Pay for Performance SEO

Beware of the reciprocal link request

Posted on November 8, 2011 by terrymickelson

Being a link builder that has built tens of thousands of links, I get a lot of requests for link exchanges. These days these link exchange requests come primarily from out of country webmasters and link building companies. I suspect this happens because of the low cost of outsourced labor and the lack of knowledge by website owners thinking that link exchanges are still effective. Quite frankly I haven’t bothered looking at any link exchange requests in a long time. However the one that follows made it through my spam filters and caught my eye. To me, this is both ingenious and sad. Sad because it takes advantage of the webmaster who does not know better.

The link builder who sent this e-mail preys upon those who do not understand link building. They state as fact “As you know, linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites.”

Of course link building does benefit both sites. However nowhere in this message does the link builder offer a reciprocal link (which provides very limited benefit) or even offer to provide a link back from another site. Instead, this link builder implies that I will receive benefit for giving them a link. I think a lot of webmasters are still conditioned to think that if you put a link up the person you link to will give you a reciprocal link.

I have changed the name e-mail address and URL in the following message.

Barton hoode barton.hoode@some.com
4:06 AM (4 hours ago)

Dear Webmaster

I am barton woot of myfinancialdream.org

As you know, linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites.

My link information is below:

Title : Debt Consolidation

URL : http://www.myfinancialdream.org/debt-consolidation-page.htm

Desc : American Financial Solutions – Non-Profit Agency: Free, confidential, debt counseling and debt management options. One low monthly payment, lower interest rates and fees.

HTML code for the above information is :

<a href=”http://www.myfinancialdream.org/debt-consolidation-page.htm”>Debt Consolidation</a> -American Financial Solutions – Non-Profit Agency: Free, confidential, debt counseling and debt management options.
One low monthly payment, lower interest rates and fees.

Awaiting for your positive reply with exact URL where my link is present.If you are not the concerned person, please forward my email to your webmaster.

Thanks & Regards,
Barton
barton.woot@some.com

Posted in Linking | Tagged link building, link exchange | Leave a comment

Good News for Sites Hit by Google Panda Update 2011

Posted on July 27, 2011 by admin

It was confirmed by Google that last week a minor change was made in the newest set of algorithm changes for this year. Of course they are downplaying it as one of the 500 changes that are made yearly to their algorithm. However, for our website, and many of our clients, we have seen some improvements that have put us in better shape in search results than we were before the first major updates hit earlier this year. While all of our content creation and linking techniques were Google friendly, some of our rankings and those of other wrongfully penalized client websites were still struggling to even out.

According to the buzz on the web, and articles about the recent changes like this one from Web Pro News: http://www.webpronews.com/daniweb-claims-110-recovery-from-google-panda-update-2011-07 , the latest update has made big improvements to search rankings for a large number of sites that had been victims of the large Panda updates in April. It gives some of us Webmasters who felt unfairly penalized by the update some hope for a full recovery. I am going to continue keeping my eyes on how these latest changes have affected other websites and companies!

Posted in SEO | Tagged Google algorithm 2011, Panda update, SEO | Leave a comment

Is human search VS Automation back in style?

Posted on January 13, 2011 by admin

I just read an article on CNN discussing, once again, the problems with spam appearing in Google search results. Of course once again the topic of using human editors to rate sites has been brought up.

According to the article the issue is created by marketers and SEO companies. They claim that the results delivered for “money” keywords are nothing but spam and that it is due to the proliferation of easy to generate content tools.

Of course the solution the author presents is to manually review sites. There are over a Billion pages on the internet so good luck with that!

Anyway, here is the link to the article. http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/01/13/people.power.cashmore/index.html

Posted in Search Engine Marketing | Leave a comment

Link Building for Bing

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Terry Mickelson

Bing recently published a document about link building. Although it
focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, it can also help you to get better
links for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The most important points of
Bing’s document can be found in this article.

The importance of link building

The Bing engineers know that link building is important and they describe
link building as follows:

“Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You
contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site
exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is
evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your
site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building.”

In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that
link building is an ongoing process:

“Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the
Web. As your website is likely one of your business’ most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building
exercise. Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in
instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term
commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to
continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time.
Good things come to those who wait (and work
smartly!).”

Things that you can do to get good links to your website

Here are the things that Bing recommends:

You should develop your website as a brand and brand it consistently. People
like to link to high quality websites.

You should find relevant bloggers, industry websites and product reviewers
and make them aware of your website.

You can publish concise and informative press releases online.

You can publish expert articles in article directories.

You can participate in relevant conversations on blogs and forums and add a
link to your website when applicable.

You can use social networks to connect to industry influencers. Your
profiles should contain links to your website.

You can use email newsletters to notify people about new content on your
website.

You can launch a blog or a forum on your website.

You can participate in relevant industry associations and their online
forums.

You should strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry while
promoting your website.

Warning: the following things will get your website in trouble

Just like Google and other major search engines, Bing doesn’t like to be
cheated. If they detect unnatural linking patterns, your website might be
penalized. The following things can trigger search engine filters:

Your website get a lot of additional inbound links a very short time.

