Yahoo Rejects Microsoft Bid

Yahoo Rejects Microsoft Bid

Yahoo Inc. has formally rejected Microsoft Corp.'s $44.6 billion takeover bid as inadequate. The response had been expected after Yahoo's intentions were leaked over the weekend.

Yahoo's rebuff raises the stakes in a battle involving two of the world's most prominent technology companies.

Many analysts expect Microsoft to raise its offer by $5 billion to $12 billion to entice Yahoo to sell. Yahoo is believed to want a bid of at least $56 billion, or about $40 per share.

Microsoft's first offer, which was made public Feb. 1, was originally valued at $31 per share. Microsoft also could take its bid directly to Yahoo shareholders.

The decision could provoke a showdown between two of the world's most prominent technology companies with Internet search leader Google Inc. looming in the background. Leery of Microsoft expanding its turf on the Internet, Google already has offered to help Yahoo avert a takeover and urged antitrust regulators to take a hard look at the proposed deal.

If the world's largest software maker wants Yahoo badly enough, Microsoft could try to override Yahoo's board by taking its offer — originally valued at $31 per share — directly to the shareholders. Pursuing that risky route probably will require Microsoft to attempt to oust Yahoo's current 10-member board.

Alternatively, Microsoft could sweeten its bid. Many analysts believe Microsoft is prepared to offer as much as $35 per share for Yahoo, which still boasts one of the Internet's largest audiences and most powerful advertising vehicles despite a prolonged slump that has hammered its stock.

Yahoo's board reached the decision after exploring a wide variety of alternatives during the past week, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press. The person didn't want to be identified because the reasons for Yahoo's rebuff won't be officially spelled out until Monday morning.

Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment Saturday on the decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on its Web site.

Yahoo's board concluded Microsoft's offer is inadequate even though the company couldn't find any other potential bidders willing to offer a higher price.

Without other suitors on the horizon, Yahoo has had little choice but to turn a cold shoulder toward Microsoft if the board hopes to fulfill its responsibility to fetch the highest price possible for the company, said technology investment banker Ken Marlin.

"You would expect Yahoo's board to reject Microsoft at first," Marlin said. "If they didn't, they would be accused of malfeasance."

But by spurning Microsoft, Yahoo risks further alienating shareholders already upset about management missteps that have led to five consecutive quarters of declining profits.

The downturn caused Yahoo's stock price to plummet by more than 40 percent, erasing about $20 billion in shareholder wealth, in the three months leading up to Microsoft's bid.

Seizing on an opportunity to expand its clout on the Internet, Microsoft dangled a takeover offer that was 62 percent above Yahoo's stock price of just $19.18 when the bid was announced Feb. 1. Yahoo shares ended the past week at $29.20.

Led by company co-founder and board member Jerry Yang, Yahoo now will be under intense pressure to lay out a strategy that will prevent its stock price from collapsing again. What's more, Yang and the rest of the management team must convince Wall Street that they can boost Yahoo's market value beyond Microsoft's offer.

Yahoo's shares traded at $31 as recently as November, but have eroded steadily amid concerns about the slowing economy and frustration with the slow pace of a turnaround that Yang promised last June when he replaced former movie studio mogul Terry Semel as Yahoo's chief executive officer.

This isn't the first time that Yahoo has spurned Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based company offered $40 per share to buy Yahoo a year ago only to be shooed away by Semel, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person didn't want to be identified because that bid was never made public.

Yahoo now may want that Microsoft to raise its price to at least $40 per share again. That would force Microsoft to raise its current offer by about $12 billion — a high price that might alarm its own shareholders.

Microsoft's stock price already has slid 12 percent since the company announced its Yahoo bid, reflecting concerns about the deal bogging down amid potential management distractions, sagging employee morale and other headaches that frequently arise when two big companies are combined.

Although it isn't involved directly in the deal, Google is the main reason Yahoo is being pursued by Microsoft.

Yahoo has struggled largely because it hasn't been able to target online ads as effectively as Google.

Microsoft believes Yahoo's brand, engineers, audience and services will provide the company with valuable weapons in its so far unsuccessful attempt to narrow Google's huge lead in the lucrative Internet search and advertising markets.

As it examined ways to thwart Microsoft, Yahoo considered an advertising partnership with Google — an alliance long favored by analysts who believe it would boost the profits of both companies. It was unclear Saturday if Yahoo's plans for boosting its stock price include a Google partnership, which would probably face antitrust issues.

A Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would also be scrutinized by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe. The antitrust uncertainties could be cited as one of the reasons that Yahoo's board decided to spurn Microsoft.

How Google, Yahoo & MSN Pick Your Organic Listing Description

How Google, Yahoo & MSN Pick Your Organic Listing Description

Having high rankings on search engines is a great thing. However, it's also important that your web pages are displayed with an attractive description in the search results. If the description is not appealing to web surfers then they might not click the link.

How do Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live create the descriptions and snippets that are used in the search results?

How Google creates descriptions and snippets

Google seems to use the description from the meta description tag if you search for a page by its URL, or if the searched keywords do not appear within the found page.

If the found web page doesn't have a meta description tag then Google seems to use the sentence that contains the searched keyword as the description.

If a web page is listed in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) then Google might also use the description that is used in the DMOZ directory.

How Yahoo creates descriptions and snippets

Yahoo seems to use only the first part of the meta description which is complemented by a text snippet from the searched page that contains the searched keyword.

If a web page doesn't have a meta description, Yahoo will use the description of the web page from Yahoo's directory (if the page is listed there).

If a web page has no meta description and is not listed in the Yahoo directory, then Yahoo will display sentences from the found web page that contain the searched keywords.

How MSN/Live creates descriptions and snippets

MSN/Live seems to use the first sentence that contains the searched keyword as the description. If the searched keyword does not appear on the page, MSN/Live seems to use the first sentence that appears on the page.

If available, MSN/Live will also use the DMOZ directory description in the results.

What does this mean for your web pages?

If you want to make sure that your web pages are listed with an appealing description in the search results, you should use meta descriptions on your web pages. If you don't want to use the description that is used in the Yahoo directory and on DMOZ.org you should use the corresponding tags that prevent search engines from using these descriptions.

