A large part of market research for online businesses is identifying the competition and determining what it will take to outrank them in the SERPs (define).

Real world and online competitors may be very different sets of players. Some fierce rivals in the brick and mortar world may not even be online. They may have badly optimized or poorly converting Web sites, or not understand the local search space. In these cases, you're at a big advantage -- at least until they catch on.

On the other hand, you may find competitors in the virtual world who you don't see as a true threat to your business. However, if they rank above you for the search terms you want to rank for, they're your online competition and need to be considered as such.

Find Your Competitors

Figuring out your online competitors isn't difficult. It can be time consuming, but it's worth the investment. Do it yourself rather than leaving it to others because you'll get a detailed view of your marketplace, which is invaluable when making decisions about the future of your business.

First, search for the top five terms you want to rank for in Google, MSN, and Yahoo and see who's earned a place on page one. Then, see who ranks for those same terms in Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Local. Next, find out who's bidding on same keyword phrases in the PPCs (define). Google rules, so concentrate your efforts there, but don't ignore the other two.

Dismiss any irrelevant results that don't belong or pose no threat. For example, Wikipedia ranks well for all kinds of things, but they don't sell anything, so don't worry about it.

See which sites rank well for several terms or in several places. Note their PageRank, the number of Google backlinks, and the number of pages on the site. Look at the terms that their pages are optimized for and if they rank well for them. These are all clues to the power of those sites. You'll discover that there are only a few true competitors to unseat.

Learn From Your Competitors

Take a close look at these Web sites and learn what you can from them. Are they appealing, informative, and easy to use? What are they doing that you can adapt to strengthen your own Web site and business?

Explore their backlinks in Google and Yahoo to see if there are any opportunities to get links for your own site from Web sites that link to them. Be discriminating, though. Just because they have a link doesn't mean it's a good link that's helping them rank.

In Google Maps and the other local search platforms, look at what categories the top ranking businesses are in. Consider your own categories and determine what, if any, changes may help you rank better.

Review your rivals' local business listings. Do they have many reviews (good or bad)? Do they have a lot Web references (pages on the Internet that mention them, but don't necessarily link to them)? Is their profile as complete as possible, and does it include appealing images and videos, and complete details about their hours, services, brands, s served, and so on? Learn from your competitors and do it better in your own profiles.

Also, look for factors that could give competitors a natural advantage over you in local search. For example, are the businesses physically located near the post office, which likely gives them a boost in local algorithms? Do their business names include good keywords?

As you can imagine, when Google sees an enterprise named Denver Tire Repair, it's easily convinced that it repairs tires in Denver. A business that does the same thing, but has a less descriptive title, like Joe's Shop, doesn't inspire the same level of confidence. There's not too much you can do about your or official business name, but it does help to be aware that others may be outranking you with the help of those factors.

Be The Best

You can learn all types of details about your competition from their Web sites, so use your competitive research to improve your Web site and your business. How do your pricing and services compare? Are your rivals open at times when you're closed? Do they deliver or offer incentives, like coupons or new customer discounts? Again, determine what they're doing better than you and then improve yourself.

Ranking well in local search can only take your business so far. In the end, it's how well you serve your customers that makes you successful. So never stop striving to be better than others in both the virtual world and the real world.

From: clickZ.com by Mary Bowling

The increasing awareness about what SEO is and what it can do is a good thing. However, it's important to beware of "instant experts" who know a few things about what's going on, but don't get the whole picture. This ranges from major SEO firms dispensing bad, and even very risky advice, to smaller firms that are overtly ripping people off.

A large Fortune 500 client that had just fired its SEO firm recently brought us in. The firm was part of a much larger agency, and the project related to moving the client's Web site from an existing domain to a new one. While the existing domain was a respected Web site, with high PageRank, this was part of a re-branding move by the company.

The prior SEO firm had correctly recommended that they implement redirects from the old domain to the new one. But, they had explicitly suggested 302 redirects. It really, really hurt to see that. Any SEO with a basic amount of experience knows that the 302 is a message to the search engines to not transfer the link equity (link juice, PageRank, whatever) from the old to the new one, and that the redirect of choice is a 301.

In addition, this SEO firm allowed the client to pick a Content Management System with basic architectural problems that made it hostile toward search engines.

So when you're picking an SEO firm, make sure you pick one that can demonstrate its competency through reputation, references, or both. In addition, make sure they explain all their recommendations in detail to you, and make sure that they make sense. You can even use an external expert to poke holes in it. Challenging recommendations is never a bad thing to do.

