Blog Your Way to the Top

Blog Your Way to the Top

While there are many methods available to improve organic search rankings, blogging and blog marketing provide some of the best marketing value for your money. Large corporations and Web technology-based companies are already seeing the benefit of corporate blogging. The benefits are obvious once you’ve given blogging a solid six month stretch, so let’s take a quick look at some of the most obvious benefits.

Blogging Adds Fresh Content to Static Sites
One of the biggest challenges to optimizing a small Web site (20 or fewer pages) is the number of pages available to draw in the reader. While this concept can definitely be taken to the opposite extreme and become a disadvantage - check out what John Scott had to say about excess pages. A daily or weekly dose of fresh content on relevant and current industry topics is healthy for your Web site. The 90’s saw thousands of sites launched overnight for the simple purpose of presenting what was essentially a Web site business card. Sales associates around the country wanted something, anything, to point prospective clients to online which might lend some authority or credence to their company’s claims.

As long as these executives are satisfied with an online business card format, that’s exactly what they’ll get. Sure, they can optimize their 10-20 pages, and they might even receive some traffic through major search engines. Our goal, however, is to discuss best practices, which entails utilizing and maximizing every tool at your disposal. And since blog software is easy to install on your server and design costs are typically reasonable, all that remains is assigning or hiring someone to add content.

Blogs Are Excellent CRM Tools
Matt Cutts’ Blog is an excellent example of how a blog can be a powerful tool for customer relationship marketing (CRM) and online reputation management (ORM). It also represents an important choice your company must make when approaching the subject of blog creation: do you want your blog to be attached to your corporate website, or a separate entity? Most companies wouldn’t consider the separate entity approach for fear of losing control, but there are some major benefits worth considering as well, which we’ll cover in depth in another article.
One of the biggest corporate dilemmas with online media is how to best interact and engage the customer and prospective customer. With millions of blogs and forums circulating the Web, your brand will inevitably receive mention, both positive and negative. Companies in the know are hosting blogs for the very purpose of giving their customers a voice to the company.

If you can encourage your client base to address you personally, you can control the flow of negative press and address issues quickly to transform dissatisfied customers into brand evangelists. Want to distinguish your brand in the industry? Position yourself to be the brand most involved in dialogue and responding to customer comments. Encourage your readers to praise, complain, suggest, and discuss in a venue you can easily control and monitor. This will save potential millions in lost revenue from dissatisfied customers who make it their mission in life to turn others away.

Professional Blogging Establishes Thought Leadership
Who can estimate the value of recognition among one’s peers as an innovator of industry-related insights and ideas? It’s priceless. Robert Scoble is an excellent example of thought leadership in the Web technology sector. Several million users annually prove that his innovation and perspective on the industry is well respected by peers and newbies alike.
In your industry, what would it take to become a nationally recognized thought leader? In most instances, it takes 1-2 years of daily blogging by an intelligent, experienced writer (or writers). Producing daily content for two years means you have added approximately 730 pages of content to your site or at least to the space of discussion within your industry. If you think that over for a few minutes, you’ll realize how that kind of exposure can lead to quotes from media professionals, peer sites, and related industry sites all over the Web!

Once you have established your company as a thought leader, the inbound links you earn will drive traffic to your site, position you as a source of quality information, and additionally increase your search engine rankings for important industry-related phrases.

With these benefits, you can’t afford not to implement blogging into your interactive marketing strategy.

Source By Mark Jackson SearchEngineWatch
http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Using a Corporate Blog for Customer Relationship Management

Using a Corporate Blog for Customer Relationship Management

Search engine optimization is a close cousin to public relations. In fact, they could be twin siblings. Much like traditional PR firms will focus on pitching your story to the Wall Street Journal, search engine optimization firms pitch your Web site to the search engines in the hopes they will find your information credible and rank-worthy.

And in the same way that part of public relations is the management of customer relationships, there is a part of SEO that performs the same role: corporate blogging.

Nurturing Your Existing Customers
It goes without saying that CRM is a necessary aspect of every organization's PR and marketing structure. Multiple studies have proven that customer retention and cross-selling can cost far less than focusing solely on new customers to replace the fluctuations of a returning customer base.

It's simply more profitable to maintain existing customers. Not only will a satisfied customer continue to purchase products and services, he or she will also become a proud product evangelist who markets your company for free. This advertising is priceless, and you can begin developing this loyal customer base with your corporate blog.

Most customers want to be heard. They have ideas, suggestions, complaints, questions – you name it. You can differentiate your business from the competition by being the one organization with a reputation for interacting and respecting the voice of the valued customer. Your customers are going to discuss your products and services online; that's a given. The question is whether or not you will have the ability to respond in a manner that strengthens those relationships.

