It’s all about the image!

I have read an interesting blogspot by Ann Smarty today called Image SEO and it reminded me to an old blog post of mine regarding image optimization for Google.
One thing that you notice is that you do not NEED to have an alt tag or have the image named according to the keywords you are after. What is the most important thing when it comes to image optimization? Surrounding text! Read more

Mobile Googlebot - Allow or Disallow

Some of our sites have already been crawled by something that looks like

Nokia6820/2.0 (4.83) Profile/MIDP-1.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

It’s the new Googlebot-Mobile using Nokia.

I have a mobile site. How can I add it to Google’s Mobile index?
How do I block or allow Googlebot?

I remember being told about mobile searches coming up in 2005 at the SES Convention in San Jose, California.

Building sites  with mobile searches in mind is going to gain importance, so this is the time to get familiar with what it takes to rank high.

So what I personally believe is that in order for a site to be doing well in the mobile searches, instead of using html you have to use something called WAP.
Let’s say you want to have a blog that targets mobile searches more than anything:
The whole interface needs to be redesigned, it’s actually a lot of work. Depending on what you are using, you might want to find if they have WAP compatible plugin.
WAP is Wireless Application Protocol.

It is really a simplified display so that people using wireless can quickly access what they need without having to download a bunch of pictures and javascript and other stuff used to make website “nice”.
As an example, WAP is used on Google, Yahoo!, and stock trading websites to allow people to quickly access what they need.
But as wireless phones get faster and mobile systems get better, such as iphone, WAP may one day be unnecessary. As for now, you can brand a site by using the advantage of being mobile optimized and dominate mobile searches if you’re working on it.
If you have some experience with mobile search results which you would like to share, feel free to leave me a comment.
This information has been compiled with the assistance of Mr. Winson Chu from Fone Leads.

SEO Tip of the Day – Earn Better Blog Links

It’s no secret that blogs are a great way to get relevant links back to your website. Most search engine optimizers focus on getting links from tons of blogs by entering their URL in the URL box just above the comment. This is a great way to get links from blogs but a better way is to get noticed in the community and earn a contextual link, with a descriptive anchor text link, within a post.

Instead of randomly visiting hundreds of blogs and posting less than meaningful comments, try to contribute to each post. Get involved by regularly visiting the blog and offering information and valuable comments. It’s not rare to see bloggers write monthly posts about their most active readers or give a little link love for different reasons.

Blogs often develop a community of “regulars” that take notice to each other and help each other out. Get involved in a blog’s community and you’ll earn better links from the blogger and the community.

Most optimization is all about longevity - IMO.

Google owns an SEO company?

You’ve heard it correctly.
Google is now owner of DoubleClick and with it comes Performics:

Search Engine Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Strategies - DoubleClick Performics

to use what they website’s title tag uses to categorize them.
So let me get this straight:
Google is now owner and operator of a search engine marketing company?
I guess there finally is a search engine advertising company which can guarantee you top rankings afterall.

~ Mike Dammann

Update:

Google is selling Performic:

“…It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold….”

And here is a part of the emails they have sent out:

As you are aware, Google closed its acquisition of DoubleClick on March 11, 2008. Since that time, we have been actively involved in integration planning for each of our products and business units. We have recently completed this process for the DoubleClick Performics business.

As a result of our planning, we are formally splitting DoubleClick Performics into two separately-run business units - Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing. We plan to integrate the Affiliate Marketing business into existing Google operations, providing enhanced value and reach for our Affiliate advertisers and additional tools and monetization opportunities for our publishers. We plan to sell the Search Marketing business unit to a third party. In Europe, these plans and their implications for our employees are subject to consultation with staff and employee representatives, where applicable.

During this transition, we will ensure that customers receive the same high level of service that they have always experienced. For those of you who have DoubleClick Performics relationships that include both Search and Affiliate Marketing services, we will assign separate account teams for each service. We will contact you shortly with more information regarding your assigned account team.
The Search Marketing business will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold. All client data will, of course, be kept confidential. Please contact your Search account manager for additional information.

We plan to continue to aggressively invest in and grow our Search Marketing business during this period of transition, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with each of our Search clients.

Thank you for your continued support of DoubleClick Performics.

Use catchy blog titles to get attention!

I’m cracking up as I see the clicks coming in because of my bogus Digital Point account with almost 24,000 posts for sale.
Needless to say, I am very visible on Digital Point and whatever appears in my latest blog post, is getting traffic from there as long as the title makes people wonder what the heck is really going on.
What I don’t understand is why so many people don’t realize just how important a title can be in order to generate more traffic.
Think about it like this:
Getting people to your blog is a must, but you also need real content that helps you generate sales.
So what you should do is have maybe 3 or 4 posts that do the job and then top it with something silly or whatever you believe makes people come to your blog.

~ Mike Dammann

Will Google editors ever visit my site?

The answer is yes. And no. They might.

The more successful your site becomes, the higher the chance that a competitor might report it for something that might not even be worth looking at..

Yet editors do come by from time to time.

Editors will do a quick scan to see whether or not the reason for your high rankings could be something that Google frowns on, or if indeed your site provides a good search result for the keywords it ranks for.

Before you get paranoid, let me show you an example of a high profile site using blackhat:
All of the dentists.com pages have dotted lines in between the listings. The lines are not lines as you can see in the html code.
They are keyword spam and the purpose of doing it is that Dentists.com wants to rank highest whenever someone googles a specific dentist’s name.
This is blackhat and I’m sure that editors have been made aware of it, yet it isn’t something that gets them penalized or banned mainly because Google figures that overall the site provides targetted results for web searchers.
However, you never know what an editor might do with your site, so you always need to evaluate the risk you are taking.
If you have ONE main site which carries your business, my recommendation is to play it cool.
~ Mike

SEO Tip - Everything Matters

Practice doing everything possible to rank better for keywords and get more traffic. Instead of focusing solely on how much one aspect of SEO effects your rankings, do everything you can to get the most out of your efforts. If you read that something has a minor effect on SEO it doesn’t mean that you should not do it, you may neglect to do something that could get you a few extra visitors every day.

