September 2004 Archives

Ok, well not literally the first digital pictures, but images taken from brand new digital cameras. This is a fun Google Hack, that you can do in a variety of ways. Basically most camera manufacturers program digital cameras to name files from the first picture as “DSC00001.JPG” or "MVC00001.JPG" or "IMG_0001.JPG. What ends up happening is that some of these pictures end up on the web, and spidered by Google. What we are able to see if basically a log of all the "FIRST" pictures people have taken. Check all the first pictures people have taken with their new cameras here. Or how about seeing all the first pictures people have taken on the beach. Or even more interesting, how about the someone taking their first picture on September 11th!

Could be a tough question depending on how you look at it. For the most part if you are doing keyword and phrase research in languages different than English, you might find it a tad bit difficult to get some good data about specific terms. How they are used, who searches for them, what is there popularity, are all information you might want to know. So when the Overture Suggestion Tool doesn't live up to its name, what do you do? Get creative and search deeper! This question was asked at Highrankings today, and thought it would be helpful if I pointed out some resources and possibly ways for people conducting these searches to find the best keywords.

Here are some of the following tools that will enable you to search for country specific or foreign language terms (organized by country or language):

1. Talk to someone using the specific language you are looking for. Ask them about how the words or phrases are used in everyday conversation. Get them to compare two phrases, and ask them which is more relevant in the local market. Get the lowdown on recent trends in that specific language or country.

2. Research terms in Google. Find other websites using specific phrases and how often. Look for offical sources of information, such as university websites or newspapers.

3. Research your Competitors. See if your competitors are as fluent as you think they are.

4. Use a tool to conduct popularity research:

Digitalpoint Keyword Suggestion Tool.
-United States, Austria, Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Overture Suggestion Tool
-Spain
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=es
-Japan
http://inventory.jp.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
-Korea
http://inventory.kr.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
-Australia
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=au/
-Norway
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=no/
-France
http://inventory.fr.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
-Germany
http://inventory.de.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Google Sandbox - AdWords Suggestions - one of the most complete
Everything from English to Urkrainian
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox

Scandinavian Keywords
http://www.keywordmaker.com/free.asp
Germany Der MetaGer-Web-Assoziator
http://metager.de/asso.html

Spain: Espotting
http://es.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

Italy Keyword Suggestion
http://www.godado.it/k_lookup.vep

Good Directory of Suggestions Tools
http://www.dwoz.com/default.asp?Pr=123

5. Repeat Steps 1-4 again. Compile list of research and start to select the best phrases for your pages.

I will not be around to write Thursday or Friday. I have asked some of the Guest Authors to step in and Ben will be back tomorrow to continue the forum coverage.

Next week, Thursday & Friday, will be the same story. Sorry about this.

I after next week, I see no future 'vacations' from this site in the near future.

An article over at MediaPost named Pay-Per-Trick: Half Of All Ad Clicks Deemed Fraud reads, "According to research released by Web analytics provider Clicklab, fraudulent clicks can account for more than 50 percent of all advertising fees attributable to certain categories." Can you believe that? You hear of companies paying people in India to sit by a computer and click on ads, but 50% of all clicks are fraud, WOW.

Forum discussion on this topic at Search Engine Watch. Other threads of interest include the click fraud software that helps you detect fraudulent clicks. Some of the software you can purchase to help you with that include; Who's Clicking Who and Click Auditor.

In addition, in the past archives you can find my notes on the Auditing Paid Listings & Click-fraud Issues session at the past San Jose SES show.

A press released was announced today from SEMPO that they have elected three new board members. "The new SEMPO Advisory Board members are Chris LaSala, the Search Engine Marketing Channel Manager at Google; Neg Norton, the President of the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association, and Safa Rashtchy; a managing director of Piper Jaffray and well known industry analyst." In the press release it discusses Danny Sullivan's and Chris Sherman's resignation from sempo and then goes into more detail on the new board members.

SEMPO has made from some widespread discussion in many of the forums. Many of the posts I covered here in the past. One such thread I did not mention as of yet is a thread named SEMPO Gone To The Dogs? over at SEW forums. This thread was instrumental in the creation of a mock SEMPO site named SEMPO TAHOE. The forum members are having a blast with this new site. I then started a thread named Will SEMPO Survive? with a poll that asks the question (not to SEMPO members but to individuals in this industry) "How Long Will SEMPO Survive?". So far over 50% voted SEMPO Will Close within a Year, 17% said SEMPO Will Close within 3 Years and an other 17% said SEMPO Will Close within 90 days, only 11% so far said SEMPO Will Survive Forever.

