Axandra news archive: 29 October 2009

1. Official Google statement: how to deal with bad inbound links

Many webmasters think that low quality links or links from spammy websites can have a negative effect on the ranking of their websites on Google.

The problem with links from spammy websites is that it is very difficult to do something against them. For example, a competitor could add your website to a link farm network or the competitor could spam with your URL.

Google has released an official statement about spammy links

This month, Google published an official statement about low quality links in their webmaster blog. Here are the main statements:

Linking is a significant factor in Google’s ranking algorithm but it is just one of many factors. Other factors are the content of your web pages, the site structure and the appearance of a keyword in the different web page elements. If you have a high quality website and get links from spammy websites, try to contact the website owners and ask them to remove their links. Google will not help you with that. It the webmasters of the spammy website are not cooperative, don’t worry and focus on the links that are under your control. Google recommends to optimize the many factors than influence indexing and ranking. The top 10 optimizer in our website optimization tool has been designed for exactly that task.

It analyzes dozens of factors that influence the position of your website in the search results and it shows you what exactly you have to change so that Google will list your website on the first result page.

Google says that low-quality links rarely stand the test of time and that they may not be considered by Google’s ranking algorithm. If you want to make sure Google knows about the spammy links and is valuing them appropriately, you can report them to Google with their spam report or paid links report forms.

What does this mean for the rankings of your website?

Low quality links are usually links from low quality websites. These website usually have low Google rankings and they cannot pass much ranking power to other websites. For that reason, you shouldn’t worry too much about links to your website that you cannot control. Better focus on the following:

To get an overview of the websites that link to your website, select IBP > Links > Add sites > Find existing backlinks to your site in our SEO tool IBP. IBP will show you the URL of the web page that links to you, the anchor text, the PageRank, TrafficRank and IP address of the linking pages and more.

IBP will also show you the websites that link to your competitors, blogs that could link to your website and much more.

Google introduces Google Social Search

“Today we’re rolling out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. [...] With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results.”

New spam method: how to get 50,000 links from a PR9 website

“Get yourself a new Facebook page here, install the HTML profile box app Static FBML app, add a block of links to the html box using your anchor text. You can deep link to as many pages as you like here, for the sake of argument lets say you add 25 links (you could link to as many sites as you want here not just pages within the same site). Now once that page gets indexed you’ll have 25 dofollow links. [...]

Create lots and lots of Facebook pages for Google to crawl, don’t worry you don’t have to create new business pages for each one because Google’s going to crawl every wall post.”

Editor’s note: do not use this method with your own website. It is likely that Google will block these links within the next few days and there might be a penalty for using this method. Better focus on SEO methods that get lasting results.

10 things Google has taught us

“Passion without focus can lead you astray. Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and a Silicon Valley mentor who spends a couple of days each week at Google, thinks the key to Google’s success is ‘focused passion.’ He credits Schmidt for bringing a focus to the founders.”

How high will real-time search fly?

“Google and Microsoft reached separate agreements last week to bring Twitter posts to their search engines. For all the buzz, however, one question remains unanswered: How easily can real-time search turn into real cash? [...]

No one doubts that helping users find fresh, up-to-the-minute content on the Web is valuable. But plenty of other valuable Web services — including content sites, free Web e-mail and social networks — have struggled to find effective business models.”

Microsoft, Google and the bear

“Two campers see a bear, and one immediately puts on his running shoes. [...] This succinctly describes the relationship when it comes to smartphones between Google (the camper with the running shoes), Microsoft (the other camper) and Apple (the bear).”

Search engine newslets

“We’re number three for the term ‘marketing firm’.”

“Wow, we’re ranking number three worldwide for the term marketing firm. Could have never done it without you! Thanks so much.”
Laura Betterly, http://www.yadayadamarketing.com/

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Axandra news archive: 9 March 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

A small error in one search engine optimization factor can destroy your efforts in all other elements. When you optimize your website for search engines, you have to consider several different factors. In this article, you’ll find the five most important factors that influence your Google rankings.

In the news: most people don’t care about real-time search, other people can edit your Google Business listing, Yahoo releases a PPC tool and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

Getting listed on Google’s first result page is the goal of many webmasters. Unfortunately, many webmasters still do the wrong things to improve their rankings.

It’s not possible to get top 10 rankings on Google by focusing on a single strategy. Getting listed on Google requires you to work on all elements of your website. Here are the top 5 factors that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results:

Ranking factor 1: website accessibility

It doesn’t make sense to optimize your web pages if search engines cannot access your web pages:

Your robots.txt file should allow search engines to visit your web pages. If your robots.txt file contains errors then many search engines won’t list your website. The HTML code of your web pages should be error-free and your web server should return the correct response code. The contents of your web pages should be readable to search engine spiders. Details can be found here.

Before you start to optimize your web pages, check if search engines can read your web page content. You can do this with IBP’s spider simulator. Double-check your robots.txt.

Ranking factor 2: site architecture

Google wants to show relevant websites in the search results. Your website shouldn’t be a collection of random web pages. If you want to get top 10 rankings on Google, the pages of your website should be related.

