead to separate words in a phrase.]

Of these four, I tend to concentrate on content and URL's primarily, time spent on onsite optimisation is time well-spent in my estimation, off-page takes a lot of effort for few positive results..

SEO - introduction

There is a lot of whaffle talked about search engine optimisation, but when you look at it, there are only two types of optimisation:

1. ON-SITE optimisation - the stuff you build into your own website to make them search-engine friendly..
2. OFF-SITE optimisation - the links that you get for your site to make the search engine think that your site has 'authority'.

There is nothing more to it than that, the devil is in the detail of course, and how you achieve the above can lead you down some interesting avenues, however because Google keeps stumm, no-one knows whether the more off-the-wall solutions will work either short-term or if they do, there's no guarantee they will work long-term - especially if Google get wind of what you are up to...!

In this series, we are going to look at both types of optimisation, and the regular things that anyone can do that will enhance search engine results for your website. We will be looking at legitimate ways to promote your site in an organic way, I am not one to indulge in certain black-hat techniques that give impressive results in the short-term.

You won't do any harm carrying out the simple steps that we will be looking at, these techniques probably cover about 80% of what you can do to enhance your site, and each step is easy to carry out with no experience or special software whatsoever.

New series coming up...

I have enjoyed the two recent series that I wrote for Munny4Hunny, having just completed 'getting organic traffic' and 'making money online', I am considering expounding my thoughts on Search Engine Optimisation, that mythical and mysterious holy grail of the internet entrepreneur.

I recently wrote a detailed email for a friend in which I attempted to address the subject of SEO in the most simple terms possible. My intention is now to turn this into a series which you will see rolled out on Munny4Hunny in the next week or so.

To give a brief introduction, the central theme is that there are SEO techniques that can be done by anyone - you don't need to be a guru to be able to optimise your site, the majority of what a professional SEO expert will tell you, is stuff that you can easily resolve yourself - though they are naturally unlikely to tell you as much...

It is easy to optimise a site for a niche, that's the market I like to operate in - if you have found your niche, then my new series may have some useful tips for you.

The importance of PageRank

PageRank use to be the part of SEO that everyone was gunning for a few years ago, yet since Google starting making major changes to how PR was worked out, it is now questionable whether it has any value at all.
The simple equation was that the more back-links you had, the better your PageRank - a simple indicator of 'off-page' optimisation with some jiggery-pokerty thrown in to come up with a hierarchical structure. However a few years on and I have the following niggling doubts:

• Do I need PR to get a search-engine result? - the answer is a resounding NO - I even have a site that ranks anything from 1 to 3 for a very specific keyword - it has never had any PR...
• Is Google actually taking any notice of PR - the current thinking is that Google has already, or is condsidering... dumping PR altogether - and even though PR is still visible in the Google toolbar, it's actual value is probably questionable at least...
• Why do people think PR is still important? - I can't really answer that, but it seems to me that certain die-hards are still taking notice of soemthing that could already be defunct, and are even still paying to try and get their PR boosted.
• Does this mean that there is no point linking? No, I do believe that organic links from like-minded sites will somehow figure in getting you search position because that just makes sense. Also I cannot see how Google can legitimately penalise someone for a paid link from a relavent site when Google itself runs paid ads in the form of Adsense which could be hosted on the same site....

My conclusions for those interested in SEO - Just keep doing what seems right, try for free links from sites within your niche, get your 'on-page' optimisation sorted and keep uddating your site with good content - I believe that makes sense and therefore eventually SERP should reflect your good hard work.