Bad Advice From Articles, Too

You can also see not-so-good, or even bad advice presented in articles written online (but surely not this one!). One blog recently caught my eye on Microsoft's Office site, "Optimize Your Web Site For Better Ranking In Search Engine Results." There's some good information and advice in here, but there's misinformation as well.

One of the more interesting tidbits was the statement they make about putting text on your Web pages: "So do write text -- at least 200 words per page." This is excellent advice, but all the more interesting because of its specificity. While the post is from the Microsoft Office team, I wonder if there is something of a clue into Live Search here about how much content it would like to see on important pages.

The thing that was scary to me, though, was the way the article started:

Keywords, meta tags, search phrases: learn the lingo. Meta tags are one or more significant words we call "keywords" that are separated by commas into phrases and placed in your Web site code. Search engines use meta tags to index sites so that people can find what they are looking for.

The entire first section was about keyword meta tags. We still get calls from people who think that tweaking your keyword meta tags is all that's required for SEO. It hurts to see that being treated as the primary recommendation on a site that should be authoritative.

Ultimately, there's some possibility that keyword meta tags influence the rankings in Yahoo and Live Search, but the degree of influence they have is very, very, very, very small (I'd insert more "verys" but my editors won't let me). And in Google, it isn't a factor at all.

The article continues with some good advice on titles, headings, and content. I was recovering a bit at this point, when I got to the section called "Get Linked Up." The advice is 100 percent centered on doing reciprocal linking. Ouch!

Not too long ago, I used to receive a dozen requests a day for reciprocal links. Every Webmaster who knew anything about SEO was out there trying to swap links.

Yes, reciprocal links with relevant Web sites can help your rankings. But if this is all you do with your link building campaigns, you won't get anywhere. Link swaps could be considered barter, which makes them a compensated link. Search engines may count these for less than a one-way link.

If a large percentage of your links are reciprocal in nature, then you could be headed for real trouble. This was the subject of the BigDaddy update by Google back in early 2006. In this update Google did many things, but one of them was to discount the value of reciprocal links for sites that had too many of them.

Summary

Just because someone calls themselves an SEO, or even if they're writing publicly about it, doesn't make them an expert. Put your mental filters on what you hear and what you see. Here are some quick things you can do to protect yourself:

• If you outsource your SEO, have someone in-house who has a basic level of competence.
• If you hire a full time SEO, you should still have someone else who has a basic level of competence.
• Ask questions. Make sure you understand the logic of what your SEO is recommending. If your SEO won't answer the questions, or can't do so clearly, it's time to get a new SEO.
• Validate advice. Do recognized experts provide contradictory advice?
• Get references when you sign up an SEO firm, or hire an SEO to work for you.
• Similarly, don't read one article, and act on it, without validating that advice as suggested above.

This may add some extra time and effort to your SEO efforts, but it's your site, and it's well worth it.

From: www.searchenginewatch.com by  Eric Enge

I have said numerous times that FireFox is an awesome SEO tool in itself. Therefore I pay so much attention to customizing it to make the SEO process most efficient. Today I decided to share 3 ways to create quick searches (or “smart keywords“) to help you access your favorite sites and search engines quickly.

What are FireFox quick searches?

FireFox quick search enables you to search within any site you prefer right from the the bar / addressbar (that’s where you type the URL to load a page). The process is simple: you type in a smart keyword (e.g. g for Google) and a search term (e.g. SEO) in the address bar and this resolves into the search for SEO in Goolge:

How do I create “smart keyword search”?

Method 1: navigate to the site you want to create a quick search for, right-click inside its search box and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search“:

After that name your search as you prefer and set a keyword for its quick access (for example, g for Google).

… You are done! Now just type [g seo] in the address bar and you will be instantly brought to Google search results for [seo].

Method 2: (described by SugarRae) useful if the site you want to add doesn’t have any decent search system of its own.

• Search Google [site:yourfavoritesite.com keyword];
• Copy the URL of the search;
• Change keyword in the query string for %s;
• Go: Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks => New Bookmark;
• Create new search bookmark the following way:

Method 3: Install YubNub search plugin and either use multiple quick searches already created there or create your own ones using a simple wizard:

From: searchenginejournal.com by Ann Smarty

ou can’t go very far these days without reading or hearing about Web 2.0 and RSS, Web analytics, blogging, social networking and the like. For small businesses it might all seem to be chaotic and confusing and make little to no sense at all. But while these new tools aren’t the end all and be all, they do present a great opportunity for small businesses to connect and engage with their customers to sell their products and services.

