Search Engines

Search Engine Ratings and SEO

October 21, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

: Image via CrunchBase

If you’ve been wondering why your submitted website hasn’t yet appeared on the front page of Yahoo!, then there’s news for you: it takes hard work and luck to find your business on that front page, or at the very least, an untapped niche of the marketplace! What are you to do if your business is quite common, like a cookie shop in Salt Lake City, Utah? There are several things you can do for yourself, using your own computers internet connections, your brain, and a thorough understanding of the internet and viral marketing. If you had to ask yourself, “What is viral marketing?” then this might be an uphill battle!

First of all, what are you trying to sell? Do you understand what your product is, and what its perceived value is to outsiders? Does your website have a consistent theme, high quality graphics, a well designed layout, and good value for readers? If you answered yes to all of those questions, then you’re in good shape to rate well on popular search engines. SEO & search engine marketing is about having great, quality, original content to offer to readers and shoppers. Once you have that content, the second facet (that is equally important) is pushing your merchandise and content in a way that makes it visible to your intended audience. How do you do that?

Find the blogs, the message boards, and the popular web sites that are read by your intended audience and customers. What would someone who wants your goods most likely be shopping for in tandem with your product? Write comments, blogs, and messages on those sites, always with a clever comment and a useful tip. In each comment, attach your auto-signature which includes your web site’s link. Eventually, you will be considered an authority, and those who enjoy your witticisms will follow your link, and comment on your shop while they’re browsing!

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: Internet marketing, Promotion, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, Web Design and Development, Web search engine, Website, Yahoo

SEO & Search Engine Marketing Nerds: How to Date Them

October 20, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Before you attempt to date an SEO & search engine marketing nerd, there are a few things you need to know! This person, whether male or female, knows things about the world. That’s not intended to be elusive: he or she will actually know things, about everything, always. For each cute tidbit of trivia you drop, you will be inundated with much more current trivia, each bit being filled in by useless but fascinating peripheral data, and ending with a snarky laugh. There’s no winning with an SEO & search engine marketing guru. This person will always know more than you do about the world; from Yoda to the Creme de la Mer sweepstakes in London, your guru will be tuned in to the marketplace at large.

If you can accept being the second brightest person in a pair, then there are other factors for you to consider, first. Does your SEO & search engine marketing geek text you from across the couch? Does he or she email you links to info graphics of movies that haven’t even been announced on IMDb, yet? This person’s on fire. If it’s a guy, he’s already assessed you, made an algorithm determining your value/cost ratio, and made the subtle move to get you to make the first move. If your nerd is female, you’re in even more trouble: she’s cyber-stalked you for months, planned your meeting, and subsequently convinced you that this attraction was your idea.

SEO & search engine marketing geniuses know what they’re doing. They know more about psychology than psychologists, more about Capitalism than Obama, and more about aesthetics than a philosopher. If you have a thing for an SEO pro, then you’d better be ready to be analyzed, implemented, and to turn out great results in less than a day, or be discarded for second-page results.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: FAQs Help and Tutorials, London, Promotion, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, Web Design and Development, Web search engine, Yoda

Viral Marketing or SEO & Search Engine Marketing: Which Works?

October 20, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Though many people in these similar fields of viral marketing and search engine optimization and search engine marketing would agree that they are related to social sciences, there is little else they share. The main influence of SEO & search engine marketing, really, is to influence people. Also, to influence the bots that reach out their tentacle-like arms to search in every site on the web, creating ratings systems and indexes, SEO & search engine marketing tacticians will implement the bots’ very own algorithms against them. With a little reverse engineering, and a little ingenuity, SEO firms have been very successful at placing their clients on the front pages of every well known search engine on the internet.

Other functions of good SEO professionals include, competitive analyses, page optimization, keyword placement and density optimization, and link building. With all of these factors working for a client, their page indubitably does well.

