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May 31, 2006

PRESS RELEASE - TopRank Online Marketing SEO Designer Named to 2006 WebAwards Judging Panel

Filed under: SEO, Web Design

Leading web site awards program adds SEO Designer, Thomas McMahon from TopRank Online Marketing, to its roster of judges.

Minneapolis, MN, May 30, 2006 –(PR.COM)– The Web Marketing Association is pleased to announce that TopRank Online Marketing’s Thomas McMahon has been selected as a judge of the 10th annual international WebAward competition for Web site development. The WebAwards is the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful Web site.  It recognizes the individual and team achievements of Web professionals who create and maintain outstanding Web sites.

"Unlike other awards, the WebAwards is not a beauty pageant where only the design and name recognition is important," said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association.  "For the past decade, the WebAwards has used a quantitative judging formula based on seven criteria to evaluate benchmark and set industry standards for Web site development.  Thomas McMahon will play a critical role in setting the standard for Internet excellence by applying his expertise to each site he adjudicates."

Says McMahon, “We want to recognize web sites for outstanding design, usability and quality.  Most sites don’t put enough thought into the end-users’ experience or into search engine friendliness.  Some sites have good usability, bad design.  Some have good design, bad usability.  It’s those that offer both that should be recognized.”

Thomas McMahon has worked for TopRank Online Marketing for the past year and a half as a SEO Designer, optimizing existing web sites and blogs, creating search engine friendly designs for new web sites as well as creating a number of blog marketing tools, WordPress plug-ins and FireFox add-ons. Prior to TopRank, McMahon worked with a web design agency for 5 years providing expertise in web design and Flash.

TopRank Online Marketing President, Lee Odden adds, "I’m very proud to see Thomas participate in such a highly regarded program. The standards he’s set for our clients’ will certainly benefit the web sites he will be tasked to evaluate for the WebAwards competition."

The 2006 WebAward judges consist of a select group of Internet professionals who have direct experience designing and managing Web sites – including members of the media, interactive creative directors, corporate marketing managers, site designers, content providers and webmasters – with an in-depth understanding of the current state-of-the-art in Web site development and technology. Judging for this year’s awards will take place in July and August, with winners announced in September.

About TopRank Online Marketing
TopRank Online Marketing is an industry leading search marketing agency offering integrated search engine optimization, online public relations and blog marketing services. TopRank has been listed as a top ten world-wide SEO firm by topseos.com and Promotion World and is the only Minnesota search marketing firm included in Marketing Sherpa’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms.  TopRank is a member of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO.org), the Search Engine Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Association (the-DMA.org), and holds a Board of Directors position for the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA.org).

About the WebAwards
The 10th annual international WebAwards competition sets the standard of excellence in 96 industry categories by evaluating Web sites and defining benchmarks based on the seven essential criteria of successful Web site development. The goal of the Web Marketing Association, sponsor of the WebAwards, is to provide a forum to recognize the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective Web sites on the Internet today. Entrants benefit from a Web site assessment by a professional judging panel and the marketing opportunities presented to an award-winning Web site.
 

May 30, 2006

SPAM Identifiers on SEO & Search Engine

Filed under: SEO

It’s tempting to put together a keyword seeded site, URL, and folder system to try to speed up you rank on major top search engines, or have a history of ranking such sites in their top results in a short period of time. But in a run term your site is identify as a search engine spam in the future.

Some identifications:
  • URL name - does it have 12 dashes in it? Is it a subdomain off something totally unrelate SPAM!
  • folder names - are the exceedingly long and/or redundant? SPAM! 
  • file names - are they redundant with the file paths and long? SPAM!
  • page titles, headers and content - are they so keyword rich that it is illegible? SPAM!
  •  design - does it look like a 4 year old put it together? does the design not match the site? are the colors just ugly? SPAM! 
  • graphics - do you use the a similar graphic to what most spammers in your industry use? SPAM!
  • ad placement - is the ad block floated left inline with the content area? SPAM!
  • outbound links - does it only link to crap off topic sites that link back? Is there a huge irrelevant link exchange area? SPAM!

Why is it important to consider the above spammy signals? Search is self reinforcing. If just a few people who would have linked at your site do not because one of the above spam signals then you may never rise to the top to reap the fruits of a self reinforcing top ranked position.

The way Aaron writes is straight-forward and to the point. He covers ground from beginner level to advanced level, imparting knowledge in such a way that really offends those of us who took years learning what he is giving away for less than $100." - John Scott, V7N

Quick Indications of Low Quality Search Spam.

May 29, 2006

Good SEO technique for your site

Filed under: SEO

    There’s some latest strategy used by some web maters for making the overall design, structure, and keyword pattern of your website relevant to search engines and web directories where the site has to been submitted for link listing. This technique, readily available by professionals in any quality SEO company, firm or Professionals allows search engines and directories, both human edited, and spider indexed thru top SE’s, to properly categorize and rank your site to be found when a user makes a search the desire key word.