Let’s start with the basics. First, Web 2.0 is less about the tools. It’s about the programming languages behind the scenes that allow these different tools to be shared and connected together. It’s what allows a person to have a blog and automatically list their blog updates on their Web site. It’s what allows a person who is reading an article from The Burlington Free Press to “share” it with their friends via e-mail, or by posting it on their Facebook page or adding it to their blog.

The big shakeup is less about the tools themselves and more about what people (you and your customers) can do with those tools. It is empowering your customer, creating engagement opportunities and entering into a partnership with your customers to share your brand. It’s a big switch from creating an advertisement to run on your local TV or in your local newspaper and hoping that is enough to drive people to your business.

How can these tools help you? Let’s look at a few and run down how they can help your bottom line.

Web Analytics: There are many analytics programs out there that provide usage data from a Web site. If you aren’t monitoring that data to know where users came from, what your “bounce rate” is (the rate at which users come to your homepage and then leave immediately), and how long they stay on your site, you are missing an opportunity to improve your site (which is your best 24/7 employee. Doesn’t need sleep, no benefit cost and always says what you want!).

-- Really Simple Syndication is a two-way street that provides your customers with a way to subscribe to yourinformation updates from your Web site or your blog without cluttering up their e-mail inbox. At the same time it provides you witha way to measure the engagement of the customer with your information: the more subscriptions you havethe better.It also allows the business professional a faster and easier way to gather their information without cluttering up their in box!

-- Blogging: A blog is a simple way for a business to communicate with itstheir customers. While the company Web site is the standard bearer for the company brand and general information, the blog is the human face of the organization. It’s the ideal place to showcase expertise — not to sell product, but rather to highlight why the business is good at what it does (the people behind the brand, of course). A good local example of this is the blog run by Seventh Generation President and CEO Jeffrey Hollender.

-- Social Networking: Sites such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook all provide differentways to connect to customers and clients. Start with where your customers are, and then use the appropriate sites to build your fan base, provide special incentives, or create a buzz.Many of these sites are free, so while a time investment is needed, it is not financially burdensome.

-- Monitoring the Social Web: Use online tools, such as Google Alerts, to find out what people are “saying“ about your business. One of the simplest ways to connect is to know when your company is mentioned online so that you can respond through a posting or an e-mail to let your customers know they have been heard.

The best advice for any small business tois that they pick one thing to start with and give it a try. Keeping the target market and company brand image in mind, setting clear goals for the tool, and monitoring the progress will allow any small business to effectively evaluate what online marketing tools will work best for them.

From: burlingtonfreepress.com by Elaine Young 

Interesting piece on CNet today about how Microsoft are focusing on tailored search in order to give them the edge in the search market. Dislodging Google from it’s number one position will be a tall order however Microsoft feel they can provide something unique and useful by having their dearch engine learn from a user’s previous behaviour in order to better understandtheir interests and needs and present more useful results.

According to the article Mircosoft’s Satya Nadella said “I believe this notion of understanding user intent, being able to analyze [search queries] and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience, is one of the most important areas for us”

Basically the theory goes that because half of the search queries at Microsoft’s search site are part of a 30-minute session. These people are searching and reasearching the Web sites returned in the Search Engine result. If these patterns can be analysised then a picture of their needs can be built up in order to increase the relevancy of subsequent result sets. In effect Microsoft’s search engine will be learning from the user’s behaviour in order to be more relevance.

Whilst most users are looking for something in particular and can be easily served with a standard ‘one size fits all’ search this extra tailoring of the results using search patterns will be of benefit for the more indepth longer term ’search projects’.

According to Satya this approach of innovation will help them in the battle against Google and Yahoo “If we come again and again with innovation that matters, we will have the opportunity to grow our volume and our share, we made decent progress but we have a ways to go”.

From: hitsearchlimited.com 

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

It is clear that the Internet is becoming a dominant factor in urban life. With a rising Internet-savvy population, sending and receiving emails, browsing news and information, logging on to social networking websites and watching videos online is becoming a part of everyday life in India.

There are many people that have an internet business but they don’t know enough about internet marketing strategies to be able to advertise their business. You can easily learn what you need to know if you are willing to let yourself be taught. All it takes to learn is research and time. Here are some of the best internet marketing strategies that you will want to use for your business.

One: Search Engine Optimization – This is when you optimize your website using keywords that are found when people search using search engines. This is one of the internet marketing strategies that you will have to get educated on because if you don’t, you will become confused and frustrated. Optimization is not hard to do but only if you understand it.

Two: Article Marketing – This is one of the best internet marketing strategies that has been used for years and will continue to be used because it works no matter what. This will also help you with search engine optimization because you can easily write an article around one or two popular keywords and then put it as content on your site to help with optimization or you can use it submit the article to the many articles directories. This is a good way to help you build links.