Many times, a customer will visit your Web site and look for answers or a way to share their input. If none is found, they will look elsewhere. But most customers want interaction and answers before they begin to slander a company's reputation. This is your window of opportunity to nip it in the bud.

Starting a Corporate Blog
If you don't have a company blog, by all means start one immediately. Obviously, I recommend a professionally designed look and feel that fits well with your Web site brand image. But even if it will take you a few weeks to get to a professional design, start by tomorrow. When it comes to blogging software, I'm partial to WordPress for its functionality and ease of use, but other options include Movable Type and Drupal.

Most of our clients elect to use our custom content management system, which was built on an open source blogging platform. This means that our Web design clients automatically have blogging functionality at their fingertips. But even if you don't, you can add WordPress quickly.

Why take the time to write in a blog? Simple: Blogs give your static Web site the ability to provide updated information on your company, products, services, and industry related events. When something newsworthy occurs in your industry, how will it affect your customers? How does it affect your company? What about new technologies? If you're in retail, you will never run out of relevant topics because the products and your customers' shopping habits are constantly evolving.

Addressing Customer Issues
With a corporate blog, you can address each and every type of customer question or complaint, thus developing an archive of answers to address current and future customer issues much like an FAQ section. Even for customers who don't feel comfortable complaining, your company image will benefit from showing these "watchers" that you care about the needs and concerns of your customers. Just being a company that cares is enough to retain a noticeable percentage of customers.

With the rising popularity of social media sites like Digg and Reddit, a blog post submission to either of these sites will launch your CRM efforts out into the rest of the Web, drawing more readers and potential clients back to your site to read the full story.

A word of caution: While blog comment spam will always be an issue, take care that you don't eliminate valuable user comments from your blog. Double check your spam blocking software or plugins to ensure you don't lose valuable feedback. Why go to all the trouble to give your audience a voice if you're not going to ensure that their comments are posted?

Using Customer Feedback
Encourage your blog readers to comment. Make sure it's easy for readers to find and read existing comments, as well as respond to what you've written. Some pre-made blog templates are not as user friendly as others, so test it out on your employees and friends to see if navigating through the blog, commenting, and finding archived information is easy and well-explained.

Work your cross-sell techniques into your blogging. When mentioning other services or products, link to those pages within your Web site. Add voting capacity to each post so your readers can click a button to vote thumbs up or down on each post. Offer prizes to the user who offers the most relevant comments per month (think gift cards, discounts, sample products, vacation packages, etc). Another awesome tactic is to create membership levels based upon number of approved comments. This encourages readers to keep interacting in order to reach intermediate and expert comment levels.

Do whatever it takes to involve your customers in the discussion of your brand, your products, your services, and your industry. Not only will you retain more customers, you might just come across the next great company idea for free.

Source By Mark Jackson SearchEngineWatch

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Google AdWords Campaigns. Keep Your Adwords Campaign From Failing

Google AdWords Campaigns. Keep Your Adwords Campaign From Failing

Google AdWord ads can be a big help to marketing your product or service, but your AdWords campaign can fail too.

For example,

Two gourmet chocolate companies tried pay-per-click last year with very different results.

Charles Chocolates spent $3,000 on pay-per-click ads and only sold 5 boxes of chocolates.

Lake Champlain Chocolates sold 30,000 pounds of chocolates last year from pay-per-click ads.

Their products were similar, but their AdWord techniques were a lot different.

Lake Champlain Chocolates, tracked results and learned how to play the game.

They did simple things such as putting in negative keywords to keep from paying for clicks from people who they determined would no not buy and testing to know how much to bid on each keyword phrase, etc.

If you've tried a Google AdWords program and it didn't work for you (or if you have never tired AdWords), don't ignore AdWords for your product or service.

But don't just give it a try not knowing what you are doing. Learn the basics. The best way to start is to buy a copy of Perry Marshall's book, "Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Web SIte MIstakes That Can Get You In Trouble With The Serach Engines

Avoid the following things which can get you in trouble with search engines:

-Don't use hidden text or hidden links.
-Don't employ cloaking or lightning fast java redirects.
-Don't load up your pages with irrelevant words.
-Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
-Don't use frame web sites
-Don't use doorway pages or software that makes doorway pages

The worst kept secret in Internet Marketing is the advantages of a well-wrought search engine optimization campaign. Companies are quickly adopting SEO into their marketing plan and looking for someone they can trust to optimize their Web sites in order to achieve top rankings. However, not all SEO practitioners are created equal so be sure you know what you're getting before you sign a contract.

With over 100 million Web sites on the Internet, it is more important than ever to achieve high rankings for visibility. While reputable SEO companies use ethical SEO practices, there are others who will try to trick the engines into high rankings by using questionable techniques. These techniques are known as spam and can get you penalized or banned from the search engines.

