Do you think Google Instant is a threat to SEO? Share your thoughts.

Speaking of PPC, Google says Google Instant changes the way it counts impressions. "It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels," says Google’s Dan Friedman. "However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need."

There are many pay per click advertising search engines to choose from online. The traffic quality varies across all of them. Some generate more sales than others and give you a better return on your ad spend.

3 of the best pay per click search engines for traffic quality are: Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and Microsoft’s adCenter.

According to ComScore.com these 3 have the following search market share in the United Sates (in March 2010):

Google Sites: 65.5%
Yahoo! Sites: 16.9%
Microsoft sites: 11.7%

Why is this important? Between just these 3 search engines they have an astonishing 94.1% of the search market share in the US. Ask have a 3.8% share and AOL have 2.5%.

This means the top 3 have the most traffic for you to tap into.

Which search engine should you use to run your Pay Per Click Advertising on and why? Here is a pro/con review of each…

GOOGLE ADWORDS

Pros:

Huge search volume. Because of this you can also dig deeper into your market and target niche markets.

Keyword research. They offer the best keyword research tool in my opinion and it is very simple and easy to work with. It gives you a ton of data on just about everything.

Excellent user interface. The AdWords interface has always been very clean and user friendly. They recently changed the interface and have improved it further to allow you to make multiple changes faster amongst other things.

Target different networks. You can target their content network (also known as Google AdSense) as well as different search networks.

Target different devices. You can target mobile phones as well as computers.

Ads go live fast. You don’t have to wait too long to get your ads approved.

Upload multiple campaigns easily. If you have big campaigns and many of them, you can upload them quite easily using the Google Adwords editor program.

Cons:

Very competitive. It is getting more and more competitive so you must get a good quality score with them. And this can also affect your sales.

Uncertainty for the future. If you base your business around this type of traffic you are vulnerable to the changes in Google that could happen overnight and stop your traffic dead.

Stricter guidelines. Guidelines are getting tougher as Google try to thin the herd and unlike the old days, it does take some work on your campaign to get a good quality score.

YAHOO SPONSORED SEARCH

Pros:

Good amount of search volume. So you can target different markets and niche markets.

Guidelines not as strict. Guidelines can be more relaxed than Googles’s but not by much.

Less competition. Less than Google that is but is still competitive.

Cons:

Keyword research. The keyword research tool is not as good as Google or Microsoft’s.

User interface. Not the cleanest and easiest use. Takes longer to put your campaigns together.

Less targeting options. Not as many as you would find at Google and Microsoft.

Uploading multiple campaigns. This is not as easy to do as it is in Google and Microsoft. You have to email your campaigns to Yahoo unless you have a gold account.

MICROSOFT ADCENTER

Pros:

Keyword research. Their keyword research tool has been improved lately and does include a demographic search option (something Google doesn’t offer). But Google’s keyword research tool is still more advanced.

Not as competitive. Not as competitive as Google and Yahoo.

Target by demographics. You can target by age and gender which can increase your sales.

Less strict on guidelines. A little less than Google but not by much.

Upload multiple campaigns. This requires the Microsft Silverlight application which is free. You can also import campaigns from Google and Yahoo.

Cons:

Not as much search volume. No where near as much search volume as Google and Yahoo which means less traffic.

User interface. This user interface is not as clean and as simple as Google’s but is better than Yahoo’s.

Less targeting options. You can’t target as many networks and devices as you can in Google.

Summing up The best pay per click search engine (in my opinion) is Google AdWords because the keyword research tool is the really good. The competition is high and guidelines are strict but they also have the most traffic which really helps.

They have a great user interface which makes setting up campaigns quick and easy.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft don’t have the search volume that Google does. This means it is harder to get traffic in niche markets where the competition is lower. But with the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft, there should be some great improvements ahead.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Best Pay Per Click Search Engines- What Are the Pros and Cons?

Have you noticed recent changes in your ranking? Tell us about it.

Algorithm Change

Google makes changes to its algorithm all the time, but when a change comes with an announcement, you know people are going to talk. On Friday, Google announced a tweak designed to surface multiple pages from a single site for relevant queries.

"For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site," says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. "Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results."

Not all webmasters have been thrilled with this. "Brace yourselves! Another Mayday disaster coming," one person commented on our story about it.

What do you think of this algorithm change? Comment here.

Experimenting

Just as the company frequently changes its algorithm, it also frequently experiments with different features, showing them to small sets of users before either turning them into full-fledged features or throwing them away. The jury’s still out on this one, but a new experiment has been spotted, which alters search results as you type your query.

Think of this like autosuggest taking over the entire SERP. The video demonstrates:

Again, this is only an experiment at this stage, and it may never make its way to the mainstream Google experience, but people are already expressing a great deal of concern about it (particularly with regards to queries that begin with words that could yield undesired NSFW results).

My guess is that Google would have ways around that issue, but it remains to be seen if users/webmaters will have to deal with it. If the feature does come to fruition, this is something SEOs are going to have to consider, as it could have a big impact on the habits of searchers. You may, for example, want to optimize more for the earlier words in a longer key phrase, in addition to the key phrase itself. But, we’ll see.

Should Google change search results as you type? Comment here.

Google Crawling Sites From Numerous IPs

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to some discussion from SEOs in Webmasterworld, who have found for the first time that Googlebot is now crawling from several different IP addresses at the same time. One webmaster said, ". their fast activity notified me so I took a peek to see who was scraping the site… I’ve never seen Google spider so fast and from so many IP addresses, they were all valid Google ip’s but there was like 10-20 of them running at once."

Acquisition

The other day, it was officially announced that Like.com has been acquired by Google. Like.com is a shopping search company offering visual search technology and an automated cross-matching system for clothing and other merchandise.

At this point, it’s unclear what Google has planned for this technology, but it could very well affect search results for shopping queries, which means it could affect small business visibility for better or for worse. Shopping search is going to be an area of Google to keep an eye on.

Have you noticed anything else interesting happening with Google search within the last week or so? Are you seeing things that are impacting your rankings? Let us know.

"For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site," says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. "Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results."

"We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year," adds Keshava. "We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page."

This change may prove to be helpful for a lot of searches, but they could still do more in this area if you ask me. For exmaple, they could rank tag pages (commonly used on news sites and blogs) as top results for appropriate searches.

For instance, if I search for "WebProNews SEO articles" or "SEO articles on WebProNews", it couldn’t get any more relvant than the WebProNews SEO tag page. That points to every SEO article we have. Yet, this result is nowhere to be found for either query, and it’s certainly not unique to us (ironically, another article in which I made a similar complaint ranks at the top). These pages aren’t often linked to, so they don’t get the PageRank, but does that make them less relevant for queries like this?

How to write compelling page titles

From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important. These are the words that describe what your page is about and are the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.

The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result – so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searcher’s criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page opened.

It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.

Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let me explain how to write an effective and powerful title.

First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and spread your reach across search engine indexes.

The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword “Family Solicitors”, then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read
the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.

It is important to remember that since the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, you need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”. Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of “About Us – ECommerce Partners”, we added “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”.

The reason is because “Website Design Company” is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced “About Us” with “About Website Design Company”. This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.

Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to their clients.

The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.

Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of the title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.

General Suggestion: You cannot promote all of your keywords in one page. Normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The ‘Title tag’ should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page content. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.

Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters or less, including spaces. There’s no reason to have the engines cut off the last word and have it replaced with a “…” Note that some search engines are now accepting longer titles and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.

Use a divider when splitting up the keywords. We generally recommend the use of the “|” symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well.

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they’re reasonably certain fits their intended search query.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Meta Title Tags are Gold

This applies to web, image, and video search on Yahoo for both the desktop and mobile experiences of Yahoo Search.

"With this week’s milestone behind us, Yahoo! will continue to drive technology innovation in the search experience to bring more value to users and advertisers alike," says Yahoo SVP of Search Products, Shashi Seth. "We are focused on creating rich, immersive experiences that foster serendipitous discovery for people across the Yahoo! network.  As we shared last week, we are also working hard on finalizing our revenue model for the Yahoo! Search BOSS program going forward, and will be offering other search-related tools for publishers in the months to come."

"We continue to work hard on the migration to adCenter, and are optimistic about completing this phase later this fall," says Microsoft’s SVP of Online Services, Satya Nadella. "As we have said all along, our primary goal is to provide advertisers with a quality transition experience in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season."

Both companies have indicated that the transition has gone smoothly, with Yahoo praising the speed at which the teams were able to get it done.

