There are a number of misconceptions in selecting the right and relevant keywords, which, if not checked, can ruin the entire optimization process. Among the various misconceptions, the most common one is that bigger keywords are better. However, this is not true always. Suppose you are a life coach and you are trying to optimize your personal life-coaching website. Therefore, in this case, you can use “life coach” as the appropriate keyword for the site, which is small yet carries a lot of meaning to it.

Keywords should be very specific and should flawlessly relate to the products or the services that are being offered. One can even use keywords in phrases, but the phrases should be in small meaningful sentence format. Moreover, keywords should be such that have high frequency demands and low competition. High keyword frequency can also be defined as those, which are entered in the search bar while searching in any search engine and can draw high traffic. On the other hand, low keyword competition indicates lower number of websites using the same keywords to draw visitors.

Apart from these facts about getting the right keywords, let me share some basic tips that would definitely help you to select the perfect set of keywords for your website. The foremost thing is that you will have to learn to think like a nonprofessional. You might have a thorough knowledge about your industry, but this might not be the case with everyone around. So, while framing the keywords, try to use those words or phrases that a nonprofessional would use who knows nothing about this industry. At the same time, you need to think in an expert’s point of view as well! The product or the service you are offering might need the use of some specific keywords, which the layman would definitely not know. Therefore, it is better to have a balanced perception of both.

So, whenever you are optimizing your website, always remember to pay extra heed to keyword selection, as you certainly know by now, that it is a very important part of this whole optimization process. If you use some rational steps, keeping in mind some basic facts, success might take some time to come. However once it is there, it’s going to be a long lasting one for sure.

Whenever you submit your search query to a search engine looking for relevant results or information, the strings of data that comprise your search query is matched against keywords that are referenced by a website or by a particular web page. Conventionally, such information is already mined by search bots in advance. More or less, conventional search engines technically function as mentioned and dynamically generate your desired page comprising of your search results.

With advanced forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts being seamlessly integrated in programs that power search engines, the present scenario is evolving or rather, has already evolved. Whenever you initiate a search, every data associated with your search query is stored in the search engine’s database. This data is then referenced and cross referenced further with related searches that have been performed by you, or by other individuals. The search engines index this information and intelligently arrange them in order of maximum relevance, all on the account of the search history available. Some search engines may even use a history of searches to create knowledge bases in order to improve the efficiency of the AI based search engine.

Yes, I am talking about the basic principles of personalized search. Against a particular search keyword, the search results that might be relevant to you might be not be for another individual! Personalized search is all about delivering information that only you can relate to as an individual.

Here is an example:

Chord-One word, many meanings! Yes, if I am a music freak, then probably half the number of times I would use this word to indicate a particular scale. However, I would interpret this word more as a line intersecting a circle had I been inclined more towards Geometry. Personalized search helps in rendering a word from its general sense to a more specific sense, to its intended audience. But how do search engines achieve this intelligence?

Though the entire process is quite complex and non-deterministic, it may seem simple if viewed from a distance. While you are searching for information, what these search engines would typically do is dynamically monitor your search habits and capture them over time. This data would now be used to train the AI based search engine where it would acquire knowledge related to your search habits and preferences. As the search engine acquires more knowledge, its classification power increases. You would notice a considerable increase of relevance in your search results.

I guess you now understand the concept loud and clear. Did you know that you could use these features to increase sales for your business? I am talking about SEO in an era of personalized search. Well, I would be glad to talk about it, but on my next post.

All search engines have their own parameters and ways to rate a site higher in the order of rank, in their respective search results. Google has it too. Most of you might know about the factors which would ultimately help a site to achieve that apex position, but you may fail to make the most out of these.

1. Page title should be accurate and unique: When a site is displayed in the search results, its title appears in the first line. Therefore, the title should be such that, it can be easily recognized by the user and Google search engine and should clearly state the name of the site/company or the type of products/services it provides. The basic formation of the title tags should clearly reflect the entire content of that particular page. Moreover, your website can have N number of pages, but each page should have a unique title tag, so that, it becomes easier for Google to differentiate among all the pages of that site. Another important thing to keep in mind about title tag, it should be short and enlightening, because in case of long titles, Google only shows a small portion of the title.
2. Try to add “Description” meta tag: Like title tags, description meta tags are equally important as Google uses them as a clip in the search results. The description can be of one or two sentences, or even a small paragraph. Each an every page of the site should have a suitable description meta tags. These descriptions (or clips) help the users to identify easily whether the content of that particular page is exactly what he/she is actually looking for.
3. The URLs should be proper: It is always very important to have proper framing of the URLs. The pages should have URLs with words that are easily understandable to both the users and the search engines. URL of a particular page, in the search results, is placed just below the description or the clip. Therefore, if it is framed properly, it helps to know about what the page actually contains.