Your web pages should show Google that your website is relevant to a certain topic. All pages of your website should be linked. If possible, web surfers should reach any page of your website with a maximum of three clicks.

The links and the directory structure of your website should make it easy to search engines to categorize the contents of your website.

Ranking factor 3: keywords

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps. If you choose the wrong keywords, you won’t succeed with your campaign.

Optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. The more pages of your website you optimize, the better. Start with very targeted keyphrases that consists of many words, for example “find inexpensive hotels in brussels”. When you have top rankings for these targeted keyphrases, proceed with more general keywords such as “hotels in brussels”. When you have top rankings for these keyphrases, you can proceed with very general keywords such as “hotels”.

In general, targeted keywords have a much higher conversion rate than general keywords, i.e. you will get more sales per visitor with “find inexpensive hotels in brussels” than with “hotels”.

Also think about the type of visitor that you attract with a keyword. Are these people interested in information or do they want to buy?

Use IBP’s comprehensive keyword tools to find the keywords that will work best with your site. You can find further information on how to find the correct keyword type in the IBP manual (PDF).

Ranking factor 4: content

Your website won’t get high rankings on Google if it only offers articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other websites.

Separate your website from the rest by creating unique and trustworthy content. Write your own articles about the topic of your website, publish them on your own website and make your website a useful resource.

Ranking factor 5: links from other websites

It is not possible to get high rankings on Google without having links from other websites.

The more links point to your website, the more likely it is that your website gets good positions in Google’s search results. The links to your website should be from trusted websites.

If a web page that links to you is related to your own website then the effect of that link on the search engine rankings of your website is higher than the effect of an unrelated link.

It also helps if social bookmark websites link to your website. If many people bookmark your website on social bookmark sites, then this is a sign that your website might deserve high rankings.

A small error in one element can destroy your effects in all other ranking elements. For that reason, it is important to use the right strategy when optimizing your website.

Detailed step-by-step instructions and checklists can be found in our free search engine optimization eBook.

Eye tracking study: users largely blind to real-time results in search

“The study [...] seems to assert that real-time results so far have limited impact or appeal. While there’s enormous hype and coverage among tech-insiders about ‘real time search,’ the public doesn’t really understand (or perhaps care) what the fuss is all about.”

Yahoo releases desktop tool for PPC management

“If you’re an advertiser running more than one campaign, you will probably welcome the new Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop, a free offline tool that lets you spend less time on the tactical details of campaign management, and more on increasing your return-on-investment.”

Your Google Business listing is at risk

“You need to watch out! I was just reading the Google Lat Long Blog and they’re telling people to edit YOUR Google business listing. This is really, really, bad. [...]

It’s so simple to claim these listings and even though Google is advertising like crazy too many businesses are leaving it up to some random visitor to edit their Google business listing?”

Related: A new way to edit places on Google Maps

Online shopper intelligence study released

“Overwhelmingly, consumers depend on one resource more than others to help them shop online—search engines. 3 out of 5 shoppers said that they always or often use search engines when shopping online. More consumers use search engines than they do coupon sites, retailer emails, consumer reviews, or shopping comparison sites.”

Editor’s note: If you want to get buyers, make sure that your website can be found for the right keywords.

Search engine newslets

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Axandra news archive: 7 July 2009

This week, we’re taking a look at how you can change your web page titles so that you will get more visitors. Depending on the type of traffic that you want to attract, you should use different web page title types.

In the news: Google updates the PageRank in the toolbar, Google updates its algorithm, Yahoo launches a new research tool and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

The titles that you use for your web pages are very important. They are an important factor for the ranking algorithms of search engines and they are the first thing that web surfers see when they find your website in the search results.

Depending on which kind of traffic you want to attract, you should use different title formats on your web pages:

1. News titles (not so good for SEO)

This kind of title is often used by bloggers and news websites. Here are some examples:

Beat the ‘overqualified’ tagParking fees spark meter madnessNominate your heroKarl Malden died

The problem with these titles is that they are not good for search engine optimization. These titles usually don’t contain relevant keywords and they don’t look very attractive in the search results.

There won’t be many people who will type “Parking fees spark meter madness” in Google’s search box so it’s not likely that the page will get many visitors through search engines.

2. Shopping titles (good for SEO)

Shopping titles usually contain a product name that is used by web surfers. If they also contain a call to action, you can get targeted visitors with these titles. Here are some examples:

ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10-Inch Black Netbook – 9.5 Hour Battery LifeASUS Eee PC 1000 – Buy it now for only $249.95Buy an ASUS Eee PC 1000 with extended guaranteeFree shipping: ASUS Eee PC 1000 – $249.95

The first shopping title is rather descriptive because it only lists the features. The other titles contain a call to action (buy now), prices and additional benefits (free shipping).

People who want to buy an ASUS Eee PC probably will click on the title with the call to action while people who are looking for product information might choose the first title.