This entry comes of way of an entry by Danny at the SEW blog named SEMPO Gets New Advisors & Parody Site.

I must of missed this when this first came out but it looks like more rumors and buzz is starting up again on the topic of "AdWords Automator". Basically, this program will allow advertisers to feed its pages to AdWords, then AdWords will dynamically create and display AdWord ads based on the content of those page. There is a more detailed article on this at ClickZ named Google Tests New Keyword Tool released back on May 10, 2004.

So I did some searching based on the recent thread I found named Using Froogle To Generate AdWords Ads, which discusses this concept from the Froogle side of things. I found an other thread at WebmasterWorld named Google Ads Automator, which has several posts on this topic. In addition, I found a thread at Search Engine Watch forums that brings up this topic named Search Firms Fear Client Poaching and references an article at MediaPost.

This is the first thread I have seen that asks the question, Why does the Sandbox exist? Other threads talk about how can one beat the sandbox, what does the sandbox affect, what is the sandbox doing, etc?

Some believe it exists just to ensure that new sites use Google AdWords and thus pay Google to rank well. But Google's Do No Evil motto would then be completely sacrificed.

Others feel it is a technical issue, where Google simply has no more room in the main index and they need to create brand new indexes, which takes longer.

One of the most popular beliefs is that this is to combat link spam, by placing all sites in a holding cell until X months, an intense link building campaign for new sites can be fruitless for a long time.

Interesting thread if you can weed through some of the poor posts that go a bit off topic. These theories are then argued and new ones arise.

A thread at WebmasterWorld named Gbot running hard has driven up lots of interest, its on its 9th page now. In addition, this thread has been referenced at other forums, including Cre8asite, under the thread name Raid of the Googlebots. The thread basically discusses people seeing an abnormally high level of GoogleBot hits. I personally do not see much out of the norm with my sites but many are.

In the WMW thread Brett mentions "panic" based spidering, which he describes as "if an index needs to be rebuilt from the ground up in a short time period (aka: the old index didn't work)." Now, I didn't yet read the whole thread but looking over at Barry Welford's post at Cre8asite where he mentions a possibility that Google might be working some relaunch of its engine to counter any of Microsofts future attempts to encroach on its market share.

Some interesting concepts, if true, I wonder what we will be getting from Google.

Google added this great feature that helps AdWords customers figure out an estimated level of traffic that they should expect to see based on the CPC value and keyword phrase. But ad features are added, it adds an additional level of complexity for the end user. A thread at Search Engine Watch brought in a response from an official AdWords representative. I'll highlight some points in his post, that I hope will add more insight into how Traffic Estimator works.

Of course AdWordsRep starts off by saying that this is just an estimate and the data should be used as such. Do not think that an estimate of 10 clicks will actually be 10 clicks.

He then explains that the reason for the traffic estimator is not 100% right, is because there are just too many variables. These variables include; number of competitors, ad reach and impressions, keyword selection, daily (hourly) budgets, match options selected, current CPC as well as max CPC and other factors. This just touches on some of the many variables that must be used in the traffic estimator.

In addition, Nacho, a mod at SEW, asked if AdWords can add an impression estimation to the tool. AdWordsRep said he would ask, but he said it would be a logical assumption to say that "The number of estimated 'clicks per day' is based on a CTR in the neighborhood of 2%. This means that if you are estimated to get 2 click per day, the system is predicting 100 impressions."

If you have questions, comments or suggestions check out the thread named New Adwords Traffic Estimator.

All this talk in the forums on hubs and authorities, but yet no one really has built a search engine that searches exclusively the hubs and authorities. Of course, limiting the index to just include hubs and authorities would make for a less broad search engine. However, Kozoru, is looking to build a search service that searches hubs and authorities. Below you will find a quote being pulled from Brett Tabke at WebmasterWorld.

"We're going for a niche," said Kozuru Chief Executive John Flowers." We're specifically focusing on providing answers to specifically tailored questions.

"If you're asking a question about what car in 2003 had the highest safety rating, or how do I change the oil in my Acura, you can get those results in a regular search engine. But you'll have to sift through a lot of answers."

"We are trying to determine who the most authoritative sources are," he said.

Its amazing, its been less then I year since I started this site. The traffic is great, comments posted are excellent and I seriously enjoy writing from the forums perspective.