    Some SEO firm explains those different tactics to get the most accurate and most relevant keyword for your site, so that they can obtain high rank when somebody make a search to the relevant keyword you used. For being a top rank on the major search engines is very important because those searcher or internet users will only look at the first ten sites display whenever they search. But if your site listed in page 2 it may never be seen by the searcher if they don’t scroll down or click those number of pages display on the desire search engine.

    For this reason, it’s very important that you include correct SEO strategies into your website. This may involve hiring an SEO firm or an SEO company for their different services. Among the most common SEO services are writing articles. These are articles written with interesting or informative contents, but which have been structured specifically around a specific keyword you used. Therefore, if your company related on realty, you might want to include an article on your website that uses the word “real state, mortgage” throughout its paragraphs. To come up with your unique keywords, try to think about the different ways that you’d search for your own website. Think about your products, your services the information that you provide, and the type of customer you’ll want to attract. You can either make your own list, or use a computer program that is designed for coming up with the different words that will work the best for you.

    If you sign up an SEO company, they will likely have that sort of program available. It allows you to simply give an idea, such as “mortgage”, and it will come up with all of the relevant search words that people who used on that keyword, and will tell you how many other sites already come up in search engines when that word or group of words is used for search. There are some tricks to create a correct SEO based article you have. Although it may seem as though you can simply write a regular article and plug in your keyword, there are actually some other things that you need to consider. While some believe that the keyword should be used once within the title of the article, and up to ten times throughout the rest of the text, others believe that it should only be used three more times, and a subheading is required.

    In fact, there are a lot of different techniques that work very well for good SEO Company or professionals, but it is a matter of knowing what you’re doing, and being consistent about it. For this reason, it’s not a bad idea to hire a freelance SEO writer, an SEO company, or a firm. This will ensure that you have the best odds at achieving those popular top SE’s ranks.

May 26, 2006

Is SEO matters in site re-design?

Filed under: SEO

According to Brian Kaminski -

iProspect’s managing director explains why incorporating traffic-driving elements into a site re-design is a critical step you can’t afford to miss.

You just got the news you’ve been waiting for. Green light on the re-design of the company’s website. Now you’ll finally be able to build a site that’s on par with your competitors’. No longer will you be ashamed to show clients your ho-hum site. Immediately, the wheels begin to turn — faster and faster — thinking of everything you want to incorporate into the site. Things like Flash animation, better product information, customer reviews, related product information, and a personalized user experience. You realize you’ll need input from your creative and usability teams, but in the end… the new site will be awesome.  And customers will be blown away…

Um… Timeout… Earth to site designer, come in please.

Listen, those ideas are great, but you forgot one thing. One big thing. If your customers can’t find your site, all those new bells and whistles will be for naught. Moreover, if they can’t find it, they won’t be conducting any transactions on it either. 

Quite simply, when it comes to site re-design, pretty is nice, but it isn’t enough. Incorporating elements into a site re-design that will help you drive traffic is a critical step you can’t afford to miss. And, if you’re thinking it’s one way or the other — a search friendly site OR a customer friendly site — you’re wrong. The two are not mutually exclusive. You can have your cake AND eat it too.

Most websites re-launch every two years, and all too often marketers and webmasters forget to plan for SEO in the process. Later on, when the site’s performance tanks, and everyone scrambles to figure out the problem, the importance of search becomes evident. Once it’s identified as an SEO issue, more scrambling ensues to try to fix things. However, this backwards approach doesn’t really fix anything. Instead, it just creates a band-aid solution that in the end actually keeps the site from reaching its full traffic-generating potential. To do it right, you should capitalize on the window of opportunity that your re-launch presents, as it is a rare chance to make those labor intensive changes while your developers are already touching the site.

Now you might be wondering why the re-design time is such a good opportunity to address SEO.  Well to start, during the re-design process, people are usually more willing to step back and think about how they can make something better. It’s a time of renewal. A re-birth of sorts. And while that sounds a little Zen-like, my experience with client after client has shown that this seemingly small step is a crucial element in the improvement process. This is the time where you can constructively look at ways to improve your search marketing performance. For example, this would be the time to make your URLs cleaner, improve internal linking, add new content, and restructure your source code.

I hate to keep beating what I hope is now a dead horse, but failing to consider SEO at all during the re-design process — or waiting until the last minute to do so — is the biggest mistake I see being made by marketers and webmasters.  But it’s usually not alone. Other common mistakes include not taking down old web pages, and not properly re-directing users and search engine crawlers to your new content. The importance of migrating links that point to old or significantly changed pages to their new homes is paramount, and cannot be overstressed. This is a common error, and the negative impact can be quite severe.

Congratulations on getting approval to upgrade you company’s website. Make sure to focus on delivering a unique and compelling experience for users. But remember, pretty is nice, but it isn’t enough. Be sure to think about driving qualified traffic to the site through SEO early and often throughout your site re-design project.

