Many of you have probably heard about Google’s recent frontal assault on the paid link industry. Let’s face it, we all knew that day was coming… we just didn’t know how or when. Well, the cat’s out of the bag and the jig is apparently up for those who found themselves overly enamored with the text ad link brokers of the world. It’s a heated debate, and I’ll probably take some heat for my perspective on this, but I think the move was brilliant on Google’s part.

I’ve been a long proponent of the argument that the importance of Page Rank is completely dependent on your interpretation of Page Rank to begin with. To me, there is more than one form of Page Rank. The first form that most people obsess on is visible Page Rank… the one that graces the web browsers of those who have downloaded the Google toolbar. The there’s the other form, the invisible one that is the basis of Google’s ranking algorithm (aka. the one that matters).

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MSN will now notify you, when given your contact information, about which pages MSN thinks are the most important on your site as well as a yes/no if they think you are spamming. If yes you can go through a process to find out how and why. This is a nice feature to get some professional search engine feedback about your website and SEO tactics. If only Google provided this information; Hint Hint! You should check this out and all the other features available in both MSN and Google Webmaster tools. There is always something available that you will find valuable.

Matt Cutts is in charge of the Webspam team at Google. His Blog is extremely popular in the webmaster and search engine optimization world. In many of his Blog posts and interviews there are always interesting tidbits of information that are revealed that only someone that worked for Google would know. Any insight into the secretive intricacies of Google’s algorithm is always great information and Matt Cutts is everyones primary source.

Matt Cutts was recently interviewed in California. During this interview he was asked about Robot.txt and Page Rank for pages that aren’t allowed to be crawled by Google. What was interesting in the interview was when he mentioned “you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps.” A page that isn’t indexed within Google because of a Robot.txt file or NoFollow tag still carries Page Rank and outbound links on that page will still carry weight in internal and external cross-linking. Another situation he mentioned that was important for this scenario is if your website had multiple pages of similar or duplicate content, you could NoIndex the pages you don’t want Google to index but the links going into and coming out of those pages will still carry Page Rank.

The important thing to consider here is that the pages on your website create a web of Page Rank. The home page of your website passes link juice throughout your website. The path of your internal pages from the home page is extremely important from an SEO perspective. You want to make sure that your most important pages get the most link juice that can be obtained. There is always an optimal way to cross link your website and the above information may change some of the intricacies involved in choosing the optimal cross linking structure.

Is This Ethical? Microsoft AKA MSN Live Search is partnering with another search marketing firm, The Search Agency which will offer SEO and Paid Search Marketing services. Microsoft is the parent company of aQuantive, which owns Avenue A Razorfish a major paid search company. [more…]

Determining the most cost effective form of Web Site Marketing depends on your business. If your business would greatly benefit from ranking at the top of Google’s search results then Search Engine Marketing is your answer. That is the easy answer though. the difficult answer is determining how to achieve top search engine rankings cost effectively. Paying for top placement in Google AdWords and Yahoo Search can be cost effective but it is difficult for a beginner or someone with little time to dedicate to achieve a good ROI on the investment. Achieving top rankings through the organic results of the Search Engines is the most cost effective form of Web Site Marketing but also the biggest challenge to any business.

If you want a good return on your investment through Google AdWords, Yahoo Search and other Paid Search channels, you’re better off hiring a specialist to manage your campaign for you. The first thought that likely pops into your head is “How can I afford to pay a specialist?”. That is a good question but there is a better one, “How can you not afford to pay a specialist?”. Hiring a specialist to manage your campaign will provide you with the guaranteed ROI that you need to be successful with Paid Search Engine Marketing. There are tools that specialists utilize to make sure you’re always receiving your desired ROI with your campaign. A specialist will also dedicate the time necessary to optimize your campaign and not only achieve great results but increase the volume of business that you receive from your campaign and constantly make improvements over time.

Your next question is likely “Should I hire a specialist as an employee or outsource to a company/consultant?”. While it seems like hiring someone internally is the right answer, usually outsourcing is the best solution. When you outsource to a company that specializes in Paid Search Management you receive more resources at the same or even lower cost of an employee. A Paid Search Management company will have a team of specialists dedicated to your account. Furthermore, finding a good employee that is a Paid Search Engine Marketing specialist is not only difficult but expensive. In the end, outsourcing is the right answer, choosing the right company is the bigger obstacle.

The same questions and answers above apply to Organic Search Engine Optimization. The biggest difference with SEO compared to Paid Search is that one is an investment and the other is an ongoing marketing expense. Search Engine Optimization may seem more costly but in the end the ROI from a successful SEO campaign is far greater than any form of Online Marketing. When the heavy lifting is completed on an SEO campaign, the benefit of having an internal employee can never be justified. There is only so much that can be done once a web site is fully optimized by an employee and most of their options will be to utilize outside services to achieve better search engine rankings. Retaining an SEO Company requires a low monthly expense but you will receive far greater benefit from their expertise and the improvements that can be made over time. Link Building is also an extremely important factor in SEO, unless you already have a very popular web site. An employee could never satisfy your Link Building needs and an SEO Firm has all the tools and resources to provide an effective Link Building strategy for your company.

USWeb is one of the top Search Engine Marketing companies available. The biggest benefit to working with our company is the level of attention that we provide to our clients. You will always have direct access to our specialists at USWeb and they will be involved with every detail of your campaign. We pride ourselves in being a big company but making our clients feel like they are working with a small company that provides them with an unprecedented level of attention. You may be asking yourself, “I am sure that level of attention comes at a greater cost, no?” The answer is amazingly no. We are constantly complimented about our competitive prices based upon the level of expertise and service we deliver. We also work with small and medium size companies and they also find our prices very reasonable.

If you’re interested in learning more about our products and services, please feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Brian Ratzker VP, Business Development (212) 404-5603 brian@usweb.com

Phoenix Pool Builders

With the holidays around the corner everyone wants to take advantage of the most important time of the year and maximize their revenues. One of the most important avenues of driving sales for the holiday season is through search engine marketing. Ranking at the top of Google can provide a substantial amount of business for your company. Ranking at the bottom of the 1st page of Google results doesn’t provide enough exposure to have a significant impact on your business. If you rank at the bottom of the 1st page of results or even on the 2nd page of Google there is something that you can do to give you an extra boost in your rankings for the holiday season. USWeb has access to a network of Bloggers that can provide buzz about your company and quality links to your website. This service can have a substantial impact on your search engine rankings in a short amount of time and provide that extra boost that anyone can use to increase your holiday business and sales.

USWeb is one of the top Search Engine Optimization companies and we can provide you with valuable insight into your website and what can be done to help you maximize your holiday sales. I would be happy to provide you with some quick recommendations on what you can do to increase your search engine rankings at no cost. Link Building is extremely important for most websites and that is something I will likely recommend but a conversation with me is worth your time regardless if you choose to utilize any of our services. I am always happy to help anyone I speak with.

Brian Ratzker VP, Business Development (212) 404-5603 brian@usweb.com

Rob Semaan,

I have been trying to get through the right person at Fig for some time now about the results returned from Google for the term Lipodissolve:

http://www.google.com/search?q=lipodissolve&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

The first result reads, Lipo-Dissolve: Under Investigation. When you reach a candidate for Lipodissolve with your marketing efforts, I would imagine that the chance of them doing some research is pretty good, and the chance they will start their research on Google is even better. [more…]

After a software upgrade failure, DMOZ has struggled to get back up on its feet since October of last year. Today a DMOZ Meta-Admin posted an update stating that site submissions and update listing forms are back up and running. [more…]

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.

Digital Soapbox

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.

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…]