3. Information seeker titles (good for SEO)

Information seeker titles won’t attract buyers but people who are looking for information about a special topic. Here are some examples:

How to lose weight as fast as possibleHow to repair a broken chair12 mistakes most parents make when choosing a schoolHow to find the perfect golf club5 ways to find the perfect partner

These web page titles are good because they will attract visitors over a long time period. People are always looking for “how to” articles and solutions to their problems and you will get long term, constant traffic with these pages.

Action plan: how to change your current web page titles

Good web page titles can make a huge difference in the number of visitors that your website gets. For that reason, you should check the titles of all web pages of your website now:

Make sure that the titles of your web pages are descriptive. It should be clear what to expect on the pages.If possible, add a call to action and benefits in your web page title.Put the most important information at the beginning of the title. Search engines might shorten the title in the search result pages and people might not see the complete text.If you’re not a major brand name, avoid your company name in your web page titles.Do not use the same title for all of your web pages. This is a mistake that many beginners make.

Is Google’s latest PageRank update a technical “quirk”?

Webmasters reported a Google PageRank update in many online forums. Google’s John Muller commented on the PageRank update: “As far as I can tell, it looks like the change in Toolbar PageRank for your site is only due to some technical quirk and not something that you need to worry about.”

Editor’s note: Remember that the PageRank that Google displays in the Google toolbar is not the actual PageRank that is used for calculation the position in Google’s search results.

When you optimize your website, focus on getting high positions in the search results, not on getting a high PageRank in Google’s toolbar.

Yahoo to formally launch new research tool

“Search Pad detects when users appear to be conducting research-related searches based on patterns in their search queries [...]

Then it asks them if they want to start saving the results, and if so, saves the links a user clicks on a separate screen where they can also jot down some notes like ‘useful snow report site.’ Users who are logged in can access their links and notes another time and share them with friends.”

Has Google updated its algorithm?

In addition to the (meaningless) PageRank update that we mentioned above, Google seems to have changed its ranking algorithm.

The rankings of many websites have changed over the past few weeks and there are rumors that Google has adjusted their link algorithm to look more at how “relevant” the link is to the page it is linking to.

Editor’s note: If your rankings on Google have dropped, re-analyze your website with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer analyzes your website based on Google’s current algorithm and it will tell you how to change your website and your links so that your website can get top 10 rankings with Google’s new algorithm.

Bing finds meaning in Powerset

“Powerset’s semantic obsession is already working its way into Bing’s primary search engine, helping to suss out the meaning behind end-user queries, generate captions for query results, and suggest related queries.”

Since March, Internet Explorer lost 11.4 percent share to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome

“In just over three months, Internet Explorer has seen its overall market share erode by 11.4 percent. Where did that go? It went to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Nearly 5 percent of that, or about half, went to Firefox 3.0, which currently has 27.6 percent market share.”

Search engine newslets

“IBP has made a difference in our marketing plans.”

“We have been using IBP for site promotion of our UltimateGlobes.com site within the major search engines for over the last year.

Starting out we had spent a lot of time in trial and error trying to reach the top spots by reading and implementing some of the articles found on the web, with little success.

Our small investment in IBP started paying off immediately. The processes used by IBP helped to better identify what and how our competitors where developing their content, giving us key insight and the ability to prioritize our development spend for SEO.

After several months of use we watched as our site made it to the top five for our major key search terms and phrases within Google. The program has provided excellent ROI as a result of our increased organic search results, reducing our overall PPC/CPC ad spend and our ability to reduce the need for outside agencies to manage this portion of our business.

We highly recommend other companies with the capacity to manage their SEO internally and those new to marketing on the web to use IBP.”
Sean Morley, http://www.markleycompanies.com/

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

Back issues:
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View the original article here

Axandra news archive: 4 August 2009

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

This week, we’re taking a look at the effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft deal on your website. Yahoo will change its search engine, and there will be a new search result provider that reaches a lot of potential customers.

In the news: There are new search engine market share statistics, new interface changes on Google result pages, and Twitter becomes more and more a search engine.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

You’ve probably heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. This will have a major impact on the search engine landscape and there definitely will be effects on your website rankings and the number of visitors that your website will get.

The basic facts

Yahoo is going to give up their own search technology and use Microsoft’s search technology instead. Bing.com will power the organic and the paid search results on Yahoo (except for premium ads on Yahoo).

Self-serve advertising (i.e. the AdWords competitor) will be managed by Microsoft’s AdCenter. Microsoft will get access to Yahoo’s search technology and can use it to improve its own search technology.

What does this mean for your website?

If you do not optimize some of your website pages for Bing, you’ll lose a lot of visitors and sales. Fortunately, IBP’s top 10 optimizer already enables you to optimize your website for Bing.

The optimizer works with the US version of Bing as well as with many country versions. Recent research has shown that Bing’s traffic is more likely to convert.

Yahoo is the search engine that currently returns the most inbound link data. When Yahoo drops its index, that data will probably be lost. We recommend using IBP’s link manager if you want to get an overview of the websites that link to your website.

The link manager in IBP will retrieve all links that are returned by Yahoo, Bing, Google and other search engines.

Microsoft will provide the search ads for Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo will close its own paid search offerings. That means that you will be able to manage your ads for both Yahoo and Bing in one user interface. It probably also means rising bid prices on Yahoo and Bing.