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Until now, there has not been a magazine that caters exclusively to the business of running a website. Sure, there are many publications focusing on the affiliate industry, technology at large or the advertising and marketing community – but those periodicals focus primarily on news and act as an industry who’s who instead of offering practical advice for their audience.

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Don't Buy AdWords, Focus On SEO

Don't Buy AdWords, Focus On SEO

Over the weekend, with the sensational headline "Search & Destroy," (article below) the New York Post wrote up the forthcoming results of an "audit" from UK-based Internet Search Metrics (also called Internet Search Management). The Post article says the audit, which is not yet released, argues that the spending on paid-search is often unjustified and that more resources should be devoted to optimization.

If the audit is simply calling for balance and arguing in favor of devoting more effort and money to optimization, that's a sober recommendation. If it concludes, rather, that paid-search advertising has little or no merit that would be a mistaken position.

On Monday eBay resumed its AdWords campaigns on a "much more limited basis." Indeed, the highly publicized temporary withdrawal of eBay's paid-search campaigns on Google may prompt other big spending advertisers to take a closer look at their dependence on AdWords.

Source: SearchEngineLand

SEARCH & DESTROY
AUDIT COULD SIPHON AD $$ FROM GOOGLE

By RICHARD WILNER and HOLLY M. SANDERS
June 24, 2007 -- Paid search ads, responsible for the barrels of cash that have fueled Google's meteoric growth, could be one of the worst-spent marketing dollars on the Internet, according to an eye-catching audit of search results to be released this week.

Most executives, with little regard to how well their companies fare in the more important natural search results - the top sites that come up after an Internet search - overspend on paid search because it is the one area of the search market they understand, said a director with London-based ISM (Internet Search Management), which will release the audits.

"Executives know the battleground for business success today is being fought on the search engine but they know very little about how well their companies are faring on natural search or if their paid search advertising dollars are well spent," said Phil Millo, an ISM director.

As a result, Millo said, companies are pouring money into paid search - with a good deal of the cash not improving their marketing muscle.

Just this month, in a spat, eBay angrily pulled all of its advertising money from Google - and saw little drop-off in traffic. The move and its results have opened a lot of eyes.

"It's gotten to the point that if they're spending $100 million a year on paid links, maybe it's time to start reassessing where it's going," said Mark Simon, of Did-it Search Marketing, a firm that helps companies with their search marketing plans.

Indeed, eBay spent some of the money they withdrew from Google with Yahoo! and other sites.

Steve Grossberg, the president of the Internet Marketers Association, which represents some of eBay's biggest sellers, said the day eBay launched a Web banner campaign on the homepage of Yahoo! was his biggest sales day of the month.

Whether other large Google advertisers - like Amazon.com, Bizrate.com and Target.com - will follow suit remains to be seen.

ISM's audits track the top 4.5 million search phrases on Google and Yahoo!, a total of 7.3 billion searches a month, to determine which companies across 50 business sectors pop up most frequently in the top three or four positions in natural search. Natural search results are based mostly on a site's traffic, relevance and how many other sites link to it.

The ISM audits, to be released in London, break down which of 50 business sectors are locked up - that is, have large chunks of natural search dominated by a handful of companies - and which are wide open.

The digital camera sector is pretty well locked up, the audit found, meaning it would be very hard to create a Web site or Internet marketing campaign that would successfully steal market share.

DPReview.com, a site with news and reviews of digital cameras, the ISM audit found, was the leader, turning up in the top three or four search results on Google and Yahoo! 73.7 percent of the time. It was purchased last month by Amazon.com, which was looking to sell more cameras.

"It's quite interesting that Amazon.com didn't look to mount an Internet marketing campaign and purchase search ads to gain market share but rather bought a company few people [had] heard of but which produced excellent natural search results," Millo noted.

Google's own research shows surfers look toward natural search over paid search by a ration of 4-to-1, Millo said.

ISM is working with Wal-Mart, Staples and Mercedes-Benz to sharpen their Internet marketing strategies.

OnTheAvenues has been providing Search Engine Optimization services since 1998.
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
Bonnie Burns SEO Consultant

Microsoft - MSN: Building Stealth Search Engine

Microsoft: Team Building Stealth Search Engine

Microsoft has gathered a team of twenty or more “rock star” developers who’ve been tasked at building their next generation search engine, a source has told us. The team, which supposedly came together recently, is based at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Mountain View.

We have few details on their approach to the product, other than hearing that it is definitely a “horizontal” engine (so, it’s not limited to a specific vertical like images), and is “very cool.”

Microsoft moved Sanaz Ahari down to Silicon Valley to lead the project. Ahari was previously on the Live.com team, and was reportedly the youngest lead product manager in Microsoft history at 23. She was part of the core team that developed the start.com product, which was later renamed live.com. Fast Company recently wrote an article on her.

Source: TechCrunch

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

MSN, Yahoo! partnership envisioned

MSN, Yahoo! partnership envisioned

The marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo! didn't happen as the tabloids predicted, but I wonder if the aging Internet giants will try a domestic partnership instead.

I've been thinking this since I met with Scott Moore, the former head of Microsoft's online-content group, who left two years ago to run the Yahoo! news and information group. Moore, 46, didn't say anything about the companies merging and didn't drop any hints. But the more I learned about his company's strategy, the more a partnership, with MSN at least, seemed to make sense.

Here's my theory.

Search is a great business, but the fascination with it is starting to fade. Search is becoming a utility we take for granted; content is where the Web's sizzling now.

No wonder Google bought YouTube. Google's also creating content in the form of online productivity applications.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has cut back on content initiatives and focused on building its search business.

Content has always been Yahoo!'s strength, but it doesn't have applications to respond to Google's new thrust. A partnership could fill these gaps, without sacrificing their franchises.

Some say Microsoft and Yahoo! could never overcome their cultural differences, yet Moore and other executives have cross-pollinated the companies in recent years.

About the time Moore moved south, Microsoft hired Yahoo! research director Gary Flake to run its Web laboratory. Then it hired another Californian, former Ask.com Chief Executive Steve Berkowitz, to run MSN and other online services.

This theory didn't come from Moore. We mostly talked about the media business, over smoothies at the Washington Athletic Club in April.

