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With the ringing in of the New Year, I resolve to become a better search engine optimizer (SEO). Below is a list of resolutions that I have made in order to make my clients’ websites the absolute best on the web.

• I will not use flash as text.
  • Even though many search engines can now read some of the text embedded in flash, flash sites do not perform as well in search engine results as non-flash sites. Flash should primarily be used to enhance sites; in the same way one would use pictures to make the site look better.
• I will not use images as text.
  • Although I personally believe that text in images will be read by search engines by the end of 2006, we are not there just yet. As it now stands, image text is invisible to search engines and therefore should not be used in that capacity.
• I will use good usability techniques.
  • Usability is simple to test. Get three friends to complete a task on your site as you silently watch and take notes (have them talk out loud too). You will be amazed as to what you find. Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox has a good introduction to usability.
• I will not use cloaking.
  • Cloaking is frowned upon by search engines. Once they catch you, you will get penalized (or in some instances, banned).
• I will not use frames unless I have a REALLY good reason to.
  • Frames complicate things for the search engine. There are very few good reasons to use frames and thus they should be avoided whenever possible.
• I will use a catchy title with the keyphrase in it.
  • Marketing is what we are all about. A catchy title will bring in the customers. A title containing the target keyphrase will raise the result in the search engines. Put the two together and you have a professional marketing title that works hard to bring in traffic.
• I will track the return on investment (ROI).
  • By tracking the ROI, I will clearly see if the site is making or losing money. To track ROI one needs to co-relate the marketing dollars spent with the revenue earned. This statistic is usually hindered by the site’s owner, who cannot (or does not) provide the financial information, nor the conversional statistics I need to track ROI.
• I will write an alt tag that clearly depicts what the image is, for every image.
  • This will help people without images on their screen know what the image is about. Using the keyphrase in the alt tag is a bonus because it will help the rankings slightly in the search engine results, but it is most important to describe the image as clearly as possible.
• I will use good informative content.
  • Ah yes, “Content is King”. All the above resolutions are meaningless if I don’t have good content. This is what will bring in the search engines. This is what will bring in the clients. And this is what will bring in the dough.
• I will not stuff the pages with keyphrases.
  • Stuffing the page with keyphrases goes against the golden rule of good content. If you stuff the pages with keyphrases, they will no longer read well, and readers won’t like to read them. Consequently, people won’t enjoy your site, and because the search engines are designed to figure out what people like and then display it to them, the search engines will eventually begin to disregard your site. Therefore, ALWAYS use keyphrases wisely.
• I will not use “spammy” techniques.
  • “Spammy” techniques are anything the search engines say not to use. These techniques may do well in the short-term, but in the long run they will get you penalized (or even banned).
    – Google has a list of guidelines here
    – Yahoo has a list of guidelines here
• I will use pay-per-click (PPC), even if it is for a very small amount.
  • I have found that using even a minuscule PPC campaign will bring in more traffic. It also propagates links to your site throughout the Internet, and thus makes your site more prominent. If you are worried about losing money, then use the free conversion tracking tool available at both Overture and Google AdWords. USE IT. Only then will you know how effective your PPC campaign really is.
• I will track unique hits to the site.
  • By keeping track of whether the site’s traffic goes up or down, I get a big picture of the health of the website. If traffic goes up, then the rankings probably went up. If traffic goes down, then rankings probably went down. Of course there are also seasonal variations (and marketing pushes), but you should be familiar enough with the market to know when to expect such cyclical fluctuations.
• I will get a good copywriter to write the content.
  • “Content is King”, so get a professional to write it. You may think you are good, but are you really? Would you bet your Internet presence on it? Use someone who knows how to write specifically for the Internet. Use someone who knows how to balance writing for people, writing for sales, and writing for search engines.
• I will not send out “spammy” emails asking for reciprocal links.
  • Reciprocal links don’t bring in clients, and they tend to only slightly boost your PageRank. An SEO’s time is better served getting the site listed in directories and on sites where people would be looking for it (such as associations, suppliers, clients, and more…). Personalized emails to these sites requesting a link to yours are fine. Templates or mass emails requesting reciprocal links are definitely not.
• I will work hard getting valuable links to my site.
  • “Linking is Queen”, thus getting links is essential. Find directories that relate to your market and take your time to submit to them (in the best category). Contact your suppliers and/or resellers and see if they will link to you. Figure out where your potential clients hang out on the Internet, and get those sites to link to you. Do your homework to choose where you want your links to appear, then roll up your sleeves, get out the elbow grease and get those links to show up!