These are some of the important things to keep in mind when you want to optimize your website for Google search engine. However, as I mentioned it before, it’s not that easy. There are a lot more in this regard, that I shall continue in my next post. So, do keep checking this blog for the next part of this post. Thus, the best way to end is by saying…To be continued…

We’ve seen a few sites attempt to help turn the web green, but most of them have been little more than gimmicks. Blackle purports to conserve energy by offering a “black” version of Google, which it says uses less energy than the engine’s standard white. But Google has gone on to say that black may actually increase the amount of energy consumed by visitors (of course, this didn’t stop Google Israel from turning its site black in honor of Earth Hour).

Today, Y Combinator startup CO2Stats has launched a search engine that aspires to be truly green. Greenseng (sounds like Ginseng) is a standard search engine, pulling results from Google’s Custom Search to produce results. But instead of relying on a dubious method of energy conservation, CO2Stats measures the amount of energy used by its servers and the computers of its users and purchases renewable energy certificates (similar to carbon credits) to offset the environmental toll.

CO2Stats CTO Alex Wissner-Gross says that Greenseng isn’t meant to generate revenue though advertising. Instead, the site is using proceeds from its certification business that allows websites to purchase renewable energy certificates in return for a badge that labels them as “Green Certified”.

But while Greenseng may not directly be earning any money, it may help CO2Stats pull in a slew of new customers. In its next iteration, the site will be using Yahoo’s powerful BOSS search API to incorporate some of its own data. Users will be able to see the environmental footprint of each site in their search results with data pulled from CO2Stats, which may give companies more of an incentive to get Green Certified.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/greenseng-a-green-search-engine-that-actually-conserves-energy/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/google-tries-milking-mobile-youtube-for-ad-money/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/google-tries-milking-mobile-youtube-for-ad-money/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:52:31 +0000 Jeff Meisner tag:www.technewsworld.com://5205bcd004de29c30f7dd9c81d233fc5
Search engine giant Google has begun testing video ads on its mobile version of YouTube in the U.S. and Japan. The move is an attempt by the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine to monetize YouTube’s video ad potential. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006. The move is typical for Google, reflecting its penchant for experimentation, said Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil Media Metrics. “They’re being aggressive because they’re looking for the killer app for video ads. They’re just trying a lot of different things.”

A YouTube Experiment

The announcement came from Christine Tsai, a YouTube product marketing manager, via an official blog, one of the many ways Google releases company news to the public.

“You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan,” Tsai wrote. “This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube — it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.”

However at times what’s best for the user doesn’t always seem to be what’s best for the search engine and vice versa so compromises have to be made. I’ve gone over here some of the most common flash points between usability and SEO best practice I see.

#1 The title tag

For SEO’s its the most important part of the page and its all about the keywords but usability best practice essentially says the shorter the better, just a quick description of the page and the site name. Oh and the site name should be at the front of the title tag not the end on the homepage.

For example this title for helpmetravel.co.uk throws a lot of keywords at me but doesn’t give me the company name, even though it’s the homepage and there’s know way I’m going to read the whole thing meaning SERPS performance is going to be hindered.

The compromise

You’ve got to get the keywords in there, no doubt about it but the titles shouldn’t be gibberish. So something like this sounds good to me…

Helpmetravel.co.uk – Compare Airport Parking & Car Parks

Nice for users in search results pages, nice for bookmarking and not really compromising on SEO.

#2 Copywriting

Some usability guys will say ‘cut the text down by half- then half what’s left’ but SEO’s can have a habit of saying with 400 words which could have been said with 40. Ideally you don’t want to be using any words which aren’t helping the user to get the information they need out of that page and move on as quickly as possible, but similarly long pages with lots of copy do tend to rank well.

Long or short?

Somewhere in between! Cut out unnecessary words and any repetition and marketing speak but leave in enough content to tell the user what they need to know and give the search engines something to play with. Blogs, articles, whitepapers and the like are a bit different to regular web pages as your readers are already engaged so here you can go into as much detail as neccesary- one of the reasons this type of content is all good SEO fodder. Jakob Nielsen has a good article on long vs short content.

#3 Hidden content

While slick ‘web2’ stuff like content stashed in javascript spans can be a handy way to get more content on the page without compromising design, lending itself well to SEO. In reality the implementation of this stuff tends to fall short of usable.

Anything which causes a page to lengthen when activated and drop below the fold can cause extra scrolling which doubles the work of the user who has to click to reveal the extra content then move back to their scrollbar to see it.

Web2 unusable?

Not at all, just some of the tools which are starting to get used don’t have basic users in mind. Take the new BBC homepage for example-

#4 Blogs

Blogs are now common place in SEO/ social media strategies but blog interfaces themselves are rarely pillars of usable interface design.

The archive based information architecture and navigation system used by most blogs are tricky for unfamiliar users to get their heads round and generally don’t lend themselves to making the posts you want easy to find. Categories fair a bit better but not if there’s a category list the length of your arm.

Additionally the use of terminology like ‘tags’, ‘blogrolls’ and ‘diggs’ don’t give many clues if its your first time on a blog.

Blogs can help your search efforts but they should be treated as an extension of the main site and adhere to the same usability principles.