But the synergies made sense after our conversation, when the merger talk resurfaced. Draw your own conclusions. Here are some edited excerpts:

Q: MSN has been pretty low profile recently. What do you think is happening? Will it turn around?

A: By rights, I would say Microsoft should be the dominant online-media company. If you go back to the late 1990s when Bill [Gates] sent the famous Internet tidal-wave memo and galvanized the company to go hard core after the Internet, it really felt that we were going to build a massive business. You could see the future as it has played out.

But broadband took longer to deploy than the early projections and Microsoft felt it wasn't such a good investment, so they pulled way back.

Then Google came along and all the focus went to search and away from the media stuff.

I don't know what they're going to do next, I really don't. On the one hand it makes me sad a bit, as somebody who spent a long time there and still has tons of respect for the company and still owns the stock.

On the other hand, I'm just happy they're not a bigger, tougher competitor than they are right now. I prefer it that way, given where I work right now.

Q: So Microsoft was ahead of one wave, then behind the next one. Are we entering another content cycle?

A: Where the attention or where the buzz goes, it's hard for me to predict that, but there's no question that the Internet as a media, as a content-creating, consuming activity for tens and hundreds of millions of people, is just going to continue to boom. It's just on a steady upward trajectory.

When you look at the percentage of time spent across all media, the Internet is the only one that's growing fast, almost all the rest of them are declining.

The thing about search, nobody took search seriously as a business until four or five years ago.

People always looked at it as, yeah, you should have it so people can find the content.

Then Google figured out how to monetize search, and it's just unbelievably profitable and efficient as a marketing tool. Yahoo! has a strong play in search as well, but at the end of the day we search to find something to consume.

The time spent in search is very, very small compared to the time spent in [other activities].

E-mail is the top time-spent category of activity; I think news is second or third after that. Search is way down the list. It just turns out that in efficiency of monetization, it's at the top.

Q: Google's new content is apparently going to be applications. Microsoft has a story there, Yahoo! doesn't. Will Yahoo! offer productivity apps?

A: I hope not.

One of the things I really liked about going to Yahoo! was I could see two years ago that Google and Microsoft were headed for a head-on collision, not only in search but over productivity applications. It's already a war; it's going to be a long and bloody war.

I think Yahoo! has the opportunity and is taking advantage of being an alternative to both Microsoft and Google, both for advertisers and users.

Our core business is a media business. We're a media company that's driven by technology; that's how we talk about it. Whether it's search advertising or display advertising selling on our Web sites, that's our core business, that's what we want to do.

Q: People keep talking about Microsoft and Yahoo! getting together. AOL and Google also have a partnership; could there be a merger there?

MSN, Yahoo! partnership envisioned

A: I would be very surprised if Google bought AOL. They certainly, I'm sure, like having the search business, it's a lot of search volume, but it's fundamentally a different business, the content business, the media side of the business.

From everything I've read and seen and from people I've talked to there, Google is not interested in the content business. They want to stay focused on search and they want to figure out what the next big thing is that isn't search.

In terms of Yahoo!, Yahoo! used to power Microsoft search through Overture and then Microsoft pulled out of that deal.

We would love to have their business again if they decide to do that, but I'm sure Microsoft is going to stay committed to building their own [search] engine and driving that for themselves. But it's constantly evolving.

Q: You and other MSN managers left, then Microsoft hired some Californians. Any ideas how it will be reorganized next?

A: I've lost track. I've been gone two years and I don't know how many reorgs they've had since then.

That was one of the things that drove me nuts. I had four bosses in my last year at Microsoft.

It's hard to get a lot of traction when you're constantly churning management. That's been a nice thing about Yahoo! There's the media side and there's the search side. Those are our big levers, so everybody at the company is involved in one degree or another on those things.

Q: You run the biggest online news site, and you're increasing its focus on local news and content. Will newspapers be gone in five years?

A: No. There will be more consolidation that happens, but most newspapers have a good long life ahead of them.

Source: Seattle Times Business and Technology

http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://www.ontheavenues.com/

Get incoming links from websites that are considered authority sites

Get incoming links from websites that are considered authority sites

Hers is a fast, easy to use and free tool that finds "authority"
websites you need to get incoming links from

Get incoming links from websites that are considered "authority sites" and you are well on your way to getting ranked high in Google and other search engines.

Web sites that are ranked high on BOTH Google AND Yahoo are considered "authority sites."

To get ranked high, all you have to do is to find these authority sites and get them to link to your site.

Finding these authority websites could be a lot of work when you have several keyword phrases you want to rank high for, but here is a free tool that does all of the hard work for you (Below is an example and explanation of how to use the tool):

Click on the link below and you will see the Langreiter graph for the keyword phrase, "restaurant marketing plans."

(After you see how the tool works, enter your own keyword phrases to find the websites you need to get incoming links from.)

Here is the link:

(Note: Since the link below is a long link and wraps around, you will have to copy and past it into your browser. If you just click on it, you will cut off the part that's on the second line and you will not go to the right place.)

http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.html?q=restaurant+marketing+plans

The dots shown across the top represent the top 100 websites ranked on Google for the phrase entered in the box at the top of the page (restaurant marketing plans in this example). The dot at the left represents the site that is ranked #1 for the phrase and the dot at the extreme right of the page represents the site ranked in position #100.

The dots shown across the bottom represent the top 100 websites ranked on Yahoo for the phrase.

The blue dots represent the websites that are ranked in the top 10 0 on BOTH Google and Yahoo and the lines connecting blue dots show where the site is ranked on the other search engine.

(White dots represent websites that are ranked in the top 100 on only one of the search engines.)

Therefore, lines that are close to vertical near the left of the chart show websites that rank high on both search engines. Hover over the dots to see the URL of these authority websites and you will know the websites you need to try to get links from.

For example, the site ranked #1 on Yahoo for the phrase, "
restaurant marketing plans" is also ranked #5 on Google, so this would be considered an authority site on the subject of restaurant marketing plans. (Of course, these rankings may be different by the time you look, but you get the idea.)

Play with this tool and see what you can find out about the websites you need to get links from and while you're at, it check to see how much of an authority your site is for your important keyword phrases.