With a little dedication and a lot of work, I will get my clients into the top search engine results. If you want to do well with your website, stick to these resolutions and before you know it the traffic (and the sales) will roll in smoothly, just like the New Year.

Shawn Campbell

Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
www.redcarpetweb.com

A lot has changed in the way sites are optimized for search engines since last year. For one thing, Google is not the only search engine worth looking into anymore; Yahoo has definitely managed to take away some of Google’s oomph over the past twelve months. Another important change is that the intelligence of the search engine spiders and algorithms has increased dramatically. So without further ado, I will present you with a standard search engine optimizing process as done by Red Carpet Web Promotion.

Keyword Research

Nothing can be done until you know what your target phrases are. Keyword research must be done to find out what people are actually typing into the search engines. For example, do they type in “medical insurance” or “health insurance” more often? Is it worth targeting the keyword “dental insurance”? What do your competitors think its clients type?

Keyword research usually begins by asking the client what they think are good keywords and by looking at your competitor’s Meta tags and text. You then have to brainstorm to find new and related keywords that were not previously thought of. The use of Wordtracker, Overture, and Google AdWords’ estimates is indispensable. If you use the “KEI” offered at Wordtracker, don’t fall into the trap of giving it too much worth. It is a good tool to help discover keywords that have not been exploited by the competition, but the really important number is the amount of traffic each keyword generates. Finally, create a chart to determine the relationship between keywords used. For example, there is no point promoting dental insurance if your site does not offer it.

Texts

The next step is to write the text. Hire a specialized writer to put the text together. Ideally someone who has been trained in Internet writing, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO), or get advice from professional SEOs, marketing experts, and usability experts. Work with the client to get a feel for what is needed for the site. Then use all these skill to put together the delicate balance needed between selling to people, selling to search engines, and making the text interesting/useful to read.

Domain Selection

Once the text is written, come up with a catchy domain name for the site. Try to include part of the keyword in the domain, and to think ahead so that the domain can be expanded into the title. Our site www.gloriousbahamas.com is a good example of a domain with a keyword in it that is catchy and clearly stated. The keyword for that site is “Bahamas real estate”, so having part of the keyword in the domain will help in the long run.

Title and Meta Tags

From the domain name, you can then create a title with the full main keyword in it (such as Glorious Bahamas Real Estate). The title is the most important text on the site. The Meta tags include the description tag, and the keyword tag. The description is what the searchers will see in many search engine results, so it must have the keywords in it and, more importantly, it must sell the site. Write a description that is objective, not subjective. Zeal has some good advice for titles and especially description writing at http://zeal.com/guidelines/style/site_titledesc. The keyword tag is done just in case some engines still use it (though very few still do), so don’t pull your hair out over it. Just list 10-15 keyphrases and try not to repeat any single word more than three times.

New Content

Now we come to the meat of today’s search engine optimization. So far, we have not discussed anything new or original. It is the same strategies that have been used since I first got into the business of SEO in 1998. Today, with smarter engines, a site needs to be something that is cared about. A site has to grow, develop, and expand as if it were someone’s baby. Gone are the days when you could build a site, get good listings, and then forget about it as it brought in the traffic and the dough. Take care of your site by adding useful content to it on a regular basis, and then the site will gradually grow from a few pages to dozens of pages. Not only will this make the site seem more alive – radiating with the healthy glow of a developing child – but it has the added benefit of increasing the amount of content the site contains, and thus increasing the amount of keywords found within it. For example with www.canada-health-insurance.com we add pages with more details about dental coverage or pages with details about government coverage for each province. Every month there are new pages, so that every time the spider comes back to visit, it spends more time at the site reading new content. This is one half of the key to getting good listings in the search engine results pages (SERP).