Three: Build links or exchange links – There are many ways you can do this. One is with article marketing and another is to submit your site link to the many directories that are available. You can also exchange links with another websites owner. This is basically what it sounds like, you give them your link to place on their site and they give you their link to be placed on your site. The more links you have pointing to your site the more search engines are going to list your site.

Four: Press Releases – This is one of the internet marketing strategies that a lot of people need to use but don’t because they think it doesn’t apply to their business. You can successfully use press releases for any business and reach a lot of people.

Five: Blogging – This is one of the best internet marketing strategies that you can use because the search engines love blogs that provides fresh content. Learn all you can about this before you do it so that you can do it right from the start. It is not hard to do unless you are clueless about it.

These are only five of the best internet marketing strategies that you can use to help you build your business. The more internet marketing strategies you use the faster your business will start seeing results. Just make sure you learn as much as you can about each of the strategies before you attempt to use them so you can do it right from the start.

Summary: Do you have an internet business but you don’t know much about internet marketing strategies? If this is the case then you need to take some time to learn internet marketing before you try anything. Here are some of the best internet marketing strategies that you can start using and learning about.

From: promotionworld.com by Cherie Ang

A Simple & Effective Keyword Strategy

When it comes to ecommerce sites, there are plenty of keywords to choose from. Because sites typically follow a fairly set format, numerous pages are created between the home page and the order confirmation page. Those pages all need keywords and phrases if they are going to rank high in the search engines. So, how exactly do you choose the best keywords for each page? Here's an easy strategy to follow. (Please keep in mind that all keyphrases used in this article are for example only and have not been researched.)

Home Page > > > Broad Keywords

When you start out, use keywords and phrases that are descriptive of your overall site. For example, if you sold clothing for the entire family, you might opt for phrases such as "ladies clothing," "men's clothing" or "kids clothing." Those would be expressive, but could also be worked easily into the home page copy.

Think of the sales process as a funnel. It's broad at the lip and gets more narrow as you move closer to the spout. The same goes for the keyword strategy: broad keyphrases at first and more specific ones as the subject matter gets more specific.

Category Page > > > Specific Keywords

Once you move to the category pages, you'll want to select keyphrases that work well with what you're trying to describe in your copy. If your visitor clicks on the women's shoes category, she'll want to read about and see pictures of women's shoes. Perhaps you'll use phrases such as "fabric ballet flats" or "leather peep-toe pumps."

I typically create a paragraph at the top of the page, then add a descriptive sentence or two under each image. Sometimes, I'll also add a paragraph of copy at the

bottom of the page. This helps guide your visitors through the sales process.

Product Descriptions > > > Long-Tail Keywords

The product description pages should incorporate long tail keywords that are laser specific. If your visitor clicked on a link for "Bermuda shorts" on the category page, you'll want to get as detailed as possible, so your customer can make the decision to buy.

For instance, a keyphrase such as "Liz Claiborne pastel plaid Bermuda shorts" would be perfect for a product description because it is… well… descriptive. Long? Yes, it is a long phrase. Most long-tail keywords will be. But the further into the sales process a customer gets, the more specific their searches will be. Chances are, someone who has decided she wants pastel plaid shorts will use a phrase like the one above instead of something like "Bermuda shorts."

Here's a plus: Because long-tail phrases are much less competitive than broader terms, you stand a better shot at getting ranked highly for them.

A Word on Linking

Here's where some copywriters get confused. When you use links in anchor text, you're giving credit to the page being linked to. For instance, if you have a category page for shorts, you would want to use the keyphrase "Bermuda shorts" in the anchor text of a link that pointed to the Bermuda shorts page. That way, the Bermuda shorts page gets credit for the link. The link would be of no (or very little) value to the general shorts page.

When you take note of the navigation and purchase cycle of your visitors, you begin to see why this simple strategy for keyword placement works so well. Using more specific terms as you write more specific copy helps usher visitors from the front door to the checkout counter with ease while also boosting your search engine rankings.

From: isedb.com by  Karon Thackston

Although Google Universal Search (GUS) is still very much in flux, it's been a part of the SEO landscape for a while now. In that time, there have been some good studies about how often GUS presents video results, and some research into how it ranks videos versus text pages.

One aspect of GUS that's been mentioned anecdotally is its preference for videos hosted by other Google properties: YouTube and Google Video. A few explanations have been offered for this behavior:

1) Google Video and YouTube have the largest archive of videos on the Web, so the odds of these two sites having a relevant video in their inventory is much higher than for other portals.