Yahoo might put its Internet directory into question as well as their alternative search applications SearchMonkey and SearchBOSS. Applications such as Yahoo Maps might also be reconsidered because Bing offers similar services.

Yahoo will have full control over the user interface of their search form. The ordering of the results, the layout and the whole search focus can be different from Bing. That means that you still might have to optimize your website for both search engines.

The deal still needs shareholder and legal approval. Yahoo and Microsoft hope that the changes will be in place by early 2010. If you want to participate from the change as soon as possible, you should optimize some of your web pages for Bing now.

Optimize different pages of your website for different search engines and different keywords. What works with one search engine might not work with another. Optimize each web page for a dedicated search engine/keyword combination to get better results.

Out of search business, Yahoo shifts its focus

“Yahoo will lose some of its most talented engineers to Microsoft and as many as 400 employees through layoffs. The deal also undercuts years of investment around search technology. [...] While encouraged by some of Bing’s innovations, [Yahoo CEO] Carol Bartz figures that Google will most likely match them soon. ‘That is the arms race I don’t want to be in,’ she said.”

Hitwise: Bing + Yahoo! now equals 26% of search market

“Now that the deal is official, the latest search numbers tell us that Google has 70.6% of all U.S. query volume while the combined Bing and Yahoo! Search now comprise 26% of all U.S. searches, leaving only 3.4% for the other 54 engines that we track in search share (1,465 search engines that we track in market share of visits).”

It’s Google’s world, we just live in it

“Google has a 60% share of search queries in the U.S., but that number is 67% worldwide, according to ComScore. In many top and growing internet countries, including Germany, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and Italy, Google has more than 80% of the search market.”

Google adds custom date range search to result pages

“Google’s web search toolbelt has been updated and it now includes an option that lets you find web pages from a user-defined period of time. “

Google launches a major offensive against Microsoft with ‘Going Google’

“Google is back on the offensive, with a major promotional campaign to get the word out about organizations switching to Google apps for their daily computing needs.”

Twitter plays up search with new home page

“Twitter unveiled a brand-new home page that [...] makes Twitter look a lot more like a real-time search engine. [...] The new home page sums up the way Twitter sees itself today: a tool to ‘share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.’”

Search engine newslets Google’s ‘Show More Results’ link goes contextual.Google Docs integrates with Google Search.Google new AdWords interface is out of beta.Google releases Bid Simulator to AdWords advertisers.Google not liable for false ads.Yahoo is testing a new search results layout.Yahoo enhances local search results with more business information.Microsoft has kicked off a new series of ads for Bing.Ask.com’s parent company IAC posts lower Q2 profit.Updated list of Google accounts on Twitter.Google challenger Blekko raises US$11.5 million.Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

We have just released IBP version 11.5!

Based on user feedback we have improved the keyword manager so that IBP now supports the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool in many different languages. You don’t even have to enter a captcha code when searching for keyword suggestions.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com

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Axandra news archive: 6 October 2009

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

This week, we’re taking a look at our top 10 ranking guarantee on Google. Is it really possible to guarantee a top 10 position on Google? What’s the catch?

In the news: Google announces a canonical tag with cross-domain support, Bing’s growth slows down, Google might have geo-targeting problems and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

You have probably seen the top 10 ranking guarantee that we give users of our website promotion tool IBP: we guarantee that your website will be found in the regular (unpaid) search results on Google for the keywords of your choice.

How can we guarantee top 10 rankings on Google and what’s the catch?

Many people will tell you that it is not possible to guarantee top 10 rankings on Google. That is correct. No one can guarantee top 10 rankings except for Google’s engineers.

However, IBP has a success rate of more than 98% and we will give you your money back if you belong to the very few people who don’t get top 10 rankings on Google with IBP.

How does it work in detail?

1. You choose the keyword and the search engine

You tell IBP for which keyword you want to get a top 10 position and you choose the search engine on which you want to have a top 10 position. This can be Google.com, Google.co.uk, many other local Google variations as well as Yahoo, Bing, their local variations and many other search engines.

2. IBP analyzes your web page

IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer will then analyze all the relevant ranking elements on your web page as well as the links to your website and calculate a ranking score based on that information. The higher the ranking score, the more likely it is that your website will be listed on Google’s first result page.

3. IBP tells you in detail what you have to change

If your website does not have a 100% score, IBP will tell you in plain English what exactly you have to do to improve your web page and the links to your site. The advice will be tailored to your website, the chosen search engine and the chosen keyword and IBP will tell you in detail what you have to change and how you have to change it.

4. You make the changes on your web page

In the last step, you change your web page according to the suggestions of IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer until there are no further suggestions (IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer gives your site a 100% rating).

That’s it. No catch, no strings attached. If you change your website according to IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer then your website will be listed on Google’s first result page in the regular results.

Other top 10 guarantees that you should stay away from

There are quite a few companies that offer top 10 guarantees. You should take a close look at their offerings. For example, some companies will charge you a monthly fee for the “optimization”, take half of that fee to advertise your website on Google AdWords and that’s it.