Link Campaigns

The second half of the key is getting good sites to link to your site. Going after websites with related content, sites with good authority in your website’s field, and sites that are “popular” are the priority. Getting only reciprocal links is not the goal, getting the aforementioned sites to link to you because you have good, valuable content is the goal. Sites that do reciprocal linking usually have hundreds of links on their link pages and these will add very little value to your site. Don’t waste your time with reciprocal linking. Only link to a site if doing so will increase the value of your site in the eyes of your clients.

A link campaign is a lot of work, and it involves a lot of frustration and rejection. You have to approach bigger sites and sell the value that linking to your site will bring them. For every 20 sites you approach, you will be lucky to get one to link to you. You have to be persistent, consistent, and determined.

Conclusions

Optimizing a site is no longer something you can do and then forget about. For a site to succeed in the search engines today, it has to constantly be changing and growing either in content or in links, and ideally in both. It has to appear that the site is the life and soul of its creator, and that somebody cares enough about it to pay attention to it. Because after all, if the creator doesn’t care, why should the search engines?

Shawn Campbell

Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
www.redcarpetweb.com

While you may have heard of a controversial new program called Site Match, which is being run by the Yahoo/Overture team, what you probably don’t know is what this program is really all about. Site Match is a program created to get your site into the Yahoo database (formerly the Inktomi database) and it can be expensive. It is based on a yearly fee and an additional cost for every click you get from a Yahoo based search engine.

Demystifying the mysterious Site Match

Let me back up a bit and give you some history. On a hot July day in 2003, the directory giant Yahoo bought the colossus Pay Per Click (PPC) database Overture (previously known as Goto). Today, Yahoo has decided to monetize by offering us such programs as Site Match.

What Site Match is not

• Site Match has nothing to do with the $299 fee you pay to get into Yahoo’s directory
• Site Match will not get you better rankings in Yahoo (or in Overture)
• Site Match does not get you into Overture’s auction-style PPC database

What Site Match is

Site Match ensures that your site is listed in Yahoo’s search database (not their directory), and that it is refreshed every 48 hours. If you are not listed in Yahoo’s search database you can do one of two things:

1. Wait until Yahoo’s spider picks you up
2. Pay Site Match to list you right away.

Unless your site is brand-spanking new, you are likely to already be listed in Yahoo’s search database. Yahoo’s spider (Slurp) does an extensive job of picking up websites to add to the database. To verify that you are indeed listed, you can type your domain into the Yahoo search box and see if your site comes up (type “yourdomain.com” without the quotes). If a result comes up, then you are in the database.

How much does Site Match cost?

Site Match costs $49 per year to sign up and $0.15 to $0.30 per click afterwards. If you are listed in Yahoo’s database, you get the exact same service for free (except that your site is refreshed every month instead of every 48 hours). What are the advantages of being refreshed? What does refreshed mean? It essentially entails that Slurp comes to visit your site and updates it to the Yahoo database every two days.

My Site Match test

I decided to test out a site to see if there are any benefits to using Site Match. I submitted www.PrintPot.com to the program on April 23rd. This site was created in early April, so it just got into the database a week before. The rankings before and after Site Match are as follows:

A ranking of “none” means that it did not turn up in the listings. As you can see, since we signed up for Site Match, our ranking dropped dramatically. Yahoo only shows the top 500-700 listings, and The Print Pot (which sells Epson inkjet refill kits) is not found at all.

This was my experience with Site Match, but it was only one experience. I doubt that I will be using Site Match again, nor would I recommend it to my clients. However, with only one test, it would be a mistake to conclude that the majority of sites will drop in listings after signing up for Site Match. What is troubling is how Site Match affected all the keywords that Print Pot was struggling to improve.

