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Archive for January, 2008

Don’t be a Victim of Online Fraud

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 24th, 2008

Be aware of Online fraud Due to all the mortgage fraud around here, and throughout the country, there have been public service announcements popping up, to better “educate” us about the dangers of fraud. Fraud seems to be a part of life, with new ploys being developed all the time to take advantage of trusting individuals. The last comment of one of the public service announcements heard frequently around here states: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” We all have heard this comment before, and frankly it is a good piece of advice. Due to blatant greed, we all need to be suspect of almost everything, if not everything. I can promise you there is no money locked in a secret US bank account, which only you can get out to help a banished Prince of Nigerian royal decent, and for your efforts the good Prince won’t be giving you a few million as a commission either.

In online business the same goes, I am sad to hear of stories of people who put out their hard-earned money on some hyped-up trick to increase traffic to their site. These programs might in fact increase traffic a bit, but it isn’t quality traffic, it isn’t qualified traffic, so it isn’t worth what was paid.

Then there are the “online marketing experts” who are willing to open their secret treasure trove of online selling secrets for a nominal fee. These are the secrets that have “made them millions” and they are going to hand them out to you for only $29.95. Oh, but that’s not all, you can also get a special bonus of the super-duper extra secret online marketing magic techniques for just another $19.99, but you have to do it before that 60 second timer ticks off to zero… hurry!!! Please…

I am also tired of hearing of the many SEO scams, and then dealing with the fallout these scams put on the SEO industry. These SEO scammers are the people who ask you to pay a relatively small fee up front, then monthly fees thereafter for their masterful “SEO services.” All of which can’t be audited or proven, while you are being assured by the scammer they are working hard on your site, and you sense they are sitting in their underwear, and you swear you can hear Halo 3 being played in the background. I am sure there have been many occasions when all these SEO guys have done is sign our sites up for that traffic-pusher scam system mentioned earlier, and then they just sit back and claim the new increase in traffic is from their relentless SEO efforts. Total scam.

In the world of Internet marketing, let’s just agree on this… If it sounds to good to be true, it MOST DEFINITELY IS NOT TRUE. Please do not fall for any of these and a myriad of other online scams, there is not easy money out there, not legally anyway.

Making a site a success is like anything else in life, it takes work. SEO is work, it takes time to build links, create content, research keywords, all of which are important in SEO efforts. There are tools you can use to make the process of SEO more manageable, but the work has to be done by someone, somehow, somewhere, in order for a site to really improve its performance. You can use a system like SoloSEO to help you keep track of all your progress and provide you with tools and training to do it yourself, but it does take time and effort. Or you can hire a reputable SEO firm, one that will be a bit pricey, but they will tell you what they are doing, and show you reports of the progress they have made, and you will see an increase in qualified traffic, and ultimately sales. Good SEO efforts drive real potential clients to your site because they already know what you are offering and it is what they are searching for, that is the type of pre-qualified clients we all want browsing our product pages.

At SoloSEO we are working to make the tools and processing of SEO easier to use, as well as more educational. We not only want our clients to see their sites improving the right way, we want them to know how SEO works and to understand what the tools and processes are doing, and why the positive results are happening. Understanding the concepts behind SEO allow us to better understand our online marketplace, and helps us quickly determine the different online tactics be employed by our competitors, so we can better compete. Learning and doing are both important in SEO, as it is with many other worthwhile endeavors.

In short, please be careful when purchasing SEO services, make sure the providers will be accountable, make sure they give you some benchmarks on what they will accomplish over the term of the contract. Not so much in terms of traffic, traffic will come if the SEO is done right, instead make sure they give you a timeline on when the keyword research will be done, how much time they will spend building links, and how they build links, (hopefully they avoid purchasing links), and how much time will be spent on content, etc. Pin them down, and make them commit to a defined time-line. This is the way business is typically done in the offline world, we should demand and expect the same level of responsibility from the online world. Don’t be intimidated by their perceived expertise, you know more about other stuff than they do, I assure you. Speak with confidence, and expect them to stand by their performance.

If you have any questions on whether a SEO service provider is a good one or not, ask them to provide you a few URLs they have worked on and talk to the owners of those sites, see how past clients have felt they were treated. You could also use our SEO tools to analyze these sites and see if they have addressed basic SEO principles required to improve a site for the long haul.

Ultimately, just be wary, money can make good people do some pretty dumb/dishonest things. We unfortunately had $20K stolen from us last year by a family friend. This someone we allowed in our home as one of the family and we mistakenly trusted, so it can happen easily, anywhere, anytime, even to the most untrusting among us.

One final note on fraud, pay attention to all the political campaigning going on right now. Some of the very best scammers in all the world are now running for President of the United States, it is fascinating to watch. Let us all remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, even ( or especially) in politics.