Of course, you still have to get these sites to link to your site, but at least, you will know the best waters to fish in.

http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://www.ontheavenues.com/

SEO Tip: You Must Have Sitemaps On Your Web Site

SEO Tip: You Must Have Sitemaps On Your Web Site

In November 2006, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft agreed to support the Sitemap protocol. The Sitemap protocol is a standard that can help you to submit all of your web pages to search engines.

Last week, Ask.com joined the team so that now all four major search engines support the Sitemap protocol. In addition, search engines can now automatically detect your Sitemaps file.

What are sitemaps and what is the official Sitemaps protocol?

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL:

• when it was last updated


• how often it usually changes


• how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site

That information helps search engines to more intelligently crawl your site. The Sitemaps protocol is a standard that makes it easier to create a sitemap that can be parsed by all search engines.

How can the Sitemaps protocol help your website?

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata.

The sitemap allows you to inform search engines about the pages on your website. Depending on how your website is structured, it can be easier for search engines to find all of your web pages if you use a sitemap.

How do search engines find my Sitemaps file? What's new?

The big four search engines Google, Yahoo, Live/MSN and Ask will now automatically index your Sitemaps file if you add a link to your Sitemaps file in your font robots.txt file.

All the major search engines regularly check the robots.txt of a website. Just add the following line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: http:/www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Of course, you can also actively inform Google and Yahoo about your Sitemap file. This is not possible with Live/MSN and Ask.

Does a Sitemaps file improve your search engine rankings?

Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that your web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

A sitemap helps search engines to find your web pages but it does not help you to get higher search engine rankings.

When search engines index your web pages, they must find optimized web page content and good inbound links. Search engines will only give your web pages high rankings if they have both.
The Sitemaps protocol can help you to inform search engines about your web pages.

In short...you must have a sitemap. Both xnl and static html sitemap for your web site.

www.ontheavenues.com
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://bonnieburns.wordpress.com/

SEO Tip: The Top SEO Concerns You Need To Have

SEO Tip: The Top SEO Concerns You Need To Have

This isn’t reverse engineering, says SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin, who called a virtual quorum of the top 37 minds in the SEO business. It’s a list of 35 factors that make up, in Fishkin’s estimation, 90-95 percent of what Google’s algorithm is looking for when determining rankings.

Fishkin and SEOMoz have been refining this list since 2005, whittling it down from over 200 important factors. This year’s guide received input, through voting and commenting, of search aficionados from Danny Sullivan to Jill Whalen to Eric Ward, all names you should recognize if you’ve been following this trade for any length of time.

The SEO report is divided into three sections: Top 10 Positive Factors; Most Controversial Factors; and Top 5 Negative Factors. If you don’t read it, in it’s entirety, then you aren’t very serious about SEO.

Sullivan’s not so sure about how they’re divided up, so he devised his own organized list, arranged by amount of control the webmaster has and the difficulty level. That post is also worth a look.

Google Algorithm’s Top 10 (Assumed) Positive Factors

1. Keyword Use In Title Tags – “Notice number one – that you have HTML title tags that reflect the key terms you want your page to be found for. That’s been the advice since I first starting writing about SEO back in 1996. Eleven years later – and even in the age of it’s all about links — it remains the top ranked tip by so many experts. – Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land.

2. Global Link Popularity of Site (The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web – both link quality and quantity) – “Think of a web page as a town. If a city has freeways, airports, train stations, bus shelters and a port, that’s a good indicator that it is an important hub. That orphaned web page with no links pointing to it? It may as well be a hidden tribe of Amazons that no one has discovered.” – Lucas Ng (a.k.a. shor), Fairfax Digital online marketing analyst.

3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link – “Anchor text of the inbound link is one of the most concise assessments another person can make about what your site/page is ‘about’.” – Mike McDonald, WebProNews

4. Link Popularity within Site’s Internal Link Structure (Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page) – “As mentioned on my blog, you can pulse a page’s rankings by including and excluding links to it from your home page.” – Russ Jones, Virante CTO.

5. Age of Site (Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines) – “We have seen new sites flourish as long as they have a clear connection to the ‘parent’ site that has already gained trust.” – Chris Boggs, Search Engine Land Associate Editor.

6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links To Site (The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword) – “We seem to have moved from analysis of simply anchor text, to including surrounding text and probably even page theme.” – Caveman, SEO/SEM Consultant.

7. Link Popularity of Site In Topical Community (The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world) – ” I’ve seen one of my sites goes from #39 to #1 right after I got 1 link… from the #1 spot on the keyword I was trying to get” – Guillaume Bouchard, CEO NVI Solutions.

8. Keyword Use in Body Text (Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page) – “If you are writing about ‘dogs’ then you should naturally use keywords related to ‘dogs’ within your content. If you don’t have keywords within your content it can become hard to rank for those terms.” – Neil Patel, Pronet Advertising.

9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site – “This is why people bought PageRank 7 site links for lots more than PageRank 6 links. The links were very valuable, and the information on how strong they were was very valuable (this is why it’s also very hard to GET an accurate read on anymore without an SEO shaman). – Todd Malicoat, Stuntdubl SEO Consulting.

10. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site (The frequency and timing of external sites linking to given domain) – “I don’t think getting fifty links overnight will kill you. Especially if those links are bringing traffic and from quality sites. Getting 100K links overnight and having no visitors or search queries as a result smells abit fishy no matter how you look at it.” – Rae Hoffman, Principal, Sugarrae SEO Consulting.

This isn’t reverse engineering, says SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin, who called a virtual quorum of the top 37 minds in the SEO business. It’s a list of 35 factors that make up, in Fishkin’s estimation, 90-95 percent of what Google’s algorithm is looking for when determining rankings.

www.ontheavenues.com
http://ontheavenues-diy-seo.blogspot.com/
http://bonnieburns.wordpress.com/

Demystifying Radically Different Keyword Results

Demystifying The Radically Different Keyword Results Provided by Yahoo/Overture and Wordtracker

To make my job easier...Robin Nobles (can't get a more professional SEO guru) did a through research on keywords, and Overture/Wordtracker. Written last year, but still reliable. This detail view of the ups and downs and heartache of selecting phrases.

The root of all success in search engine marketing begins with keywords. Period. Get them wrong and virtually everything about your online endeavor will fail. Only by targeting the right keywords can one expect to ride that exhilarating magic carpet
to online prosperity.