So, what are your thoughts on Yahoo’s new search results? If you were a Yahoo user before, now you’re choosing between Yahoo’s and Bing’s user interface.

FM says TextDigger’s technology complements its own platform with semantic solutions for content tagging, filtering and clustering, that can help the company enhance the user experience, ad targeting, and semantic SEO for a site or network of sites.

"We’re proud to place TextDigger’s semantic profiling technology in FM’s hands," said Tim Musgrove, founder and CEO of TextDigger. "I’ve followed FM’s growth over the last few years and admire the company’s work. They have amassed a great team and a solid technology platform. I’m happy that our IP and our people will be integrated into such a wonderful company. This is a great strategic fit for all sides involved."

"FM’s home-grown technology platform is largely an untold story," said John Battelle, founder, chairman and CEO of Federated Media. "Over the past five years, our technology team has built an extraordinary platform that drives our business and keeps us on the edge of innovation in media. TextDigger provides us with a complementary technology that will build upon the work our team began back in 2005. Expect to hear more from FM with regard to media and marketing technology solutions."

Four "key" people from TextDigger including Musgrove, VP Engineering Robin Hiroko Walsh, Sr. Director of Product Management Peter Ridge, and Lead Software Engineer Jim Hull, are also joining the Federated Media team.

TextDigger will continue its own search business. Current Chief Business Development Officer will take over as CEO. TextDigger customers will continue to be supported by either FM or TextDigger, depending on their type of project or service. Financial terms of the acquisition have not been revealed.

Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future.

To a certain extent, they are.

Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, so you can virally market your website through the “buzz” that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in “all the right places,” it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic.

We search marketers tend to hang out in numerous online and offline communities where it’s easy to promote our own products and services, yet I can’t help wondering if our view of Web marketing is skewed because of this.

Are potential B2B clients and even B2C customers spending time at Digg? Do they attend SEM conferences in order to hire a company, or are they just trying to learn to do it themselves? And what about other industries? Is there a Sphinn equivalent for developers of product lifecycle management software? Are there groups of people online comparing the various brands of auto parts? Are there really people seeking out articles on these topics?

Perhaps.

And if so, we’d be remiss not to promote our clients’ websites in those spaces. But is this search marketing? Or is it simply online marketing? Arguably, it becomes search marketing when it increases link popularity, but surely that should be the secondary goal of this type of marketing campaign. True link popularity comes from having something worth linking to, not something you’ve asked your insulated group of cronies to link to.

Certainly, the boost in direct traffic that a site can gain when it is being discussed in all the right places online is not to be taken lightly – and that alone is reason enough to try to be found in all the right places. Yet how much of that traffic actually converts into anything good, and how much does it help your organic search rankings?

More important – how does it increase your bottom line?

For instance, I’ve written a few articles that received upward of 1,000 visitors a day from StumbleUpon alone. The spike in traffic was nice, and the slight increase in newsletter subscribers was certainly welcome, but for the most part, those StumbleUpon visitors spent just a few minutes on our site, and only a small percentage signed up for our free newsletter. None of them were interested in using our services. They read the article and then stumbled their way to the next site of potential interest.

Isn’t participation in social media really just preaching to the choir?

You reach your peers, not the people who will buy your product or service. Sure, it’s a nice ego stroke to have others in your industry tell you how cool you are, and there’s something to be said for building credibility within your own community. I’m certainly not knocking that, and have built my own credibility via various online communities in which I’ve participated over the past decade.

But how does it sell your products and services?

Do you gain customers and sales from your social media marketing and/or your participation in social networks? Does it increase your rankings for the keyword phrases your actual target audience is typing into the search engines? If your business model depends on traffic for traffic’s sake, or on how many ad impressions your site generates, then there’s an obvious value. But if you sell a product or a service – then not so much.

My fear with all the hype about social media marketing is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.

It isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Social media marketing is a great addition to any traditional SEO work that you do, but it’s not a substitute. It’s more akin to hiring a PR firm once you’ve launched your already-SEO’d website. On-page SEO is definitely not as sexy as social media marketing, but it is still the most important investment in your website that you can make. Period.

So, go to all your social media conferences, and Digg your way to increased traffic. But first learn exactly who your target audience is, what they’re searching for in the search engines, and how your website can solve their problems. Then make sure your website does exactly that. All the social media buzz and traffic won’t amount to anything if your target audience isn’t already part of the online conversation.

Be sure to have your own house in order before you give social media marketing a try.

And don’t be surprised if it doesn’t actually provide you with the ROI you hoped it would. In most cases it will depend on who your target audience is, where they hang out, the types of services or products you offer, and whether your website truly provides people with what they’re looking for.

Getting back to SEO basics – that is, creating a crawler-friendly website that is built around the keyword phrases people use at the search engines to find what you offer – is the first and most important thing you can do for your website and your business. Yeah, it’s not as fun and exciting as social media marketing, but skip this step at your own peril!

If you’ve lost search engine traffic and would like Jill to determine what the problem might be, fill out the contact form at www.highrankings.com/contact and mention it in the “Business Goals” section. She can review most sites that have Google Analytics installed for a one-time $600 fee.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Social Media Marketing Doesn’t Replace SEO

How much is too much to pay for SEO? (…or should you try to do it yourself first?)

Yes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an excellent way of getting leads.

Yes, good SEO can level the playing field between you and competitors.

Yes, you should do some level of SEO.

…but how much is too much?

Too much? Good question.

You’ll find that everybody that uses the word “Internet” is going to suggest that you engage in SEO and many will make you an offer to do it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that as far it goes. But what you have to decide is how much you should pay for having it done.

Some Perspectives On Paying For SEO

Here are a few important tips to help you decide the answer to that question:

(1) First, make sure you really do need outside assistance. If you’re looking for better SEO placement for relatively unique or so-called “long tail” key words (e.g. “pine street rental condominiums” ) it might be worth trying it yourself before you involve an SEO consultant or SEO firm.

(2) SEO is not rocket-science. Mostly it’s monotonous drudgery. So what you pay should not be about hiring “expertise”. The SEO effort is more like 90% drudgery, 8% experience, and 2% expertise and you should compensate accordingly.

(3) The value of SEO boils down to “clicks” – preferably clicks that result in a sale conversion. SEO should be measured on the same cost-per-click basis any search-engine-marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign would be – i.e. the basis of ROI. If you don’t know how many clicks or orders you want, do not engage SEO until you do.

(4) SEO is not static and optimization is competitive. You may be on the first page today but your competitors aren’t necessarily going to sit still forever. You could be bumped at any time. So if you’re not prepared to maintain an ongoing and strategic SEO effort – no matter what the competition does – then save your money.

(5) Search engine “secrets” are just that – secret. The search engines aren’t telling them and anybody that claims to know the secrets is just guessing. It doesn’t mean they can’t help but it’s not as if they have some special advantage. Impossible.

(6) Frankly, from the search engine point-of-view, if your site doesn’t have enough useful and relevant content to be on the first page, ethical SEO notwithstanding, eventually it won’t be. This is the objective of the search engines and there’s little likelihood that the SEO “expert” pitching you is going to out-think Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others in the long run.

Is Doing SEO Yourself An Option?

It’s almost always worth taking a first crack at SEO yourself. Often only a little effort can make a significant difference. If you do want to make the effort, invest a few dollars in a do-it-yourself SEO guide and try to adhere to the following minimum suggestions:

(1) Focus on keywords that are realistic. You’re not likely to get a good placement with a keyword like “real estate” but you might get first page with a keyword like “Hill street real estate”;

(2) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in the link to your page. Instead of saying “click HERE” make sure the text for the link says something like “for more information about HILL STREET REAL ESTATE”;

(3) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in your page title, your keyword list, your page content, bolded page content;

(4) For every keyword you’re interested in, make sure you have an appropriate page to focus on it (and that it complies with #1, #2, and #3 above)

(5) Register with search engine webmaster accounts so that you can submit your site to them quickly and efficiently (search for “google webmaster”, “bing webmaster”, or “yahoo webmaster” to find the details).

Don’t Forget Links

Lastly, if you going to make an initial stab yourself, understand that quality links to your site are a vital factor in your ultimate placement. The more the merrier. To get a head-start on building links to your site, do the following:

(1) Enroll in all relevant local or regional directories – (search “free directories” to find lists of these); many will be free, some will want nominal fees or backlinks. You decide.

