SEO Copywriting Archives

There is a nice old school SEO thread at HighRankings Forum on the old topic of ranking well for singular cases, when you are already ranking well for the plural version.

For example, you are in the tops of tops at Google for [buy widgets], but you want to rank well for [buy widget]. The thread goes over some SEO copywriting tips on how to help achieve your goal.

Ian McAnerin has a nice tip, let me quote it:

Here is a trick I've used (I don't know if it will help you, but it might help someone):

Original Links:

Gray Widgets | Blue Widgets | Brown Widgets
...this is fine if you are optimizing for the plural, but not helpful if you are optimizing for the singular. Just removing the "s" makes it sound/look funny. But you can fix a lot of plural singular issues by changing the sentence context:

I'm looking for a: Gray Widget | Blue Widget | Brown Widget

For the on page stuff, you can control how your content is written. It is not as simple as removing an S at the end of the phrase. You need to make sure to rewrite the content on the page to make sure it still reads logically and grammatically correct after removing the S.

The only issue is, then you may drop in your ranking for the plural keyword phrase. Personally, I have seen many cases where either the plural version brings in the conversions or the singular case brings in the conversions, but it typically is one or the other. Of course, both would bring in conversions, but in many cases, one version brings in the majority of those conversions. This is something you need to test and fine tune over time, like most of your SEO efforts.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Let's say you wanted to be altruistic and provide a link to a site in hopes to raise awareness about a program that they promote. But when you alert the webmaster of said site, they go on a hissy fit and claim that linking to their site is a copyright violation.

In a WebmasterWorld thread, that's happening.

The back story is this: a person has had a web site about animal shelters. The site links to numerous shelters and provides their logos. A few months ago, he had to change URLs because his ISP went down. He put up a new site on a new URL and alerted the linked sites to the new site. One of these people, in particular, got all upset and said that doing so constitutes a privacy violation. Is it worth fighting in court?

The answer, to many, is no. The easy solution is just to remove the link and logo and let the guy lose his traffic. But the owner feels that this is not a good solution -- his motives are purely altruistic and he wants to keep the link intact because of his desire to have these animals adopted and not killed.

And many people, therefore, think that there's no reason to keep the link. In fact, taking the guy to court over a nonsensical issue like this would not work. Worst comes to worst, the chairman of the charity should be brought in to assess whether the person who threatened the webmaster has done so wrongly (and everyone agrees that the legal threat has no bearing).

I've never heard of any law or regulation that prevents you from linking to anything on your web site. It's your web site -- you decide the rules, aside from your host.

Other reading on the subject has been provided by forum member Victor, who says: "If they publish a website, then they accept the usual rules of conduct for websites." He links to http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html and http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkLaw.

It looks like the webmaster is right and the animal shelter is wrong. Linking won't get you in trouble, and the issue probably holds no water in a court of law.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has Labnol asking, "Can rankings vanish because a site is not updated?" If you do not update a site's content, can it set off a red flag at Google or another search engine and have the site lose its current search rankings?

The consensus in the thread is that having stale content should not penalize the site. There are many sites that are rarely updated but continue to rank well for both competitive and long-tail keyword phrases.

It is always good to update and add fresh content to your site. Fresh content is useful for your end user, it encourages the spiders to visit you more frequently, which helps search engines pick up new pages quicker. It also gives you the opportunity to rank well for new keyword phrases, on those new pages you create. But if you decide your content is super and there is no need to update it because you rank well already, then not updating it should not impact your current rankings.

Everyone seems to be in agreement that there is something else at fault in this situation. Not updating content or having a stale site is not a reason for a downgrade in search rankings.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

What began as a thread at WebmasterWorld on Google AdSense turned out to be applicable to all different areas of content creation.

The question posed is as follows:

The best AdSense sites, and those that usually make best money, are those that rely on user created content. But still there are many successful AdSense web sites whose content is written entirely by their creators.

For those who are creating content rich web sites, how many words per day in average can you produce?

