You are currently browsing the USWeb Blog - Internet and Search Engine Marketing Blog weblog archives for November, 2006.
The Great Firewall of China? No, that wasn’t a spoof, there really is such a thing in China and it regulates what the Chinese can and can’t see on the internet. However, this may all change on December 1st upon the release of a new tool. [more…]
If you haven’t run across this yet, you need to check out Ms. Dewey. She is a much more attractive and interactive version of Ask Jeeves. You can type in different searches and see the various things she does; you can ask her about pornographic topics and she has numerous responses to those searches or you can search random things and see what her responses are. This could be the beginning of the future of the Internet and search but I don’t think this is going to catch on much more than a fun gimick.
Below are a list of some searches that give interesting responses:
microsoft
google
viagra
sex
firefox
ask jeeves
what are you reading
how old are you
what is the meaning of life
white hat seo
gmail
President Bush
Dick Cheney
weather forecasts
Yo Mama
Painting
Lord of the Rings
UFOs
MySpace
Halo 2
Google recently admitted that they were complacent in the distribution of the computer virus known as the Kama Sutra worm (creepy name huh?) The worm was apparently sent out by mistake to subscribers of the Google Video Blog discussion list, spurred by a contaminated posting to the board. Subscribers who opened the email that usually contains online news items and other information regarding cool new stuff (lol) on the Video Blog, may have potentially opened their doors to an attack by the virus that can delete files and important registry keys. The knowledge of the virus dates back to January 2006, so most antivirus programs will automatically block the intruder, but Google still encourages subscribes who think they may have been exposed to update their protection to the latest version. [more…]
Here’s the trick, go to yahoo.com. The Yahoo! logo is in the top right corner. Click on the “!” and you are in for a surpise.
Wondering what the best way is to increase link popularity on your website? First, you need to understand the algorithm of Google and the other search engines, then you need you need to explore the options available to increase link popularity and then we will explain the best option to increase link popularity for your website.
Google’s algorithm is very complex, so I won’t bore you with details that would require you to be a mathematician. Google currently drives the most traffic to websites that rank at the top of their organic results. Google’s algorithm is also more complex than the other search engines but if you concentrate on Google when optimizing your website and building link popularity you will be much better off. Google looks at a websites on-site factors and off-site factors to determine how the website should rank in their results. In this post we will concentrate on the off-site factors, which are roughly 35 to 45% of the importance to Google’s algorithm.
Most people have heard of Page Rank, which is roughly the score Google gives your website to determine how popular it is on the internet. What people are failing to understand is that Page Rank doesn’t carry the weight it once did in Google’s algorithm. There is still importance to Page Rank but since manipulating Page Rank was fairly easy Google decreased its value in their algorithm. What Google really looks for now are links pointing to your website from many different sources on the internet. Page Rank is still a factor in that scenario, but there is a lot to be said about receiving 1000 links from different websites as opposed to receiving 100 links from different websites with a good Page Rank. Nobody can tell you the exact difference in the quality of one over the other but in our experience 1000 links from different websites with low levels of Page Rank work better in increasing your rankings within the organic results of Google.
Another part of the algorithm that people don’t quite understand, is the quality of the page that the link is on relative to your website and/or page it is directed to. Google looks at where the link is placed on the website and gives more value when the link is within textual content as opposed to sitting at the bottom of the page in a list of links. Google also looks at the text that surrounds the link and determines how targeted that text is compared to the page that the link points to. The algorithm also looks at the Title Tag of the page the link is on as well as important SEO factors such as H1 Tags and other META data. There is also a very complex new algorithm that Google has been testing, Latent Symantec Indexing (LSI). LSI essentially determines how words are related to each other, such as how dog is related to cat. Many people think this has to do with content on your own website but from our analysis it has more to do with the page that a link is coming from when it is hyperlinked to your website. The factors that LSI looks at are the Title Tag and the textual content of the page that your link is on. Therefore it is becoming more important to increase link popularity by receiving links on different pages of different websites that have content that is similar to the content on your website.
There are many ways to increase link popularity. I won’t go into all of them in great detail because there are far too many to cover in one post. The main methods that most people explore are press release distribution, purchasing links from link brokers, trading links with other websites (reciprocal linking) and link baiting. Press release distribution is the most effective way to increase link popularity but it is also the most difficult because the content of your release needs to be interesting enough for publications to want to write about it. Purchasing links from link brokers is easy and cost effective but you usually don’t receive the best quality of links because most are not within textual content and Google even automatically removes the value of links when they are placed at the bottom of websites with a whole list of outbound links. Reciprocal linking was once the best method to increase link popularity but now it provides very little value unless you aren’t trading links with the same websites and you only receive one-way links, even then they usually are on link pages and aren’t placed within valuable textual content that is relevant to your website. Link baiting is also a very effective way to increase link popularity but is also extremely difficult to accomplish. Link baiting is the process of hunting out links, although you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content. This is the natural way that popular websites remain popular and rank well in the search engines. If you create content or software that people can’t get anywhere else you can also make your website popular, which will increase link popularity.
Creating Blogs about your vertical market is a great strategy to build link popularity for your website. Blogs such as a NHL Blog, NFL Blog, MLB Blog, Movie Blog, TV Blog, Entertainment Blog. Blogs like these can go a long way in helping you increase your link popularity no matter your vertical market.
The best way to increase link popularity is through Blogs. Blogs naturally are filled with valuable content that the search engines crave and they also naturally link to other websites they talk about within their posts. If you had a page on your website about roses and you received a link from a Blog post about roses with the anchor text of the link pointing to your website saying “roses”; you have now received a great quality link. Now receiving one link from one Blog won’t do much to increase your ranking within Google for the keyword “roses”. You need links from hundreds or even thousands of Blogs with the same concept and then you will see significant improvements in your rankings. This works for any keyword phrase you might be targeting but the more popular the phrase is the more links from different Blogs you will need. Doing this on your own is very difficult and creating hundreds or even thousands of different Blogs yourself is nearly impossible or clearly not cost effective. Blogitive was created for this very purpose. Blogitive currently has more than 2000 Blogs within its network and is growing substantially every day. Through Blogitive you can submit a web release (mini press release) to these Bloggers and they will write about your release and link to your website in any manner you want, including any URL and any keyword phrase. Blogitive has proven to be extremely effective in increasing link popularity and is also very cost effective. Please visit Blogitive to learn more about this service and how you can finally achieve the top search engine rankings that you never thought was possible.
Would you like to know the latest fashion of your favorite Hollywood actor or actress and where you can buy it? Well, now you can. Like.com has launched a new innovative concept that adds a whole different approach to online comparison shopping. [more…]
One more guest has arrived at the search marketing party, Amazon.com. Amazon just rolled out the beta of their anticipated pay-per-click ad platform, Clickriver.
Amazon is looking for advertisers to join their closed beta test of the new service, which will be rolled out across their shopping portal, as well as the A9 search engine. [more…]
To try and cash in on the hundreds of searches for food related products and recipes, Yahoo has launched a food section that will feature videos of celebrity chefs as well as recipes from famous cooks and other non food related personalities. The new section also lets users share recipes online, as well as rate ideas from others, letting wanna be Emrils see if their recipe can stand up to the competition. [more…]