(2) Ensure that any press releases and announcements you make refer to your site and specific pages within it.

(3) Post pages of your site to delicious.com or to digg.com and to similar bookmarking sites.

(4) Ask local friends and business acquaintances if they will exchange links with you.

(5) On the other hand, DO NOT sign up for paid links without the guidance of someone experienced in Internet marketing.

Do these things sound particularly difficult? No.

And well worth taking a stab at by yourself. From there you can decide whether its desirable or worth the cost to pay for SEO services from a 3rd-party.

No Matter What You Do…

You need to think in terms of what kind of return you are going to get on your investment. The calculation is simple: Divide the total SEO cost (yours or a 3rd-party’s) by the number of orders/sales you’ve received as a result of the effort. Then compare that cost-per-sale against your margin-per-sale. If you have margin left over, you’re in the right territory. If you don’t, you’ve got a problem.

The bottom line is that when you talk with any SEO service provider, you must think in terms of ROI. Not in terms of “secrets” or first pages or top spots, but ROI. (Note: it is theoretically possible to be on the 3rd page and still get a positive ROI – not likely, but possible) If the ROI doesn’t work, then search engine optimization may not be for you and other Internet marketing methods might yield better results and a better ROI.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How Much is Too Much to Pay for SEO?

Many folks today do not realize just how powerful viral marketing is and how much potential it has.  Viral marketing revolves around creating an intense buzz on the Internet. It is a truly powerful concept that causes viral campaigns to spread pandemically around the Internet with a rapid intensity.  If used properly, it can be a very successful marketing technique for your business.

One thing that we can all be sure of is that viral marketing works and it works very well.  In this age of high-speed communications – when a message or video can travel around the world multiple times in a matter of minutes or even seconds – advertisers have to learn to use that to their advantage.  Viral marketing is not just for the big fish either.  A viral marketing campaign does not have to be expensive or expansive and can be utilized by businesses of any size.  The campaign need only be creative, catch the attention of its audience and spread around the Internet like wildfire thanks to people referring others to the campaign.

This referral process has become even easier nowadays with services like RSS Feeds, social bookmarking, AddThis or ShareThis, Twitter’s “retweet” function and Facebook’s “like” and “share” buttons.  You no longer even have to forward an email or send a message, a user of a social network like Facebook or Twitter can simply click on a “Share” link and send the viral marketing material to all of their friends, fans or followers.

The first component of the viral marketing process is the actual creative material itself.  Will you use a picture, article, video or text?  Something as simple as the headline of a news article can be viral on the Internet.  If you can think of a creative way to promote your products or services that will strike a chord with people and make them laugh, cry, feel inspired or any other emotion then they will want to share what they have seen, read or heard with their friends, family, co-workers, neighbors or any others in their social circle.  Then the web of content sharing has begun and it’s “gone viral.”  It is truly amazing how fast something can go viral online and spread throughout the world in a matter of minutes.

After you create the viral campaign then you must “seed” it by planting it at strategic places on the Internet.  There must be a distribution network to get your campaign to the masses so you need to figure out what online mediums will work best for spreading your marketing to the masses.  Perhaps you start with making a video, uploading it to YouTube and sharing it with your Facebook friends, your newsletter mailing list and any other contacts you might have.  Then you can use social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. for a further reach.

If you strategically and intelligently use viral marketing techniques in your e-commerce business then you should find them an effective promotional tool.  Viral marketing is a tremendous way to build a ton of links in a little amount of time.  This is great SEO practice for your business and can help you climb up the SERP (search engine results page) in o time!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Viral Marketing: The Proof is in the Pudding.

Any website owner wants their website to be ranking well for those keywords which will mean that targeted visitors arrive on their website and possibly turn into customers or clients.

A website’s ranking on search engines (especially Google) is quite important when you take into account the following important statistics:

- 90% of users don’t go past the Page 1 of Google
- 42% of users click on the website on position 1, 12.5% on position 2 and only 8% on position 3

What does this all mean?

This means that if your website is not on Page 1 of Google and in the top 3 positions, then you are effectively missing out on more than 60% of potential visitors (and customers for that matter).

If your website isn’t currently in a good position on the search engines, don’t panic! There are many things you can do to move its rankings up. Below is a list of website ranking factors from the most important:

URL

If you want to rank for a certain keyword, it’s absolutely vital that you have that keyword in your domain name. If you feel tempted to use your company or brand name instead, keep in mind that the goal of ranking at number 1 for your main keyword will only get much harder if you do so.

Domain Age

If you register a brand new domain name, you are going to be starting from scratch. However, a start is a start and as the months and years go by, your website will benefit immensely from this factor. On the other hand, you can get a head start by purchasing an expired domain name which does not currently have an owner. Just make sure that it hasn’t been banned by the search engines before purchasing.

Title Tag

Having the keyword in the title tag of your home page is a MUST. There are many websites which still use their brand name or company name in their title tag which make ranking for target keywords even harder. This is a ranking factor that is applicable to all pages on your website.

Page Structure

Optimize each page on your website for just 1 keyword. Every page on your website should only be optimized for one keyword. Any more and ranking for your target keywords will be that much difficult. Your home page should target the main keyword while other pages should target related, long tailed keywords.

Keyword Density

It’s important that you mention the keyword you are targeting on the relevant page. A good density to aim for is 3% which means that your target keyword only makes up 3% of the text on the page. Any more and your page could be seen as being spammy.

Backlinks

You’re probably wondering why backlinks is at the bottom of the list when it is an important factor in getting website rankings. The reason why I put it down there is to emphasize getting your website set up right first before getting backlinks. Getting hundreds or even thousands of backlinks to a website which is incorrectly optimized will diminish the value of each link in getting rankings.

On the subject of backlinks, it’s important that you get them from a variety of sources while using a variety of anchor text.

The key to a successful website in terms of getting targeted traffic and customers is all in this article. Read it many times over if you have to. Simply get these website ranking factors right and you will have a immensely successful website before you know it.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Criteria For Improving Your Website Ranking

The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.

There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.

For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:

1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”

By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.

2. “In title: ‘keyword’”

2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.

3. “In text: ‘keyword”

This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.

You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO: How To Research For Free

First off, this is the first part of our two part article on traffic conversions. It is one of the most important topics when it comes to SEO and thorough understanding must be established. Traffic conversion doesn’t just happen by itself, you need the right strategy and even a keywords niche tool to help you out there.

Let’s take all this slowly, one-step at a time to help you totally understand this concept. You have understand the role of page rankings and how it affects your page rankings. Let’s say; you got on the Top 10. You get all these valuable traffic, don’t leave it to a waste, use it?
You have to convert them. Traffic is equivalent to cash and the more traffic you get, the higher your possible earnings will be. Sounds great right?

Going back to the concept of keyword SEO optimization, that’s where the ground for your conversions starts. Every time a potential customer goes to your site, it’s a chance for your to actually sell. So how do you do it?

Here are the easiest means to provide you for the highest possible conversion rates.

a. Make sure your website is user friendly and easy to navigate, it should have the elements to drive your visitors towards your goal. As mentioned before, one of the means that you can actually promote your site is by creating articles. Always make sure that your articles are indeed keyword rich; sounds convincing but DON’T sound as if your selling your site on their faces. Do all that in your resource box and make sure your readers read through it. Make sure that your main site’s registration form is conveniently accessible and easily seen on your site and not just on the home page. You may not be able to tell which page your viewer is looking for but if they do want to join your site; you can provide with with your main link and viola!

b. Always spend time to check if your paths are working. Meaning, you should follow-up on any missing or broken paths. This will just make your readers disappointed. Having a dead-end on your link creates a negative impact on your site. And by that, it directly affects your conversion rates.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Keyword SEO: The Way of the Samurai to Boost Conversion Rates – Part 1

Now that the website is live, we just sit back, celebrate at the launch party with a bottle of bubbly and wait for all that traffic and recognition, right? Dream on!

Internet marketing and online promotion require ongoing attention and acute care. The good news is that this part of the “web-dev” process can be the most fun and bring the most joy – both emotionally and financially. Checking your website stats and seeing that you have ten times the traffic increase when compared to last month, and having to hire additional help to respond to all of the contact form submissions can be very exciting times for any online business. (Yay! #success) Where do I start then?

A properly crafted website well on it’s way with this.