Other companies will give you a top 10 ranking guarantee, but only for keywords that they choose. It’s not difficult to get top 10 rankings for obscure keywords that nobody searches for. Unfortunately, these top 10 rankings won’t help your business at all.

A top 10 ranking guarantee should be for the keywords of your choice and it should be for the regular, unpaid search results. That’s the guarantee that you get with IBP.

You can order IBP here. A demo version is available on this page.

Canonical tag 2.0: Google to add cross domain support

“Many site owners have wanted the recently introduced canonical tag to work across domains. Now their wishes will come true. Google announced cross-domain support will come by the end of the year. The news came out during the Duplicate Content: The Search Engines Edition session at SMX East conference.”

Google might have difficulties with geo-targeting some websites (discussion)

“I’ve been told by my sites users that the above domain is now not listing well in Google.co.uk – but it is under Google.com, and even better under Google.fr – I get the feeling that Google thinks we are based in France, (we do have an office there), but our domain is hosted in the UK, and the settings in webmaster tools is also set to United Kingdom.”

Bing records first monthly decline since launch

“StatCounter Global Stats finds that Bing’s share of the US search market in September fell by over one percentage point to 8.51% from 9.64% in August. There was little consolation for Microsoft from the performance of its new partner, Yahoo! which also declined, to 9.40% from 10.50%.”

Google testing new ad unit for Places pages

“We’ve found a number of Google Places advertisements appearing on searches for ‘Brand + Product Category’ and include a link to a competitive local retailer. The advertisements represent an entirely new AdWords unit that we hadn’t seen before and seem to be designed specifically for Google Places.”

Bug by bug, Google fixes a new idea

“Google seems to spit out interesting new technologies so easily, they could be made on an assembly line. When Ms. VanDyke and her cohorts allowed a reporter to sit in on their meetings, though, Google’s development process appeared a little more haphazard. [...]

The result: Google makes a better-looking text ad, advertisers can send ads only to high-end phones, and publishers (and Google) potentially get more money for ads, since high-end users can be more valuable.”

Search engine newslets

“IBP makes it so much easier.”

“Prior to being hired full-time as an employee here at Houser Shoes, Inc. early this summer, I was an independent SEO Specialist with 12 years experience and ran my own business. I used IBP then and knew of its value and capabilities.

The online shoe store is quite different from what I was used to with hundreds of vendors and thousands of products, each needing to rank for its own merit. This was going to be a test for IBP Business Edition (we’re on version 11.6.2). The company had used 3rd party SEO services in the years preceding my arrival, but never really got where they should have.

My job was to recreate the foundation where others had missed, selecting the right keyword phrases. So I began the daunting task of entering project after project, each with its own unique focus and content. I baselined the rankings to show upper management the ‘where we are now’ and set up reports to run on auto. The methodologies outlined in IBP are pretty much the same as I had practiced for years prior to first purchasing the software. The difference is, IBP makes it so much easier.

Well, before long we were ranking (and still are) for many of the hundreds of keyword phrases that I had targeted, a pretty even split of top3, middle of page, and bottom of page 1. But the results are what it is all about. More traffic, increased sales, increased market share and happy faces. I haven’t slowed down because of the shear volume of products we have on hand. However, I feel much easier about being able to manage the vast number of projects because I know that IBP is up to the task.”
Doug Kelly, www.housershoes.com

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com

Back to our newsletter archive

View the original article here

Axandra news archive: 19 May 2009

This week, we’re taking a look at the websites that are hosted on the same server as your website. Are some of them spammers? Does this affect your rankings?

In the news: Google offers more search options, Google might artificially inflate the conversion rate for advertisers, Microsoft’s Kumo Search might be on the way and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

Are you living in a bad neighborhood? Your website could. Did you know that your web host probably hosts several websites on the same web server as yours?

Some of these websites might belong to shady businesses. If they are major spammers, your website might be banned on Google.

What’s the difference between shared and dedicated IP addresses?

IP addresses are the addresses under which search engines find websites on the Internet. Domain names are only an add-on to the IP addresses.

IP addresses can be shared or dedicated. If you use a shared IP address, there will be many websites that use the same IP address as your website.

If you use a dedicated IP address then your website will be the only site on that address.

Does it make a difference what kind of IP address you have?

Yes. We recommend that you spend the money to get a dedicated IP that hosts only your own domain names. This has several reasons:

1. Search engines might use it in their algorithms

Google will tell you that it doesn’t matter whether your website has a dedicated IP address or not. However, most of the web pages that can be found on the first result pages have dedicated IP addresses. That’s interesting because the vast majority of domains is hosted on a shared IP address.

2. Shared hosting makes your website slower

If you share an IP address with hundreds of other websites then your website might become very slow. If one of the other websites on the server uses a lot of resources then this will affect your own website.

The web server delivers the web pages in the order it receives the requests. If there are more requests to the other websites on your server, the visitors of your website will have to wait before the server sends them your pages.

3. Your website might be in a bad neighborhood

If your website has the same IP address as websites that sell questionable products then your website might get in trouble. If one of the other websites on the server gets banned on Google then your website might get banned, too.