Many times, an SEO provider will promise quick, first-page rankings and fail to notify the client that they use spam techniques to achieve those rankings. To avoid falling into this trap, you must be aware of unethical SEO techniques and guard against the companies who use them.

Consequences of Spam

While search engines may have different rules for detecting spam, in the end, the results are the same – you lose your rankings and can be taken out of the index. It is not easy to recover from a ban, so it is important to know the techniques that must be avoided.

Many sites may be unwitting victims of spamming techniques used by aggressive SEO vendors. Whether it happens inadvertently or not, the search engines will penalize and ban, temporarily or permanently. If a significant part of your online business model depends on search engine traffic, you could be in trouble. When infractions are serious, it can take many months to convince the search engine that you corrected the problem and deserve a second chance.

SEO Techniques to Avoid

Search engine optimization practitioners are often divided into two camps: the so-called Black Hats, who use questionable techniques to trick the search engines into ranking them highly, and White Hats, who prefer to work with the search engines guidelines in order to achieve lasting success. A number of Black Hat vendors have turned to White Hat techniques over the past year; however, there are still many unethical vendors claiming to practice SEO soliciting business.

Below are some basic spam techniques to avoid. Obviously this list isn't exhaustive but it will give you a good idea of the types of things that the search engines find to be unacceptable. Familiarize yourself with Google's Webmaster Guidelines and make sure you know if what is being done to your Web site is in agreement with those rules.

Keyword Stuffing: This practice involves the repetitive use of the same keyword phrase over and over in your Meta tags, Comment tags, ALT tags or in the copy on your pages. When determining the appropriate keyword density for your page content, plan to repeat your targeted keywords no more than six or seven times within 200 words of text on one page. You can use the keyword density analyzer available on our free SEO tools page in order to determine if you or your SEO is using a particularly keyword too often.

Hidden Text or Links: This practice involves inserting hidden text or links that are readable by search engine spiders but cannot be seen by your site's human visitors. This can be accomplished several way, the easiest of which is by using a white link or white text containing relevant keywords on a Web page with a white background. Your site visitors won't be able to see this text and will not know it is there, but the search engines will. All search engines consider hidden links or hidden text to be spam and will penalize the page, if not the entire site, for it.

Cloaking: This involves using a software program to direct search spiders to a group of pages specifically created to trick the spider and re-direct the user to a different set of pages. The user does not see the group of spam pages and is simultaneously re-directed to the real site. Cloaking can have proper uses--some sites use it to redirect based on location. For example, if they sell a product that is illegal to market in a particular area, they can direct those users to a different page where the illegal products are not mentioned. However, by and large, cloaking is used to deceive the search engines and must be considered a spam technique.

Doorway Pages: Also known as Gateway or Bridge pages, these are low-quality Web pages that exist only to pass visitors to the main Web site without providing value of their own. Doorway pages are used to achieve high rankings for a particular key phrase while leading the user to a different page irrelevant to the search query. These pages frequently auto refresh to a second Web site. Be sure that every page on your site that you want indexed can be accessed by at least two internal links and that the page provides value to the user.

Mirror Sites and Duplicate Content: This involves the creation of several sites with identical content and placing them on multiple servers with different domain names. These sites link to one another and are constructed for the purpose of achieving multiple rankings for identical keywords using the same content. Search engines suppress duplicate content because it holds no value for their users. An optimization company who suggests that you interlink all the Web sites that you own is doing you a great disservice. These types of incestuous link rings are a clear violation of the search engine's spam guidelines.

Link Farms: Google's quality guidelines suggest that pages contain no more than 99 links. Link farms typically consist of one page with hundreds of links to sites within different categories that are unrelated to your site content. Such pages contain poor quality content that is useless to visitors. Reciprocal links from these pages hold no value for you at all and could potentially associate you with poor neighborhoods. Avoid these inbound links at all costs because they will result in serious penalties and banning.

Ask any prospective search engine optimization company about their best practices and be sure you know what they're doing to your pages. Beware of spammers who claim to be legitimate search engine optimization experts. Realize that no company can guarantee results and if a company claims a special relationship with Google or any other search engine, run the other way.

Unethical SEO techniques can bring you high rankings; however, visibility is short lived. When you use spamming techniques, your site may benefit briefly from high rankings that last for days, weeks or months. Once the search engines discover the use of spamming techniques, they will penalize or ban your site from their indexes. If you are removed from a search engine index, it can be difficult and time consuming to be reinstated. You might even have to start over with a new domain name. So beware of unethical SEO techniques and ask any prospective vendors if they adhere to a Code of Ethics and/or a Code of Conduct. Once achieved legitimately, organic links can last indefinitely. That's why it's important to acquire your search

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

IP Addresses and How They Apply To Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

IP Addresses and How They Apply To Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you are new to the internet, often times things can seem quite overwhelming. People throw around terms like IP addresses, name servers, hostíng, ftp, etc.
In this article we are going to cover IP Addresses. You'll learn exactly what they are and how they apply to search engine optimization (SEO).