Many links that point to your website are from unrelated websites or blog
comments.

Your web pages contain hidden links.

You get links from links farms or automated link exchange systems.

Paid links point to your website.

Known spammers link to your website.

Your website links to known spammers.

Here’s what Bing does when they find suspicious data that is related to your
website:

“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to
a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction. If the spam
rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations
are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the
index.”

Getting inbound links requires some work. The Bing engineers are very clear
about this fact: “Make no mistake: getting legitimate and highly valuable,
inbound links is not a couch-potato task.”

Fortunately, there is a product available called IBP that will help you get links and optimize your site. You can Download it here.

Posted in Linking | Tagged link building, link building software | Leave a comment

comScore Reports Global Search Market Growth of 46 Percent in 2009

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Terry Mickelson

Google Sites Accounts for Two-Thirds of 131 Billion Searches Conducted
Worldwide in December while Introduction of Bing Helps Microsoft Post
Significant Gains During the Year

Reston, VA, January 22, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader
in measuring the digital world, today released a study on growth in the global
search market in 2009. The study revealed that the U.S. remains the largest
search market worldwide, while Google Sites retains a commanding position in the
global search market.

“The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with
both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth
worldwide,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “Search is
clearly becoming a more ubiquitous behavior among Internet users that drives
navigation not only directly from search engines but also within sites and
across networks. If you equate the advancement of search with the ability of
humans to cultivate information, then the world is rapidly becoming a more
knowledgeable ecosystem.”

Top Search Markets Worldwide

The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches
conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December
2009, representing a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number
represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 2.9
million per minute. The U.S. represented the largest individual search market in
the world with 22.7 billion searches, or approximately 17 percent of searches
conducted globally. China ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by
Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global
search markets, Russia posted the highest gains in 2009, growing 92 percent to
3.3 billion, followed by France (up 61 percent to 5.4 billion) and Brazil (up 53
percent to 3.8 billion).

Top 10 Countries by Number of Searches Conducted* December 2009 vs. December 2008 Total Worldwide, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
	Searches (MM)
	Dec-2008	Dec-2009	Percent Change
Worldwide	89,708	131,354	46%
United States	18,688	22,741	22%
China	11,778	13,278	13%
Japan	6,213	9,170	48%
United Kingdom	4,623	6,245	35%
Germany	4,079	5,609	38%
France	3,362	5,425	61%
South Korea	2,796	4,039	44%
Brazil	2,454	3,763	53%
Canada	2,900	3,710	28%
Russian Federation	1,735	3,333	92%

*Searches based on “expanded search” definition, which includes searches
at the top properties where search activity is observed, not only the core
search engines.

Top Search Properties Worldwide

Google Sites ranked as the top search property worldwide with 87.8 billion
searches in December, or 66.8 percent of the global search market. Google Sites
achieved a 58-percent increase in search query volume over the past year. Yahoo!
Sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches (up 13 percent), followed
by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches (up 7 percent).
Microsoft Sites saw the greatest gains among the top five properties, growing 70
percent to 4.1 billion searches, on the strength of its successful introduction
of new search engine Bing. Russian search engine Yandex also achieved
considerable gains, growing 91 percent to 1.9 billion searches.

Top 10 Search Properties by Searches Conducted December 2009 vs. December 2008 Total Worldwide, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
	Searches (MM)
	Dec-2008	Dec-2009	Percent Change
Worldwide	89,708	131,354	46%
Google Sites	55,638	87,809	58%
Yahoo! Sites	8,389	9,444	13%
Baidu.com Inc.	7,963	8,534	7%
Microsoft Sites	2,403	4,094	70%
eBay	1,327	2,102	58%
NHN Corporation	1,892	2,069	9%
Yandex	992	1,892	91%
Facebook.com	1,023	1,572	54%
Ask Network	1,053	1,507	43%
Alibaba.com Corporation	1,118	1,102	-1%

*Searches based on “expanded search” definition, which includes searches
at the top properties where search activity is observed, not only the core
search engines.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in
measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing
intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Contact:
Andrew Lipsman
Director, Marketing
Communications
comScore, Inc.
+1 312 775 6510
press@comscore.com

Posted in SEO | Tagged search engine growth 2009 | Leave a comment

Are Oracle Service Fees Still Worth It?

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Terry Mickelson

"Software as a Service" biggies Oracle and SAP make billions selling businesses maintenance and support contracts guaranteeing access to the latest updates and to the helpdesks for these all-in-one business-management software systems. But in these penny-pinching times, the Wall Street Journal reports, some Oracle customers are switching their service contracts to lower-cost providers. Salesforce.com says it's been poaching Oracle customers for its CRM service. The Journal cites Rimini Street as another beneficiary; the company's site promises a 50% cut in service fees for SAP customers. If you're wondering whether to stay or go, you might seek guidance from the Independent Oracle Users Group. — Jeff B. Copeland, Content Product Manager

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Phoenix Charter School – Phoenix Charter Schools – AmeriSchools

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Terry Mickelson

Phoenix Charter Schools Spotlight on Leadership

DeeAnn Chan is an AmeriSchools success story. DeeAnn started with AmeriSchools as a novice teacher in 1998. Her knowledge of curriculum and classroom skills made her a logical choice for leadership. Over the past years, DeeAnn was selected as Principal, earned her Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from NAU, became a mother to Alex (3 years old) and led AmeriSchools to reach improved academic goals each year. DeeAnn has introduced the World Famous FISH! Philosophy, expanded implementation of Spalding Language Arts, supported school-wide music and physical education programs and created a family friendly learning community. DeeAnn leads by example and demonstrates daily how we each make a difference in the lives of children.

via Phoenix Charter School

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The effect of your URL structure on your Google rankings

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Terry Mickelson

Does Google care about the position of a web page on your server?
Does it make a difference if a web page is in the root directory of
your website or in a sub directory? How does your URL structure
influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results?