During the website development phase great care and attention was taken to lay the ground work for a sound SEO (search engine optimization) foundation. Well thought out page titles, meta tags, keyword sensitive copy-writing and a solid interlinking system should have all been in place. Having these items in place will greatly help in increasing your relevance in the eyes of major search engines. Web directories and Search engine submission

One of the first steps after launching the website should be submitting your site to the top web directories and search engines. Getting listed can sometimes cost a nominal fee and at times can be a long process, so it’s important to get the ball rolling.

Getting your site known and listed on directories can help in numerous ways:

People who use these directories can find your site

Lets the search engines know that your website exists

Provides links back to your site from some top page ranked sources

Link building

Link building is another important step in promoting your website. Having in-bound links listed on highly reputable and relevant websites is probably at the top of Google’s long list of criteria for determining your pages rank. Make sure that your approach with link building is ethical.
(Not-so-good practices such as using link farming services can quickly make your site disappear in the eyes of the major search engines.) The Best practices of getting your links listed on websites that are relevant to yours can direct visitors to you as well as making search engines say: “Hey if that top ranking website thinks that your site has reputable and relevant information then it must be so.”

Best practices for link building include (but are not limited to) the following:

Writing articles for websites or blogs and including a link back to your site in your authors bio

Writing articles and submitting them to article publication services

Adding a link on your site to a website you hope to get your name on, contacting them and asking for a reciprocal link in return

Having content on your website that is actually inbound link worthy

Keeping your content fresh

A very large mistake many people make after launching their website is never adding new content or updating existing pages. This hurts your visibility in numerous ways. If there is never anything new to see visitors will never feel the need to return. The same is true for search engine spiders – they want to eat up and index all of your new content.

Top experts also feel that search engines give more importance to sites with frequently updated content as the info must be time relevant. Spiders keep track of how often new content is added to your site and determine the frequency of their trips back to you based on this data.
The more content you produce, the more visits you’ll have from all your friendly neighbors on the net. Harnessing social media.

Using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter can help keep you in touch with your fans, tribe and client base. Social Media is a great avenue for building upon old relations and creating new ones as well. The viral nature of social media marketing also provides huge potential for exposing your website to an exponential number of people, friends of theirs and their friends’ friends, and so on ad infinitum.

There are many ways to market your website and get your name out there so that your people find you.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO & Social Media Marketing To The Rescue

Since its debut in 1996, Google’s search engine has experienced countless updates and revisions. But none of those revisions have fundamentally changed the architecture of the Google search algorithm as much as Google’s latest update, codenamed Caffeine.

While recent reports put Google’s market share at around 65 percent, a massive update to its search engine technology makes sense at this point. Microsoft’s new Bing search engine showed some resiliency in late 2009, while Web 2.0 services like Facebook and Twitter have done a lot to change the way people search for content on the Internet.

For Google to remain the most popular search service, it will have to counter Bing’s claims of technical superiority. It would also have to more effectively incorporate “real-time search,” the term used for finding information and content – like tweets from Twitter and breaking news stories – that have just been posted.

That means a radically different Google search engine. And it also means that those who care about Website search engine optimization and placement may have a lot of new rules to learn if they want to earn high Website rankings on Google. Because Caffeine is a significant departure from previous versions of Google’s search engines, Website owners and marketers could see dramatically different results for their search engine optimization and placement efforts.

But the good news is that Google has offered Webmasters and online marketers a taste of Caffeine’s unique algorithms. Search engine optimization and placement specialists have been able to test their Websites against an early version of Caffeine. And while it’s a nice gesture by Google to offer the chance for Webmasters and marketers to do some preliminary research, it would be wrong to draw any hard and fast conclusions at this point. It’s more than likely that Google will continue to tweak and refine Caffeine and its search engine optimization and placement for months after its official release.

So are there any search engine optimization and placement tips and tricks that we can learn from Caffeine? Yes. Google has hinted that several new things will have a major impact on search engine optimization and placement. Here are the most important changes.

1. Website speed: Google will now place more importance on how quickly a Website loads. That means Websites that load fast will be given prominence in search engine optimization and placement over Websites that are slow and clunky.

2. Broken links: Links that go nowhere aren’t just annoying, they’ll soon count as a strike against a Website’s search engine optimization and placement efforts. It’s already an accepted rule that any good website shouldn’t have broken links. Now it’s even more important for Website owners make sure that every link goes somewhere relevant.

3. Penalties for linking to bad neighborhoods: Currently, linking to spammers and obtaining incoming links from known spammers is not a good way to achieve the best search engine optimization and placement results. Look for Caffeine to place even more importance on staying away from link farms and other malicious online practices.

4. Overall website quality: Some canny Website owners have gotten good search engine optimization and placement results by ranking high in a single factor that Google assesses, while ignoring other aspects. Under Caffeine, the overall quality will be under closer inspection. Having just one or two key search engine optimization and placement ranking factors won’t be enough.

So what will you have to change if you want to achieve great search engine optimization and placement results under Caffeine? If you already have a Website that subscribes to Google and SEO best practices, then there probably isn’t a lot you’ll have to tweak.

Here are some steps you can take to make sure that you’re Website is primed to get good results under Caffeine:

1. Eliminate all spam elements from your Website: Any part of your Website that could conceivably be considered spam will likely have a negative effect on your search engine optimization and placement efforts. Spam elements include Website text that’s the same color as the background, Website cloaking, and automated linking.

2. Reevaluate your Website design and structure: Make sure your Website looks great and is user-friendly. Users should be able to easily navigate through the Website and search engines should be able to understand and categorize a Web page just by reading its title and meta tags.

3. Get links from social bookmark and other social media sites: Links from social bookmark sites like Digg and Delicious are already important to gaining good search engine optimization and placement. The importance of links from these types of sites is likely to increase under Caffeine.

4. Check your Website links: Make sure that you aren’t linking to any Websites that could potentially be labeled as spammers. Having a selection of quality links is far better than gathering as many links as possible.

By following the above tips and tricks, your Website should have no problem adjusting to Google’s new search engine. And you’ll have a crucial advantage when it comes to getting great search engine optimization and placement results.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Get Top Search Engine Optimization and Placement Results with Google Caffeine

"The primary change for these tests is that the listings are coming from Microsoft," says Yahoo’s VP of Search Product Operations, Kartik Ramakrishnan. "However, the overall page should look the same as the Yahoo! Search you’re used to – with rich content and unique tools and features from Yahoo!. If you happen to fall into our tests, you might also notice some differences in how we’re displaying select search results due to a variety of product configurations we are testing."

Yahoo provides the following example, in which the Microsoft-powered parts are represented by the boxes:

As far as SEO is concerned, the Yahoo Search Marketing Team provides the following tips for organic search:

1. Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that work best for you.
2. Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate.
3. Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Microsoft platform crawler, as Bing listings will be displayed for approximately 30% of search queries after this change, according to comScore.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella also says that "now is a good time for you to review your crawl policies in your robots.txt and ensure that you have identical polices for the msnbot/Bingbot and Yahoo’s bots. Just to note, you should not see an increase in bingbot traffic as a result of the transition."

The Bingbot is designed to crawl non-optimized sties more easily. The new Bingbot will replace the existing msnbot in October. More on this here.

Also note that the new Bing Webmaster Tools experience is live. This has been completely redone with a  bunch of new features (and more features to come). Bing Webmaster Tools Senior Product Manager Anthony M. Garcia summarizes:

The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as Index Explorer and Submit URLs, provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Index Explorer gives you unprecedented access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included. Submit URLs gives you the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to the index. Other new features include: Crawl Issues to view details on redirects, malware, and exclusions encountered while crawling sites; and Block URLs to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages. In addition, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. That means more transparency and more control to help you make decisions, which optimize your sites for Bing.

WebProNews spoke with Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo out at SMX a while back. She had presented on the topic of Bing SEO vs. Organic SEO. As she notes, some businesses actually see better results from Bing than they do from Google, and when Yahoo starts fully using Bing for search, Bing’s share of the search market is going to grow dramatically (it also powers search in Facebook, let’s not forget).

More WebProNews Videos

Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft’s mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September. This of course depends on how the testing goes.

Yahoo and Microsoft have created new joint editorial guidelines for advertisers that will become effective in early August. These can be found here.

As we’ve discussed, Bing optimization is about to get more important, and now the time has come to really look at your Bing strategy if you’ve not already been doing so.

Are you prepared for the transition? Comment here.

Many webmasters complain about their website not ranking well in the SERPs. What they fail to realize is that their website is not search engine friendly. An SEO friendly website contains more than keyword filled Meta tags and content.