IP Address stands for Internet Protocol Address and is currently made up of four "octets" or numbers separated by a period. Each octet can be a number from 0 to 255 .

Some examples of valid IP addresses are - 1.123.150.243, 35.35.36.10, 240.216.1.80

There is also a new standard for IP addresses that is slowly being launched called IPV6 (IP version 6). IPV6 numbers look quite different from our current IP addresses.

An example of an IPV6 IP address is -
2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334

You will notice each is much longer with MANY more possible variations. The new IP system is designed to give us enough IP addresses so that we will not run out of unique IP addresses any time in the foreseeable future.

So why do we need IP addresses? Quite simply, an IP address is like your physical home address. It designates a specific computer that is connected to the internet. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. This is necessary for it to send and receive information.

When you type in a website name, for example mine, http://www.sesecrets.com, that name is translated into an IP address that is then used to "find" my site. In the current set of IP addresses, going from left to right, the first "octet" is the most broad, with each successive octet getting more and more granular or specific.

To explain that a bit better.

134 - is VERY broad
134.125 - is still quite broad, but getting more specific
134.125.244 - is getting more specific and probably refers to a specific web host
134.125.244.1 - is as specific as you can get and refers to a specific computer

You will often hear of different classes such as class A, class B and class C talked about when dealing with IP addresses. Below I've given some examples of what people are referring to when talking about classes.

Class A
134.###.###.###
240.###.###.###
22.###.###.###

Class B
134.254.###.###
36.36.###.###
36.37.###.###

Class C
254.210.135.###
36.36.1.###
36.36.2.###

It's often easiest to think of IP addresses as physical addresses, with the Class A octet being similar to country, Class B, being a city in that country, Class C being a street in that city, and the last octet being a specific house on that street.

So, by looking above you should be able to see that when someone talks about a Class A IP address they are referring to the first "octet" and when they say that two IP addresses are on different Class A subnets, it simply means the first set of numbers are different.

So for example

255.123.124.255
34.123.124.255

are on different Class A's. While the rest of the IP addresses are the same, because they are on different Class As, they are VERY far apart (remember, Class A is the most broad).

The same goes for Class B. Class B refers to the second octet of numbers. When someone says that two IP addresses are on different Class B's, it simply means that the the second octet's of each IP is different. The IPs may be on the same Class A or it may be different, but the second Octet of numbers is different. To better explain...look below.

255.123.124.255
255.34.124.255
34.34.124.255

In the above example, the first two IP addresses are on the same Class A, but different Class B's. The third IP address, has the same Class B number (34), but because the first Octet is different, it is also on a different Class B ( as with physical addresses, two countries can have the same city names, but they are still different cities).

For class C we are looking at the third octet.

255.123.124.255
255.123.34.255
34.42.124.255

Again, the first two above are on different Class C's, while the third has the same class C number as the first, but it's first and second octets are different, so it's also on a different Class C.

I hope the above makes sense to you. I've tried to give plenty of examples to make it clear no matter what your tech background is.

The good news is, that you hardly ever have to mess with IP addresses. When you get a web hostíng account for your domain name, your host will assign your domain name and IP address. You often don't even HAVE to know it. Generally your host will set all this up for you without you having to understand any of it. From that point on, when someone types in your domain name, that name will then be converted to your assigned IP address and voila...your visitor winds up at your site.

Source: SiteProNews John Buchanan

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Tip: Each Web Page Stands On Its Own For SEO Rankings

SEO Tip: Each Web Page Stands On Its Own For SEO Rankings

Did you know that every page of your Web site stands on its own?

Every page should have a unique title, description, and keyword tag.
The description tag should describe ONLY that page.

The keyword tag should include keywords for just that page.

Include 5-6 keywords, including the main keyword phrase and synonyms of that keyword phrase.

Don't make the mistake of including every keyword that could possibly describe what your site is about in your keyword tag. Make your keyword meta tag specific for each page.

The keyword tag holds very little importance anyway, but be sure to make it page specific. FOCUS!

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Hot Trends Added To Google Trends

Hot Trends Added To Google Trends


Google has launched a meme-like feature to Google Trends. The Google Trends home page now has a section named "Hot Trends," which shows the hottest queries for the day. You can also look back historically and see the hottest queries for that day. Plus, Google Trends upgraded the trends history to show not only country data in the regions box but also state and even city detail - worldwide.

What defines a "hot trend"? Google told me they use a very sophisticated algorithm to determine what is "hot." I was told to think of it as Google noticing a "sudden rise" in a query phrase that is not in the norm for that query. The higher the rise, the hotter the query is. Google has a "hotness level" score for these queries, the hottest is "volcanic", followed by "on fire," "spicy," "medium" and "mild."