#4.1 RSS

In addition to the blogs point- RSS another tool of choice for the modern SEO has questionable usability primarily because most users still don’t know what it is, what it stands for or how it works!

By all means use your RSS for syndication onto other sites but if you want users to pick up your feeds as well its worth explaining what RSS is and ideally not calling it RSS in the first place!

#5 Subtle link highlighting

Internal linking is one of the first things most SEO’s will look at when sorting out the onsite factors influencing its ranking and building links between pages in the body text can be an effective way of boosting a sites overall link count. More and more though SEO’s choose to hide these links from users, styling them link normal text so the link isn’t visible (unless its clicked).

Making links easy to recognise for users is always one of the first things a usability study will address so that really goes against the idea of hiding them away. If the links not visible to the user should it be there?

In practice this may not be such a problem as if a user can’t see a link at all they’ll rarely know any different, but if its just a really subtle link like a faint underline it could cause problems so either hide them properly or better still don’t hide them at all!

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/when-seo-usability-go-head-to-head/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/hey-google-can-we-get-a-clear-cloaking-and-first-click-free-explanation/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/hey-google-can-we-get-a-clear-cloaking-and-first-click-free-explanation/#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:22:28 +0000 Michael Gray http://www.wolf-howl.com/?p=1952 ShareThis

Whenever you make changes to a web site, one of the most important considerations should be how to use “redirects” to alert the search engine to your changes, to avoid having a negative impact on your search rankings. Whether you’re moving pages around, switching CMS platforms, or just wanting to avoid duplicate content and PageRank dilution, you’ll want to employ redirects so as not to squander any link juice (PageRank) that your site has acquired. There are multiple ways of redirecting, and it’s important you get it right if you want the SEO benefit without risk of falling outside search engine guidelines (such as is the case with “conditional redirects”).

Click to continue reading…

For those unaware of negative keywords, these are elements in your PPC campaign that will ensure your ads are not triggered and displayed when this keyword is included in the searcher’s query: if I have the negative keyword “boat” in my “rentals” campaign, then my ads will not show when someone types “rent a boat” into a search engine.

The absence of negatives in your campaign may lead to a complete waste of your budget if you are not careful. It is also very important to include these keywords from day one to your campaign, and then add new negatives as and when you find them. The other thing to note here, is that the simpler your keywords are, the more you will need to use negatives: if you are bidding on “rental” for your car service, then you will need to exclude anything else in the world you think people might rent. (boats, planes, flat, power tools…)

So how do you research for negative keywords that should apply to your campaign?

When you use your favorite keyword tools to build up a keyword list of terms relevant to your campaign, there are usually more suggestions you reject than ones you accept. Well instead of simply dismissing these terms, put them aside, and factor them into a negative keyword list.

Once this is done, type in the most generic keywords of your campaign into the keyword tool (the shortest ones: usually one word, possibly two words). This will churn a long list of keywords in which you can select irrelevant keywords, put them aside in your master negative keyword list. You then need to go through your negative keyword list, and make sure you DON’T want to appear for any of these terms.

Now you have a decent list (10-20 terms can sometimes be all you need, but it can be anything really) you want to add these to your campaign. In AdWords, it’s never been easier: go into your campaign page, and there should be a link there to the campaign negative keywords. Copy + Paste your negative list into the box, hit enter, and your negatives are now active and refining your campaign objectives.

photo credit: Fujoshi

But sometimes when you are starting the link building process you’ll want to quickly and easily get a few good quality links pointing at a site to kick start the process, that’s where these easy do follow link building tips come in handy.

They’ll never supersede a concerted link building effort and aren’t as simple as a drive by link drop but they do get a pretty good bang for your buck in the first couple of hours of link building.

LinkedIn Answers – unlike the more popular Yahoo Answers site, LinkedIn’s Q&A section at the moment seems to be following their links when supplied in the answers. Here you’ve got to spend some time writing a response and finding relvant questions but you can set up a Yahoo Pipe to help you with that.

Don’t be sleazy and set up a false user name, use your own account and write useful responses and where relevant include a link to more information on your or your clients site.

Twitter – My good friend Nick Wilsdon pointed out a great way of getting some do follow links from your twitter profile over at his blog Again if you set up a profile just to drop the links they’ll have no value but if you’re an active user they could send a few targeted clicks and some small search engine benefit.

Book Marking Sites - there are quite a few social book marking sites where the links are followed if you manage to scrape your way onto the home page. If I had a quid for every time I’d read write some good content and submit it to digg. It’s never that simple but starting on a few smaller sites where less votes are required can make the success of front page a bit more achievable.

It won’t send you the deluge of traffic of a FP you would get from one of the big sites, but it might give you a quick link equity boost.

Academic Blogs – I’m not going to reveal my favourite culprits in this category but let it be said there are quite a few blogs out there set up on trusted academic domains where it’s possible to leave a relevant if a little self serving comment. Also worth looking out for are forums on government domains, most will be no-followed but not all.