For example, people argue that Meta descriptions are pointless, but if a good description gets a visitor to visit your website, then it should become a mandatory part of your strategy. Search Engine Optimization involves more than getting good rankings – it involves getting you or your clients more website visitors, conversions and profit. A combination of everything will get you the best results.

Everything counts, don’t do your competitors any favors.

What the F are you doing on the “PR doesn’t matter bandwagon”?

A while ago I started seeing comments and threads showing up on forums and blogs about how much PageRank (PR) doesn’t matter; I’m sure you’ve see them too. Forget about the fact that a high PR opens up a whole new world of opportunities as far as link exchanges and link sales (if that’s your thing). Let’s just talk about whether or not PR helps influence search engine rankings. I’ll admit that for a minute or three I was questioning if PR really did matter. I mean, there are tons of websites that rank well for keywords even though they don’t have high PR, but how competitive are those keywords?

Are these people honestly suggesting that PR has absolutely NO effect on Google rankings? Are they trying to convince me that Google’s algorithm puts absolutely NO weight on PageRank? Are they seriously telling me that the Googler spends time and money on a big joke? Are they telling me that they believe a link from a PR1 page is equal to a link from a PR9 page? Are they stupid, do they just not think before they post, or both?

Read more

Dylseiax

Look at the amount of competition for that one.
Have you ever wondered if there are certain groups of people who are more likely going to misspell keywords than others?
Dyslexia is a pretty tough keyterm to score, but what if you are finding a way to get into the top results for easy misspells thru non spammy blogposts?

Soon this post will be one of 2 or 3 results and there are many more.

No, don’t just clutter keywords, but go for it in a sensible way explaining to your viewers which misspells dyslexic people are most likely going to use.

OK, this is just one example of thinking outside of the box.

There are many more I will discuss in the future.

Searchfeatured: Aaron Wall!

Before I start, I want to express how grateful I am that Aaron Wall has agreed to be the first SEO celebrity to be Search featured on our blog.

Aaron, this is a big favor. Out of all the SEO people out there, you are my first choice, so this is a sign.

Jason, thank you for the joke that made this happen.

Without any further ado, here is Aaron answering questions which I´ve had on my mind:

1) [Search Feature] Aaron, in the past 3 years you have become one of the top faces of SEO. I however remember you as being one of the first to ever respond to my questions on Digital Point. You have once mentioned that the first year of doing SEO you´ve only made a small amount of money.
What kept you going and at what point did you realize you´ve had something there?

[Aaron] At that point in time I was not all that much motivated by money, but I knew SEO would be big soon after getting on the web. It just seemed like a way to give a voice to the voiceless, and that to me was a powerful idea.

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2) [Search Feature] Aaron, in the past, we have not had guys like Matt Cutts or anybody from Google give us feedback. We pretty much experimented around and figured it out for ourselves. How do you believe that Google employees befriending SEOs has changed the market and why do you think it all happened in the first place?

[Aaron] I think that Google looks out for Google’s best interests. I think Google felt that to look out for Google’s best interests they needed to have active voices manipulating the marketplace. And so we got garbage like link rel=nofollow. Not sure if/how that benefits us though.

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3) [Search Feature] I believe that a lot of young and new webmasters are drawn to blackhat. It seems to be the cooler and easier way to go. What would you tell someone age 13, a new webmaster kid, to get him on the track you believe is better for him/her?

[Aaron] If they are great at programming and want to give it a go then try it. For me the whole black hat vs white hat thing is a bit arbitrary. I think that black hat is continually refined to include anything that gives a great short term ROI and is easy to detect and kill. It is all a game of risk vs reward. At this point in time I have come to realize that if I want to build a real sustainable brand much more value needs to go into customer interaction than in short term ranking schemes.

Years ago when I was less well known my site got filtered out for its own name when Google rolled in a new algorithm. And that really had minimal effects on my sales (even as a person selling an information product about SEO).

http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/articles/seo-vacuum.htm

Search is good for letting prospects find you, but not for converting if you sell a high touch service. For that you need emotional resonance and word of mouth marketing.

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4) [Search Feature] One thing about you is that you seem to love detail. Everything you put out there, you examine and seem to not miss anything. Are you very passionate about SEO and what is it that you like about it so much?

[Aaron] It is the idea that amongst all the backdrop of corruption, circle-jerking, self-promotion, lies, and manipulation from soulless corporations  that an individual can compete and dominate the marketplace simply by being more passionate.

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5) [Search Feature] OK, I was told that I´ve met you at the Ask party at the SES 2005. I really don´t remember, but remember it being an awesome party. Which one of the conventions was your favorite and what are some of your best memories?

[Aaron] I would say the first ones meant more to me than the most recent ones. But that is how dopamine works. When something is new you get a bigger rush from it. Then as time passes and it becomes normal you do not get as much of a rush from it.

Some people who have been in the industry 3 times as long as I have still go to like 3 conferences a month…I am not sure how they pull that off. I would get burned out.

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6) [Search Feature] OK, and last but not least, where do you see SEO and YOURSELF headed. What else do you want to do that you have not yet done?

[Aaron] I want to keep making a bunch more SEO Tools  http://tools.seobook.com/ , extend out my SEO training program http://www.seobook.com/join/ , and keep learning about the broader field of marketing. I would love to create a site as strong as SEO Book outside the SEO market, and my wife http://www.heygio.com/ is working on making that happen.

Changes at SEO Book

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