The Google Trends home page has been enhanced to include these Hot Trends. It will show the top ten hot trends for the day, for the United States (that's the only country currently being supported).

As you can see, you can click to view "more hot searches" at the end of the list. Clicking that link will show you a list of a 100 hot trends for that day, sorted by the hotness score. Also, you can then "change date" on this page to go back in history to see what were the hottest trends for a date in the past. See complete details at below source

Source: SearchEngineLand

Google Blog on Hot Trends

For more than six years, we have compiled a regular list of popular searches called the Google Zeitgeist. This has been our way to highlight the sorts of queries people type into the Google search box every day. More recently, we unveiled Google Trends to show the popularity of search terms in relation to each other overtime, and how different cities or regions may care (or not) about the trends.

And today we're introducing a new toy we are calling Hot Trends. It's a new feature of Google Trends for sharing the the hottest current searches with you in very close to real time. What's on our collective mind as we search for information? What's interesting to people right now? Hot Trends will tell you. At a glance, you'll see the huge variety of topics capturing our attention, from current events to daily crossword puzzle clues to the latest celebrity gossip. Hot Trends is updated throughout the day, so check back often.

For each Hot Trend, you will see results from Google News, Google Blog Search and web search, which help explain why the search is hot. For example, the #7 item on Thursday, May 17th was the cryptic phrase [creed thoughts]. The associated news stories and blog results show that this odd term is the name of a fake website mentioned on the season finale of The Office. Mystery solved. Of course, some searches are not as easily explained. Visit the Hot Trends group to read the explanations of others and offer your own.

If you want to look further back, you can also see what queries were hot on a particular day. On Wednesday, May 16th, [melinda doolittle], [halo 3 beta], and [ge dishwasher recall] were on the Hot Trends list. If you don't know why, maybe you'll learn something.

Hot Trends aren't the search terms people look for most often -- those are pretty predictable, like [weather] or [games] or perhaps [myspace]. Yes, [sex] too. Instead, the Hot Trends algorithm analyzes millions of searches to find those that are deviating the most relative to their past traffic. And the outcome is the Hot Trends list.

In addition to Hot Trends, we've updated Google Trends so that it's easier to use and, we hope, more useful to you. In addition to viewing the top search terms by country and city, you can view the top "subregions" (e.g. states within the U.S.) across more than 70 countries. You can now compare the leading presidential candidates around the country, for instance, or find out which states have the worst mosquito problems.

With the release of Hot Trends, we're retiring the weekly Zeitgest list, but we will still compile monthly lists for each country, and will continue our annual year-end roll-ups too.

Hot Trends is currently available only in English, but we hope to release international versions in the future.

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Tip: Look for common statements and change them

SEO Tip: Look for common statements

Go through your site and look for common statements like:

Click here for a quote, or Click here for more information.

These are areas where you can include keyword phrases.
For example, Click here for a mortgage loan quote, or Click here for more graphic arts information. Be sure to make the entire sentence a link, or at least make the keyword phrase a link. And be sure the link is absolute. That means not pagename.html but the link should be http://www.websitename.com/page-name.html

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Is Your SEO Strategy Global

Is Your SEO Strategy Global

"But can't I just optimize my U.S. site and then translate it?"

Sound familiar? I can't tell you how many times I've heard that from large global organizations. If only it was that easy. Unfortunately, it's not. The fact is, SEO presents unique challenges for global organizations, especially when the offering is essentially the same, but accessible worldwide.

Developing an SEO strategy for a global brand in one country is no easy task; but just thinking about launching that brand globally can be overwhelming for some. However, as daunting as the task may seem, if you have a strong international presence, you should start thinking about SEO globally from day one.

If you don't – depending on how your Web sites are managed and how your technology is setup – optimizing your site for just one country might create more challenges in the long run. Ultimately, when you eventually begin thinking about a global strategy, it may even cause you to go back and change what you've changed once already.

Quite simply, if you have a global presence, your SEO strategy should be global as well. Below are a few things to keep in mind when developing your strategy.

Language
To begin, let's all agree that search is search and that relevancy is relevancy, and that it holds true all around the globe. Consequently, there is no reason for the core of an algorithm to act differently depending on where you are in the world. However, from a user's perspective, search needs to be relevant to their location. This is especially true in regard to language.

But when it comes to extending brand presence around the globe, some marketers think that all they need to do is hire a translation company and create some additional pages. Unfortunately, that approach won't suffice.

To be most effective, content needs be localized in many ways, whether it is an alternate spelling for a word, the vernacular used by the locals, or even the slang that is common for the region. For example, a hotel is a hotel regardless of its location in the world, but the site's content needs to speak to the locals – it needs to match how they search. Given that I'm Australian, I would never go on a "vacation," but instead a "holiday." I may also use language such as "get away" or "RDO weekend" to find a hotel for a long weekend. Can anyone guess what an "RDO" is?