4 comments Visited 3040 times January 24th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

SEO “Blog Posters” vs “Article Bloggers”

Don’t April Fools Yourself

Empty Title Tag = Google uses WHOIS data?

The Blog Tag Tree

Showcase of the Best Search Engine Marketing Posts

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 14th, 2008

Learning all there is to learn in Search Engine Marketing is no easy feat. There’s no real text book, and if there was it would be outdated right after it was published I’m sure. The best place to get the best information in Search Marketing is from immersing yourself in the blogs of SEO and SEM.

Thankfully, Matt McGee comes to our rescue with the SEMMY’s (note…SEM=search engine marketing, the rest is to give it the Grammy’s feel). This “award ceremony” goes through the best posts in the previous year in the search marketing world. The nice thing is, it gives you a fantastic list of articles to read and get caught up on in any of the following categories:

SEO
PPC
Viral Marketing
Social Media
Link Building
Local Search
General Online Marketing
Blogs & Blogging
Reputation Management
Small Business
Analytics
Google
Search Tech

and just for fun…

LOL Funny!
Rants

To my surprise I have 4 articles nominated, in 2 categories! In the SEO category, one called Learn SEO Basics: Long Tail Keywords and another 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours (that also has a great follow-up with 80+ comments called 24 Hour Site Indexing Works Again). In the LOL Funny! category (no one has ever really called me funny actually) I have our most visited and commented post ever, What the Customer Actually Wanted, and the other is LinkedIn Wants Me to Accept or Deny Jesus?.

Matt even made some cool little badges for nominees, which I’m not really into, but I thought I’d branch out a little:

I do think there is a ton to gain from reading the articles being nominated, which I bet you could do in a couple of days. And if you’re really looking for the cream of the crop, the judges are going to be narrowing each category down to a handful of articles (and even letting us vote on them).

Head on over to the SEMMYS for some great reading!

2 comments Visited 4322 times January 14th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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SEO and the Presidential Candidates, Part 2

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 8th, 2008

With the Presidential primaries well under way, it’s time for a follow-up to my March 2007 post about how the Presidential candidates rate for SEO. Conveniently the same top 3 candidates in both parties are both considered the top 3 candidates, so I’m going to stick with the same in my new analysis (Democrats: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. Republicans: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain). In my previous post I looked at a few points that haven’t changed, like age of domain and the choice of domain URL, so refer to that post for that analysis.

This analysis looks at basic SEO metrics and compares data from January 2008 to March 2007. A few new measurements are given following these, including PPC branding and a new metric called IndexRank. And for fun we’ll come up with the winners from both parties in terms of their effectiveness in SEO.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or inbound links, are how many sites link to your site. These figures are from Yahoo.

Candidate	March ‘07	January ‘08	% Increase
Barack Obama	119,909	734,395	612%
John Edwards	15,498	581,823	3754%
Hillary Clinton	79,219	501,415	632%
Rudy Giuliani	38,236	348,025	910%
Mitt Romney	39,245	291,470	742%
John McCain	7,428	199,813	2690%

Barack Obama leads in backlinks by about 150,000 backlinks. John Edwards started with having almost 6 times less than Hillary and beats her by 80,000 backlinks.
In the Republican field, John McCain started off with very few (comparatively) backlinks and still ends with 100,000 less than Mitt Romney. Romney leads Rudy by about 50,000 links.

Technorati Links

This is used as a measure of popularity in the blogosphere world. The more the better.

Candidate	March ‘07	January ‘08	% Increase
Barack Obama	6,527	22,662	347%
John Edwards	4,952	21,766	440%
Hillary Clinton	3,710	20,933	564%
Mitt Romney	1,756	11,019	627%
Rudy Giuliani	342	8,206	2400%
John McCain	670	6,172	921%

Obama again leads on Technorati links and John Edwards and Clinton keep their same position, with Hillary having the most percentage increase.
Mitt Romney started well ahead of both Rudy and John (2.5 X more and 5 X more respectively) and still leads in Technorati links. Rudy surpasses John McCain with a larger increase in links.

Alexa Rank

I know Alexa isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting comparison. The lower the number, “the better”. The number represents the rank of the website out of the top websites on the Internet in terms of traffic. The most visited site on the Internet is ranked 1. A zero (0) means either an error or not enough traffic to rank.

Candidate	March ‘07	January ‘08	Change
Barack Obama	12,581	17,303	-4,722
Hillary Clinton	18,727	32,729	-14,002
John Edwards	33,485	69,182	-35,697
Mitt Romney	129,490	63,734	+65,756
Rudy Giuliani	Not Ranked	92,963	unknown
John McCain	178,788	99,639	+79,149

All of the Democratic candidates have seen a drop in their Alexa Rank since March 2007, with John Edwards taking the worst drop. Barack Obama leads with the best rank.
All of the Republican candidates see a better Alexa ranking, although anything was better than Rudy’s rank in March 2007. Mitt Romney leads with the best rank.