I often get requests from people to advertise on the site. I started with putting sponsored links at the bottom left of these pages. I have also added Google Ads (Image and Text) to the individual pages. Now I am about to take one more step by putting an ad, very small, at the top header, to the right of the logo.

I will not allow this site to get to flashy, it is important that the readers come first. Feel free to leave your comments, either before or after you see the ads up. Your feedback is important to me.

Thanks!

The recent addition of MyJeeves was very popular amongst many people who are in the SEM industry. I know MyJeeves doesn't work on all browsers, including Safari - which is acceptable to me. But there are reports that MyJeeves doesn't work with AOL's browser. Not good, if this is the case.

Froogle announced last week (or around that time) that they are now offering its shopping search engine to the UK market. If your a UK merchant and you would like to sign up, check out the Froogle UK Welcome Page. To know if you qualify visit the Programme Policies (I love how they spell that), here is the FAQs page.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch.

Yahoo is now allowing My Yahoo users to test out the new My Yahoo layout. Yahoo! lists the new features to be found at the new My Yahoo here. Jeremy Zawodny has some great information on this in his entry named New My Yahoo Beta, Featuring RSS and Atom. Anyway, I was smart enough to compare the old with the new before switching directly to the new design. Here are my first impressions of the new my yahoo design.

(1) Much more screen real estate. I was able to see two more RSS feeds I subscribed to with the new design. Reduces all the scrolling I do daily, I subscribe to tons of RSS feeds, so it helps.

(2) Search at the top but more features. Instead of a simple, Yahoo! Search box, there is the full Yahoo Search box that allows you to search Web, Images, Yellow Pages, News, and Products.

(3) Compact Design; this adds more room for more stock quotes - which I faded out from you below. More, more content. Good stuff.

I did not get into all the features yet, but it looks like a nice improvement so far.

Below are two screen shots of the My Yahoo pages, old and new.

OLD DESIGN: View Large Image

NEW DESIGN: View Large Image

Forum coverage at Search Engine Watch.

This was a tad bit disturbing, and not surprising. For all people in large offices, I would run and hide (ok, not really). A little news clip, has stated that hackers are now using Google to watch people make copies on networked photocopiers. You can physically sit there and watch as Sally photocopies the companies financial information for a meeting to potential investors, while at the same time leaking it to a few watchful eyes. Looks like they need a more secure way to prevent this, or a better way to not leak information into Google in the first place.

This past weekend was the High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminar in Boston. HighRankings has a bit of a history in the forums. Jill Whalen, the owner of HighRankings, used to be a moderator over at Cre8asiteForums back in the day. But Jill saw a need from her advisor newsletter and other areas to start her own forum, which has become extremely popular. Jill also has a seminar that she puts together, I am not sure how many she had in the past but I am sure that information is readily available.

Anyway, there are reviews on this event at HighRankings Forum and Cre8site Forums.

Seems that there are wide reports that traffic driven by Google on a constant basis have suddenly and dramatically dropped since September 22nd and 23rd. Forum reports at WebmasterWorld account for many people who have seen a significant loss in the traffic delivered to them by way of Google.

Here are some quotes from the thread:
- Traffic dropped from 2000 to 350
- We have been getting about 2000 hits per day for the last 1.5 year. Sept 23 hits are down to about 350-400.
- Yep, me too! 4500 to 700.

Not only is this making major news at the press, according to Andy, the censorship placed on Google News over at China is causing some forum noise at Cre8asiteForums and WebmasterWorld. I like the quote pulled by Ruud at Cre8asite "Google's recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from Web sites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil.""

Its China, they have rules, Google is complying by those rules, why do we care? If I lived in China, then I might have an opinion. :)

This is funny, or just extremely annoying to some members. Remember all the rumors in the past two weeks about the Google Browser? Well now, there are some people starting rumors that the Google Browser, like Gmail, is invite only.

That means that the only way for you to see and use the rumored Google Browser is to get an invite from someone who has it. A member at SEO Chat posts that he has invites. So why don't you all send this guy a PM and ask him for an invite? :)

It is only logical to think that Google would by the ww.wgoogle.com variation, just in case someone hit that period key one step to early. In fact, if you take a look at the whois record for WGOOGLE.COM, you will see that the physical address and email address match that of Google's headquarters. So what is the problem?

I dare you to check out wgoogle.com, you will notice that is basically a cheap doorway page, promoting mysportsbook.com. Mikkel from SEW forums, was kind enough to strip the JavaScript from the page and put it up on his server for us to take a look at http://www.geekbrowser.com/test/index.html.