2) The indexing technology behind GUS has to be custom-tuned for each video portal, and naturally the Google properties are the best understood by GUS developers.

3) The YouTube and Google Video pages were designed from the start with search engines in mind, and so they are easier to index.

These all sound very reasonable. Yet there's another possibility:

4) Google may be cultivating a walled garden, where searchers are kept in the system to keep spinning the turnstiles and create more ad revenue.

But before we label them with a scarlet G, let's take a look at some Universal Search results, and see what portion of video listings actually come from Google properties.

Did someone say scarlett?

To see what GUS's preferences are, let's choose a list of search terms that are likely to result in GUS-driven video listings. Celebrities are a natural, and I hit the jackpot at UGO: The 50 Hottest Actresses Under 25. Everyone on this list should be well represented in the video portals. And just to be sure, I appended "...video" to each name before running the searches. Including Ms. Johansson.

Findings

Surprisingly, even for up-to-the-minute pop culture searches, only 7 of the 17 competing portals displayed any results in GUS. Let's take a closer look at the resulting chart.

Two sets of figures are represented. The height of the bars indicates the number of listings each portal received, out of 50 actress/video searches. Taller bars mean better coverage. The numbers shown on each bar represent the average position that these listings achieved in search results - lower numbers mean higher rankings and better visibility.

Take a minute to review this, and you'll see that it's a mixed bag. Looking just at the bars, YouTube performs the best, but not by an astoundingly margin.

Look at the average ranking numbers, and the difference is more dramatic. YouTube is leaps and bounds ahead of any rival, with a killer combination of higher rankings and broader coverage.

Google Video is another story: for this class of search terms, this property doesn't offer much.

Conclusions

• The range of content being indexed is playing a role here: many portals aren't displaying any results, even for these very specific searches. This could be due to indexing problems, or a simple lack of inventory.
• There's clear support for the perception that YouTube dominates GUS video listings.
• The very high average ranking for YouTube definitely raise an eyebrow. It's pretty clear that even if Google's algorithm is being objective, it's been trained to respond to the characteristics that YouTube has in spades. It's debatable whether this is a "bias" or just good design - take a Sphinn and let me know what you think...

From: searchengineland.com by Sherwood Strenieri

An SEJ reader sent us the following SEO question, which which I decided to discuss with our readers:

What is an orphan page and dead-end page? What’s the difference? How are they harmful for your site?

An orphan page is the one that is not linked to by another one of the site (i.e. that cannot be reached from anywhere on the site) and thus cannot be found by a search bot unless it is linked to externally. It can occur deliberately (when a webmaster creates a “private” page to show to someone but not to public, for example) or accidentally (in this case it’s a web development/ design mistake).

While there are plenty of myths that, once discovered by a search bot, such web page may be classified as a doorway page and by this cause penalty to the whole site. I’ve personally never experienced that penalty myself and don’t believe that it can happen but if you have another experience, please share.

The worst thing about orphan pages is that they are useless for SEO as they can’t be seen by a search bot.

A dead-end page is the one that has no outgoing links, thus creating a “dead end”. It is definitely not a best case as, first, it’s unnatural (a web page should be connected to other pages, hence its name) and, secondly, it leaves both the robot and the visitor no other choice accept abandon the site: they have no way to go.

With template-driven sites it is quite difficult to create a dead end (you always have links in a sidebar, footer or banner). A common case of a dead end is a 404 page: therefore it should be optimized to include links to home page and important site directories.

From: searchenginejournal.com by Ann Smarty

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

Google has been very vocal about their policy on paid links. Matt Cutts has written about the topic, and spoke about it at industry conferences and in interviews over the years.

Yahoo and MSN have been much quieter on the topic. They've certainly indicated at industry conferences that they don't want publishers to buy links for the purpose of affecting their rankings in the search engines, but less has been said about how they act on that policy.

During a recent interview with Yahoo's Priyank Garg, I got a much clearer sense of how Yahoo's policy on paid links differs from Google's. Let's take a look!

Google Policy on Paid Links

You can read about Google's policy here, here, here, and here.

Here's my brief summary of the policy: Offering compensation for a text link ad is a normal part of the Web economy. However, doing so for the purpose of influencing PageRank, or your rankings, is against their guidelines.

It's also well known that Google provides a way for users to report paid links that they see to Google. While according to a survey by Barry Schwartz, less than a third of SEOs report paid links, this is a relatively important source of data to Google on the topic.