A website must be created and designed keeping the visitors in mind. Search engines can get your website in the top ranking; but a well crafted website ensures that the visitor gets converted into a customer. You need to ensure that your website is both search engine and visitor friendly.

Tips for Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website:

Fill the Meta tags: Search engines come across the Meta tags well before the content. A major part of the search result is picked up from the Meta tags. The title tag helps the search engines and visitors in understanding what the webpage is about. The Meta description gets listed as the snippet in the search result. Well formatted Meta tags play a major role in making the website SEO friendly.

Include Breadcrumbs in the website: Breadcrumbs are navigational links present in the inner pages of the website. They link a web page to its respective category and sub category. Breadcrumbs help in the even distribution of the page rank to the connected web pages. You must include keywords as the anchor text of the breadcrumbs. Remember to place the breadcrumbs before the main heading of the web page.

Perform the On Page Optimization Activities: SEO of a website mainly consists of on page optimization activities. Implement these tips:

• Add a heading tag to the web page.
• As search engines cannot read images, add an alt tag to the images.
• Name the image according to the selected keywords. Use hyphens to separate long keywords.
• Place a keyword as the anchor text of a link.
• Optimize the content of your web page. Make sure that the keyword density doesn’t exceed 2%.

Interlink all the important web pages: Interlinking web pages helps the search spiders to navigate the website. Web pages can be linked based on their category. E.g. an online book store can link their web pages based on the authors. It has been observed that a well linked website will always rank better than the non-linked websites. You can link to the important pages of your website from the homepage by using appropriate anchor text.

Use SEO Friendly URL Structure: Search engines do not understand the URL’s which contain the PHP / ASP code in them. A SEO friendly URL structure contains words separated by hyphens. You can rewrite your URL’s manually via the.htaccess file. Wordpress gives you an option to change your URL structure with one click.

Generate XML Sitemaps: Sitemaps help the engines discover all the pages in your website. There are a lot of free XML sitemap generator tools available online. You can include the “priority” and “change frequency” tags in your sitemap. The priority tag indicates the importance of the web page to the search engines. The Change frequency tag tells the search engines how frequently the page is likely to change.

A fully optimized site increases your chances of ranking well in the SERPs. Once in the top SERPs, your website has a good chance of converting its visitors into customers.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website

There are three words not normally associated with SEO. They are quick, cheap, and easy. But there is one situation where I can honestly say these words really do describe the optimization process; the Wordpress blog.

Google loves Wordpress because it’s easy to spider and uses extremely clean code on the back end. But there’s more…

Google has a thing for dynamic content and lots of it. And it doesn’t get much better than Wordpress when it comes to making Google happy. You don’t have to know a lot about SEO because Wordpress sets you up to naturally take advantage of what Google likes. And if you invest a bit in a nice plugin, you can often see results you never even dreamed of.

There are just a few things to know about initial setup so I’ll cover them one by one.

First, if your blog is part of a larger site, name its directory ‘blog’ or ‘topic blog’ with ‘topic’ being your main keyword or topic. Don’t name it Wordpress.

Second, be sure your sites uses ‘www’ in its fully qualified domain name (FQDN.) Here’s how.

1. Login to the Wordpress dashboard.
2. Go to Dashboard > Settings > General.
3. Edit your WordPress URL and Blog URL to include the www prefix.

Third, set your Wordpress to use Permalink with optimal custom setting. This creates a permanent URL that Google can easily reference and makes each post into a page. Here’s how to do it:

1. Login to the Wordpress dashboard.
2. Go to Dashboard > Options > Permalink.
3. Select custom option placing /%postname%/ in the custom field.

Fourth, make each post date easy to find. Google loves fresh, relevant information.

Now for doing the actual posts, here is how to get the biggest SEO bang for your buck…

1. Use your main keyword in the post title wherever it falls naturally. Make sure it is in the title, but don’t force it to the beginning if it does not work. If your keyword is ‘lake retreat cabin’ you might have a title like ‘Finding Peace at Your Lake Retreat Cabin.’
2. Try to write the post naturally and use the keyword two to three times for every 100 words of the post but don’t go over 5 mentions total. Also be sure to use other related words in your post. If your keyword is ‘lake retreat cabin’ you might use words like ‘view’, ‘wooded’, ‘cottage’, ’stream’, ‘waterfall’, etc.
3. Keep your posts to an appropriate length. Consider each to be an article. In most simple articles 300 to 600 words is ideal. But don’t drone on if your point is already made. If you only need 250 words to say what you want to say, end it there.
4. I know I already said it, but it’s important enough to say again; write naturally. Google invested a lot of time and money in its natural text algorithm (NTA) and it loves to let it weed out blocky text jammed with robotic feeling keywords.

Even if you do everything else perfectly, there are always ways to get that extra inside advantage. Here are two:

First, be sure to be consistent with all of your backlinks. If you set your prefix to ‘www’ as recommended, make sure all of your backlink URLs come into the ‘www’ version of your pages. If some are ‘http’ while others are for ‘http://www‘ they will be treated as separate pages and you will be throwing away links.

And finally, if you can invest forty os so dollars, you might want to consider getting a high-end Wordpress SEO plugin like the one at http://www.seopressors.com/. Most pros use the unlimited version and put it on all of their client sites, but if you have just have one blog you can get by for under $50. There are also some freebies out there, but this is definitely a case of “You get what you pay for.”

Good luck.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO for Wordpress; Quick, Cheap and Easy

In this modern age, it is increasingly important to make sure your websites are optimized for the major search engines through the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices.  The current top three search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Let’s face it though; Google is the major player and they set the standards when it comes to the Internet search industry.

There are a few basic practices you can follow to make your site more friendly to the search engines and thus rank higher for certain keyword phrases when users search for them.  You just need to make sure you are conducting these practices properly.  Being at the top of the search engines for your target keywords is a make or break factor for the success of your business.

There are millions of websites in existence and there could be thousands competing for the keywords you are trying to rank  for.  The Internet is a very competitive marketplace so it is vital to stay on top of the current SEO trends.  Not being recognized by the top search engines can be very frustrating, especially after putting a lot of work and money into creating and designing your website.

Each search engine uses a different algorithm to conduct their searches.  These algorithms are kept secret by the companies and are always changing.  However, there are numerous people whose jobs consist of attempting to deconstruct these algorithms to figure out how the engines rank pages.

In order to increase your web page’s rank in the search engine results, take the following advice into consideration:

Keywords:

• Remember that content will always be king.  Fill your web pages with relevant information that will help visitors – search engines love this.
• Fill your content with your target keywords but don’t overdo it by stuffing keywords into your pages.  You need to keep your keyword density to no more than one anchor text keyword hyperlink per 100 words of content.  If the pages of your site contain relevant keywords to a searcher’s search phrase then your site has a higher likelihood of appearing on the results pages.
• Be specific with your keywords.  If you are selling “Men’s Nike Air Jordans” target that phrase not “Michael Jordan shoes.”
• When choosing keywords, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher.  What would you search (WWYS)?

Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords):

• The title tag is the description of the current page you are on that appears on the top bar of your web browser.  For SEO purposes, you need to use your first targeted keyword at the beginning of your title and try to describe what your website is all about In 10-15 words.
• The keyword tag consists of the list of keywords you have put together in your market research.  Search your competitors websites and see what keywords they are using then rank them in order of relevancy from first to last.
• The description tag is a short explanation about the content of your website and its topic.  Keep this under 20-25 words and try to use at least three to four target keywords.  This is what users will see on the search engine results pages under the link to your site.
• For the best SEO results, edit the meta tags for each page of your website to match the contents of that specific page.

Submit Your Site to the Search Engines:

• It is a quick and painless process to submit to the top search engines.  Simply visit the websites of the major search engines and fill out the corresponding submission forms.
• You should also submit your website to the DMOZ.org directory.  It can take a few months to get listed but it is a great SEO technique and most sites listed in the directory get higher priority in the search results over sites that are not listed.
• Patience is a virtue when it comes to submission.  It can take days or weeks for the search engine spiders to actually crawl your website and get indexed.

Build Links by Submitting Your Site to Directories and Niche Websites:

• The more meaningful links from high ranked websites linking to your site, the higher your search rating.  However, this does not mean you should practice “link farming” or paying for links.  This is considered a negative practice and can actually have a negative impact on your results rating and can even get you banned from the search engines.
• The best way to be featured in directories is to make a profile with a link to your page.
• Article marketing is another very valuable SEO tactic.  Write articles with keyword hyperlinks pointing to your page.  Other sites are happy to have quality content and you obtain linkage, so both sides win!  You will also see direct traffic from these links which will help your site gain popularity.
• Link building is a time-consuming process that can take long periods of time to see real results, so again – be patient!

