Developer Shed Weekly SEO News for 2010-07-30

Trouble reading this message? Read it online. July 30th, 2010 Welcome to the SEO Chat newsletter. We survived the storm last week with nary a scratch, and are back to bring you the latest and greatest in search engine optimization news and techniques. It was a pretty good week, so without further ado, here is this week's offerings... First at bat: another article covering Google Analytics. This time we look at benchmarking analysis and visitor profiling methods. It is a great technical article that can teach you a lot about your visitors. I highly recommend it. Next up to plate, we take an inside peek at the AOL search deal and try to answer the question of whether or not AOL will continue its current deal with Google, or if they will go in a different direction. I could tell you here, but then you would never read the article. So you know...go read the article. Last but not least, we all hate getting negative reviews and sometimes it can be difficult not to respond in kind. Our final article of the week, however, gives you some tips on how to respond with a more positive action. Finally, we top it all off with a new Spotlight and Thread of the week you won't want to miss. As always, thanks for reading. Until next time, SEO Chat Staff ARTICLES Google Analytics: Benchmarking Analysis and Visitor Profiling Methods AOL Search Deal May Include Multiple Partners Fight Negative Reviews with Positive Action SEO on Tutorialized SEO Thread of The Week SEO Chat News Spotlight TOOLS Get Our Content on Your Site with DevText! New Articles, Right To Your E-mail         As an entrepreneur, your primary goals include closing more sales, getting repeat business, and building lasting, profitable relationships with your contacts. And email marketing can certainly help you do that. The problem is that so few people actually know how to use email marketing effectively. In a powerful new free report, you'll discover 3 techniques for increasing your sales through email marketing. This free report reveals the secrets of Email Marketing 2.0 and shows you: Why most emails get ignored, and how to make yours stand out How Email Marketing 2.0 can increase your profits while you spend less time at the office Why most entrepreneurs are sabotaging their own efforts How experts send the perfect message at the perfect time to close more deals And much more! If you want to get more out of your email marketing, then this 5-page free report is for you. Download your free copy today!     top It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's News You Can't Use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions: Keith showcases the best of Tech News. No - it is not just five minutes of credits. Watch the video!     ADVERTISEMENT Code is just about everywhere you look. So are the challenges of bringing your ideas to life. Fortunately, Visual Studio 2010 simplifies the entire development life cycle, from design to deployment. Learn more today.   top Google Analytics: Benchmarking Analysis and Visitor Profiling Methods by Codex-M 2010-07-28 Google Analytics is not only useful for tracking the unique visitors to a website; you can also use it for setting goals and even tracking your most popular content. In fact, one of the least common but more important uses of Google Analytics is visitor profiling and benchmarking analysis. This article will explain how and why to do this. Using the techniques in this article, you will be able to answer some of the visitor profiling questions faced by any search engine marketer/webmaster or web developer . These include: 1. Is your website optimized for the most popular browsers used by your visitors? 2. What is the most popular operating system/browser combination used by your visitors? Is your website optimized for this kind of setup? 3. Does your website really look good on the most popular screen resolution used by your visitors? 4. If you're also thinking about targeting your website for mobile-based visitors, does your website really look good on the specific mobile device you have in mind? Read Website Security Tips for SEO ADVERTISEMENT Links From PR5-PR9 Sites Permanent, one-way text links 12 Months Permanent Link Guarantee Unique link building service Increase your site rankings , traffic , and sales ! Check Our Low Prices   top AOL Search Deal May Include Multiple Partners by Terri Wells 2010-07-27 AOL's current deal with Google to provide search throughout its sites expires on December 19. Will the company continue to use Google? That's not a foregone conclusion. In fact, it's not even certain that AOL will use only one search provider going forward. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong noted that the company is in talks with at least three different search providers. While the current deal with Google was worth $700 million for the past two years, the fact that it will be expiring relatively soon seems to be giving both companies a chance to consider their options. AOL won't even comment on whether they're likely to conclude an exclusive deal with one company, or parcel the service among different providers. With Google at the top of the heap, some observers think AOL should continue that relationship. As the saying goes, however, if you're number two, you try harder. AOL may be able to negotiate a substantially better deal with Microsoft or Yahoo than the one they had with Google. Taking into account that Microsoft and Yahoo are merging their search technology, such a deal could create a search alliance that attracts more than 30 percent of searches, according to comScore. That should be enough to make Google at least marginally nervous. Read AOL Search Deal May Include Multiple Partners top Fight Negative Reviews with Positive Action by Terri Wells 2010-07-26 Social media comes in many shapes and sizes. Few worry small businesses more than sites like Yelp and Google Places, where clients and customers can leave reviews and not all of them are glowing. Sooner or later, you may find your own business