Yahoo Policy on Paid Links

Here's a summary of Yahoo's policy on paid links, using an excerpt from my interview with Garg:

"If a paid link is not valuable to the users, we will not want to give it value. Our algorithms are being organized for detecting value to users. We feel most of the time that paid links are less valuable to users than organic links. But that's not black and white, it is always a continuum. Yahoo continues to focus on the element of recognizing links that are valuable to users, building mechanisms in our algorithms that attenuate the signal and capture as much value from that link in context, rather than worrying about it being paid or unpaid."

Commentary

One thing both policies have in common is that both search engines are concerned about how paid links impact their rankings. However, in Google's case, the key concept (or goal) is that all paid links should have no impact on search rankings.

This is pretty difficult to execute against, and it's what has led to Google offering a paid links reporting mechanism -- to get help. It has also led to Cutts suggestion that publishers that sell text links mark their links with the nofollow attribute.

Yahoo appears to be taking a different route. As I read the comments by Garg, it seems that they focus more on the end user value of a link, whether it's paid or not. To read between the lines a little bit, end user value is most likely being measured by the relevance and context of a link.

This saves Yahoo from fighting a difficult battle, a battle that has led some to say that there's an arms race between Google and spammers. Certainly if this battle is inherently unwinnable, the Yahoo approach may be a pragmatic one.

For example, Yahoo doesn't have the burden of being called out in posts like this one by Michael Gray, which accuses Google of having a double standard.

Gray's post outlines a scenario in which a PR firm wines and dines a bunch of high profile A-list bloggers with an all expense paid weekend getaway, and then asks them "if they had a good time please write about it on their blog and post some pictures to flickr."

Many have cried out for Google to recognize paid links as a part of the Web environment, and to develop ranking algorithms that are less subject to being affected by them. Of course, if this was simple to do, the search engines would have moved on from links as a major ranking factor a long time ago. Don't expect it to happen any time soon.

From: searchenginewatch by Eric Enge

algorithm, you could look at actual usage data from hundreds of millions of users.
Since there are more web users than webmasters BrowseRank would be a more democratic system, but many users are mislead and/or easily influenced by social media, public relations, and some referral spam strategies, so BrowseRank could surface some low quality temporal information, making manipulating Digg and other "firehose of traffic" sources more valuable than they perhaps should be. Although if certain referrals were blocked (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.) and/or BrowseRank was combined with a blended search strategy (like how Google mixes Google News in their organic results) Microsoft could have a bit more confidence in waiting out some traffic spikes to see if traffic is sustained. And this potential shortfall (if managed properly) could actually lead to a major advantage over the stale effect of PageRank. If you create non-resource hyped up piece of linkbait that gets a quick rush of links and never gains any more votes then why should that page have a lot of authority to pass around your site?

Such an algorithm would add value to direct navigation keyword rich URLs. Another obvious extension of such an algorithm would be identifying brand specific searches and URL searches, and bucketing those referrals into the green category as well.

To encourage such branded search queries and long user interactions it would be better to create strong communities with repeat visitors and many web based tools rather than allowing useful user interactions occur through browser extensions.

Another big issue with BrowseRank is that it highlights many social media sites. The issue with social media is that any piece of content is generally only relevant to a small number of people and most of the content is irrelevant to the population at large. Unless the search engine had a lot of personalized data promoting the general purpose social media sites would be blunderous - surfacing lots of results that are irrelevant, spam, or both.

One of the big advantages PageRank has over BrowseRank is an economic one.

• People are more likely to link at informational resources, thus surfacing those pages and sites higher in the search results.
• This gives Google's organic search results an informational bias which makes searchers more likely to click on Google's paid ads when performing a commercial search.
• Google also has the ability to arbitrarily police links and/or strip PageRank scores to 0 with the intent to fearmonger and add opportunity cost to anyone who gathers enough links pointing at a (non-corporate owned) commercial domain. This layer of social engineering coerces publishers to create the type of content Google likes to rank.

From: searchnewz.com by Aaron Wall

For more on this topic, go to www.dentaleconomics.com and search using the following key words: search engine optimization, SEO, Web site, domain, meta tags, links, title tags.

You have a Web site. You worked hard to design it. You are good about updating it. You are always thinking about ways to use it in your marketing efforts. I hate to tell you this ... you are not done ... there is more work to do. The foundation for establishing and maintaining an online presence for your practice begins with search engine optimization (SEO). Even though your Web site has great content and looks great, it needs to rank well with important keyword phrases on the major search engines.

Simply stated, SEO means the ongoing process of setting up your Web site in order to increase the number of visitors. Unfortunately, this can be an ongoing, time-consuming process. You can try this yourself, with your Web site designer, or find an SEO consultant to perform this task for you.