By following these simple SEO tactics, you can raise your ranking in the search engines!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Why is SEO So Important for E-Commerce Websites? The Basics.

BusinessWire says these microsites were developed specifically to help corporate communicators and investor relations officers house and maintain information for journalists, bloggers, investors, consumers, analysts, key influencers, etc.

"There are many benefits to employing these content management solutions," explains BusinessWire VP of Web Communications, Ibrey Woodall. "One of the main reasons the online newsroom came into existence was because public relations representatives were having a hard time getting cooperation from their technical, or IT department, when they needed a press release posted quickly. Investor relations officers also needed a means by which they could get the most recent financial news and data to their company’s investors and analysts."

"So, control was an initiating factor for this technological evolution," she adds. "Communicators needed to be able to post and organize content in a timely manner. They needed to be able to get their message on their website, and delivered directly to those who were interested in their organization."

Getting press coverage can mean a great deal of gaining traffic and overall exposure for your business. Providing the givers of press (journalists, bloggers, and even everyday consumers via social media) with as many resources for finding information as possible, will only increase the likelihood of coverage. Businesses may find  these new services from Business Wire quite helpful.

It also helps that the services come with some basic SEO features, which should further increase visibility.

There are a variety of misconceptions surrounding search engine optimization today. One big misconception that many website owners have is that once they have their site set up and they submit it to search engines, they’ll get traffic right away. The truth is that there is a lot more to bringing traffic to your website. Search engine optimization is a task that is ongoing and it does take quite a bit of work. Instead of submitting your site to the search engines right away, here are a few critical steps to great SEO that you should take first.

Step #1 – Research Your Keywords

One of the important steps you need to take for great SEO before you submit your site to the search engines is to research your keywords. No doubt, you already know what the topic of your site is all about. It is important that you choose the right keywords now before you submit your site. When you select keywords, keep in mind criteria that the search engines have for keywords. Look for niche keywords instead of keywords that are so broad you’ll never rank well with them.

Step #2 – Improve Your Title Tags

Another step to take before submitting to the search engines is improving your title tags. One of the biggest things that will determine your score within the search engines is the appearance of keywords in the title tags. Do not go with title tags that don’t use your keywords. Your title tags should be keyword rich, which can help you ensure that you get strong rankings when your site is submitted to the search engines.

Step #3 – Check Out Your Site Technology

Take some time to check out your site technology before submitting your site to the search engines as well. Some technology built into sites can end up confusing the spiders that crawl through websites. Image maps, CGI scripts, frames, and other types of technology may not be understood by many of the spiders out there. Go through your site carefully and ensure that technology is not holding you back from getting high rankings in the search engines.

Step #4 – Check for Errors

Checking your website for errors is also going to be a critical step to great SEO. It’s a good idea to use a site maintenance tool to make sure that you catch any errors before you start bringing customers to your website. Any errors in HTML can end up causing problems for search engine spiders. Not only can errors cause problems with spiders, but they can also be frustrating to site a user, which means they may leave your site. Now is the time to ensure that any errors are taken care of.

Each of these steps is essential to the success of your website. Before you submit your website to the search engines, go through these steps and ensure that your site is ready.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Critical Steps to Great SEO

A method and system of modulating search result relevancy use various types of user browsing activities. In particular, a client assistant residing in a client computer monitors movements of a user controlled pointer in a web browser, e.g., when the pointer moves into a predefined region and when it moves out of the predefined region. A server then determines a relevancy value between an informational item associated with the predefined region and a search query according to the pointer hover period. When preparing a new search result responsive to a search query, the server re-orders identified informational items in accordance with their respective relevancy values such that more relevant items appear before less relevant ones. The server also uses the relevancy values to determine and/or adjust the content of an one-box result associated with a search query.

"The patent presents a couple of assumptions about how mouse pointer movements can be interpreted," explains Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea, who presents a much more readable explanation of the patent. "For example, a longer hover over a result may indicate a positive opinion about how relevant a listing on the results page might be to a query. And, if someone moves their mouse pointer across a snippet line by line at a normal reading speed, it may indicate a higher level of attention to that result than if pointer was kept in a static position or moved randomly."

"So, the speed and movement of a mouse pointer as well as where it is placed on a search result page might be tracked to see how much attention a search pays to different search results," he adds. "If someone hovers over one sponsored listing, or ad, but not another, that might indicate more attention and interest in the ad hovered over. If a local map is shown, or a definition, or some other OneBox result, and the searcher viewing the page hovers over those OneBox results for a while, that could be an indication that the map or the definition or other OneBox listing was helpful."
 
The patent was filed all the way back in 2005, and like Slawski notes, there’s no telling if Google will actually utilize it. A lot can change in 5 years, especially in this industry. Either way, they’ve been granted the patent. You can read it here.

Online businesses require traffic to carry on, and many business people constantly seek out hassle-free and also productive ways to make folks take note of them and also what they have to publicize. Making inlinks would let you multiply the amount of traffic coming to your webpage or weblog and improve your profits. This short article will reveal more regarding how you could build incoming links.

One approach is to market and bookmark your content through the use of services like OnlyWire. You need to position those ‘Share and ‘Bookmark’ buttons in places where your consumers could easily see it. If they love your website content, they will click on these buttons and publish your content on the leading social networking websites on the web. For you to get these buttons, you need to set up individual user accounts with these social networking websites. As for your target market, all they have to do is type in a captcha code to start sharing your content with other interested customers.

One more strategy to obtain inbound links quickly is to utilize content promotion, which means the publicizing of write-ups and also video clips. This particular strategy would allow you to put backlinks to your site or blog at the conclusion of every write-up or video and in each description box. End users can then click on your one-way links to go to your website or weblog for more details. This is a really efficient way of building inward links, and if you make use of the appropriate resources, you could even send several versions of your content pieces to as much as 300 article directory sites in 1 hour or so.

A third strategy to create inward links quickly is to submit comments on other webpages and weblogs, preferably the ones that belong to fellow business people who are in the same niche as you are. Whenever you give feedback, you have to leave your e-mail address, name as well as the link to your website. Whenever you submit your comments, a hyperlink will appear together with the previous blog entry that you published, which gives other folks the opportunity to click on it and look at your content. Be careful not to carry out spamming; this would only irritate your peers and target market and also give you a lousy reputation.

You may also talk to the bloggers in your circle and make arrangements to trade backlinks with them. Do not forget that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing will learn of your webpage or weblog if you have loads of inward as well as outbound links. When these search engines determine that your webpage or weblog is gaining lots of back-links, you will be in a much better position to obtain more viewers.

Furthermore, if you have a Facebook account, you should look into using it to publicise your webpage or blog. Publish links to your write-ups as well as videos on your profile so your relatives, close friends and viewers would see what you are up to. This would make them click on the hyperlinks that you provide, and they could also distribute your content by posting your inward links on their own profiles. This specific technique would get you even more one-way links and page views, as well as make it possible for those who have no idea of your products and services to take note of you.

The same principle can be utilized for microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk. Most folks now depend on these types of sites to get the information and facts they need, and you will greatly benefit if you utilise them to put together a wide network. Given that there is a 140-character limit, you’ll need to be imaginative with the way you show your links as well as copy. You need to get their interest with snappy copy as well as relevant links.

By carrying out these tasks regularly, you will not only do well in making incoming links quickly, but you could also expect a lot more traffic and also improved conversations. However, everything boils down to the calibre of your content; you must make sure that your material is useful and also of a great standard. If this is the case, more and more consumers would want to peruse your material and exchange incoming links with you.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Would You Like To Build One-Way Links Fast? Here’s A Handful Of Ideas!

Online businesses require traffic to carry on, and many business people constantly seek out hassle-free and also productive ways to make folks take note of them and also what they have to publicize. Making inlinks would let you multiply the amount of traffic coming to your webpage or weblog and improve your profits. This short article will reveal more regarding how you could build incoming links.

One approach is to market and bookmark your content through the use of services like OnlyWire. You need to position those ‘Share and ‘Bookmark’ buttons in places where your consumers could easily see it. If they love your website content, they will click on these buttons and publish your content on the leading social networking websites on the web. For you to get these buttons, you need to set up individual user accounts with these social networking websites. As for your target market, all they have to do is type in a captcha code to start sharing your content with other interested customers.