The biggest challenge with adjusting content to reflect local language trends is the risk of excluding those who are searching from outside the area. For example, if a large travel entity such as Marriott or Hilton have a hotel in downtown Sydney, should they optimize their content for Australians, using language such as "holidays" and "get aways?" Or, should they instead focus on "vacations" because they're trying to attract visitors from the U.S.? Ultimately, they will either have to settle on language that speaks to a particular audience, or they will have multiple variations of the exact same property (which could raise concerns about duplicate content issues).

Web Address
It's interesting to see the many ways that large organizations skin this cat. For example, Apple and Microsoft utilize subfolders to distinguish between various language versions of their Web site. Sites like Mercedes-Benz.com, Nokia, and Google use country domain extensions. And sites such as Yahoo and MSN mix it up a little and use either country domain extension or unique sub-domains for each country.

So, which strategy is better? While each approach has unique benefits, there are many factors that go into making the decision, such as technical constraints, content management systems, and even local business owners – all of which are usually outside the marketing department's control.

But beyond those elements, it is also equally important to keep in mind the specific audience you seek, which engines are key in any given country, and more importantly, how they work by default. Since results are favored by default to the country where the search takes place, you may want to exhaust the possibility of creating country domain extensions with country-specific content. For example, if I'm viewing Google in Australia and I conduct a search, by default the results are served from pages pertaining to Australia, unless I check the "search the Web" radio box before I click the search button. How many people do you think change the default setting? Therefore, if you don't have a local domain extension, you're at a disadvantage.

Management of a Global SEO Strategy
Managing a global brand is tough enough as it is; the last thing you need is a renegade that may threaten your search presence in any given market, or globally for that matter. Therefore, it is incredibly important that someone within the organization take the lead on your global SEO strategy. While individual stake holders within given countries can run their own local efforts, a centrally coordinated and managed strategy will be the most effective. Specifically, there should be rules of engagement, guidelines, and best practices that become institutionalized globally so that everyone involved is on the same page. Such an approach could prove instrumental, especially in countries where the management and ownership of the Web presence is an even bigger challenge because it is decentralized and so many people are involved.

I realize that this may sound easier than it actually is, especially considering that SEO rules differ around the globe. Also, the rules are often challenged by one individual or another, and can be viewed as corporate dictating. But ultimately, a centralized SEO strategy will be worth the effort. And while it should be centrally developed and managed, localized support is paramount. It will not only foster buy-in, it will also provide insight from local experts that will ensure you're always thinking like the locals.

Overall, developing a global SEO strategy is not an easy undertaking – not by a long shot. However, if you have a worldwide presence, you should be thinking about SEO globally…and sooner rather than later.

Source: SearchEngineWatch. John Tawadros is COO of iProspect. John brings international technology-service experience to the company, where he provides support to iProspect's clients and ensures that the company continues to refine its search engine marketing technology, tools and processes. He is also responsible for new product development and iProspect's search engine partnerships.

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Firm Banned For Life By FTC

SEO Firm Banned For Life By FTC

NOTE: This is why it is so important to really ask
the SEO company questions before you hire them. Read How To Pick An SEO Company

Netvertise, Inc. and owner Elliot Krasnow were banned for life from promoting or selling franchises or business opportunities by the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC alleges the company violated federal law by selling franchises for Website design, promotion services, and SEO software under false claims.

In addition to the ban, Netvertise will have to return $160,000 to its customers, as part of a settlement, which is not technically an admission of guilt.

The FTC claims the company inflated the earnings customers would make with their services and Netspace SEO software to lure franchise buyers.

In addition, the FTC was none to pleased to learn that Krasnow, who'd been in trouble with them before, back in 1990, for misrepresentations about rare coins he was selling, didn't disclose his checkered past to franchisees as required by law.

The rare coins mess 17 years ago cost Krasnow $400,000.

And now, he and his company are banned offline and on the Web from promoting or selling franchises or business opportunities.

Netvertise sold its franchises for between $20,000 and $100,000, offering various Web services to small- and medium-sized businesses, including the construction and promotion of Websites, use of email marketing, and off-site data protection.

The franchise also included Netspace's SEO software, which Netvertise promised would create Websites that ranked on the first page of search engine results pages.

The FTC says Krasnow's company misrepresented franchise incomes with unsubstantiated earnings claims, overstated the value of the Netspace software, and that the Netvertise provided consumers with "defective" disclosure documents.

No earnings claim documents were provided to franchisees.

The lifetime ban from the franchise and promotion business is covered under the Franchise Rule and the Business Opportunity Rule.

