Feb 28

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Marketing No Comments »

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The objective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site. This relative ranking is often viewed as a struggle to best use a few keywords, instead of a struggle to out-do your competition. If you search on your target keywords, you will see the leading site in the rankings. All you need to do is to be better than that number one site. This page suggests ways to optimize and improve search engine results with ranking and placement advice, information, hints, tips, and clues to improve your search engine keywords relative to existing leaders. After all, better keyword ranking is your real objective.

It is not enough to simply add META tags and do search engine submission of your site to a million search engine indexes and directories. The first placement step in obtaining significant web visitor counts is to seek first-page search engine results. An early step is to build a great content-rich site. One of the last steps is the proper submission of your great site to the search engine or directory. In the middle is a step that is VITAL if you want to obtain front-page results. Most sites skim past this step because it is forgotten or too complex, but without competent Search Engine Optimization you are destined to be search engine fodder. The following FREE tools and advice describes how to design your keywords with Search Engine Optimization and ranking in mind.

There are no Search Engine Optimization secrets — just ranking and placement methodologies to follow in order to beat your competition in obtaining a high ranking for desired search keywords. SEO training, content and link services are just one small part. This site targets improving search engine rankings by using a “follow the leader” approach to keyword selection and page wording. Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services (not spam) worked for the “leaders”, you can “beat the leader” and do even better! Proper Search Engine Optimization requires that you beat your competition, so knowing the keywords and criterion used by your competition is the most important first step. It will become obvious that good ranking excludes keyword spamming the search engine, and that with the careful selection of your keywords that you will fare well for a little effort. The Bruce Clay website offers help, hints, and tips for improving search engine results via a specific search engine keywords placement methodology.

SEO Framework Graphic

Step 0 - Search Engine Optimization Overview

What is Search Engine Optimization? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of search as it relates to marketing on the web. It is mostly technical in nature, combining programming with business, persuasion, sales, and a love for competitive puzzle solving into a written form capable of maintaining desired revenue goals while achieving high rankings in the organic sections of search engine results pages. It is not just technical, nor copywriting, nor links, nor just search engine submission, but an intricate blend of over a hundred variables into the fabric of a website. It is difficult to accomplish without a formal proven methodology and strong proprietary tools. We offer you a tutorial on all of that and more on these pages…

Before you start, you should understand that top 10 rankings with every single major search engine and directory can be obtained, although very few sites can get there and the effort is often beyond reason. Note: URL ranking results change week-to-week due to competition, so maintaining a top ranking requires constant keywords monitoring and information rework. Search Engine Optimization never rests, much like your competition.

“It is not the job of Search Engine Optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the web site so that it becomes an eagle.”

The key information on this page includes how to prepare both you and your site for the search engines, choosing the right keywords, how to analyze your competition, what is submission and how is it best accomplished, when to monitor your ranking, instructions for performing an analysis of your site results, complete with tools and aids. This site covers all basic and advanced strategies and the common mistakes to avoid.

 

Search Engine Relationship Chart ®

Search Engine Relationship Chart ®
Feb 25

The Last Days Of SEO

Seach Engine Optimization No Comments »
by Chris Copeland, Friday, Feb 22, 2008 12:00 PM ET
I STARTED DOING WEB SITE promotions in 1996. Back then, the term “search engine optimization” (SEO) had yet to be coined, and the industry was nothing more than a random collection of individuals emailing sites asking for links. Early Yahoo submitters recall fondly the days when extra information on a submission would expedite the process, while Infoseek ever so briefly engaged in instantaneous updating of its indexing, which allowed SEO specialists to submit and resubmit pages based on real-time results.But the days of SEO have been numbered for some time. Now, this is not one of those columns. You know, the column where someone rails against search engine optimization and explains how it is an antiquated technique whose course has been run. Rather, this is a look at the evolution of SEO to DAO.

What’s DAO? I’ll get to that. But first, let’s examine what SEO was…

SEO

Over the years, search engines have been described as dinosaurs. Often, the best way to explain what an engine looks for and how it “reads” a site versus the human interacting was to describe them in terms equated with dinosaurs: big, slow and dumb. Engines were so text-dependent that, in many cases, the best pages for optimization were FAQs. Marketers had a tough choice to make: optimize for a search engine or optimize for the people who would use a search engine. The term “search engine optimization” was really a perfect descriptor of the target segment a company was optimizing for, versus who or what they were optimizing.

The slow evolution to 3D and Universal

Over time, engines have been trying to find more and more ways to bring relevance into their listings. Emphasis has shifted from a focus on page elements to the off-site criteria. It began with PageRank, and now is morphing forward with Ask 3D and Google Universal bringing other aspects of media into a results page. Interestingly, a recent study by Keynote Benchmark highlights how user perceptions may be changing based on the evolution and availability of diverse content. In the study, Google held its usual position as the leader in all four measured categories: Overall Customer Experience, Brand Impact, Future Usage and Customer Satisfaction. But the surprise in the results was largely the improvements of Yahoo in terms of consumer satisfaction and experience. The growth was attributed to two things: 1) search assists and getting consumers to their desired topic sooner, and 2) tighter linking to both internal and external content and community that satisfied the searchers needs.

Yahoo’s Director of Customer Insights, Michael Kronthal, explained Yahoo’s path by saying, “In the future, people will be sharing information on a massive scale, and we believe that is the next chapter of growth for the Web. We’re looking to tap that valuable knowledge and integrate it into our Web search experience, so that Web search is not just searching Web sites for information, but also delivering the knowledge that individuals have through their collective experiences… . We’ll actually be leveraging the knowledge that exists within the one giant social network.”

Introducing DAO

It seems like the trend is shifting from optimizing for a slow, dumb engine, and is moving towards a more sophisticated integration of elements, be it image, video, consumer reviews, or social networks. This changes what is getting optimized from the platform to the asset. That is why the future is all about Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) and not about SEO. Digital Asset Optimization properly assigns value to the platform or device as the conduit for marrying content and intent. By understanding how video can be optimized, a search campaign can be successful on Google or YouTube.

Earlier this week, fellow Search Insider David Berkowitz discussed the new Samsung set top See’N'Search. The device is just one example of how search is going to evolve. I’ve said this before, yet it still has not sunk in for many. Search on the desktop is not the end game. It is the starting point today, and Google has won that medium. When we think about Mobile Search, Local Search, Video and Image Search — and even search on the set top, we have yet to declare a winner, and I would suggest we have yet to even meet all the players.

The closing paragraph of the Keynote study summed it up fairly well. “Whatever the front end, whatever the search domain, the news is sure to be good for users. With such intense competition, and so much money at stake, the leading search providers will continue to make the user experience better and better, and make it easier and easier to find whatever it is we seek.”

So, the future of SEO as defined today is a bleak one. Whether we merely change the description of SEO or use a new acronym like DAO, the days of success being optimization for 10 text links on a standard results page is going to end up just like our old description of the engines: as dinosaurs. Extinct dinosaurs.

 http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=77088&art_type=30
Feb 14

How Search Engines Work

Search Marketing Trends, Search Marketing No Comments »

How Search Engines Work Search engines consist of five discrete software components:

  1. spider : a robotic browser like program that downloads webpages.
  2. crawler : a wandering spider that automatically follows links found on pages.
  3. indexer : a blender like program that dissects webpages that are downloaded by spiders.
  4. the database : a warehouse of the pages downloaded and processed.
  5. search engine results engine : digs search results out of the database. Read the rest of this entry »

Search Engine Optimization Techniques & Trends
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