Stating the obvious you say? ...well, if so, then why is it that virtually everyone - professional and amateur alike - is oblivious to the fact they are selecting, and frequently buying, keywords based on highly skewed numbers?

The fact is that very few online marketers understand the results supplied by the two most basic keyword selection tools. These are the very same tools being used globally to hone keyword choices into supposedly laser sharp focus in an effort to keep pace with the challenges of increasingly keen competition and ever-rising keyword pay-per-click costs.

The Critical Differences — Overture's STST vs. Wordtracker's KSS

As one of Wordtracker's technical support team(http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html), one of the most frequent questions we receive these days is...

Why are the keyword search query numbers supplied by Overture's search term suggestion tool (STST) so incredibly different than those supplied by Wordtracker's keyword selection service (KSS)?

Frankly, there isn't a better search engine related question one could ask. And, now's a good time to pay close attention because the surprising answer will likely change forever how you evaluate keywords!

First: Understanding Their Motives.

To help you understand the details we're about to reveal, let's examine the motives of the services that are providing the keyword query numbers.

Motive Analysis: Purpose

On the one hand, there's Overture's STST whose purpose is to help customersbuy keywords.

On the other hand, there's Wordtracker whose purpose is to help customers select keywords.

Proposal:

Overture's STST suggests what keywords to buy from them.

Wordtracker suggests what keywords to use in your optimization efforts and/or which to buy elsewhere.

Success:

Overture's success depends on you believing there are LOTS of search queries for whatever you are selling.

Wordtracker's success depends on you getting accurate numbers upon which you can reliably base your optimization and keyword purchase decisions.

Profits:

Overture's STST is free. Overture profits by selling you the keywords that STST reports on.

Wordtracker's KSS is fee based. They profit by selling you access to accurate and impartial information. Since they don't sell the keywords, there's no vested interest in query numbers beyond accuracy.

It's important to note there is no good-guy, bad-guy here - just two companies that provide information and do so with different incentives in mind.

Second: Understanding The Artificial Skew.

In researching the search term "keyword," Overture's STST indicates there were 180,468 searches for the 30-day period ending the last day of December '03. Of course, when we divide this number by 30 (days), one naturally assumes that's an average of 6,016 combined searches per day for the term "keyword" - (180,468/30=6,016).

Now, if you happen to be in a business that sells keywords (like Overture) then 6,016 pairs of eyeballs per day is a pretty encouraging number indeed! The problem is, there isn't anywhere even close to 6,016 per-day queries for the search term(s) "keyword(s)". In fact, the actual number, which we'll share with you in a minute, will no-doubt shock you!

But, for the moment, let's look at why that number is skewed.

Reason #1 — Artificial Searches

Overture's STST numbers are increased upward by automated queries. These include automated bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors, page popularity analyzers - anything other than a real person manually performing a search is considered an automated query. Monitoring a site's positioning at, say, AltaVista for the search term "keyword" tallies a "hit" within Overture's STST system for that search term. That's in spite of the fact that it was actually automated software that generated the hit. The same holds true for page-popularity checkers, pay- per-click bid optimizers or any other machine generated monitor
or tabulator that queries an engine for a "pet" keyword and generates a hit in the process.

Then, when the same positioning query is done at, say, MSN (another Overture partner), STST records yet another hit. Understandably, STST cannot differentiate between automated and human queries. Neither can they tell when the auto-query has already been queried at another partner's site.

Now, when we take into consideration all of the position monitoring, page popularity checking and pay-per-click bid analyzing - there are well over 15 automated and semi-automated bid checking software programs alone - it's staggering to realize the significant effect these automated queries are having on the overall search term query tabulations.

However, artificial searches are only one aspect contributing to the artificial skew (defined as: the inflation of actual search queries for specific keywords performed by anything other than
humans).

Reason #2 - Duplicate Searches

As you most certainly must know, Overture's strength as a viable advertising medium for online businesses lies in the fact they provide results to "tens of thousands of Web sites" which include AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN Search, HotBot, and AllTheWeb just to name a few. They claim to reach more than 80% of active U.S. Internet users.

Potentially, this is great for advertisers! ...yet this very same structure is what so greatly contributes to the artificial skew leading to extremely over-inflated reporting of keyword queries.

According to Overture itself, statistics on searches in any previous month are compiled from Overture's partner search engines. To further understand how partnering tends to facilitate skewed query counts, let's examine what happens when a visitor conducts a search at AltaVista.

What's actually happening is that two searches are being conducted at one time - one at AltaVista, and another that lists the SPONSORED MATCHES supplied by Overture's pay-per-click engine.

Although it is next to impossible to know the exact figures, suffice it to say that a single human often generates multiple queries when doing a single search as calculated by Overture's STST. In some cases that same human could even generate additional "hits" for a given keyword simply by conducting the
same search again on a different engine if such engine is also an Overture partner.

For instance, searching Yahoo, then searching again on MSN, then searching again on AltaVista, then again on AllTheWeb.com would tally at least five "hits" for the selected search term. In comparison, if Overture (like Google, for instance) counted only the searches that were done "on-site," such duplicate searches would not be counted and their search query numbers would be far
more accurate.

This scenario, combined with the myriad artificial duplicate searches conducted by the various softwares (explained above), severely pumps up the number of queries for virtually every legitimate search term imaginable.

Reason #3 - Plurals and Singulars

Remember our STST example (above) regarding the 180,468 "searches" for the term "keyword"? Well, another factor to consider is that Overture's STST combines both the plural term (keywords) and the singular (keyword) in compiling that number.

And, Overture's STST not only combines the plural and singular versions of "keywords," they also combine upper and lower case searches as well. Obviously, these two factors also exert an upward effect on the query count tabulations.

Third: Examining The Alternatives.

So now the obvious question - Is there a "better" way to tabulate search term query counts? ...let's examine the alternatives.

Meta-engines - a better way to accurately tabulate queries.

Obviously we'd like to eliminate artificial and duplicate searches from our tabulations, and fortunately there is a way to do so. The solution is Meta-engines.

Composite (Meta) engines, like Metacrawler and Dogpile, are search engines that query all the major engines simultaneously. One of the key differences is that the ratio of human queries to automated queries for a meta-engine is much higher than for a major search engine. That's because it doesn't make sense for
anyone to point their auto-bots at meta-engines.