The FTC brought similar charges against Netfran Development Corp., also run by Krasnow, but the defendant was dismissed on May 9 of this year.

Source: WebProNews Jason Lee Miller

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Yahoo! Search Engine Update

Yahoo! Search Engine Update

Tim Mayer of Yahoo informed us that there will be a Yahoo Search index update tonight. Tim said we should "expect minor changes" over the next few days. The update will conclude this Friday. Below is the Yahoo! Update Announcement

We just rolled out a new search index last night. So, as usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index throughout this process. This update should be complete very soon.

Thank you to all that have submitted spam reports through Site Explorer. These reports are continuously being included in our index updates. We've received some very high-quality feedback and have found these useful to keep spam out of our results.

Other Yahoo! News

"Searching" for Ways to Be a Better Planet
A few weeks ago, Yahoo! launched a brand marketing campaign called, "Be a Better ________" which was designed to inspire people to become better at whatever interests them and, in turn, explore how Yahoo! services can get them there. We hope Yahoo! users are inspired to fulfill their passions.

Here at Yahoo! we're taking our own advice and, as a result, have created the "Be a Better Planet" program to promote environmental dedication and to help affect climate change. The program invites everyone to participate in making a better planet, by doing one of three things: visiting Yahoo! Green and taking the "Green Pledge" to commit to lowering carbon emissions; contributing to the growing collection of knowledge and advice about environmental issues, by joining the conversations at Yahoo! Answers; or proactively looking for opportunities to live a greener life by performing "green" searches on Yahoo! OneSearch. Based on the total number of points earned for each green action, participants will receive a free energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulb and contribute to their hometown's overall ranking for a chance to win a fleet of hybrid taxis for their entire city.

For more details on how you can help "be a better planet," click here.

Source: http://www.ysearchblog.com/

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http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

SEO Tip: Title Tags and Keywords

SEO Tip: Title Tags and Keywords

Search for your most important keyword phrases. Look at your competitors' titles and descriptions. How do yours compare with theirs? Make sure your titles and descriptions are more compelling and designed to grab the visitors' attention immediately. Ask for several people's opinion on this -- your opinion may be too biased.

If you're just listing keywords in your title and description versus a compelling title and description, rewrite your tags immediately. Be sure that the keywords that you use are specific for the page. Your Title tags need to be different for each page of your web site.

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Which web page elements lead to high Google rankings?

New study: which web page elements lead to high Google rankings?

Warning: No one knows how Google algorythms work.
This study is just one of many and the resuklts that they found to be consistent

The German company Sistrix analyzed the web page elements of top ranked pages in Google to find out which elements lead to high Google rankings. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords, and for every keyword, they analyzed the top 100 Google search results.

Which web page elements lead to high Google rankings?

Sistrix analyzed the influence of the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank.

Keywords in the title tag seem to be important for high rankings on Google. It is also important that the targeted keywords are mentioned in the body tag, although the title tag seems to be more important.

Keywords in H2-H6 headline tags seem to have an influence on the rankings while keywords in H1 headline tags don't seem to have an effect.

Using keywords in bold or strong tags seems to have a slight effect on the top rankings. Web pages that used the keywords in image file names often had higher rankings. The same seems to be true for keywords in image alt attributes.

Websites that use the targeted keyword in the domain name often had high rankings. It might be that these sites get many inbound links with the domain name as the link text.

Keywords in the file path don't seem to have a positive effect on the Google rankings of the analyzed web sites. Web pages that use very few parameters in the URL (?id=123, etc.) or no parameters at all tend to get higher rankings than URLs that contain many parameters.

The file size doesn't seem to influence the ranking of a web page on Google although larger sites tend to have slightly higher rankings.

It's no surprise that the number of inbound links and the PageRank had a large influence on the page rankings on Google. The top result on Google has usually about four times as many links as result number 11.

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Taking advantage of Google universal search

Taking advantage of Google universal search

Yesterday, at Searchology, we unveiled exciting changes in our search results. With universal search, we've begun blending results from more than just the web in order to provide the most relevant and useful results possible. In addition to web pages, for instance, the search results may include video, news, images, maps, and books. Over time, we'll continue to enhance this blending so that searchers can get the exact information they need right from the search results.

This is great news for the searcher, but what does it mean for you, the webmaster? It's great news for you as well. Many people do their searches from web search and aren't aware of our many other tools to search for images, news, videos, maps, and books. Since more of those results may now be returned in web search, if you have content that is returned in these others searches, more potential visitors may see your results.

Want to make sure you're taking full advantage of universal search? Here are some tips:

Google News results
If your site includes news content, you can, submit your site for inclusion in Google News. Once your site is included, you can let us know about your latest articles by submitting a News Sitemap. (Note News Sitemaps are currently available for English sites only.)News Archive resultsIf you have historical news content (available for free or by subscription), you can submit it for inclusion in News Archive Search.