This is a great question. I start to think about Jennifer Laycock, since I asked her in San Jose about how she's writing so much in so little time. People do exceed expectations, after all.

Food for thought: write a bit a day. The more you write, the better you get.

Great writers both highbrow (Graham Greene) and lowbrow (Stephen King) recommend a constant production rate of at least 1000 words a day. Writing is a bit like sport, in that (a) it requires fitness obtained through daily practice, and (b) the more you do, the better you get.

It seems that most content providers will write between 500-2000 words a day from the discussion.

But then there are others who take a creative spin:

I make pictures

picture = 1,000 words

3,000

(That made me smile too.)

Some people who don't write on a daily basis will still try to pump out new content ever few days which comes out much less than 500 words per day. Nothing wrong with that!

I wonder how many words I write per day. Oh, and Barry too. :)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A High Rankings Forums member asks if the order of keywords matters in site copy. Of course, the answer to this is yes. After all, if you create content that doesn't read well for your visitors, they won't stay on the site long enough to purchase, or let alone understand, what you're trying to sell.

At the end of the day, when it comes down to copy, if you're unsure, do some keyword research to validate what people are searching for.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forums.

This post was written on September 10th and scheduled for publication on September 14th.

If Wikipedia content wasn't so full of holes and easy to steal then less might people might be doing this. One member on Webmasterworld explains how he steals Wikipedia content and uses it on his page. You'd think such behavior would eventually get you stuck in duplicate content netherland. However, the users doing this say they have never been penalized for using wikipedia in mass on their websites. They recommend recombining the content in random ways or banning the directory with robots.txt.

The thread starter was asked whether he was bothered by taking this content for his own use. He says:

Nah, it doesn't bother me at all. It's legal to use the content if I choose. I do make sure content on my site is accurate, and the bit of Wikipedia I've used in the past has been terrible I usually ignore it or rewrite it.

Wikipedia Steals Too
Okay, so you can get away with stealing wikipedia content apparently. What about Wikipedia stealing YOUR content? The Wiki apparently is prone to it own spree of petty content thief from time to time according to this WMW thread.
As one guy quoted to set the record straight:

wikipedia does not "steal" content.

The people that edit articles for wikipedia might.

So watch your content. For more strategies on stealing wikipedia content for your website and telling people not too. Continued discussion at Webmasterworld - Using Wikipedia Content

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if it is best to break our your articles or content on multiple pages or keep them on a single page.

The answer? It depends.

It depends on the length of the article. It depends if the article can be broken out in to logical subsections, where each subsection provides enough value on its own. It depends if it makes sense for your reader to click from subsection to subsection or not.

You must also keep in mind that if you have all your content for a specific article on one page, you are more likely to get more links to that one page than have them spread out to multiple pages.

Like I said, it depends.

In this case, I would listen to DigitalPoint member, WorldImpulse:

Forget google and think what will be better for your visitors?

Will they like to have one long page or 3 short pages ?

What is best for the user.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has an interesting discussion where a publisher of content that supports his specialty product is noticing his content is being used on sites with Google AdSense ads. He explains:

The thing is, lately there are so many copycat websites that give people the same information but they don't sell anything. They just sell Google ads that often lead to our site because we are one of very few actual sellers. Some of these guys are search engine pros, with their content and skill they are leapfrogging our natural search results.

This individual sends out a newsletter and has over 80,000 customers who may receive these newsletters. He was wondering ways he can utilize his readers to help him either 'thawte' or protect himself against those MFA sites.

He came up with an idea to ask those readers to link to his site, if they like his content. Plus, he is thinking of asking his readers to go to review sites, such as Epinions, and give them a positive review.

Overall, if he has an 80,000 user target base. He can and should ask for that link. But he has a greater opportunity to turn his useful content into some sort of useful widget, a widget that can be embedded on his readers' site, that links back to his authoritative site.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks a question many bloggers and writers ask themselves. What if a site is routinely stealing your content and links to your site as the original source. Plus, in this case, the site that stole your content has a high PageRank value with many internal links.