SEO begins and ends with the content of your Web site. You are best served if you create unique and well-written content. More importantly, you need to keep content fresh and updated. Blogs are a good way to do this. Generally, you make new entries to a blog on a frequent basis and search engines index these pages.

Search engines do not index Web sites. Rather they index pages in Web sites and even elements within the sites such as videos, articles, and images. Avoid cramming too many subjects on a page. Create dedicated pages for each subject you want to list. You need well-researched keyword phrases programmed into each page. The more pages you have and the fresher content you add, the greater the chance you will end up with a higher listing on the search engines.

Some people think that if you submit your Web site to search engines repeatedly, your site will be moved up on their "list." In reality, if this is done without making modifications or updates, some search engines will treat this like "spam" and may remove you from their listings.

Another fallacy is that if you add a lot of repetitive keywords to your meta tags, you will move up the "list." This process is known as keyword "stuffing" and can actually have the opposite result. Getting other sites to link to you increases your site's popularity, but you have to avoid something called "link farming." Getting links from irrelevant, nondental/medical/health-related Web sites can hurt you more than it can help you. Some search engines have paid or sponsored listings. This can get expensive. SEO is done in order to move you up the "list" in a more natural manner.

Ask for monthly reports to track your site's rankings. Be patient with this process. It can take three to six months to see results depending on the competitive level of your market. SEO is all about making adjustments on the fly if things are not working as planned.

So who are some of these SEO consultants? Here are a few who work with dental practices: Page 1 Solutions (page1solutions.com), Proceptive Dental (proceptivedental.com), TNT Dental (tntdental.com), Roadside Multimedia (roadsidemultimedia.com), Einstein Dental (einsteindental.com), and SEO.cc (seo.cc).

Besides these, there are many other companies that do this type of work. Be sure to ask the right questions when you talk with an SEO consultant. You need to be a good consumer and get what you rightly deserve.

In summary, SEO consists of: 1) easy to read, keyword-rich content; 2) proper coding of title tags on each page; 3) proper use of alt tags for images; 4) proper use of link building (link popularity is important); 5) proper use of page names and titles; 6) submission to Internet search engines; 7) inclusion into business-related directories for strong inbound links; 8) baseline rankings and ongoing search engine ranking reports.

This is an ongoing process. Search engine algorithms regularly change so even though your Web site is optimized perfectly today, a change in the algorithms can make your optimization ineffective tomorrow.

It is with great fear that I have made my practice's Web site available for viewing. I asked Bill Fukui from Page 1 Solutions to do a quick site evaluation since I have not worked much with SEO. I mentioned it to my site host, who also does the site's design work. I know I have much work to do. Here is a summary of the points Bill compiled for me:

• Domain age and page history — The Web site has a long history on the Web compared to other dental sites and has hada number of pages indexed. Unfortunately, the site has lacked strategic SEO and has not leveraged the substantial equity.
• Meta tags — The Web site's meta tags are not effectively optimized as all pages have identical meta tags, no optimized image tags, and even misspellings.
• Title tags — Title tags are not customized to the topic of each page. Like meta tags, they should be unique to each page based on the target keyword phrases on each.
• Internal linking — Good use of internal linking and text links.
• Attracting links in — The site has a few incoming links, but has not aggressively attracted them. Google does not recognize any incoming links.
• Content — Web site needs more focused content based on target keyword phrases. If you want to show up for "St. Louis porcelain veneers" on Google, you should include focused pages on porcelain veneers. Current page on new advances should divide services into separate pages (e.g., Invisalign should have its own page).

Finally, he ran a search engine scan and market analysis report for me.

Chris Lister of Proceptive Dental also created a Web site report card for me. He graded my Web site for navigation, list of services, unique content, contact information, and more. I earned B's and C's. He then graded on-site optimization. This consisted of unique meta tags, meta title tags, internal link structure, age of site, site map, keyword-themed content, and more. I was across the board here with grades ranging from A's to D's.

Bill and Chris ran quick analyses for me strictly for this column. Each of their companies normally provides a long and in-depth analysis when hired. We thought that if we took the initial didactic part of this column and put it to use with an actual site, it would then explain what SEO entails.

My Web site apparently is set up more as an online brochure instead of the proactive, online marketing resource that I want it to be. It's time to get to work!

From: dentaleconomics.com by Jeffrey Dalin

Last month I attended a SEMPO New York networking event that featured an “In-House versus Agency” debate, in which the debaters argued the benefits of each model. After the debate, I was speaking with one of the agency panelists, and we discussed the challenges agencies face differentiating themselves from their competitors given the number of search marketing agencies in the market today.