Though extremely fascinating, many would argue that SEO & search engine marketing are far less effective than viral marketing. Viral analysts and viral marketers are more focused on one-hit-wonders and flashes of genius, rather than long term results and brand building. Although consistent viral marketing can condition repeat users to recognize a company’s brand, it is not the ultimate goal of going viral. The power of linkbait is such that a page’s credibility, in terms of bot ratings, can double in a day of good Digging, or in two days of Redditor review.

To go viral is a coveted and exciting experience for linkbait editors and creators, for the designers who work week after week on infographic after infographic, hoping to hit the front page of a social media site. Viral marketers seek to build networks and create a buzz, to heat up a page for a day or a week, in order to help its ratings and industry reports. The difference between viral marketing and SEO, though, is that viral marketing is the instant gratification, whereas SEO is the long term relationship-builder.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: Marketing, Promotion, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, Viral marketing, Web Design and Development, Web page, Web search engine

Modern Methods of SEO & Search Engine Marketing

October 18, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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Modern methods of SEO & search engine marketing always include the much more effective–at least short term–viral marketing strategies such as link-bait and snapfish articles. To get attention in the blogosphere, as many have stated, and the spokesman for Google has confirmed, is the key method involved in gaining a better search engine rating and ranking. If you want to be recognized, considered an authority, and respected within your marketing niche, then you need to start implementing viral marketing tactics as a part of your SEO & search engine marketing campaign. Of course, if you have hired a professional SEO firm to help you with your marketing strategy, they should have already begun the process of writing and pushing quality content with original features, and info graphics.

Successful link-bait comes in all forms, not just in well designed info graphics. Though, for design professionals, nothing beats an imaginative and fascinating info graphic that accurately conveys information on difficult topics for people who are visual learners. Not just that, but info graphics are also a popular method of cultural diffusion, so your information is more likely to reach widespread audiences.

Popular, current info graphics on web sites like Digg and Reddit have featured political commentary, games information, and of course, hilarious remarks about daily life. People enjoy seeing the latest films dissected, as happened when Inception hit the market. Other popular info graphics do things such as break down the recession and causes into easy to chew bites of information for a public that is sometimes out of touch with serious issues. Info graphics are a great form of link bait most of the time, but for an older generation that can be intimidated by all of that internet bling, link bait articles are almost as good.

Link bait articles, sometimes referred to as snapfish pieces, are often arranged as to 10 lists, or titled something catchy to encourage you to click on sight. These articles distill information as quickly as possible for an audience, leaving the meat of the text beneath the sharp images and statistics.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: Digg, Google, Inception, Link bait, Marketing, Marketing strategy, Reddit, Search engine marketing

If SEO Influences Everything Online, What Could Happen?

October 12, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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Though there are a plethora of good reasons for implementing SEO & search engine marketing tactics, as well as viral marketing and analyses, there are also downsides that consumers must consider. At the rate that SEO sites are trending, and the way that they’re front paging on social media sites like Digg, it leaves little room for quiet, mom ‘n pop type sites that have little or no resources for SEO firms. For those who enjoy the diversity that small, boutique web sites offer to the internet, this could be a concern.

Although every site could benefit from a multi-thousand dollar SEO firm makeover, including viral marketing strategies as well as long term methods, there are ways for smaller companies to produce link bait in order to stay competitive, too. With careful research of the market (such as reading Digg’s front page daily, and watching what’s popular on StumbleUpon) and quality content production, anyone can create a blog on their site that will popularize it, even if the products are difficult to sell. For example, if your granny makes boutique dog collars that are worth $2,000 each in a town of 5,000 in Vermont, it’s unlikely that her neighbors will patronize her site for purchases. In order to get her into the right market, she or you would need to research what kind of people do make those purchases, and find the blogs they read. By posting funny articles, such as “Top 10 People Your Dog Disapproves of You Dating,” you can incorporate the theme of your site into interesting content that will appeal more broadly.