Page Strength

Candidate	March ‘07	January ‘08	Change
John Edwards	6.5/10	8.5/10	+2
Barack Obama	5/10	8/10	+3
Hillary Clinton	5.5/10	6.5/10	+1
John McCain	3.5/10	7/10	+3.5
Mitt Romney	4/10	7/10	+3
Rudy Giuliani	3.5/10	6.5/10	+3

All candidates made significant strides, as would be expected. PageStrength is not a measurement of how good the pages are, but of how well-known, cited, visited, and linked to a site is.
John Edwards has the highest PageStrength while Barack jumped the most, moving from third to second.
John McCain made the most stride but also started as the lowest in PageStrength. Both McCain and Romney end up with the same PageStrength, both beating out Hillary’s PageStrength.

Indexed Pages

Google and Yahoo both give a different number of pages in their index, so I’ll show both, Google/Yahoo.

Candidate	March ‘07	January ‘08
Barack Obama	148/525	302,000/315,000
Hillary Clinton	387/1133	39,100/19,900
John Edwards	4,230/66	31,700/209,000
Rudy Giuliani	91/34	6,400/3,650
John McCain	457/155	4,940/19,400
Mitt Romney	309/157	4,190/4,980

These numbers are all over the place, it’s hard to say who reports more accurately (Google vs. Yahoo). However, there’s no doubt that Obama has created tons of content (probably a lot of user-generated content).

PPC Branding

I’m not going to recap the PPC from March 2007 because the keywords I looked at were only used by 2 of the candidates. This time I chose to look at the use of PPC for their own name, which I feel is a reflection of their PPC campaign. If you’re not running ads for your brand (your name) you’re probably not running much of a PPC campaign.

Barack Obama – Ads by Obama and Rudy
Hillary Clinton – Ad by Rudy
John Edwards – Ad by Rudy
Rudy Giuliani – Ad by Rudy
Mitt Romney – Ads by Rudy and Mike Huckabee
John McCain – Ads by McCain and Rudy

Rudy clearly comes out a winner, but keep in mind this is only a snapshot. If you follow these links at different times of day and different geographical locations you may see very different results. These are coming from the West Coast.

IndexRank – a measurement of content freshness

This metric is from 0-10 where 10 is the highest. The higher the number the better the content growth, freshness, and the more indexed the site is by Google.

Hillary Clinton – 8
Barack Obama – 8
John Edwards – 5
Mitt Romney – 9
John McCain – 8
Rudy Giuliani – 6

Mitt Romney wins out with a 9 above even the Democrats. Hillary and Obama are both at 8 and John Edwards lags way behind the whole group with a 5. Rudy lags behind the Republican candidates with a 6.

The Winners

Back in March 2007 there was no clear SEO winner in either party. After 10 months of campaigning, you can really see a lot of changes in all the candidates, some more than others.

In the Democratic party, Barack Obama clearly trumps both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the growth of their site and the pursuit in SEO.

In the Republican party, its not as clear but Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both have made great strides, but I think Mitt Romney’s advantage in traffic, IndexRank, and Technorati links gives him an edge over Giuliani.

7 comments Visited 4225 times January 8th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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24 Hour Site Indexing Works Again

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 7th, 2008

I created a new site on Friday, and by Saturday exactly 24 hours later it was in Google’s Index. I posted about this just over a month ago in my post, 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours. I had a lot of comments about whether or not Adwords was necessary, so I thought I’d try it again without running Adwords this time. Here’s how it all played out:

1) I created 5 pages of content (Home, FAQ, About Us, etc.).

2) I put them in a simple template with site-wide links. I also linked to it from one of my other sites (it’s very relevant so it makes sense).

3) I added tagged the site on only 2 social bookmarking sites.

4) Commented in 1 forum, put the URL in one directory (niche specific), and submitted it to Digg.

5) Installed Google Analytics

6) Created a sitemap, pinged Google, and put the sitemap in my Robots.txt. Logged into Google Webmaster Central and submitted my sitemap there.

When I checked exactly 24 hours later I was sitting in the index and had already begun to get a few visitors from Google.

I had previously done Google adwords out of both necessity (get quick traffic) but also because of the trust factor I believe it gives to Google, and the fact that Google integrates a quality factor into their quality score (so they come to your site and look at it). Obviously this is just one test compared to several others I’ve done with Adwords, but it seems its very possible without running some ads.

Anyone else seeing 24 hour indexing for new sites?

100 comments Visited 10059 times January 7th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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