receiving a review from a disgruntled customer who's not afraid to tell the world. Now what? Well, the first thing you should do, according to Miriam Ellis writing for Search Engine Guide, is not overreact. She recently had to counsel a business owner who had received a negative review on Google, and was more or less freaking out over it. That one bad review made him fail to see at least two things. First, most of the reviews he'd received ( about eighty percent of them, in fact) were positive. Step back for a minute. If you were reading a company's reviews and saw lots of positive ones and only one negative, what would you assume? You'd figure that it was just one person who maybe had an ax to grind, and wouldn't take it too seriously. It may be hard to believe from where you're sitting, but that's how an outsider reading that one bad review about your company is likely to view it as well. Read Fight Negative Reviews with Positive Action ADVERTISEMENT   top Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other tech related tutorials. Submit Your Tutorial Today! Guide to Using and Getting Promoted on Digg A definitive guide that teaches you how to use Digg to drive traffic. Read the tutorial. Using Wordpress to SEO Tutorial details how to use wordpress to target search terms. Read the tutorial. Get Backlinks and Indexed Fast Use these sites to get great backlinks and get your site indexed fast! Read the tutorial. Save your Blog How to optimize headlines for search engine optimization. Read the tutorial. 10 Essential SEO Strategies Learn 10 essential SEO tips and tricks for getting a higher search engine ranking. Read the tutorial. Basics of SEO The basics of SEO in plain, easy to understand writing. Read the tutorial.   How can this SEO Newsletter be better? What do you like or dislike about this issue? Is there a topic you want to learn more about? What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement, so please email us. Email us.   top Here's some advice for those who are trying to get negative reviews about their company out of Google's top results. Be sure to stop by the thread and share your experience! Janna122003 Suggestion on SE Reputation Management Techniques Anyone here know how to remove complaintwire from the first page of Google? GraceFan Don't know anything about 'complaintwire' but, in general: 1. If it is authentic - sort the issue first. 2. Get 'complaintwire' to remove it if not authentic, or the customer to remove it if it is authentic and now sorted. 3. If it cannot be removed, reply to it (or better still get the OP to reply saying "they are actually good after all!") 4. Build a few links to the things you DO want to be seen, so that they 'leapfrog' it and push it off the first page. paratroll I've been using the fourth technique listed above to shunt old bad news out of our rankings; it does work, it is just a bit of a pain. Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts. Read More top Giving Content the Royal Treatment Everyone knows that content is king online. So how do you treat royalty? Do you send it to a region where it will get lost in the crowd? Or do you make it feel welcome in your most treasured place and get the word out that you've been graced with the real thing, so others can stop by and see for themselves? For that matter, are you SURE you're dealing with true royalty? Site owners face this kind of decision all the time, so naturally it's a pretty hot topic in our forums. If you're facing this kind of dilemma, here are a few things to keep in mind. First, not all content is created equal. Worse, a "professionally written" item is hardly less likely to be trash. As respected SEO Chat forum member EGOL put it, "I know professional content experts who can't write worth crap... and I know professional writers who can screw up the facts in a content article." Paying a professional is no substitute for using your own judgment. You know what to do with trash. What about an article that is decent, but perhaps less than the best on the web? Those you can post on an article distribution service, if you wish, with a link back to your own site. Or you can put them on your own site. EGOL states that they won't perform all that well regardless of where you put them. What if you possess the real deal? Content that is truly the best on the web deserves the royal treatment. This means putting it on your own site, and then promoting it through social marketing. Put a link to it on places like slashdot, stumbleupon, reddit, digg, etc. Whatever you do, do NOT give the article to any other site. Why should it get the royal treatment? Won't it build more traffic for your site if you give the article to a distribution service and make sure you have a link back to your site in the body of the article? Absolutely not. As EGOL explains, "If you give your great article to a powerful site...It will get your traffic and the links that your article would have earned. Giving away great articles feeds your competitor. It invites more competitors into your SERPs." And who really wants more competition? So does giving away great content ever make any sense? Yes...in one very specialized case. That is "when you have a message to spread and you are not concerned with bringing traffic or links to your own site," according to EGOL. Very few of us are in this position. While many of us love what we do and want to spread the word about it, we'd like to attract visitors and make some money as well. So if you do have true royalty on your hands, give it the royal treatment. Spread the word, but keep a tight rein to be sure that it's in the best company. Good luck! Advertising Advertise in our SEO newsletter and reach informed SEO and search engine marketing professionals! For advertising information, contact us. Unsubscribe If you don't want to receive our emails, please unsubscribe. An email will be sent with additional instructions to confirm your unsubscription. Ziff Davis Enterprise, 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016

Developer Shed Weekly SEO News for 2010-07-23