The main question here is. Google would not be participating in doorway pages. So why would this company register the information using the email address dns-admin@google.com? Only Google or a Google employee would have access to this.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch, great find Marcia!

Remember Orkut? All that hype and all just for something, I personally, rarely ever log into anymore. To my surprise, when I was logging in, I got this error.

"Bad, bad server. No donut for you." That is Google being funny. Anyway, wanted to share this with you if you haven't seen it yourself.

This subject has been discussed before in length, but solutions have remained personal opinion. A thread over at Highrankings addresses some interesting issues regarding whether or not a search engine spider can extract links from a javascript menu. If the javascript is external, then it can not read past it, but what about a menu that is completely in the code? Will a <noscript> tag work well as a solution to a javascript menu? I have played around with the <noscript> tag when using a javascript menu, and as one member points out its may not be the most aesthetic solution in the serps. What you get is a long list of urls in the snippet instead of a description.

So what happens if you have 200 urls in a javascript menu. It would make it really cumbersome to include all 200 urls in a <noscript> tag. Some of the member discuss solutions to this. I can imagine if your site is structured correctly, or includes a site map, then you might be able to get away with only several urls in the <noscript> tag.

Additionally today, there is a great thread at Digitalpoint about a new Googlebot lurking around that is HTTP 1.1, and spidering many levels deep in a single pass. This is interesting because as one of the members points out this is a test of Google's at spidering Javascript urls. So maybe there is better solution to a JS menu than a <noscript> tag and the search engines are finally able to do it all successfully. Check out and discuss the thread about Googlebot 2.1 and Javascript

There is a new theory floating around, which I found by way of a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums. The theory is that you can get indexed quickly by placing AdSense ads on your pages. Here is a quote from the original poster "So now you can get into their "index" within 24 hours, free. Just add a little Adsense spider bait to your site."

I personally tested this out on a site. I put up a new site, made sure not to put any links to it. Then I put up AdSense ads and waited. Months later it was still not included in the Google index. Only recently has it been indexed, and I believe that is because someone, somewhere put a link to it. I strongly feel that this theory, although logical, is not correct.

In addition, Google has said that AdSense ads do not affect your listings in Google. They use a totally separate spider to index the site for its AdWords network and a different index. They are separate engines, separate indexes and do not improve or increase your chances of getting indexed in my opinion.

Danny Sullivan posted a thread at SEW forums named News Search & Biases, where he points to an article written at OJR.org named Balancing Act: How News Portals Serve Up Political Stories. This blew my mind.

The article discusses how Google News seems to be favoring the conservative papers over the more left-wing, liberal papers. The logic is as follows: Do a search at Google News on Kerry and your likely to see articles that are in opposition to Kerry. Now do a search on Bush at Google News and you will find news that favors Bush. How is it that Google News, an algorithmic search technology, can be a conservative over a liberal?

The article gives an excellent theory as to the answer to this question. They quote Ethan Zuckerman, former vice president of Tripod.com and now a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, who offers a possible answer to this question. Basically, he says that the main stream (conservative) papers often, when discussing Kerry, put "Kerry" in the title of the article. Whereas, the liberal papers do not. In addition, the liberal papers often use Kerry's full name in the article content and if you do a search on John Kerry as opposed to just Kerry in Google News, you will find more liberal papers discussing Kerry.

There are some really great books on seo available today, but there are not many on the single topic of Froogle. Froogle is Google's search shopping engine, it allows you to find products for free and list products for free. Froogle is not the most popular shopping search engines but its an important one to be a part of because of Google's current grasp of the search market and because Google has been featuring Froogle on many of its pages.

I had the opportunity to review an e-book named Froogle Maximizer. This is the first e-book, that I have seen, that discusses Froogle exclusively. Let me tell you that this e-book is a very comprehensive but easy to read book. It takes you through what Froogle is and is not and it then tells you what you need to sign up to Froogle. After you sign up, it takes you through the steps of setting up a feed and ensuring that feed works correctly - I learned a few things here that I did not know before reading this book. It even gives you detailed tips on how to optimize your feeds to rank in the top positions in Froogle, which is very important. If you can achieve on of the top three positions, you will most likely see a lot more traffic and transactions then from position four. This is because Google features the top three products from Froogle in the Google search results page when it matches a Froogle like search query.