Position monitoring, bid-optimizing, popularity checks, etc., are typically conducted directly at the search engines themselves. It would be pointless to conduct such automated queries on a meta- engine because meta-engines do not "add-url's" nor do they offer pay-per-click options. They are simply a search engine that queries other search engines. And, since there is no
"metacrawler" of meta-engines, the search query counts are unlikely to be artificially skewed by such artificial searches.

Furthermore, duplicate searches are eliminated because the query counts are being tabulated from a single source instead of combining results from myriad partners.

Therefore, query counts taken from meta-engines are far, far more representative of the number of searches conducted by actual people - but even this is not yet a perfect solution due to a relatively obscure form of keyword spam.

Keyword spam (in this case not to be confused with word stuffing or repeating keywords within a Web page) refers to the practice of using cgi-scripting to manipulate the Metaspy metacrawler voyeur to artificially promote certain products or services.

By entering a flow of terms or phrases at predetermined intervals, such spammers hope to inflate the importance and significance of certain search terms thereby artificially increasing the value of such terms related to their products.

In a perfect world, adjustments should be made to filter out this flavor of spam. In a minute we'll share with you how such filtering is done but first, let's address the issue of combining plurals with singulars and upper with lower-case searches.

Plural, singular, upper, and lower-case searches represent a decision-point for search engine optimizers because sometimes it's good to combine the search query numbers while other times it isn't.

For instance the search terms "keyword and keywords," whether singular, plural, or in upper or lower-case, are similar enough in meaning that they could arguablybe combined into one search query number.

However, the search terms "tap, taps, Tap, and TAP" can have entirely different meanings. Take a look at the results for the search term "tap" on Overture. The following references were all found within the top ten sponsored listings:

Machine threading taps,
Tap / Rap support software
Beer taps
Tap Dancing
TAP A Stock
TAP Terminal Phone Numbers

Note that none of the above has any relation to the others! Obviously if we are selling any of these items, we'd want more specificity regarding the search queries than the simple 10,485 searches that STST reports were conducted in the past 30 days.

The example above illustrates the importance of obtaining search query tabulations for each version of a selected keyword independently of the other.

After all, it's easy to manually combine the numbers while it's impossible to break them out into their own categories once they've been compressed by Overture's STST into a single search term regardless of potentially different meanings.

Finally: Making sense of the numbers (here comes the shock).

Ok, now that you understand the artificial skew and the alternatives that can correct for it, let's move on to analyze the numbers given by Overture's STST and Wordtracker's keyword selection service (KSS) using the search term(s) keyword(s).

An in depth look at Overture's STST numbers...

Overture's STST shows 180,468 searches were conducted. This represents the combined count of the search terms keyword, keywords, Keywords, KEYWORD and KEYWORDS - the combined total of all singular, plural, capitalized, upper and lower-case searches.

When we divide Overture's count (180,468) by 30 (because Overture's figures are for a 30-day period), the inference is there are 6,016 searches per day that meet this criteria. In actuality, they receive just 40-60 per day total (are we shocked
yet?).

Here's how we're crunching the numbers.

Fact: Overture's STST suggests a combined average of 6,016 page views took place between Overture and its major partners - e.g. AltaVista, Yahoo, and others - each day for the month of December '03. We're referring to search result pages like: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=keywords&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=

Fact: Each of these results pages lists between 10 and 40 URLs
with descriptions.

Factor in Zipf's Law which predicts that traffic for any particular keyword on a search engine will be proportional to its popularity rank.

Factor in how the title and description affect a user's propensity to click on a Web site.

Factor in the Penn State University's findings that 55% of users check out one search result only, and 80% stop after looking at three results.

Factor in known elements leading to an estimated, but educated, conclusion as such...

Since it's a fact that Wordtracker's Web site appears in the top- ten of Overture's results throughout their partner realm, they should be getting a guesstimateed 10% of the overall click- throughs from all major engines, pay-per-clicks, and directories.

That would equate to about 602 visitors per day.

However, Wordtracker is currently ranked 1-10 on only about 25% of the major engines, directories and pay-per-click portals for the search term, keyword(s)... Calculate the estimate...

...therefore, the Wordtracker site should expect roughly 25% of this predicted click-through traffic, which is 150 visitors per day.

Compare calculated estimate to known facts...

In fact, Wordtracker receives 10 - 15 visitors per day for the search term(s) keyword(s). In fact, Overture's STST overestimates this search query by a factor of 10.

Furthermore, since Wordtracker is estimating they receive approximately 25% of the total traffic then that would put the total traffic generated at 40 to 60 per day (25% of 40 to 60 = 10 to 15 visitors a day).

In fact, Overture's STST overestimates the total search query count by a factor of 100 ...based on 6,016 being more than 100 times greater than the 40 to 60 figure suggested by Wordtracker's actual visitors.

Experience shock and awe at the difference between the numbers!

Wordtracker's service provides very different numbers...

Using the same search term(s) keyword(s), we pulled a representative result from the Wordtracker database (on January 13, 2004) that predicts searches per day conducted throughout the major engines, directories and pay-per-clicks on the Internet.

The results were...

keyword - 93 searches (lower case, singular)
Keyword - 39 searches (Capitalized, singular)
keywords - 187 searches (lower case, plural)
Keywords - 184 searches (Capitalized, plural)
KEYWORD - 115 searches (UPPER case, singular)
Total Predicted Daily Searches for all Engines = 618

This figure - 618 - Wordtracker compiled directly from results taken from Meta-engines, Metacrawler and Dogpile in order to eliminate the artificial skew.

Wordtracker further adjusted the number downward by filtering out keyword spam (as defined above) based upon a proprietary formula used to identify search terms that are being searched at intervals too regular to have been conducted by actual humans.

These suspiciously regular and assumed to be artificially generated searches are therefore discounted in arriving at the final number - 618.

Even when taking into account such dependent variables such as position, title, and description, we would expect (logically guesstimate) the website to receive about 10% of the total traffic due to top-ten placement, targeted title and relevant link-description.

And finally, we should expect no better than 25% of that total traffic, due to the fact that Wordtracker has top-ten placement in only 25% of the relevant engines.