One more strategy to obtain inbound links quickly is to utilize content promotion, which means the publicizing of write-ups and also video clips. This particular strategy would allow you to put backlinks to your site or blog at the conclusion of every write-up or video and in each description box. End users can then click on your one-way links to go to your website or weblog for more details. This is a really efficient way of building inward links, and if you make use of the appropriate resources, you could even send several versions of your content pieces to as much as 300 article directory sites in 1 hour or so.

A third strategy to create inward links quickly is to submit comments on other webpages and weblogs, preferably the ones that belong to fellow business people who are in the same niche as you are. Whenever you give feedback, you have to leave your e-mail address, name as well as the link to your website. Whenever you submit your comments, a hyperlink will appear together with the previous blog entry that you published, which gives other folks the opportunity to click on it and look at your content. Be careful not to carry out spamming; this would only irritate your peers and target market and also give you a lousy reputation.

You may also talk to the bloggers in your circle and make arrangements to trade backlinks with them. Do not forget that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing will learn of your webpage or weblog if you have loads of inward as well as outbound links. When these search engines determine that your webpage or weblog is gaining lots of back-links, you will be in a much better position to obtain more viewers.

Furthermore, if you have a Facebook account, you should look into using it to publicise your webpage or blog. Publish links to your write-ups as well as videos on your profile so your relatives, close friends and viewers would see what you are up to. This would make them click on the hyperlinks that you provide, and they could also distribute your content by posting your inward links on their own profiles. This specific technique would get you even more one-way links and page views, as well as make it possible for those who have no idea of your products and services to take note of you.

The same principle can be utilized for microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk. Most folks now depend on these types of sites to get the information and facts they need, and you will greatly benefit if you utilise them to put together a wide network. Given that there is a 140-character limit, you’ll need to be imaginative with the way you show your links as well as copy. You need to get their interest with snappy copy as well as relevant links.

By carrying out these tasks regularly, you will not only do well in making incoming links quickly, but you could also expect a lot more traffic and also improved conversations. However, everything boils down to the calibre of your content; you must make sure that your material is useful and also of a great standard. If this is the case, more and more consumers would want to peruse your material and exchange incoming links with you.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Would You Like To Build One-Way Links Fast? Here’s A Handful Of Ideas!

So just what do you know about SEO? When it comes to SEO are you a Novice, Intermediate or Expert? Regardless of your level, this article from a 10 year SEO war veteran may prove helpful.

One of my biggest problems in trying to help other webmasters – I naturally and wrongly assume they know all about SEO. I forget these webmasters have not spent the last 10 years battling it out with other online webmasters and marketers for some very popular and lucrative keywords, in the process, honing their SEO skills with other like-minded individuals.

I forget that many beginning webmasters may not be familiar with all the SEO lingo and SEO techniques which I mention in my articles.

There’s nothing wrong with that. If I were to take up a new hobby or explore a new subject, I am sure I would be just as clueless. Mainly because every subject, sport or hobby comes with a lot of terms/phrases which are unique to that subject. SEO is the same way so maybe a little background or warm-up is needed in regards to understanding the basics of SEO.

Tip: If you’re a complete novice, a complete list of the SEO terms might prove helpful. You can find a complete list here: http://www.submitexpress.com/seodictionary.html

First, you must understand that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization… which means you optimize your website and content so that it ranks high in the major search engines such as Google and Bing/Yahoo. This optimization can take the form of following a strict formula or layout of your website content with the proper meta tags, keyword density, linking structures and so on. It can also mean off-site optimization with link building, right anchor text, keyword positioning and so on.

SEO has become a major industry simply because getting top rankings for lucrative keywords can mean big bucks for companies or individuals. We are talking about billions, if not trillions of dollars, exchanging hands with the sale of products, services and business transactions. Get a top ranking for your chosen keyword phrase and it means a flood of targeted prospects/buyers coming to your website or company, ready to do business.

Now, because there is so much money involved, a whole SEO industry has sprung up with consultants, experts and companies offering their services to get you or your company into those top rankings in the search engines. These SEO services could include link building, link buying, social media positioning, onpage optimization, pay-per-click management… all with the goal of bringing targeted traffic/customers to your site or business.

White Hat vs Black Hat SEO

You may also have heard other webmasters talking about White Hat SEO as opposed to Black Hat SEO. And as the names suggest, White Hat is strictly above board proper site optimization, while Black hat is using underhand devious cloaking methods and systems to raise your rankings. For obvious reasons, always go the White Hat route and you won’t be disappointed and you will feel better knowing you’re doing the right thing in regards to your site.

Perhaps the next concept or term you should know is Algorithm. Search engines create complicated algorithms or lists of rules which determine not only how web pages are listed but also which web pages are listed first in their index or SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These rules or ranking factors are used by SEO experts and webmasters to help move their keyword rankings up in the search engines. You open a web browser, go to a search engine such as Google, type in a search query for “top corporate lawyers” and the search engine returns a list of organic results along with a list of paid listings. Now, getting to that top spot means a lot of potential traffic/clients would be coming your way.

This is just one example, but most people quickly realize how lucrative getting to those top spots is for any individual or company. They also realize that understanding how the search engine algorithms work and how to manipulate them is a valuable skill which many clients will pay big bucks to have on their side. This SEO industry also consists of SEO software which helps webmasters/marketers get their sites into the top positions in the search engines.

Most SEO experts break up your search engine optimization into TWO TYPES:

On-Page and Off-Page Optimization

On-Page Optimization means getting right all the factors which influence your rankings in the search engines. Keep in mind, the whole web is “keyword based and keyword driven” which means you must optimize your domain and site for your chosen keywords. Your main keyword should be in your Domain Name, in the title of the page, in the main heading for that page, in the URL and it should appear (with variations) throughout the page. Try to keep the keyword density to around 2%-5%, although like many things to do with SEO… there are varying opinions on the exact percentage. But what most experts agree on: the layout or structure of your web site or pages must be easily reached not only by your visitors but also by the search engine spiders which crawl your site. Keep it simple – have no links more than three clicks away from your homepage. Many webmasters include a link back to their homepage on EVERY page of their sites.

Off-Page Optimization means building backlinks flowing back to your web site or web pages. Regardless of what anyone will tell you, getting quality keyworded links from other high quality keyword related sites is the most important factor in achieving top rankings in the search engines. So link building should be a major part of your SEO efforts and something which will bring the fastest results. These links must appear natural and organic
so varying the anchor text (underlined part) in your links is important. Also, the web is quickly changing, links from social media sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter are becoming more helpful to getting top rankings. So too, are links from blogs especially those from Blogger and Wordpress because these are optimized for keywords. Don’t forget other media forms such as videos since links from sites such as YouTube can also boost your rankings.

Tip: SEO experts sometimes like to complicate matters. One easy and simple way to get hundreds, if not thousands, of links from the different social media sites is to add the Free Addthis.com bookmark to all your pages/content. Let your visitors bookmark your content for you. Simple, yet an effective SEO technique that doesn’t cost you anything. Other webmasters simply place bookmark logos for Twitter, FaceBook, Google Buzz… on their sites. If a page goes viral in one of those networks, you can get hundreds/thousands of backlinks flowing traffic and SEO link juice back to your site.

Along those same lines, the key to SEO has been and always will be quality content. Never forget the web is a very smart place. Remember it holds all our collective knowledge. Users will find your quality content and promote it. Produce quality articles and webmasters will place them on their sites with backlinks to your site. Produce quality blog posts and bloggers will link back to your posts. Produce quality videos and viewers will
recommend them to their friends.

Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t do any SEO promotion or work. One of the best ways to succeed is to constantly promote your site or links: do press releases, write articles, make videos, create quality blog posts… get involved in online forums related to your topic and leave your sig links at the end of your comments. Do the same for all your email messages by including your signature tag.

Many webmasters make the assumption that just because they have created a well optimized site – it will automatically rank high in the search engines and will receive plenty of quality traffic. Now if you’re extremely, extremely, extremely lucky and by word of mouth your site catches on and becomes popular you will get that traffic. However, in my experience, you can build an excellent site and have it indexed in all the search engines and it will go nowhere unless you do some SEO promotion.