Google 'gaming'

Changes are taking place in the world of Google, now they are looking at how they can improve on 'apps' that give local information. I have come across reports about apps that can identify pictures taken from a mobile phone camera. The app can recognise a logo, shopfront or landmark and give search results relating to what it can 'see'.
This is a tremendous leap forward in how Google can continue to help people to find what they need, but it has caused a stir amongst webmaster and journalists that are concerned with writing about SEO. However, my take on it is that really it is up to Google to come up with a way to integrate the information that is already there, so in the long term, webmasters are not required to jump every time Google comes up with a new concept or search hysteresis. It seems to me that webmasters are in danger of forgetting that Google has a clientele (primarily the technology-aware general public) to serve and therefore have a duty to bring your website to the attention of their clients where relevant. The idea of gaming the results to get yourself in a high position regardless of relevance is a short-term tactic. For those in for the long-term, my advice is to keep on doing what you are doing and let Google worry about getting your site into the search results - there is still no replacement for good content although there are naturally small things that you can do to make sure your site is optimised. Optimisation is still based on the basic tenets that it always has been, with noticeably less emphasis on PageRank (off-page optimisation), and more emphasis of the following on-page tactics:
Content, content, content - unless you are planning a landing page only (shame on you...), you should really spent the majority of your time on producing good content. I wouldn't even be overly concerned about keyword density because if you write naturally and informatively, your keyword content should be naturally correct.
Tags - it is so simple to add title, alt, keyword and description you would have to be crazy not to do it despite the fact that it is not considered 'sexy' - you would be far better employed doing tags than designing a flash animation for your visitors. It is still a webmaster crime of epic proportions to have a page title come up as 'home', 'index' or 'untitled' no matter how good your page looks if a visitor ever actually found it.
URL's including keywords - still a winner for search results and will continue to be - any page that does not have a keyword in the URL may be a page wasted.
As long as the oh-so simple rules of on-page optimisation are behind what you are doing, I believe Google is obliged to seek you out and put you in the search results... THAT after all is their job, it is not as many believe, Google's job to 'police' the internet.

Still looking for PageRank?

I am starting to come round to the conclusion that PR is a bit of a self-fulfilling dream... after all, what is it's value?
Does it get you SERP (search engine results position)? seemingly not as I have several sites with little or no PR that achieve first-page results for specific targeted key-words.
Many of us were slave to PR when we started blogging, and the weeping could be heard from afar when Google slapped us all for trying to 'game' PR with viral schemes. Some desperately hung on, determined to show their contrite hearts to Daddy Google by refusing paid posts and removing 'do follow' from their blogs.
Did it make any difference? Did traffic cease or did our sites disappear from the search results? Maybe there were some short-term effects here and there, maybe Google has learned some lessons and maybe there is not so much money being thrown at paid bloggers, but not an awful lot has really changed.
I am promoting a new site at the moment, and have concentrated almost exclusively on 'on-page' optimisation - the type of SEO that doesn't rely on outside links and therefore is not affected by PR. My conclusions are that you can certainly get ranked on page 1 without PR- and most of the time, I am only held off the top-spot by Wikipedia... So I leave you with this... What is the value of PageRank?
And my answer is that you really only need to think about it if you are competing for a very highly sought after keyword. You may easily get SERP for a cleverly thought out associated phrase with virtually no 'off-page' optimisation at all. Of course, if many of those who sponsored posts took this view, they would stop paying for links except for those sickeningly 'popular' recurring promotions (I leave the themes of these to your imagination), so I hope sponsors will ignore my views and continue to send interesting and varied opportunities.

Stumbled upon an SEO website

I have been getting into 'Stumble upon' lately and my findings will no doubt emerge in a later post, but today I stumbled upon a site worth reviewing. The site has been put together by Stephen an SEO expert who uses the motto 'SEO is a flair not a science - science always gets the same results!'.
The more I thought about that, the more it rang true. There are those who say that you can get SERP through following a set number of steps or will guarantee first position in Google search, but really SEO doesn't work like that.
The Google search hysteresis that determines your search engine results position for a given keyword or phrase is not written in stone like physics, it is subject to trends like fashion. What worked even 5 minutes ago may not work again... SEO has to be viewed as something fluid not rigid, almost having a life of it's own an existence fueled by Google geeks and shady back-office characters.
Not only does Stephen offer advice, often free on SEO, he raises money for cancer research in his spare time through charity races. He tells me he has raised £8,000 (that's $15,000) so far this year, and is planning to run at least 25 miles a week to reach a 1,000 mile target.