Trouble reading this message? Read it online. July 23rd, 2010 Welcome back to the SEO Chat newsletter. Down here in our Florida headquarters, we are hunkering down for a big storm heading our way. But before we put up those shutters and load up our shopping carts with snacks, we thought we would bring you some new SEO articles to help weather the storm. First up: a serious look at website secuirty and how it can affect your websites ranking. It is a dangerous threat and every good SEOer should understand the dangers and know the precautions to take. Read the story for more info on how to keep your site - and visitors - safe. Next, we take a peek at Yahoo rankings and compare them to Google rankings to help you figure out how to gain more traction on both sites. With Yahoo gaining market share recently, it is always a good idea to brush up on your skills for this engine. Last up to plate, we have a news piece covering Google's withdrawal from China and how the engine Baidu stands to profit. Finally, we top it all off with a new Spotlight and Thread of the week you won't want to miss. As always, thanks for reading. Until next time, SEO Chat Staff ARTICLES Bing SEO Analysis: A Comparison with Google Ranking Factors Bing Trending Upward in Popularity Link Google AdSense to Analytics to Increase AdSense Revenue SEO on Tutorialized SEO Thread of The Week SEO Chat News Spotlight TOOLS Get Our Content on Your Site with DevText! New Articles, Right To Your E-mail         As an entrepreneur, your primary goals include closing more sales, getting repeat business, and building lasting, profitable relationships with your contacts. And email marketing can certainly help you do that. The problem is that so few people actually know how to use email marketing effectively. In a powerful new free report, you'll discover 3 techniques for increasing your sales through email marketing. This free report reveals the secrets of Email Marketing 2.0 and shows you: Why most emails get ignored, and how to make yours stand out How Email Marketing 2.0 can increase your profits while you spend less time at the office Why most entrepreneurs are sabotaging their own efforts How experts send the perfect message at the perfect time to close more deals And much more! If you want to get more out of your email marketing, then this 5-page free report is for you. Download your free copy today!     top It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's News You Can't Use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions: Keith showcases the best of Tech News. No - it is not just five minutes of credits. Watch the video!     ADVERTISEMENT Code is just about everywhere you look. So are the challenges of bringing your ideas to life. Fortunately, Visual Studio 2010 simplifies the entire development life cycle, from design to deployment. Learn more today.   top Website Security Tips for SEO by Codex-M 2010-07-21 A hacked website can seriously affect your search engine optimization efforts. This article will explain the three ways it can hurt you, the major forms of attack, what makes a site vulnerable to them, and what you can do to protect your site from hackers. A hacked website's impact on SEO can be separated into three major categories: Effect on search engine ranking. Major search engines like Google will penalize your website as an "attacked" site or site hosting malware, and then your rankings will be dropped until the website has fully recovered from the attack. Read Website Security Tips for SEO ADVERTISEMENT Links From PR5-PR9 Sites Permanent, one-way text links 12 Months Permanent Link Guarantee Unique link building service Increase your site rankings , traffic , and sales ! Check Our Low Prices   top Yahoo SEO Analysis in Comparison to Google Search Ranking Results by wubayou 2010-07-20 Yahoo's search engine market share as of 2010 is second only to Google's; it is 6.24 percent globally. Therefore, if you want to increase your site's organic search engine traffic, you might as well consider optimizing for Yahoo. This article will examine the Yahoo search engine's ranking behavior by comparing it to Google's, using actual websites, rankings, keywords and common search engine ranking factors (onsite and links). Are you skeptical about Yahoo's share of the market? Here's a report on search engine market share to set your mind at ease. This article's objective is to spot clear differences in ranking preferences that could help provide a “white hat” clue to optimizing websites for Yahoo. Read Yahoo SEO Analysis in Comparison to Google Search Ranking Results top Baidu Profits From Google`s China Exit by Codex-M 2010-07-19 Many applauded Google's decision to stand on principle and stop censoring itself in China at the beginning of this year. Actions have consequences, however, and in this case, Google's righteousness seems to have strengthened its biggest rival in China, Baidu â€? a made-in-China search engine whose company is more than happy to embrace censorship. Google's attitude seems to have encouraged investors to spend their money on Baidu. But it raises despair in the hearts of those who hoped to see the Great Firewall of China open further. It isn't just the laws of China that are to blame, however; it's also the laws of economics. To understand that, it helps to take a quick look at Baidu's history. Like Google, the two founders of the Baidu search engine boast graduate degrees from a US university. Founded in late 1999, Baidu was set up from the very beginning to serve the growing Chinese market. Today, that market is even bigger than the US, with 384 million online users and more than twice as many mobile phone users. Baidu quickly claimed a 64 percent share of that search market, which is akin to the share Google holds in the US. Read Baidu Profits From Google`s China Exit ADVERTISEMENT   top Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other tech related tutorials. Submit Your Tutorial Today! Guide to Using and Getting Promoted on Digg A definitive guide that teaches you how to use Digg to drive traffic. Read the tutorial. Using Wordpress to SEO Tutorial details how to use wordpress to target search terms. Read the tutorial. Get Backlinks and Indexed Fast Use these sites to get great backlinks and get your site indexed fast! Read the tutorial. Save your Blog How to optimize headlines for search engine optimization. Read the tutorial. 