Another concern about SEO & search engine marketing is that web sites will become solely commercial driven. Though this may be true, it might not be bad. Sites that are specialized around the interests of a viewer would sell relevant products that the viewer would most likely be interested in. Though it can become overwhelming if it is implemented badly, good SEO & search engine tactics will never place keywords and links too densely for a reader to enjoy the content.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: Internet marketing, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, StumbleUpon, Vermont, Web Design and Development, Web search engine, Website

Search Engines: Finding What You Need

October 11, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

: Image by Visual Legacy via Flickr

For some people, search engines never seem to work the way that they should. You might enter a few words, in a combination that makes perfect sense to you, and find the results are less than ideal. For example, if all you want to do is find a cheesy pizza on a Friday night, and you happen to enter that into a search engine, you could find a restaurant called the Cheesy Pizza that’s 200 miles from your home, or a recipe for cheese pizza to be made at home. It doesn’t make sense to the average user why, sometimes, these engines seem intuitive and capable, and other times they miss the mark by 200 miles.

SEO & search engine marketing have a lot to do with the results you get when you search using popular search engines. If you want to find a cheesy pizza near your home, then you have to enter the information into the search engine in a way that its algorithm knows how to interpret. Search engines honestly do want to give you the most useful information possible, so that you will continue to patronize their service, rather than a competitors. How do search engines interpret what “cheesy pizza buffalo” means to you, and how to help you as quickly as possible?

If you are searching for something something a little more complex than your Friday night snack, you might want to phrase it as a question. For instance, if you need to find out how to update drivers on your laptop, you might want to include the model number of what driver you are looking for.

With Google’s new instant results, you’ll find each letter you enter changes the pathway of where Google intends to direct you. It even offers suggestions in a drop-down menu of things you might be typing. Google’s search engine uses automatic bots to search every web page that’s linked on the entire internet. It sounds impossible, but it’s true. Suspicious pages are reviewed by humans, but these programs are pretty effective. When they are flawed, you can find that “cheesy pizza buffalo” will lead you to porn, a princess with an eating disorder, and the latest disgusting flavor in fad bubble gum. Usually, though, these bots will take to you restaurants in Buffalo that serve pizza, or, pizzas with buffalo sauce on them.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: FAQs Help and Tutorials, Google, Promotion, search, search engine, Search engine optimization, Web Design and Development, Web search engine

A Beginner’s Guide to Search Engines

September 17, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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How Do Search Engines Work?

There are four functions of a search engine, including building an index of sites, calculating each sites relevancy and quality before ranking them, crawling to sites to make links, and processing results for users based upon their keywords. Whew. That seems really complicated, but in fact, it makes a lot of sense.

First, the search engine determines which web site submissions are legitimate, and which are spam, before it begins crawling.

Then, the search engine bot, or spider, goes to your site and inspects the ease of access, clarity of information, quality of content, percent of junk and advertisements (which weighs heavily on SEO & search engine marketing), and then it compiles this information and gives your site a rating which allows the engine to easily place your site in the rankings for all similar sites.

Next, your site which has been rated and ranked will be indexed for users who are searching. People can search based on any keywords they would like, and the more specific they are, the more likely it is that your site will appear on the front page of the results for a given search engine.

Lastly, but most importantly, the search engine functions for users, producing results. Based upon their keyword choice, they could receive numerous results, or just a few if they are overly specific. As the average computer user has become more familiar with search engines, and improved in keyword writing, companies have needed to respond in kind by placing popular keywords on their sites specifically to lure the right audience to their sites. This, in part, is SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO & search engine marketing is a craft that is now its own major in some colleges.

Hopefully, if nothing more, this brief overview has helped you to understand the complex nature of search engine results, and SEO & search engine marketing.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: Search engine optimization, Web Design and Development, Web search engine

How to Be an SEO Pro

September 14, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

SEO & search engine marketing don’t have to be complicated topics. If you want to develop your online presence, and enjoy an increase in profit revenues, then it’s time to learn all you can about SEO (search engine optimization). SEO & search engine marketing is an extension of the truths you already understand in a traditional marketing schema. There are really just nine essential steps to remember and consider before getting started.