Should you let it slide or should you do something about it?

Why would you want to let it slide? Well, you are getting links from a site that has high PageRank with many other links pointing to it. Those links might boost your site's popularity.

Why should you stop the theft? Well, this site can easily outrank you for your own articles because it is more popular than yours. Also, do those links really pass that much value? Over time, those links may get so deep into the site that they are buried.

I feel, as a long term strategy, you have to stop the content theft. In the long run your content will should be represented fairly in the search results. Letting people steal your content, when your site is not all that popular, may not be a wise decision.

Member, Quadrille, explained from "experience,"

Whatever "SEO" benefit you'll get from an article farm, you'll almost invariably get more by exclusively self-publishing.

If you believe you will get actual human referrals from the article farm, then consider it - and you can judge that likelihood by the quality of the stuff already there.

This goes well with Tamar's recap on Combining Thousands of Duplicate Pages Without Penalty from yesterday.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

When you maintain a blog or a regularly updated website, is there an optimal amount of time you should wait before updating your articles, or should you post them all at once? In a WebmasterWorld thread, a website publisher is wondering if publishing 5 articles at a time once a week is better than publishing one a day.

Ogletree says that either way is fine because there is apparently no evidence to boost one claim over the other.

There is no evidence that adding a lot of content at one time can hurt a site if the content is of high quality.

I'm inclined to agree with ccDan, who says that you should spread them out over time, especially from a reader's perspective.

I think it's better to spread them out than to post a bunch at once. Just for the sake of getting visitors to return to your site.

There's also been good advice dispensed that if you are concerned about search engine rankings, you can check your log files:

I have never had any problems adding lots of content. If you are really concerned about this you can watch your log files and see when gbot gets all the new articles and then post more.

[Hat tip to Ogletree.]

Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) filings are on a site basis or page by page basis. It is on a page by page basis.

So if you submit a DMCA page removal request, you need to submit it for each page.

If your site content is stolen, learn how to report stolen content and submit DMCA requests. If you want your content back in the Google index after being removed due to a DMCA request, see here.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This was written on Tuesday and scheduled to go live at a later date.

A Cre8asite Forums thread comments on a V7N Blog post named Excess pages polluting your website?

In short, John Scott of V7N, explained how he decided about a month ago to remove a large number of pages from his site that met the criteria of being "xxx number of days old, had less than xxx number of page views, and less than xxx number of responses." Then, about two weeks ago, he noticed an increase in search referrals of about "7,000 per day." He feels that this may be due to a direct relation to removing some of the "excess pages." Which takes him back to this big debate on content versus links, which John is clearly for links. He said:

Content (marketing copy, etc) may be king when it comes to converting visitors, but for search engine rankings, link weight, domain authority and intelligent distribution of link weight appears to be much more effective, even when it means removing content.

Now the Cre8asite Forums thread digs a bit deeper into the theory. Before we analyze some of the responses in the thread, I would just like to say that this removal of content from V7N is most likely not related to the increase in search referrals. I believe this was all about timing and how many people noticed a Google update about that time. I have several clients that saw significant improvements about that time as well.

The thread is calling for John Scott to reverse what he did and see if this has the reverse affect on his search rankings.

Barry Welford, the thread creator summarizes at the end of the thread:

Firstly I believe that the dilution of page rank transfer by cutting out the number if internal links from a web page is probably a minor issue. Unless you were changing this by an order of magnitude or even say down to a quarter of what they were, then this won't help much.

On the other hand I think it's good to have lots of content on the website given the 'long tail' nature of searchers' keyword queries. So I would leave all web pages up. However Bill's suggestion of revisiting web pages and editing them to make them stronger is excellent.

There is no doubt, I tend to see fresher posts on more of the fresher types of queries, ranking higher. I.e. a post on Google's first quarter results for 2007, the fresher the post, typically, the higher that post will rank in the search results. But this not always the case.