10 Essential SEO Strategies Learn 10 essential SEO tips and tricks for getting a higher search engine ranking. Read the tutorial. Basics of SEO The basics of SEO in plain, easy to understand writing. Read the tutorial.   How can this SEO Newsletter be better? What do you like or dislike about this issue? Is there a topic you want to learn more about? What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement, so please email us. Email us.   top Building a new website? The brand's the thing, as the original poster of this week's thread learned. Check it out and add your advice! Dr.Marie Brainstorm with me for my new realtor site. My husband is a realtor and in a few months I will be too. I have been working towards my real estate license so that I can help him do paperwork or show houses in the busy season and also so I can do marketing for him as well. We currently have a Point2Agent site which is a site that grabs content from all of the other agents in their system. It recently took a big SEO hit with the new Google algorithm. So, I am thinking of starting up our own site for when we are a team. I want to start things right from the very start. I will have lots of questions over the next little while, but first I have some domain name questions. We already own DavidAndMarie.com. This is brandable, but doesn't do much for SEO. There is a domain name similar to RealEstateAgentInOurcity.com available. Should I grab it? I was thinking of putting DavidAndMarie.com on our cards and then redirecting it to the other one. Thanks! Marie JVRudnick We have a couple of real estate clients....and yes, the domain that you choose is VERY important when it comes to branding same.... Think about buying a house...from the most deep part of your soul...and you'll find 'other' domain names that can 'fit' that thought with the prospective buyers that you will need to 'sell'..... I can't mention (DAMN) who we have but I can say this...that when you buy a house, you're really buying a home....a place where your buyers will live, love, laugh and enjoy their lives... So think about what that can mean to them, search with a Reg that offers up a 'thesaurus' style domain name alternate and find what you need....and I'm sorry but "daveandmarie" just doesn't spell it out for me....not like 'mydreamhome.com' or 'livinglarge.com' or 'myhomesweethome.com' do.... BRAND your site....and brand it for the long term...as I remember real estate agents usuallly succeed via WOM....and for that you need a brand that will last and last and last... Jim Dr.Marie Thanks JV! So, is it important for me to have the city name in the domain? Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts. Read More top It Isn't Just Age Google takes many factors into consideration when deciding where in the SERPs to rank a particular website for a keyword. Not all factors are weighted evenly, however. There's a certain belief among SEOs and webmasters that the age of the domain plays a role as one of the factors. But how important is it? This topic gets debated regularly on our forums, with some saying it matters a great deal, and others insisting it matters hardly at all. In the most recent version of this debate, one poster said that he has two domains, with an equal number of links of similar quality. The one that's only a few months old is better built, but the one that is five years old gets almost 20 times as much traffic. Another poster said that she has seen people rank a new site above a well-established site by getting the appropriate backlinks. What's going on here? Well, let's pretend for a moment that a website is a person. Why not? Many site owners think of them as their babies anyway. Can you think of any two people the same age who are exactly the same? Of course not. That's just as true with websites as it is with people. And when you start getting into two people of different ages, the difference becomes more marked. So it is with websites. With people, we attribute it to their different experiences along the way. That holds true for websites as well, in a different sense. How much content do they contain? Do a lot of sites link to them? How old are the links â€? and the linking sites? Do a lot of people visit the site on a regular basis? Is there some kind of active community that uses the site? If you think about it, you'll come up with a whole list of factors that differentiate one site from another. When properly built and maintained, an older website gains an edge on a younger one in many of these factors. The key point, though, is “when properly built and maintained.” If you buy a domain and do nothing but park static content on it and forget about it, it will probably just sit there. You'll bore the Googlebot, which will eventually stop visiting. To mix my metaphors again, those who focus on a site's age are seeing a tree â€? and missing the entire ecosystem it supports. In short, it's not a site's age that is important; it's everything that age implies. So yes, it's quite possible for a young site to beat an older site, just as it's possible for a relative newcomer to a field to do better than someone who's been in it for years. But for that to happen, the newcomer needs to do everything better than the “old pro.” For a lasting lead in the SERPs, that means a lot of work. Good luck! Advertising Advertise in our SEO newsletter and reach informed SEO and search engine marketing professionals! For advertising information, contact us. Unsubscribe If you don't want to receive our emails, please unsubscribe. An email will be sent with additional instructions to confirm your unsubscription. Ziff Davis Enterprise, 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016