1. Do you have a competitive edge for your market niche?
2. Which keywords and keyword phrases are currently trending?
3. How should your site be structured for optimal readability?
4. How should your content be structured and presented?
5. Do you have quality, working links?
6. How will branding affect SEO & search engine marketing?
7. What are the ins and outs of viral marketing?
8. How will I know if my SEO & search engine marketing campaign is a success?
9. When changes and updates occur in SEO & search engine marketing, how will I track them and implement changes?

Several computers internet service providers may access your page as its popularity grows, causing it to crash, and losing you valuable traffic. Before you even consider honing in on these topics and converting your site to a cash cow, you should make sure your server can handle several computers internet service providers accessing it at once. Before learning how to rank on Yahoo!, Google, Bing, and other search engines, you need to prepare your site for the pounding it will receive when it is ranking well, rating high in the results and “front paging,” and also getting good feedback from critics and industry experts.

Although many people overlook Fark.com, it is a site that insiders would like to get ranked on. It’s difficult to break-through, but instead of Stumbling, try getting listed on Fark, and you’ll find yourself ready for anything!

Filed Under: Internet, Search Engines, Website Tagged With: Google, Search engine optimization, Web search engine

Droid vs iPhone Searching

August 14, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Have you ever heard of the .mobi type of domain name? It’s the top level domain name that is used whenever you want to look at a site that was designed to be viewed and interacted with via a smart phone interface. With a .mobi web site, it does not matter what kind of smart phone you use, Droid vs iPhone vs Blackberry vs any other kind – the site just works a whole lot better than when you try to shoehorn a web site that was obviously designed to be looked at on a computer into the much smaller, less typing enabled interface of a smart phone.

But what happens once you know that there are plenty of sites that will work beautifully with either device? At some point, you are going to want to actually use a search engine; you’ll want to find something, learn something, or maybe just be entertained by something. In the ongoing struggle between the iPhone and the Droid, there has emerged a sort of argument about which device can help you navigate search engines more efficiently. Some of the issue revolves around the software that is available, while another part of the issue involves the physicality of the devices themselves.

If you are looking for the smaller device, the iPhone is your baby; the Droid’s slide out keyboard makes the thing bulkier. And you know you love having a screen that lets you just push buttons that then disappear, making way for other buttons (or a YouTube video, or whatever else you may happen to want to see on your screen). From an ease of use perspective, however, the Droid has a voice typing option that is hard to beat – so hard to beat, in fact, that Apple appears to have pretty much given up on the idea altogether. Too bad; it’s handy.

Filed Under: Internet, Search Engines Tagged With: Apple, IPhone, Smartphone

Competition and Working with It

August 13, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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You know how you want your site to have millions and millions of hits every single day? Guess what – everybody else wants the exact same thing for their own sites. So needless to say, there is going to naturally be a lot of competition for those precious page views – and more importantly, for the opt ins that will make you sales and get you life long clients. After all, a life long client is like a giant gold statue on your door step, isn’t it? Getting these clients to appear in your web site is obviously a matter of having great content and solid SEO, so that the search engines will know what you’re all about. Once they know that, they’re just bound to send you plenty of people who (hopefully) want what you’re selling.

However, there is a factor that a lot of people don’t think too much about, when they’re doing their research. It concerns more than just how many searches are being done on a particular word of phrase during a particular time frame – but how many people or companies are working on optimizing for a particular key word or phrase. The amount of competition you are facing can be a very significant factor in whether or not you can get top billing on a particular search. Google can be very fickle, after all – especially since they changed their code to take in the index of similar, related keywords when it comes to placing a given site.

If you’ve never heard of LSI, it concerns how similar keywords can be related to a unifying topic. For instance, “apartment” would also likely have “town home,” “zero maintenance,” “condo,” and “free rent” in its LSI stable. When you think about it, this is really nothing more than just common sense. One of the best things about LSI is that it can be the little extra edge that can carry you over your competitors, and right into the winner’s circle (or the first page, whichever comes first). So hammer the topic, not just the key words.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO, Website Tagged With: Google, Search engine optimization, Web search engine, Website