So the calculations show...

618 x 10% = 61.8 x 25% = approx 15 visits per day.

This is more in line with Wordtracker's actual 10-15 per day average number of visits generated by the 5 variations of the search term keyword across all of the major engines.

So, whose numbers should we trust?

When it comes to trusting the numbers, you should take into account what you are using them for. If you're looking to determine relative popularity of a given item, service, topic, or category, then Overture's STST can fill the bill nicely - and for free!

For instance, Overture's STST returns the following numbers for
the following searches...

58,312 home insurance
57,315 home owner insurance
233,854 auto insurance
570,337 car insurance

This tells us (for free) that car insurance gets about twice as many searches as auto insurance. It also tells us that home insurance gets about the same number of searches as home owner insurance ...and that searches for car insurance is TEN times more popular than home owner insurance.

No doubt about it, when researching what to sell online, this is valuable preliminary information that Overture's STST provides for free.

However, based upon what we now know about artificial skew, we'd want to get a third-party-review of the search terms - one that adjusted the numbers for skew - before we bought advertising on a pay-per-click engine or spent good time and money optimizing a site for organic (think Google) Web search results.

After all, if Overture shows 6,016 "hits" per day out of which Wordtracker is experiencing 15 visitors, then reality suggests we should do the math (i.e., apply the information) that distills the raw numbers into useful data. Let's first decide if "15" visitors per day will pay the advertising bill (duh!) ...and, if the reality count is anywhere near 6,016, we'll be ecstatic, right?

Always remember it's the amateurs that believe optimistically romanced numbers just before they lose their wallets on the way to bankruptcy. Professional marketers learn to err on the downside of expectations and then smile when the pleasant surprises shower down riches.

They know that nothing beats accurate

ontheavenues

MSN SEO Tips

MSN Search - SEO Facts

The SEOBook , a wonderful source has a great overview of Yahoo and SEO needs that all of us SEO experts agree with...well, at least this SEO expert does :-)

MSN Search had many incarnations, being powered by the likes of Inktomi and Looksmart for a number of years. After Yahoo! bought Inktomi and Overture it was obvious to Microsoft that they needed to develop their own search product. They launched their technology preview of their search engine around July 1st of 2004. They formally switched from Yahoo! organic search results to their own in house technology on January 31st, 2005. MSN announced they dumped Yahoo!'s search ad program on May 4th, 2006.

On Page Content
Using descriptive page titles and page content goes a long way to help you rank in MSN. I have seen examples of many domains that ranked for things like

state name+ insurance type + insurance

on sites that were not very authoritative which only had a few instances of state name and insurance as the anchor text. Adding the word health, life, etc. to the page title made the site relevant for those types of insurance, in spite of the site having few authoritative links and no relevant anchor text for those specific niches.

Additionally, internal pages on sites like those can rank well for many relevant queries just by being hyper focused, but MSN currently drives little traffic when compared with the likes of Google.

Crawling
MSN has got better at crawling, but I still think Yahoo! and Google are much better at crawling. It is best to avoid session IDs, sending bots cookies, or using many variables in the URL strings. MSN is nowhere near as comprehensive as Yahoo! or Google at crawling deeply through large sites like eBay.com or Amazon.com.

Query Processing
I believe MSN might be a bit better than Yahoo! at processing queries for meaning instead of taking them quite so literally, but I do not believe they are as good as Google is at it.

While MSN offers a tool that estimates how commercial a page or query is I think their lack of ability to distinguish quality links from low quality links makes their results exceptionally biased toward commercial results.

Link Reputation
By the time Microsoft got in the search game the web graph was polluted with spammy and bought links. Because of this, and Microsoft's limited crawling history, they are not as good as the other major search engines at telling the difference between real organic citations and low quality links.

MSN search reacts much more quickly than the other engines at ranking new sites due to link bursts. Sites with relatively few quality links that gain enough descriptive links are able to quickly rank in MSN. I have seen sites rank for one of the top few dozen most expensive phrases on the net in about a week.

Page vs Site
I think all major search engines consider site authority when evaluating individual pages, but with MSN it seems as though you do not need to build as much site authority as you would to rank well in the other engines.

Site Age
Due to MSN's limited crawling history and the web graph being highly polluted before they got into search they are not as good as the other engines at determining age related trust scores. New sites doing general textbook SEO and acquiring a few descriptive inbound links (perhaps even low quality links) can rank well in MSN within a month.

Paid Search
Microsoft's paid search product, AdCenter, is the most advanced search ad platform on the web. Like Google, MSN ranks ads based on both max bid price and ad clickthrough rate. In addition to those relevancy factors MSN also allows you to place adjustable bids based on demographic details. For example, a mortgage lead from a wealthy older person might be worth more than an equivalent search from a younger and poorer person.

Editorial
All major search engines have internal relevancy measurement teams. MSN seems to be highly lacking in this department, or they are trying to use the fact that their search results are spammy as a marketing angle.

MSN is running many promotional campaigns to try to get people to try out MSN Search, and in many cases some of the searches they are sending people to have bogus spam or pornography type results in them. A good example of this is when they used Stacey Kiebler to market their Celebrity Maps product. As of writing this, their top search result for Stacey Kiebler is still pure spam.

Based on MSN's lack of feedback or concern toward the obvious search spam noted above on a popular search marketing community site I think MSN is trying to automate much of their spam detection, but it is not a topic you see people talk about very often. Here are MSN's Guidelines for Successful Indexing, but they still have a lot of spam in their search results. ;)

Social Aspects
Microsoft continues to lag in understanding what the web is about. Executives there should read The Cluetrain Manifesto. Twice.Or maybe three times.

They don't get the web. They are a software company posing as a web company.

They launch many products as though they have the market stranglehold monopolies they once enjoyed, and as though they are not rapidly losing them. Many of Microsoft's most innovative moves get little coverage because when they launch key products they often launch them without supporting other browsers and trying to lock you into logging in to Microsoft.

MSN SEO Tools
MSN has a wide array of new and interesting search marketing tools. Their biggest limiting factor with them is that they have limited search market share.