Brian Kaminski is managing director for iProspect’s San Francisco office, responsible for overseeing all client service and sales activities for the west coast, and for delivering superior strategies for iProspect’s clients.  Since joining iProspect in 2000, Kaminski has contributed significantly to the firm’s growth, first in his role as Campaign Analyst and then in his role as Client Services Manager. More recently, as Client Services Director, Kaminski led the activities of the client-facing search teams as well as the strategic direction of each campaign, working with clients such as Circuit City, Cingular Wireless, Allegis Group and Sharp Electronics Corporation. Also responsible for new employee training and development, Kaminski monitors iProspect’s overall search engine marketing process, ensuring that the company continues to innovate and achieve superior results. Kaminski is a contributor to iProspect’s monthly newsletter, the Search Marketing Advisor, and has spoken at client conferences around the country as well as numerous industry events, including the Search Engine Strategies Conference. Kaminski earned his Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Colgate University.

Your SEO Service, Ethical SEO, and Competitor Monitoring

Filed under: SEO, SEO Technique

According to Scott Buresh as posted on his article
-"When a company undertakes a search engine optimization program, whether it is performed in-house or outsourced to an SEO service, most of the attention (and rightly so) is focused on the company website. This is the one aspect where there is a feeling of control—once a website is released into the wild, the company will have to see how its site fares against all the other websites out there, whether the other sites are using ethical SEO tactics or not.

Apart from changes made to the company website, the assumption is often that the company and, if it is using one, its SEO service, has zero control over what appears in search engine results. However, this is not usually the case. Often, you or your SEO service can have a direct effect on search engine results by monitoring your competitors and reporting them to the major search engines when the SEO techniques used on their site fall outside what is popularly referred to as ethical SEO. (Please note that while I believe that the word “ethical” is tossed around too often, “ethical SEO” has become the standard phrase to describe white hat techniques, and so it is the phrase I use throughout the article.)

Primary Competitors

To start with, let’s define competitors. Almost every company has at least a handful of other companies that it considers to be primary competitors—the ones that sell the same products and services, that are of similar size, and so on. It is important that the SEO efforts (or lack thereof) of these competitors, whether they are using ethical SEO techniques or not, be monitored on a routine basis. If they have not hired an SEO service of their own, or if they have not started doing SEO in-house at all, you will have peace of mind knowing that the use of this channel, for the moment, is yours. If your competitors begin an SEO campaign, with or without an outside SEO service, you can learn much about their sales and marketing tactics by evaluating the keyphrases that they target. And you can also investigate whether they are using ethical SEO practices in their campaign.

Your Online Competitors

It’s important to keep in mind that it is unlikely that searchers are going to decide only between you and the primary competitors you have listed. They are going to consider any company that matches their particular needs and that shows up for their search term. This is why your criteria for a competitor online should broaden to encompass any company that offers products or services like yours that outranks you for any of your targeted keyphrases. If your in-house staff or your SEO service not only continually monitors your search engine positions but also analyzes the companies that appear above you in search results, you can often identify forward-looking competitors of which you were previously unaware—your primary competitors of tomorrow.

Violations

This brings us to the key issue of ethical SEO. Search engine optimization is still a very new concept to most companies. Even the most respected companies can make mistakes in this arena, either by choosing the wrong SEO service, or by trying to avoid hiring an SEO service altogether by bringing it in house with well-intentioned but unqualified people. For example, BMW’s German site was recently removed temporarily from the Google index for using doorway pages—something that is not considered an ethical SEO practice. It stands to reason that your competitors are also not immune to violations.

Monitoring

A thorough SEO service will monitor not only the handful of competitors that you deem crucial but also the sites that appear higher than you for any of your chosen search phrases. This may be somewhat controversial, especially to any SEO service or webmaster that uses tactics forbidden by the search engines’ terms of service. However, many white hat SEO service firms consider it an obligation to their clients to routinely monitor the sites of any competitor found on the engines to be sure it is using ethical SEO techniques.

There is a reason that every major search engine has a form to report sites who do not use ethical SEO tactics and who violate the terms of service so that these sites can be subsequently penalized or removed. Spam filters cannot catch all violations without also removing a large number of good sites. Search engines rely on their users to help them to keep their indexes clean and free of sites not using ethical SEO tactics. There are many techniques to spam an engine—far too many to list. However, a good SEO service not only knows what all of these techniques are but knows how to identify them when it sees them so they can be reported to the engine accurately.

The engine also benefits from users reporting violations. Engines do not like people trying to trick their indexes, since there might then be pages showing up for particular search terms that are not actually relevant to those terms. Clearly, search engines understand this benefit—if the engines thought they could weed out all the spam themselves, they would not provide a reporting system. Supporting such a system, after all, is not free. Real people employed by the engine have to visit the offending pages to confirm that they are not using ethical SEO tactics.

In the notable example cited earlier of the firm that got most of its clients penalized, the owner of the SEO service in question was quoted as saying, “Google can kiss my ass. This is the Wild Wild West.” He may be right—maybe it is the Wild Wild West. But there are a whole bunch of new sheriffs in town—and they are wearing white hats."

 
See related topics on this stories:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewByAuthor.asp?authorID=723 

 






















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