Trailing slashes and sub directories

A popular assumption is that Google prefers pages that are in the root directory of a website.

If an URL contains many trailing slashes (meaning the page is placed in
a sub-sub-directory) then Google might not think that the page is
important in relation to the other pages.

Although this statement is often repeated in SEO forums, it is probably not true.

The visibility of a web page counts, not its position

If
a web page is linked throughout your website and if the page has
inbound links then the web page will be indexed and ranked by Google
without any problems.

Most web pages on today's websites
are created dynamically and the URL that is displayed in a web browser
presents only a virtual site structure that is not really available on
the server.

As there are no real folders on the server,
search engines won't find a valuable ranking signal if they look at
things like presence or absence of directories.

What does this mean for your website?

If
you want to show search engines that a page on your website is
important, link to it from many other pages of your website so that it
can easily be found.

A page that gets many links (both
from your own website and from other websites) will get the attention
that it deserves from Google's indexing robot.

When you should care about the structure of your URLs

1. URL stripping can cause problems

Rumor
has it that Google uses URL stripping to index web pages. That means
that Google shortens the path to an URL to find new pages on a site.
For example, "www.example.com/folder/keyword.htm" would be shortened to "www.example.com/folder/".

If
you use dynamically created URLs then you should make sure that all
virtual folders return real web pages a "404 not found" pages.
Otherwise, Google might think that you have many faulty pages and/or
that your website has a low quality.

2. Shorter URLs can be better for your website visitors

Although
most web surfers don't pay attention to the URL in the browser address
bar, shorter URLs can enhance the user experience. Shorter URLs are
easier to remember and they can improve the direct type-in traffic.

3. Short URLs get more clicks

A
search marketing study found out that web surfers clicked short URLs
twice as often as long URLs in Google's search results. Long URLs are
cut off in Google search engine result pages. Web surfers cannot see
where they are going to go and this can decrease the click-through rate.

4. The URLs of your web pages can contain your keywords

The
words that appear in the URL of a web page can influence the position
of the web page for these words. For that reason, it can make sense to
rewrite your URLs so that they include the keywords for which you want
to have high rankings.

Article from the weekly newsletter of IBusiness Promoter. Download a free copy here.

Posted in Linking | Tagged site design, url structure | Leave a comment

What do search engine marketers think about reciprocal links?

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Terry Mickelson

There are three main factions:

Group 1: reciprocal links have no effect at all on the position of a website in the search results on Google.

Group 2: reciprocal links work just like any other inbound links.

Group 3: there's a threshold value. For example, you shouldn't have more than 33% reciprocal inbound links.

Which group is right and should you use reciprocal links with your website or not?

Is there a threshold value for reciprocal links?

Webmasters
in group 3 think that a high number of reciprocal links is a red flag
for search engines. The idea behind this is that links should not be
trusted if (for example) 100% of a site's inbound links are reciprocal.

However,
this is not really a good indicator. If high quality websites do link
to each other, they won't harm their rankings in any way.

For some sites, it is normal to have a high reciprocity percentage

Link building expert Eric Ward recently did a test. He found out that there are websites for which it is perfectly normal that they have almost 100% reciprocal links.

The
more specific the topic of a website is, the more likely it is that it
will have a high reciprocity percentage. As an example, Eric Ward used
the website of "The Southeastern Bat Diversity Network", an
organization with a goal to "conserve bats and their habitats in
southeastern North America through collaborative research, education,
and management."

The top sites in that subject are all
linked back and forth to all other websites that write about bats. This
is not surprising and it shows that a high number of reciprocal links
can also be a sign of high quality. It depends on the topic of the
website.

If the websites were about different topics, then the reciprocal links would look suspicious.

Should you use reciprocal links for your website or not?

You
don't have to worry if a link is a reciprocal link or not. That does
not matter. Reciprocal links are neither good nor bad. They are just
links and it always depends on the individual link whether it is a good
link or a bad link.

If a link comes from a website that
is related to your website then it is a good link. If the other website
is related to yours then you can link back and this won't cause any
problems. As long as you make sure that the links make sense to your
website visitors then everything is okay.

You can use IBP's link building tool
to get links to your website. IBP can help you with one-way links,
reciprocal links, links from blogs, links from related websites, links
from Internet directories and much more. It is a spam-free link
building tool that helps you to get high quality links.

Posted in Linking | Tagged building links, ibp, inbound links, link building, reciprocal links | Leave a comment