Some of the more interesting tools are
Keyword Search Funnel Tool - shows terms that people search for before or after they search for a particular keyword
Demographic Prediction Tool - predicts the demographics of searchers by keyword or site visitors by website
Online Commercial Intention Detection Tool - estimates the probability of a search query or web page being commercial, informational-transactional, or
Search Result Clustering Tool - clusters search results based on related topics
You can view more of their tools under the demo section at Microsoft's Adlab.

MSN Business Perspectives
Microsoft has too many search brands for building their own technology in house.

They have MSN Search, Microsoft AdCenter, and Windows Live Search. All these things are pretty much the same thing and are meshed together, the only difference between them is that Microsoft does not know what brand they want to push.

Microsoft also heavily undermines their own credibility by recommending doorway page generator software and fake Alexa traffic generator software.

It seems as though Microsoft is big, slow moving, and late to the game.

Search Marketing Perspective
I believe if you do standard textbook SEO practices and actively build links it is reasonable to expect to be able to rank well in MSN within about a month. If you are trying to rank for highly spammed keyword phrases keep in mind that many of the top results will have thousands and thousands of spammy links. The biggest benefit to new webmasters trying to rank in Microsoft is how quickly they rank new sites which have shown inbound link bursts.

One note of caution with Microsoft Search is that they are so new to the market that they are rapidly changing their relevancy algorithms as they try to play catch up with Yahoo! and Google, both of which had many years of a head start on them. Having said that, expect that sometimes you will rank where your site does not belong, and over time some of those rankings may go away. Additionally sometimes they may not rank you where you do belong, and the rankings will continue to shift to and fro as they keep testing new technologies.

Microsoft has a small market share, but the biggest things a search marketer have to consider with Microsoft are their vast vats of cash and the dominance on the operating system front.

So far they have lost many distribution battles to Google, but they picked up Amazon.com as a partner, and they can use their operating system software pricing to gain influence over computer manufacturer related distribution partnerships.

The next version of Internet Explorer will integrate search into the browser. This may increase the overall size of the search market by making search more convenient, and boost Microsoft's share of the search pie. This will also require search engines to bid for placement as the default search provider, and nobody is sitting on as much cash as Microsoft is.

Microsoft has one of the largest email user bases. They have been testing integrating search and showing contextually relevant ads in desktop email software. Microsoft also purchased Massive, Inc., a firm which places ads in video games.

Microsoft users tend to be default users who are less advertisement adverse than a typical Google user. Even though Microsoft has a small marketshare they should not be overlooked due to their primitive search algorithms (and thus ease of relevancy manipulation), defaultish users, and potential market growth opportunity associated with the launch of their next web browser.

Learn More
MSN Guidelines for Successful Indexing
MSN Site Owner Help
MSN Search Blog
MSN AdCenter Blog
Microsoft AdLab
Microsoft Research

Source: SEOBook
www.ontheavenues

Can My Site Rank Well on all Four Major Engines?

Can My Site Rank Well on all Four Major Engines?

One of the most frequently asked questions readers and clients email StepForth Placement's SEO staff, revolves around how websites can be best optimized to meet the algorithmic needs of each of the major 4 search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though there have been wide sweeping changes in the organic search engine landscape over the past six months, the fundamental ways search engines operate remains the same.

This question, or variants on it, reflects a shared notion among some webmasters that SEO driven placements at one search engine might come at the expense of high rankings across the other search engines. As the thinking goes, the techniques used to make a well optimized website rank well at Google might somehow prevent that same site from achieving high rankings at Yahoo, MSN and/or Ask. Alternately, webmasters and advertisers who already have great placements at Google but not at the others appear wary of sacrificing their Google rankings in pursuit of higher placements on Yahoo, MSN or Ask.

The differences between how each engine works appears to be causing a bit of confusion among webmasters and search marketers, especially regarding how to optimize well for all four at the same time.

Techniques that work on one engine might not work as well on another. In some extreme cases, techniques that work brilliantly with old school engines like MSN and Ask, and even with the invigorated Yahoo, are a kin to a kiss of death on Google.

There is one search engine friendly site design and optimization philosophy that works, almost every time, without fail. Good content, smart networking, and persistence over time. A well constructed website, or one that has been treated by a good search engine optimizer, should be able to rank well on all major search engines, provided that site has useful, relevant information to express.

Questions about ranking well on all four engines brings up some of the basic differences between the major search engines and, in light of so much change in the sector over the past few months, a look at what search engines look at, and how they do it seems in order.

There are a lot of differences between the major search engines but, by and large, they all gather information the same way. Each major search engine uses unique spider agents known as Googlebot, Slurp (Yahoo/Inktomi), Ask.com/Teoma, and MSNbot, (updated list @ Wikipedia), that find information by following links from document to document across the web. Spiders are designed to revisit sites on a semi-regular basis as well, though they often hit the index (or home) page more often than other pages. Spiders do tend to dig deeper looking for changes to internal documents based on changes to the index (or home) page. This allows the engines to maintain rapidly updating versions of the web, or parts of the web, in separate proprietary databases.

Each search database has its own characteristics and most importantly, each engine has its own algorithms for sorting and ranking web documents.

Getting information into those databases is the first stage of SEO. The site needs to be constructed (or reconstructed) in such a way as to allow search spiders to easily read and absorb the information and content contained on them.

Assuming realistic expectations and goal setting are already part of the equation, the success or failure of any multi-engine optimization campaign is dependent on the type of site being marketed, as much as it depends on methods and techniques used to market it. If the ultimate goal is strong search engine placements across all major search engines, a few compromises in style might be a temporary necessity in order to expose the great content and reap the rewards of multiple rankings.

Before beginning the building or construction of a site, having a working knowledge of the major on and off-site elements each search engine looks at when examining and evaluating a site and its contents is a key starting point.

There are two overarching areas all search engines examines when ranking a web document or site known as "on-page” and "off-page". As their names indicate, search engines examine factors and elements that occur on the document or site in question as well as factors and elements occurring on other documents and sites related by links or by topical theme.

While the search algorithms of each engine might differ in the number of factors found on or off page and the overall importance of those factors, they all examine generally similar sets of data when deciding which should rank where in relation to whatever search-queries are entered.

For example, Google loves links, as does Yahoo, MSN and to a lesser degree, Ask. MSN and Ask are considered to be old school search engines, allowing simpler SEO techniques to work quite we