What happened? Was there a penalty? The site has no reason to be penalized as it followed all the content guidelines listed by Yahoo/Overture at http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/sm_gl.jhtml. These guidelines were pointed out by the support staff from PositionTech, a reseller of Site Match. So why did it drop? I suspect that Yahoo is still ironing out the bugs from its Site Match program. The other possibility is that Yahoo changed its algorithm, and the new one does not rank www.PrintPot.com highly. I have sent a letter to Yahoo and expect an answer in the near future. I will inform you of their response in the next www.RedCarpetWeb.com newsletter.

Should you pay for Site Match?

The answer is wonderfully complicated.

Option 1) If you are already in the database: The answer is a big fat NO WAY. The only exception would be if you change your site more often than once a week. Even then, Yahoo would only update the description, title, and ranking of your site on the search engine results pages. The link would still go to the new updated site even if you don’t pay, and even if it is not freshly spidered.

Option 2) If you are not in the database because your site is new: It would normally take 2-5 weeks to be included in Yahoo’s database for free. If you are in a hurry, then sign up to Site Match. You should show up within 48 hours, and you will be paying $0.15 to $0.30 per hit.

Option 3) If you are not in the database but your site has been online for over 2 months: Something is wrong with your site. Either your robots tag is wrong, or you have zero links in to your site, or you have a penalty of some kind. In order to resolve your situation, it is imperative that you need to hire a search engine optimizing specialist to inspect your site.

Conclusions

Unless you are running a site that gets updated on a near daily basis (such as a news site or a web log), my advice is not to sign up for Site Match. You would be throwing your money at Yahoo, and in return you would be getting a service you probably don’t really need. If you are not listed in their database, there is probably a reason for it, and that same reason would probably keep you out of the database even if you signed up to Site Match.

Shawn Campbell

Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
www.redcarpetweb.com

I was all set to write an article predicting the future of search engines, when Yahoo dropped Google and replaced it with its own engine. Now that’s big news. In less than twenty-four hours, Google went from about 79% of the market share to about 51%, almost overnight. And what a welcome relief it is too! Being #1 in Google was great, but when you had the misfortune of dropping even a couple of positions you really felt it. Now there will be more stability; if you drop in Google today, your hits from Yahoo will remain consistent.

What is the new Yahoo?

Last year, Yahoo bought the AltaVista, Fast, and Inktomi search engines. The new Yahoo results are none of these. Many people are saying that the results come from a new Inktomi because the results are similar; but the results are also similar to all the other search engines out there. In comparing these engines, it seems to me that Yahoo’s results are from a brand new engine. Maybe they took parts and ideas from all the search engines they bought – maybe they even took the best parts – , but whatever they did, the result is something completely new.

Which search engine is better?

I will be comparing Google and Yahoo for the terms “music”, “art prints and posters”, “Bahamas real estate”, “mosquito nets”, and “liposuction”. The other search engines all hold less than 4% of the market share (except for MSN which uses Yahoo’s Inktomi), so I won’t be considering them. Here is what I found in the top 10 results for each keyphrase:

Music

Yahoo offers a lot of music resource sites. Information about music from different sources such as magazine, TV and other music news sites are found 6 times in the top 10 results. It also offered downloading and file sharing programs 3 times. The 10th result was an audio player program site.

Google has a lot more diversity. There were 3 music resource sites (but no magazines), one downloading program, one CD store, one radio station (Yahoo radio), one music directory, and the 10th result was an audio player program site. Google also had 2 sites in its top ten that were of no value whatsoever; MP3.com which just has one page stating that they no longer offer the services that they used to (with links to their parent company), and music.com, which is nothing more than an email gathering site for a newsletter (not a single link on the entire page).

Google’s diversity is a big bonus, but the 2 spam/junk/useless sites really hurt it. The results? Yahoo 1, Google 0.