I recommend taking a serious look at this e-book if your in the shopping search field. Find the e-book at http://www.frooglemaximizer.com/.

Search Engine Marketing industry leader, Danny Sullivan, celebrates his birthday today. The SEW Forums has put up a little birthday surprise for Danny at the Happy Birthday Danny Sullivan!!!! thread.

I am pretty sure that everyone in this industry agrees that Danny is an outstanding role model. We could not ask for a better person to be the face of the industry. He is respected and liked by all side of the industry; yes the white-hats and the black-hats both like Danny.

Below is a picture created by two of the mods at SEW forums. Basically, the heads pasted onto the bodies of the people are the moderators at the Search Engine Watch forums.

This was way too funny for me not to mention here. Let me warn you, that this site will use language that, 5 years ago, would not be suitable for your kids. Give Aks Jeeves a spin.

Forum chatter at Search Engine Watch.

To be honest, when the thread How Fair is the Link Popularity Algorithm? was first started, I thought it would turn out to be a poor quality thread. I was wrong.

The thread asks the question, is the link popularity component of the algorithms deployed at the major search engines fair to Web pages? I know what your thinking? Life isn't fair, business isn't fair, what is fair?

But it is actually bringing in some serious players, such as Eric Ward, one of the most well respected link building speakers.

Is it fair that companies with the most money can use their budgets to build up a level of links that would be virtually unbeatable? Is it fair that these same companies can purchase huge ad space in Time Square, or a TV spot during the Super Bowl? These questions are not fair to ask. :)

So, let's move on and delve into what would be the optimal link popularity algorithm, something that can not be manipulated to benefit the rich or smart. Can it be Microsoft's concept of Block Level Link Analysis? Nah, I am sure even something as sophisticated as that can be manipulated. So what is the solution? If I knew, I would be inventing the next Google.

Might be a good day to pull out the old vinyl records or CD's of Ray Charles. Google celebrates his birthday today with the logo below. To the man that brought us the genius to shape rhythm and blues with his voice and a piano: Ray Charles.

A couple days after the rumored WMW 5 year b-day, DaveAtIFG, WMW Administrator, has decided to take it easy and kick back. In a thread he started named It's tme I kicked back!, he posts his resignation as a moderator. He does however say that he will be "lurking" the forums.

Other well respected moderators and administrators that recently resigned from WebmasterWorld include:

• 4eyes
  
• JamesR
  
• Jeremy_Goodrich
  
• Littleman
  
• Marcia
  
• Mivox
  
• MrMackin
  
• NFFC
  
• NickW
  
• RCJordan
  
• Toolman
  

Many are still active at WMW and other forums.

Of course you can base the amount you spend on links based on an ROI figure. But what do links cost? A thread at WebmasterWorld named Is this a reasonable amount to pay for links, discusses just that.

It is obvious that link development in the US will cost at least 4x as much as link development in India. :)

update: Looks like the thread I linked to above, has been warped into a different thread. No I am not crazy.

There is speculation that the new MSN search will be going live before the date of July 1st, 2005. This comes by way of a post by "msndude", supposedly a MSN official representative at WebmasterWorld in message # 8 in this thread posted on Sept. 19th.

The message read; "We have stated publicly that we will release our own algorithmic search engine within one year of our Technology Preview which launched July 1st, 2004."

This topic is now being discussed at WebmasterWorld.

There is some confusion as to if the 5th year anniversary of WebmasterWorld was this past Tuesday, September 21st. By looking at Brett_Tabke User Profile, you will see his join date was Sept 21, 1999. Brett owns, built and runs WebmasterWorld. A post named Half a decade of WebmasterWorld, is where this first propped up.

In that thread, Brett outlines the history of his forum/bbs community development:

- 84-88 single line commodore based bbs's.
- 88-89 2 line commercial bbs.
- 90-91 single line bbs again.
- 92-96 sysop of 64 line support bbs for major computer manufacturer.
- 96 first "web bbs" went up on old isp site.
- 97 first bbs went up on searchengineworld.com
- late 98 lost domain after registrar failed to auto renew domain.
- 99 started registered webmasterworld.
- 99 got searchengineworld back and started with this software base.
- 2000 moved the rebuilt forums (called WebmasterWorld, over to this domain).

"The customer is always right - just not right for you", quoted from Ammon Johns at Cre8site Forums. I do have agree on this, you definately can have customers that are not right for you. But how do you deal with this? What are ways to find the RIGHT customers. Whose best interest are your considering? As this thread points out it was your responsibility for taking the client. In my words, learn to say no sometimes. A very worthwhile thread for all those currently growing your business.