With one of my nine or ten sites, I have done very little in regards to SEO and as a consequence it gets very little traffic and is nowhere to be seen in the rankings. This is a site which I have not worked on mainly because of a lack of time and it’s not closely related in theme to my other sites. Now if I wanted to promote this site and build up my rankings… I would do all of the above… write articles, do press releases, do viral videos, join related forums and get involved, do blog posts, and so on. Now, from past experience, I know if I work/promote this site for two or three months consistently, the rankings would go up and the SEO would improve. Give it six months to a year and this site would be highly ranked in the search engines and bringing in a lot of quality traffic.

SEO is not some mysterious process that only a few skilled individuals know how to do, rather it is a simple process of consistently promoting your site and content by building quality backlinks from related sites on the web. It is the simple process of connecting your content with the steady flow of traffic on the web by becoming involved in forums, blogs, social networks and like-minded communities. SEO is simply placing your site/content into the whole mix of things so that the search engines can’t ignore your site. By consistently using SEO you will make your site an authority on your chosen subject and you won’t look back.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How Much Do You Know About SEO?

“How do I get my website to come up on top of the search engines?” – That is one of the most frequently asked questions I get asked by clients.

The truth is, it’s not easy. With millions of websites on the internet right now and thousands being added each month, everyone is striving to do the same – to come up in the first spot (or on the first page).

In reality there are only 2 ways you can come up on top:

1. Set up a pay per click advertising campaign, such as Google Adwords
2. Optimise your website for keywords (also know as Search Engine Optimisation)

Keywords

Before you embark on either of these marketing methods, you need to understand about keywords.

Keywords or key phrases are the words that visitors type into a search engine to find a service or product. The best keywords are those that are commonly typed in by your potential customers, but which aren’t used much on your competitor’s websites. In other words, if you optimize your pages for keywords your potential customers use a lot, but your competitors haven’t thought of, you win. But here’s the catch…you’ll never get to know which are the best keywords for your website simply by guessing.

There are many tools you can use to find what keywords people are using, including Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.

If you are serious about finding the perfect keywords, I would recommend using a tool called Wordtracker – www.wordtracker.com. Through a series of simple steps, Wordtracker identifies the best keywords to use on each page of your website. Wordtracker’s suggestions are based on over 300 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days. (In other words, there is no “guessing” when you use Wordtracker. Everything is based on the keywords millions of people have actually typed into search engines.)

Best of all, their competitive analysis tool enables you to find those “best keywords” – the ones your potential customers use, but which your competitors don’t know about.

Once you have identified the best keywords, you can either run a pay per click marketing campaign or optimize your website for search engines.

Pay per click

Pay per click advertising is when an advertiser (you) pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user to your web page. PPC requires you to bid on keywords or phrases that relate to your business. The best known pay per click services are Google AdWords and Overture. Generally you can bid from as little as a few cents per visitor. However, the more you bid the higher up in the search engine your advertisement will appear. Pay per click is a great way to deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your website at a very reasonable price.

It is a good idea to experiment with different PPC search engines to find the one that works best for you. In addition, you will need to spend time testing your keywords and ads.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engines prefer to list sites that contain good content. In order to rank high you need to create a website that has maximum content and which uses lots of relevant keywords to your service and products.

Once you decide on the keywords, use them in

• Your website’s domain name
• The title of your page – This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window
• The heading of your home page
• The first paragraph of your home page
• Meta tags – Keywords, page title, description
• Titles of your graphics
• Alternative (Alt) tags – These appear in place of images when the browser preferences are set for text only.

Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalized or even banned by some search engines.

Another important thing to consider when trying to optimize your website for search engines is to have as many relevant links pointing back to your website from other complementary sites. This can be done through link exchanges or by writing articles/posts and submitting them to article directories or forums. Ensure you include your domain name at the end of each article/post.

If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your website’s content more search engine friendly.

Please remember, having your website listed at the top of the search engines is not the only way to promote your website. There are lots of other ways you can get visitors to your site for little or no money.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Painful Truth About Getting Your Website To The Top Of The Search Engines

"Improvements to the bot enable more efficient crawling, and increase the ability to crawl content on sites not optimized for search," he says.
 
Rick DeJarnette has more about the change on the Bing Webmaster Blog:

Instead of the old msnbot 2.0b showing up in your server logs, the updated user agent will be:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0 +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

The HTTP header From field will also change as shown below:

From: msnbot(at)microsoft.com

will become

From: bingbot(at)microsoft.com

If Bing finds separate sets of directives for Bingbot and for other crawlers, directives for bingbot will take precedence, the company says.

I find the part about increasing the ability to crawl content on sites not optimized for search to be particularly interesting. I wouldn’t exactly call this an invitation to ignore SEO. Obviously Google is still the biggest search engine anyway, but even as far as Bing is concerned, good SEO practices will likely still help your rankings.

Also keep in mind that optimizing for Bing is becoming increasingly important. Not only is Facebook giving more reason for people to search (where Bing provides the web results), but the Yahoo/Bing integration will be here (likely) before the holidays.

How important is freshness to you as a search engine user? Share your thoughts here.

The user question in this particular video says:

Some people are under the impression that blogs are good for SEO only if they’re updated frequently. How much does frequency play into PageRank for blogs & other dynamic sites? Isn’t the content more important than the simple # of posts per day/week?

Matt’s response is that it is indeed much more important to have quality content, but frequency can be a nice thing to have for the users.

Essentially, if you post more frequently, people have more of a reason to keep coming back. That can be good for page views. However, as Matt says…

"Whenever you’re thinking about search engines, it’s much, much, much more important to think about the quality of your content. For example, on my blog, I don’t post every day. Sometimes I don’t post every week. But I try to make sure that each post has something useful about it…"

Matt implies that you’ll be better off in terms of search, if you wait until you can deliver some value to a post, rather than just crank stuff out that isn’t that much different than stuff that’s already out there. This strategy is likely to attract a lot more links, he says.

Quality is always priority one, but I don’t think that’s to say that freshness doesn’t count. For example, as we looked at recently,

Google’s time filters (which are more readily available to searchers, courtesy of the recent redesign of the SERPs), not to mention the realtime results Google often displays, can add some benefit to providing fresh content. Brian Klais, General Manager and VP of Product Mangagement at Covario had a very interesting post at Search Engine Land looking at how the time filter may even help smaller brands get some visibility.

Of course Google has gone out of its way with Caffeine to increase the speed at which it indexes content so it can provide the freshest results possible.

Do you take freshness into account for your search engine marketing strategy? Comment here.

Google’s Matt Cutts talked more about Mayday at SMX Advanced a couple weeks ago. He said that it was designed to try and spot signals of quality on pages and sites that would be good for users, and that auto-generated pages and content farms tend to get hit the most by Mayday.

More WebProNews Videos

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine roundtable is pointing to a WebmasterWorld thread indicating that there may have been another tweak on June 23rd and 24th that had a big impact on some sites’ rankings again.

Cutts’ advice to webmasters affected by Mayday in the first place, was basically to improve quality. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this advice would probably still apply.

Have you experienced a dramatic change in Google rankings this week? Let us know.

While utilizing likes and the open graph as a ranking factor in search should help Facebook improve its internal search, it doesn’t represent much of a threat to Google search. Google indexes the web. Facebook indexes activity from Facebook users. There’s a pretty big difference, regardless of how big Facebook is.

There is certainly something to be said for Facebook search, however. There’s no question that a lot lof people are using Facebook and spending a lot of time there, so having some kind of search strategy for Facebook is not a bad idea. Naturally, the Open Graph will play a huge role in this, and that means taking advantage of Facebook’s social plugins. As I’ve written about before, Facebook likes (as well as Twitter retweets) are like the new links in some ways.

Facebook is definitely making a lot of moves to keep users getting the info they want from within Facebook. Fan pages essentially turn Facebook into a news reader. They’re working on a Q&A product. They’re launching content destinations themselves (like this politics page). However, no matter how much information Facebook is able to give users, that amount will always be limited, and will not be able to deliver the web in the way Google can. Of course, that’s why they have Bing results for web search.

As far as search market share, it is probably Bing that stands to gain the most out of improved Facebook search. I don’t know how often people are going to go to Facebook for web searches, but the more people do search on Facebook, the more they are going to see those web results from Bing, when the actual (limited) Facebook results don’t deliver what they want. If Bing can deliver what they want in the top three results (the amount that is commonly displayed in Facebook search results), Bing only stands to gain.

Optimizing for Bing is very connected to optimizing for Facebook and soon optimizing for Yahoo.