Art Prints And Posters

Yahoo offers 6 stores, while Google offers 5. The other links are all affiliate spam with no content whatsoever (just links to stores), with the exception of one of Yahoo’s links, which has some biographical content about artists. So Google has 5 spam sites, and Yahoo has 3 and a half.

Yet another round goes to Yahoo.

Bahamas Real Estate

For this keyphrase, I found results between Google and Yahoo to be quite similar. The only differences were sites by actual realtors and sites that were simply property listings. Both types of results are useful, with Google having an edge in realtors. Google had some lower quality sites, but the information was just as good even though they did seem less professional. On the other hand, Yahoo did have one site that was nothing more than a links page from another realtor’s site. Big boo boo.

This one goes to Google.

Mosquito Nets

It seems to me that someone searching for “mosquito nets” wants either A) to buy them, or B) to learn about them, so I was expecting to find either stores or information about mosquito nets. Yahoo showed me 6 stores and 2 informational pages. The other results were a search result page (not a good result) and an inner page from a previous result (also not a good result).

Google gave me 7 stores and 3 charitable organizations (one of which was a store as well). The other 2 charitable organizations were a news article outlining what they had done regarding mosquito nets and information about mosquito nets.

So even though I didn’t necessarily want the latest news about what a charity did regarding mosquito nets, I think getting the same site twice from Yahoo (not to mention the search result page) is the bigger no-no. Google wins this round.

Liposuction

I expected to find information about liposuction, liposuction organizations and either doctors or centers where you can have liposuction done. What I got was a lot of “how to find a doctor” sites, with a lot of good information.

Yahoo results included 3 sites doubled. This is a problem that killed AltaVista in the late 90’s. Hopefully they will have it fixed soon. Other than the 3 doubled sites, the results included 4 informational sites, 2 sites for finding doctors and one poorly written article about the history of liposuction.

Google gave me 4 good informational sites, 2 good “find a doctor” sites, one recent article about liposuction for people in the industry, one site with very poor information one written by a single doctor and one site that was nothing more than a directory.

Google gets this round as well. Overall, it looks like Yahoo needs to fix its doubling of sites and Google needs to clean out some spam (poor sites).

And The Winner Is…

You! Having two good search engines to choose from makes searching that much better for everyone. It also makes getting listings better. It also makes marketing better. It also makes traffic to your site steadier. The only way this could have been worse is if Yahoo’s results sucked, and they don’t. They seem just as good, if not better, than Google’s.

So rejoice, and enjoy a more dynamic world of online searching!

Shawn Campbell

Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
www.redcarpetweb.com

On November 16th, Google did a major overhaul of its results. Many legitimate sites that were basking in the sun at the top of Google results plummeted down the rankings into a dark abyss of countless other results. Many webmasters and search engine optimizers went into shock, as they saw their Christmas sales sink like a stone in the water. Many people got angry. Many people wrote letters and participated in forums. Many people complained, and many people wept. Basically, anyone who wasn’t a multinational conglomerate or an educational institution felt the pangs of rejection. Google shook the Internet… again.

This Google update has been nicknamed the Florida update in honour of the Florida election fiasco in 2000.

What changed?

On average, about 50% of all results in the top 100 have now fallen below the top 500. These changes only apply to certain terms, usually the terms that are related to commercial searches. You can see if your site has fallen at www.google-watch.org/scraper.html by typing in your keyword and looking for your site. This site compares the old Google results with the new results and counts how many sites are missing from the new top 100. Google is currently trying to block these results by blocking Google-watch.org’s IP address, but as of the writing of this newsletter the site is still in operation.

The Theories

There are many theories about what Google did and why. One of them is that Google removed commercial sites from their free listings in order to get the merchants to buy more AdWords. I disagree with this theory. I don’t believe they did it to monetise. I think that Google’s intention was to diversify the types of sites in the top results in order to provide better results to users. I think the profit they will make from this change just happens to be a happy side effect for Google. One thing is for sure, there are much fewer commercial listings in the top results than ever before. Many have been replaced by educational, governmental, or directory listings. The top ten in many results are now a mix of informational, authoritative commercial, and directory listings. This gives searchers more of a choice in the kind of site they want. The commercial sites that survived tend to be the leaders in the industry.