How to find out which websites are hosted on the same server as your site

Go to the shared hosting check web page and enter your domain name. The free online tool will show you all domains that are hosted on the same server as your website.

If your website does not have a dedicated IP address, call your web host. There might be a small fee for the dedicated IP address but it is worth the charge.

Google offers more search options

“The Search Options panel also gives you the ability to view your results in new ways. One view gives you more information about each result, including images as well as text, while others let you explore and iterate your search in different ways.”

Hitwise: top 20 search engines and websites

Google has a market share of 73.32%, followed by Yahoo with 15.78%. Ask.com has 3.93%, MSN Search 3.52% and Live Search 2.11%.

Google.com is the most popular website, followed by Yahoo Mail.

Google and its partners inflate measured conversion rates and increase advertisers’ costs

“When advertisers measure the effectiveness of their pay-per-click ad campaigns, advertisers systematically assume additionally, i.e. that the sales that follow a paid click are sales that would not have happened without the ad platform’s assistance.

This assumption offers intuitive appeal: If a user clicked an ad and then bought the advertised product, by all indications the ad platform should be thanked for finding and sending an interested customer. Or should it?”

Google introduces rich snippets

“Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. We are currently supporting data about reviews and people. When searching for a product or service, users can easily see reviews and ratings, and when searching for a person, they’ll get help distinguishing between people with the same name.”

Some users get Kumo features in Live Search

“Back in March, news trickled out that Microsoft employees were testing a new search experience named Kumo, possibly one that will replace Live Search. That same week, some users were lucky enough to (apparently randomly) get access to the new Kumo layout in their Live Search results on live.com.”

Search engine newslets

“A very professional and ethical software solution.”

“We obtained great results for our customers after studying your software.

The thing we appreciate most about your software is that every project must be studied. Every project has its own winning formula. No secret, no full automation, no useless tools but a very professional and ethical software solution. We published our great results on our website.”
Alberto Cavalcoli, Web Agency Verona – Siti Internet Verona

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Axandra news archive: 23 December 2008

This week, we’re bringing you our Christmas puzzle instead of the main article. Can you find the hidden message?

We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. May you enjoy peace, love, and happiness among friends and family.

In the news: Google leads in ad-serving share, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo might be similar to Ford, GM and Chrysler in the 40s, Google improves image search and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

Mark the following words in the picture above:

ADWORDS, ANALYSIS, AXANDRA, BETTER, BUSINESS, FAMILY, FRIENDS, FUN, GREAT, HOLIDAY, IBP, IMPROVEMENT, INTERNET, LINKS, OPTIMIZATION, PROMOTION, RANKING, SEO, WEBSITE

The words can be written in any direction (left, right, up, down, diagonally). As an example, we have marked the word “LINKS” in the image.

When you have marked all words in the image, read the remaining letters from left to right to see our hidden message. A printable version and the solution can be found here.

Google leads in ad-serving share

“DoubleClick and AdSense are responsible for more than half of all online-ad-server calls, or 31% and 26% respectively, Attributor reported. The next closest was Yahoo, at 10%, followed by AOL and Revenue Science, both at 7%. Surprisingly, Microsoft, which owns the Atlas ad-serving system, had only 4% of the market.”

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo as Ford, GM and Chrysler

“Could Google, Microsoft and Yahoo be the equivalent of Ford, GM and Chrysler more than 60 years ago? [...] The parallel with the auto industry? Buick, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet were the high tech startups industry of the 1940s. They were gobbled up to become GM.”

New search-by-style options for Google Image Search

“Today we’re pleased to extend [the style search options] to clip art and line drawings. To see the effect of these new options, let’s take a look at the first few results for ‘Christmas,’ one of our most popular queries on Image Search right now.”

Google’s secret revenue weapon revealed

“All quarter long, Wall Street has been trying to figure out why Google has introduced a slew of new revenue-generating products and suddenly developed new religion with regard to costs. [..] A senior source at the company tells us the changes are the result of Google’s ‘secret weapon,’ new CFO Patrick Pichette.”

Google disguises capitalism as civil rights

“Google has an opinion on the matter. Network neutrality is necessary to keep the service providers from charging us [...]. We want to run our business how we please, but you should force the internet service providers to run their business how we please. It’s just really convenient for us that way. Please, government, step in and save us.”

Search engine newslets

Do you want to have top 10 rankings on Google?

High rankings on Google mean more website visitors, more customers and more sales. Watch the video for further information:

“We do not need to spend a single penny on media advertising.”

“I just like to say how great we think IBP is. Digital Wonder Lab is a web design company, and we have been using IBP ever since we started producing websites. All of our customers are now on Google’s first result page.

Most of the time this occurred in only a few months. It really impresses our customers how quickly we can achieve this. Thanks IBP!”
Rob Good, Digital Wonder Lab

Get your website in front of more than 160,000 readers

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Copyright © 2008 Axandra GmbH

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Axandra news archive: 28 September 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

That’s one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. This article will help you to get back your old search engine rankings.

