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Hi Everyone!
I’m having a hard time getting going this morning since
my search
engine won’t start (I know, don’t quit my day job).
Hope you were busy watching the political debates recently
(whichever side you happen to be on) as they were most
entertaining.
Anyway, here’s some Q &A to get us started.
How do I know if I’ve picked the right keywords?
- Roger
Hi Roger,
This is a big subject, but to get you started, make a list
of
keywords you think are relevant to your site and then
cross-reference them on Overture and Wordtracker. Also, keep
in mind that if you are selling something (and who isn’t)
that you will want to pick keywords for buyers instead of
information seekers.
For instance, there are two funny t-shirt sites. The first
one is
optimized for “funny t-shirts” and the second on
is optimized for “funny pictures”. The term “funny
pictures” is twice as popular as “funny t-shirts”
and the second site receives twice as many unique visitors
as the first. The first site, however, sells 5 times more
funny t-shirts than the second site. Why?
The first site picked a key-phrase for buyers and the second
site picked a key-phrase for browsers (information seekers).
For more information of this subject see:
http://www.seoresource.net/Personalized-Search.htm
Hi Kevin,
Can you ever over-optimize a website?
-Miva
Hi Miva,
If by over-optimize you mean go to the extreme which would
border on spamming your own site, I would say yes. Stuffing
all of your alt tags with long lists of keywords for instance
would be an example of this. Recently, within the SEO community
there has been talk of some of the major search engines penalizing
websites that look SEO’ed.
According to some in the forums, mostly SEO’ed sites
are doing better recently than those have been totally SEO’ed.
While the evidence at this point is only anecdotal, I suspect
there may be some truth to this as SE’s like Google are
making a big effort to cut down on spammy sites. Of course,
though this is only conjecture at this point.
News
Well, it looks like our old buddy Traffic Power is at it
again.
Read about the fake forums this black hat SEO has put up in
order to attack the white hat SEO’s at:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=29561
The SeoResource.net site is even mentioned as one of the
websites under attack. At least we are in good company with
the other industry leading white hat SEO’s.
News Flash – Flash News
Well, it looks like Macromedia has tried to solve the “You
can’t
SEO a Flash file” dilemma with their new Macromedia Flash
Search Engine SDK 1.0. This product is just out and I haven’t
had time to investigate it, but perhaps the cavalry is coming
to the rescue on this one. It will be interesting to track
the feedback when it starts rolling in on whether this is
a great fix or a fix that needs to be fixed itself. More news
to come …
More info can be found at:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/
search_engine/readme.html#sample_output
Yahoo! Personal Search
Yahoo! has just rolled out its new personal search engine
at:
http://mysearch.yahoo.com/
In this personal search the user can set preference, save
results, block results and my personal favorite is the share
option. With the share option, it makes it easy to find
the results you want, then forward them off to a friend.
Google Update Coming Soon
Many are now anxiously awaiting the next Google algorithm
update. Multiple versions of Googlebot have been most active
recently and it is coming up on the season when last year
Google rolled out its infamous “Florida Update”
which buried many top sites in the SE rankings just in time
for the holiday shopping season. The newest Googlebot, according
to rumor, is looking for spammy sites and those using black
hat SEO techniques to weed out.
Google Publishing Print Program
Google has just unveiled its Google Print Program at:
http://print.google.com/
so that books can be found along with
the regular search results. Because of limits imposed by Google,
books cannot be read start to finish, but can be browsed,
like in a bookstore. For more information see:
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3417941
New SEO Resource Article
Look for the newest SeoResource article concerning how to
SEO and PDF file, coming out later this week.
Tip of the Week
For those concerned with back links (and who isn’t)
here’s a few ways to keep track of your back links:
Google – so a search for link:http://www.yourdomain.com/
MSN, AllTheWeb, AltaVista – go to
http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com/
That’s it for now. See you all in a couple of weeks!
If you have questions, send them in. Remember, not to ask
for
free website critiques, but if you have general questions
to
share, send them in!
-Kevin Kantola
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