Continue reading and discussing about Are Clients Expendable?

Who ever wants a free gmail invite, no contest, just email me at barry.schwartz@gmail.com and the first 6 responses get a free invite.

I will update this when there are no more invites left.

***NO MORE INVITES AVAILABLE***

Check Back Later Please.

Yes, site rankings can be literally highjacked by your competitors by (1) stealing your content and (2) using a 302 redirect. How does it work? GoodSite.com ranks in the number three slot at Google. EvilSite.com comes along and copies the content directly from GoodSite.com. Then EvilSite.com puts a 302 redirect from EvilSite.com to GoodSite.com.

Many believe that Google looks at this as EvilSite.com as the new page for GoodSite.com. Why? (1) Same content and (2) the 302 redirect gives it a spin. So Google will go ahead and remove the GoodSite.com page from the listings with its duplicate content filter and replace the listing with EvilSite.com.

Now of course, you got the 302 redirect sending all the traffic from EvilSite.com to GoodSite.com, right? Well, not if they are only giving this 302 redirect to Google through IP Delivery. What this does is effectively allow searchers to go to EvilSite.com, because the 302 redirect will not redirect the actual users.

The bate and switch worked.

A huge thread on this topic is over at WebmasterWorld.

I would like to thank Max Chirkov for giving me the details for some of this entry.

How many of you, have seen SEO copy like this lately?

Our California web design firm, is the best web design firm in California for your website design needs. We specialize in California web design and development, with an emphasis on placing creativity and innovation in all your california web design. Trust us for your California web design.

Came up with that myself...hehe. Anyway, I am sure some of you have seen this on multiple occasions. I get about half way through something like that and realize its no use finishing, and that I should move on to the next company. Maybe they will have a little more [creativity] in their SEO copy. Who are we trying to talk to here, the prospective client or the search engines. Or both!?

I just bought, the Robert Collier, Letter Book from Amazon this week, its like an essential must have if you are interested in copywriting. While on my kick to find out more, I came across an short article this morning by Karon Thackston, who I thought did a great job touching upon suggestions to improve the flow of your SEO copy, and avoid situations like above. She mentions:

1. Vary your terms to avoid absolutely bombarding the reader (and the engines) with the same keyphrases.
2. That *may* mean the need for longer copy *if* your target audience is one that would respond well to longer copy.
3. Breaking up that phrase will help you retain your appeal to the engines and your site visitors.
4. So, is the flow of your current copy destroyed by keywords? Are you scaring off both the engines and your visitors? One quick check can help you decide. Read your copy out loud.

Check out the article on SEO Copy and Improving the Natural Flow of It

Yesterday, I had interviewed Patrick Gavin from Text Link Ads Inc., a link popularity and traffic generating ad firm. Patrick has a detailed background in SEO and is now currently focusing on the link building component. This interview makes for some interesting reading. Make sure to click on the entry to read the full interview.

Roundtable: Hi Patrick, Thank you for taking the time with me for this interview. I thought it would be nice to chat with a link building SEO at this time because of all the talk going on about PageRank, or lack there of, and the SandBox effect. Of course, I would like to get into your service found at www.text-link-ads.com during this interview, but let's first get into link building. Sound good?
Patrick Gavin: Yes Barry, thanks for the opportunity.

Roundtable: Thanks. To start off, let me ask you about how you go about creating new sites and at what point does the link building process begin for you? Do you have any process, in which you stick with, during the link building campaign? Can you give the readers at the Search Engine Roundtable and idea on how they should manage the link building aspect of SEO during the overall SEO and site development plan?
Patrick Gavin: It is best to start the link building as soon as possible. Our strategy for all sites, new and old is two fold:

Continue reading "Interview with Patrick Gavin from Text Link Ads Inc."

This email was sent out to Overture customers last night with the details:

When Overture advertisers speak, we listen. In response to advertiser feedback, we've simplified our match types.

Phrase and Broad match types will be streamlined into one match type: Advanced. Now it will be easier than ever to manage your account, put your business in more relevant searches and drive more qualified traffic to your site.

Simpler is better with Advanced match type:
- Advanced will encompass both Phrase and Broad match types-You will no longer designate one or the other. Your current Phrase and/or Broad match type listings will become Advanced match type listings at the time of launch.
- Advanced will leverage your existing keywords-You won't have to add keywords or receive additional editorial revi