Image results
If your site includes images, you can opt-in to enhanced Image search in webmaster tools, which will enable us to gather additional metadata about your images using our Image Labeler. This helps us return your images for the most relevant queries. Also ensure that you are fully taking advantage of the images on your site.

Local results
If your site is for a business in a particular geographic location, you can provide information to us using our Local Business Center. By providing this information, you can help us provide the best, locally relevant results to searchers both in web search and on Google Maps.

Video results
If you have video content, you can host it on Google Video, YouTube, or a number of other video hosting providers. If the video is a relevant result for the query, searchers can play the video directly from the search results page (for Google Video and YouTube) or can view a thumbnail of the video then click over to the player for other hosting providers. You can easily upload videos to Google Video or to YouTube.

Our goal with universal search is to provide most relevant and useful results, so for those of you who want to connect to visitors via search, our best advice remains the same: create valuable, unique content that is exactly what searchers are looking for.

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
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Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Links To Interior Pages

Links To Interior Pages

Are you working toward getting links to your interior pages?

If any of your interior pages are of particular importance to you, work on building some link popularity to those pages individually.

Remember: link popularity is "page specific," NOT "site specific."

http://www.ontheavenues.com/
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

How focused is your Web site to your customers' needs

How focused is your Web site to your customers' needs

How focused is your Web site to your customers' needs versus your needs?
Remember that your Web site should be built for your customer with words spoken just for your customer.

Visit the "We We Monitor" to see how customer focused your Web site copy really is.http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant OnTheAvenues.com

Google’s New Universal Results and SEO Factors

Google Introduces New Search Features and Unveils New Homepage Design

Google’s New Universal Results and SEO Factors

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 16, 2007) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced its critical first steps toward a universal search model that will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online. The company also introduced an updated homepage design and several new navigation features that make it faster and easier for users to find the information they are looking for.

"Our focus has always been making our users' search experience as simple and straightforward as possible," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. "The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query. While we still have a long way to go, today's announcements are a big step in that direction."

Google's vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for. Beginning today, the company will incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results. At first, universal search results may be subtle. Over time users will recognize additional types of content integrated into their search results as the company advances toward delivering a truly comprehensive search experience.

For example, a user searching for information on the Star Wars character Darth Vader is likely interested in all the information related to the character and the actor – not just web pages that mention the movie. Google will now deliver a single set of blended search results that include a humorous parody of the movie, images of the Darth Vader character, news reports on the latest Lucas film, as well as websites focused on the actor James Earl Jones – all ranked in order of relevance to the query. Users no longer have to visit several different Google search properties to find such a wide array of information on the topic.

The Power of Google Technology
Google is also in the process of deploying a new technical infrastructure that will enable the search engine to handle the computationally intensive tasks required to produce universal search results. The company is also releasing the first stage of an upgraded ranking mechanism that automatically and objectively compares different types of information. As always, Google™ search results are ranked automatically by algorithms to deliver the best results to users anywhere in the world.

"Google has continued to concentrate on improving the quality of search," said Udi Manber, vice president of engineering at Google. "The level and speed of search innovation at Google has increased. Most of this innovation addresses basic ranking algorithms and is often not obvious to users. Users just see more accurate results, more often, in more languages, which is our primary goal."

New Navigation Features
New dynamically generated navigation links have been added above the search results to suggest additional information that is relevant to a user's query. For example, a search for "python" will now generate links to Google Blog Search™, Google Book Search™, Google Groups™, and Google Code™, to let the user know there is additional information on his or her query in each of those areas. As a result, users can find a wider array of information on their topic, including data types they might not have initially considered.

Google's homepage and a number of applications have also been updated with a new navigation bar to provide easier access to popular Google products. Now, instead of having links above the Google.com homepage search box, users will see a navigation bar on the top left side of the page with various Google search properties and popular products including Gmail™, Google Calendar™, Google Docs & Spreadsheets™, and Picasa Web Albums™.

Experience the Experiments
Google also announced today a new experimental version of its popular search service called Google Experimental™, available on Google Labs™. This new test site provides users an opportunity to try out some of the latest search experiments and innovations and provide Google with feedback. One of the first experiments to be featured on the site enables users to view their search results on a map or timeline. For instance, when someone searches for "Albert Einstein" on Google Experimental, they can choose to view the search results on a map that shows locations mentioned within web pages about Albert Einstein or on a timeline that illustrates the history of Albert Einstein's life. More information on Google Experimental search is available at Google Labs at http://labs.google.com.

About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant OnTheAvenues.com

SEO Tip: Text Link Names and Absolute Links

SEO Tip: Text Link Names

At the bottom of your pages, do you have a straight text link pointing back to your home page? Does it say "home"? If so, this isn't doing your site any