First steps in SEO

I have talked about simple SEO [Search Engine Optimisation] and practiced some SEO on other websites, even getting good levels of success doing just that in my day-job. I have not as yet, really got to grips with SEO on a blog. Today I took the first simple steps to rectify that and placed some meta-tags in my blogger template.
There is some debate over whether there is any value in 'keyword' since it has been over-used and abused in the past, yet the consensus is that when used properly, it may help and can certainly do no harm... If you don't believe me take a look at the HTML of the home page at eBay - they certainly know how to get a site noticed, and yes they use keyword along with 'description' and 'title'.
Now 'title' already exists in the blogger template and can be edited in blogger settings, but there is no 'keyword' or 'description', so why not put them in? I went to blogger dashboard, layout, edit HTML and just placed in the tags and saved the template. Simple huh?
If you want to know more about what the tags look like, there is an article on Livewyre.NET discussing tags and their format... feel free to click on 'view/page source' in your browser to see the tags in place on munny4hunny.

Intelligent Marketing

Website Review:

When you get to the point where you require online marketing specialists you should check out ‘IOM’, that’s ‘Intelligent Online Marketing’

IOM offer a service not only to offer a package of measures to suit your marketing needs, but a service to train your own personnel in the methods that they themselves employ. If you go for the training option you will be in a position to build your own marketing department, and maybe even offer your services to others.

The IOM website offers advice on Rankings, PPC advertising, Driving traffic to your site and building a site that grabs your visitors and makes them want to buy your product and services. You may think that this type of service is primarily for large companies, but in my experience I would say that where a company is small and doesn’t have experts in marketing, this type of service is ideal. Many smaller companies don’t have the time to really do their marketing effectively and often this is left to an individual who is not specifically trained and experienced. This is the kind of situation where employing experienced marketing experts on a short-term basis can really prove cost-effective.

I watched the Search Engine Marketing videos on the IOM site and found them really easy to follow. The videos go through the steps of promoting a website in really simple steps. They are filmed as one-to-one interview-style segments with a list of the questions on the right – if you click on the question that interests you, the player jumps to that segment and you get a great answer. The questions cover anything from basic SEO to PPC, spidering, domain names etc. (There’s almost 50 questions in all)

I'm no pro-blogger, but....

If you are serious about your blog, then you should post everyday.
I don't pretend or even aim to be a pro-blogger, but if I wanted to be, posting every day would be an absolute requirement.
I don't really have a niche theme - but if you want to be found by search engines, then you should gear up your blog for SEO and pick a niche theme.
I don't aim to be picked up by search engines - but I know a few bloggers who use the following tactic:
News, by definition is fresh every day, throwing up new keywords that people will use as search keywords - however quick webmasters are, they can't really use a lot of keyword promotion for a fresh news story, so you have as much chance of your website being thrown up as a search engine result as any other site if you pick on a hot news story for your latest post.
The best way to use these tactics (IMHO) is to combine breaking stories with niche, that way you get a better chance of getting visitors from search results.
I've not tried these tactics myself, though I am toying with the idea of a niche blog on a theme which interests me and may be newsworthy. This means I will be able to search for news on my niche subject and post fresh information and maybe pick up some passing traffic.
The essential element of course, is to have your site monetised so that you have something to show for all your traffic. For this you will need adsense, and depending on your niche, maybe amazon or auction ads up and running to maximise your revenue.
I hope I find time to slip this project in with all my other ones... I would like to try it on a free site and maybe transfer to a domain if the site got the traffic I was hoping for.
Leave me a comment if you have some hints and tips on this subject.....