Here are some of the theories about the changes at Google:
www.webworkshop.net/florida-update.html
searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3286101
www.searchengineguide.com/hotchkiss/2003/1215_gh1.html
www.searchengineguide.com/terry/2003/1205_tv1.html
www.webpronews.com/wpn-4-20040108GoogleRumorsThatNeedToBeStopped.html

What to do

Since the big update, many sites that were dropped have been crawling their way back into the top results. It seems to be a slow and painful process. Google’s Senior Research Scientist Craig Nevill-Manning actually apologized for the update, saying: “I apologize for the roller coaster. We’re aware that changes in the algorithm affect people’s livelihoods. We don’t make changes lightly.” The good news is that if a site has a lot of good content, then Google seems to care. The more content you have, the better Google seems to like you.

Many search engine optimizers are frantically making changes, but until we understand more about what motivated the update, such a reaction becomes the equivalent of thrashing and flailing about in the water. Right now the best thing to do is to continue adding good quality content to your site, make sure you are not using spammy techniques, and continue getting links from quality sites and directories.

Hold the boat steady, and you will weather the storm.

Shawn Campbell

Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
www.redcarpetweb.com

In December of 2002, Yahoo! bought Inktomi for $235 million.

As things currently stand, Yahoo, MSN, and Google each receive about 30% of online search traffic. However, because Google’s search results are used for Yahoo! searches, Google actually captures about 60% of the market. Since the sale of Inktomi, we search engine optimizers have been collectively holding our breath waiting for Yahoo! to dump Google and get in bed with Inktomi for Yahoo! search. That would decrease Google’s stranglehold on search traffic and create more competition.

Where does Inktomi get its traffic?

Inktomi provides results for MSN search. Currently, when someone does a search on MSN, they get the following results:

– MSN’s own “featured sites” results (paid advertisers) (usually 1-5 results)
– Overture’s “sponsored sites” (pay-per-click advertisers) (usually 3 results)
– LookSmart’s “web directory sites” (anywhere from 0 to 50 results)
– Inktomi’s “web pages (leftovers)

Inktomi is also the back-up for Overture results (after Overture’s own sponsored links), and is used for a myriad of smaller web portals and search engines, such as About, BBC, Espotting, Goo, HotBot, and InfoSpace.

The good news for Inktomi is that MSN will be dropping LookSmart in mid-January of 2004, and replacing its results with Inktomi’s. Add that to the Yahoo! swap (Inktomi for Google), and Inktomi will go from having a very small share of search traffic to having almost 60% of the total.

Inktomi’s Quality

Obviously, Inktomi is about to become very important, so I looked into Inktomi’s search results, in the hope of figuring out how to optimize for this born-again search company. The results however, were not very encouraging. There was a lot of doubling (the same site showing up 2 or 3 times), and a lot of spam. Mind you, there is a lot of spam in Google too (Spam is any web page that attempts to deceive a search engine’s relevancy algorithm, usually resulting in pages that are irrelevant to a user’s search).

The interesting thing was that the results differed a great deal from Google’s. This is good for the consumer (different results means real competition), but bad for the search engine optimizer. Ideally, a well-optimized site should show up in all the search engines, but Google and Inktomi have different ideas about relevancy. This means we will be seeing a lot of sites built twice: once for Google, and once for Inktomi. And more sites mean more spam.

Hopefully, in the end, the high-quality sites will come out on top of both engines. I imagine there will be either similar relevant sites, or different, but still relevant sites in both Google and Inktomi.

Shawn Campbell

Shawn Campbell is the co-founder and Chief Search Engine Optimizer at Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
www.redcarpetweb.com