In the news: Google’s new keyword tool is out of beta, information about the impact of Google Insight based on statistics, there might have been a Google ranking algorithm and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

It’s one of the worst things that can happen to a webmaster: your website has lost its rankings on Google. Ranking drops can cost your business a lot of money. This article will help you to recover your lost rankings on Google.

Possibility 1: Your website has been penalized by Google

To check if your website has been penalized by Google, search for “site:yourdomain.com” (replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name) on Google.

If Google does not display any pages of your website, then your site has been penalized.

Google only penalizes websites that use spammy search engine optimization methods. For that reason, you have to remove all issues that might have caused the problem:

1. Remove all on-page spam:

Remove hidden or nearly-hidden text on your web pages. Reconsider any use of display:none and visibility:hidden that you use in the CSS code of your website. Check your web page titles, the meta tags and even the HTML comments on your web pages and remove any elements that might be interpreted as a keyword stuffing attempt. Remove any unnecessary redirects, links to dubious websites and all duplicate pages from your website. If you use cloaking or bot blocking scripts on your server, disable these scripts. Many bot blocking scripts keep legitimate search engine spiders away. Make sure that your HTML code is clean and that your web pages look nice. Don’t use any automatically created doorway pages.

2. Fix all off-site issues:

Off-site issues are often the reason for ranking penalties and they are more difficult to fix than on-page issues.

If you participated in automated link exchange systems or if you paid a cheap overseas link building service to get links to your website then it’s likely that these links have been flagged as spam links by Google.

Google does not like automated link systems at all. Remove all automated link systems from your website and try to make sure that these linking systems do not link anymore to your site.

If you purchased links to improve your rankings, try to get rid of these links. Paid links do work to some extend but they can get your website in trouble when Google finds out that you use paid links.

3. File a reinclusion request

When you are sure that all spam elements have been removed, you can file a reinclusion request.

Keep your reinclusion request short and to the point. Be friendly and explain what you have done to clean up your website.

Possibility 2: This is a change in the ranking algorithm

A ranking drop does not necessarily mean that your website has been penalized.

1. You redesigned your website or your website is relatively new

Google also temporarily downranks websites after a major design change (source). In that case, you don’t have to worry about the ranking drop because Google will give you your old rankings back after some time.

Of course, you must make sure that your new website design can still be parsed by Google and that your new web pages still contain the keywords for which you want to be ranked.

2. Other websites are better than yours

Search engine optimization is not a set-and-forget thing. Your competitors might have improved their websites so that they now have better content and better links than your site.

No website can keep its rankings forever. Re-analyze your web pages and optimize the content of your pages so that it is compliant to Google’s latest ranking algorithm.

Also improve the backlinks that point to your website. The link builder in IBP can help you to get better links.

Losing rankings on Google is hard for any website. If you do the things described above, chances are that you will get your rankings back as quickly as possible.

If your website doesn’t have top 10 rankings on Google yet, optimize it with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you what to do so that you get first page rankings on Google for the keywords of your choice.

Google’s updated keyword tool is out of beta

“We’ve combined the best features from two previous keyword tools into one. The previous Keyword Tool and Search-based Keyword Tool are no longer available in AdWords. The updated Keyword Tool is now the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, so you can now simply call it ‘The Keyword Tool.’ [...]

We’ve also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners.”

Discussion: was there a smaller Google ranking algorithm update this month?

“I have seen a sudden drop in rankings for my most traffic generating keywords on Google UK, whereas my competitors’ keywords haven’t dropped. [...] I’m in the UK and I’ve seen some of my sites drop too today, I suspect a shake-up. In my experience it sometimes settles back to normal after a day or two.”

Multiple domains vs subdomains vs folders in SEO

“Multiple domains are used when we want to be very GEO targeted and when we have enough content and resources to support all these websites. [...]

Subdomains are used when you have different products and services that you want to present by using a different website structure [...]

The folders are the most common, easy to use and all purpose solution. It is the safest method in terms of SEO and Web Development. You should use folders when you have a relatively small website and when you want to maintain the authority of the domain in the main categories.”

The impact of Google Instant (based on statistics)

“Nine out of the eleven sites saw increases in 7+ word keywords. Eight out of eleven sites saw decreases in 2 and 3 word keywords. [...]

The data, so far, suggests that Google Instant might be pulling people away from 2 and 3 word keywords and towards 6 and 7+ word keywords. This shift doesn’t appear dramatic, but there appears to be a slight shift toward long tail keywords.”

Google uses AI to make search smarter

“Imagine a very near future when you don’t forget anything because the computer remembers [...]

Artificial intelligence innovation could directly affect Google’s revenue, which rose to $23.7 billion last year. Take Google Instant, a new search tool launched in early September that uses AI to guess what a person is searching for as they type keywords into the search box.”

Search engine newslets

“IBP has saved the telephone charges.”

“Our small company sells craft beer in French throughout France. Most of our business goes through our website. So it was important that we get a good rank in search engines like Google.

We started groping and experiment; Internet is full of information, often contradictory, for the optimization of website. Of course, we had knowledge, like everybody.