A key point that is often overlooked from my perspective is that differentiation is not only about how your prospective customers view your agency, but also how prospective job candidates view it.

As a quick exercise, grab a pen and paper and imagine you are interviewing someone for an open search marketing position in your firm, and he or she asks you, “what do you feel differentiates your agency from your competitors?” Quickly jot down what you would say.

Are your points of differentiation something like the following?

• Our team provides world-class customer service.
• We hire great and passionate people.
• Our company has an established track record with proven results.
• We have developed a customized SEO / SEM methodology that works.
• We have an experienced team of industry thought leaders.
• We take the time to understand our customers’ business goals.

Let me first say that I believe you do all of these things well, but you should be aware that every other employer that candidate interviews with is saying the same things that you are. So how do you demonstrate to this future employee that your company is different - and you really are the customer service leader and deliver rock-solid results for your customers?

I would recommend you evaluate using the Net Promoter Score (or NPS) as a way to both validate why you are different, as well as drive growth and profitability. I am not aware of any search marketing firms that are using NPS as a customer satisfaction measure, or at least any that have publically acknowledged it, and it surprises me given the metrics-focused culture of search.

So what is NPS and how does it work? NPS was developed by Fred Reichfeld, a consultant with Bain & Company, as a way to provide an indicator of a company’s performance from the perspective of its customers, as well as measure its ability to drive growth and profitability.

Your NPS score is based on how your customers answer a single question: “how likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or a colleague?” Your customers answer this question using a scale of 0 to 10 (with 0 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest.) Based on how they answer this question, all of your customers can be divided into three categories: promoters, passives, and detractors.

• A promoter (a customer who rates you a 9 or a 10) is unflinchingly loyal to your company; and when asked about their experience with your firm, will evangelize your business and its services.
• A passive (a customer who rates you a 7 or 8) is neutral about your company’s performance. When asked how their company’s search marketing engagement went with your agency, the response might be along the lines of, “They did their job.”
• A detractor (a customer who rates you a 0 to a 6) is unhappy with your company’s performance. If asked about their company’s relationship with your firm, the customer will provide negative feedback and ultimately discourage other prospective customers from engaging with your firm.

The way to calculate your NPS score is by aggregating your survey results and then subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters (i.e. Promoters - Detractors = Net Promoter Score). The passives are considered neutral so are not factored into the score. For example, if 70% of your customers were promoters, 10% were passives, and 20% were detractors, then your NPS would be 50% (70% - 20%).

The power of NPS is not based on how high you scored on your first NPS survey, but instead the subsequent impact you get from your employees and company becoming focused on improving the score. An increase in your NPS score means you are getting more referrals and higher customer satisfaction — which will lead to more growth and profitability. NPS practitioners typically survey their customers monthly so they can continually tweak and their company’s internal processes until they hit their NPS goal.

NPS has been used at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, GE, and many others, and I believe it is a great tool for search marketing agencies as well. Having an NPS program focused on driving NPS improvement provides your customers with a simple metric of why your agency is great at what you do, and equally important, an illustration to your future employees of why your agency is a great place to work.

From: searchenginejournal by Ken Clark

Whether you want to take your web working career into a different direction or you simply want a refreshing distraction from your regular web work, it’s likely that you’ll consider changing your niche market at least once in your career. What are the consequences of changing your niche? Is that even advisable? Also, how do you go about it?

The first thing you need to do is to understand how this affects your personal brand. If you’ve already established yourself in a particular niche, shifting to another one, whether completely or temporarily, might be confusing. It’s similar to having such a wide variety of jobs across several industries on your resume - from food service to law enforcement to art to dental hygienist. You risk looking unfocused or spreading yourself too thin.

Confusing as this may be for some people, the truth is that we are dynamic. This is especially true of web workers. We have a variety of interests and strengths which we can explore.  However, if you want to be a known expert in one thing, establishing your expertise publicly may prove to be difficult if people see you working on several niches at once. But there are some workarounds:

Be clear about the niche or field you’re prioritizing in. This will especially help you when you’re making time-management decisions. Which field are you more passionate about? Does your website or blog reflect your own priorities? Devoting more blog posts or space to your priority niche will show your website visitors that your new niche is just a sideline.

Have different “storefronts”. If you want to be both an illustrator and a programmer, you might need different websites for each service. This will allow you to market and promote both services equally, without confusing your web site visitors in the process. The less related the two niches are, the more you need a separate storefront for each.

Find an intersection between your current niche to the one you want to shift to. If you can find some common groun