We knew a lot about page titles, meta description, H1 tags, but what to choose? Which factors are most important? And it was unthinkable to take a phone call to our biggest competitor ‘hello, we would like to know how you have optimized your site’. IBP has saved telephone charges.

With IBP, we got second place for our main keyword in Google, and the rankings for other keywords continue to grow.

We have multiplied our visitors and sales. All this would not have been possible without IBP and today we can only congratulate ourselves for having it.”
Ebeer EURL, www.ebeer.fr

Tell us how IBP helped your business and 250,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

Click here to tell us your story.

Back to table of contents – Visit Axandra.com

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Axandra news archive: 8 June 2010

Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you must do the right things to succeed. You have to work on many different factors to make sure that your website performs better than the sites of your competitors. This week’s article helps you to check the five most important points.

In the news: long tail keywords still deliver more conversions, Google updates the toolbar PageRank, Flash is still a problem for Google and more.

Table of contents:

Best regards,

If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you must do the right things to succeed. You have to work on many different factors to make sure that your website performs better than the sites of your competitors.

Step 1: make your web pages accessible

Search engines must be able to access your web pages. If search engines cannot parse your web pages then they will ignore your site and you won’t get good rankings. Check the following points to make sure that search engines can access your web pages.

Your web server must not return an error code when search engine spiders visit your web pages. If your server returns an error code, search engines won’t index your site.

Your web server should return a “200 OK” code to search engine spiders. You can check the status code that your web server returns to search engines with IBP’s search engine spider simulator.

You should also check the HTML code of your web pages. While most HTML errors don’t cause problems with search engines, some of them can prevent search engines from indexing your site.

The fewer HTML errors your web pages have, the better. You can access a HTML validator in the “Tools” section in IBP.

The content of your web pages must make sense to search engines. Don’t use images or Flash to present the main content of your web pages.

To find out if your web page content contains all the elements that are needed to get a listing in Google’s top 10 results, check your web pages with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer.

Your robots.txt file must allow search engines to index your web pages. If you accidentally blocked all bots or all directories of your website (this can happen with a simply typo in the robots.txt file), search engines won’t list your website.

Step 2: use a meaningful site and information architecture

A good site architecture shows search engines that your website is more than just a collection of random web pages.

Use folders and logical linking to show search engines which pages of your website are related. Search engines should be able to find out that a group of web pages on your site is related to a certain topic.

Step 3: choose your keywords wisely

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps that determines whether your SEO campaign is a success or not.

It’s best to focus on longer keywords for search engine optimization. One word keywords are less likely to convert to a sale and they are also much more competitive. Details can be found here.

IBP’s keyword tools help you to find the keywords that will work best with your site.

Step 4: work on your website content

Web sites that only offer articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other web sites will have a hard time to get good search engine rankings.

Try to create unique and trustworthy content that separates your web site from the others.

Write about things you know. If you’re an expert in a special field, write as much as possible about that field to make sure that your web site becomes the best resource for that topic.

Step 5: work on your backlinks

Without good backlinks, it is impossible to get high rankings on major search engines. The links that point to your website have a major impact on the position of your web pages in Google’s search results.

Try to get as many links as possible from related web sites. The more targeted the link, the more it will help your search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization can be tricky because a small error in one element can destroy all of your other efforts.

Take a look at the checklists in our free search engine optimization eBook to find out how your web site can get top rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other major search engines.

Using Google Analytics to prove the SEO long tail theory

“Anyway I want to know, ‘Does a longer keyword actually give a better Conversion rate?’ [...] I took 13 Analytics accounts who have either e-commerce tracking or goals set up and set out about exporting the data. [...]

From the data presented it does show clear support that the long tail theory in SEO still exists and it is still right to assume niche keywords will drive a higher conversion although they have a lower search volume.”

Editor’s note: use the keyword tools in IBP to find good long tail keywords.

Google PageRank update June 2010

Many webmasters reported a PageRank drop for their websites in several discussion groups. The PageRank of these sites was lowered to zero. Here’s Google’s official answer to PageRank related problems:

“Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked.

PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner.”

Editor’s note: the green bar and the number in Google’s toolbar is not important. It’s important to get high rankings for the right keywords. If you’re interested in getting high rankings for the right keywords, make sure that your web pages contain the right elements.

It’s not just Apple: Google hates Flash too

“Google, at the end of the day, also hates Flash. Running an all flash environment is SEO death. Flash websites are simply too complicated for Google’s spiders to actually understand. Google sees the internet primarily in text – flash, and other scripts are ignored. [...]

Google has made no effort to improve its searching of flash. Two years ago Google and Adobe announced they were working together on the problem. Since then, nothing.”

Google vs Bing vs Yahoo

“Google handles 71% of all search queries in the United States in May 2010, while Yahoo handles around 15% and Bing around 9%. [...]

The changes to search engines from Google and Microsoft are causing some consternation among users, who typically don’t like changes to a service like search that they use so frequently. Some users complained that Google is looking more like Bing with the addition of a new navigation bar, while Bing is adding tabs to look more like Google.”

Search engine newslets

The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.

You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: “Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software.”

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com

Back to our newsletter archive

View the original article here