Cre8asite Moderator EGOL also goes back to one of his theories that larger Web sites may require more links than smaller sites to rank well.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Brett has posted in the Webmaster Supporters forum asking for help with picking a 3-4 word mission statement for WebmasterWorld. He might be getting jealous of all those trendy brand name taglines that are so cool (Fedex: peace of mind, etc..) Maybe not though. Some companies (eBay, CNN, Amazon) which have acheived common word status can get away without a mission statement. I think WebmasterWorld might qualify for that. Regardless, its never to late to add a clever mission statement for fun.

Brett asks:

So Guy says that you should have a 3-4 word mission statement. He used examples:

Fedex: peace of mind.
Wendys: healthy fast food.
Nike: genuine athletic performance.

What would webmasterworld's be?

Help WebmasterWorld pick a mission statement in the Supporters Forum (Paid Reg required).

A Cre8asite Forums thread has a classic discussion taking place. The discussion is what can I do about someone who steals my content? We have discussed it here time and time again. But this thread has an example of a funny but yet serious example of what can happen if you mess with the wrong site.

Ha.ckers.org noticed he and some friends were being messed with and he didn't like it, so he deployed a little trick.

So anyway, it was fairly trivial to figure out who was ripping my RSS feed. So it took me a few seconds to modify my document management system to do some IP delivery to the moron, and a few seconds of searching on the web for some nice prescription drug spam and poof!

So, if you are going to mess with someone, don't pick a site or blog of a hacker.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Search Engines like to include web pages in their query results that provide plenty of relevant content, either directly or through introduction and linking to other pages. It is hard to argue against the consensus that "content is king." Thus, when people attempt to improve the chances of ranking through the process of search engine optimization, content is a priority. Through research and testing, many SEO's have found that keeping content "fresh" is a way to gain the favor of the search engine spider, especially if the content is expected to change. That is - if your content rarely changes and the content of what you would consider to be competitor websites does, chances are that you will not be able to keep up when competing for highly popular keywords.

An interesting thread started a couple of weeks ago at High Rankings Forums has a member asking which is better for the overall SEO efforts of a website: simply updating current content or adding fresh content to the web site completely new pages? Some good points made so far in the debate include Chip Johns'

Remember, there are no definitive answers when it comes to SEO. If you have a site that deals with medieval history, many of your pages are not going to change, because, for the most part, history doesn't change. Google may prefer that pages NOT change in this instance.

When you make significant changes to the content of a page, there can be (at least temporary) rankings drops as the SEs sort out where the new page should rank.

Content will always be important to a website. Although the above example shows a possible topic that could be considered "safe" if it remains unchanged; I feel that the linking and some of the commentary probably should change, in order to keep up with recent research and discoveries dealing with medieval history.

Please comment on this topic at High Rankings Forums. It would be interesting to hear from people who have experimented with both content-freshening techniques.

There is no doubt that Wikipedia entries tend to rank well in the search engines these days. Many SEOs would like to get their company, products and services listed in the Wikipedia because of this. So how can you write a Wikipedia entry and have the best possible chances that the entry will remain and, more importantly, grow within the Wikipedia community?

Added: Wikipedia has a notability criteria guideline, which describes how the authors of the Wikipedia should address certain issues such as, listing companies, products and services, recommendations of such and more.

That is the current question at a Search Engine Watch Forums thread named Help Getting My Company Into Wikipedia.

Jeff Watts from National Instruments gives a presentation at SES conferences where he talks specifically about this. We covered the session twice, one time at NYC and the other at Chicago. He provided excellent details on what makes a Wiki entry stick and what make the Wiki entry snip.

The Wikipedia is "self-regulating," meaning the community itself is quick to remove content that they deem inappropriate or promotional. That is why it is critical to write the Wiki entries in an unbiased manner, from a "neutral point of view." When writing the entry, use data, facts and stats, do not give the promotional swing to it. Do not try to embed links in your content, that would happen naturally on its own, just don't do it to start - let the community do it for you. In short, be dry - put up product specs and not product marketing materials.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Although there are many different "recipes" for gaining search engine rankings, most experts in the search engine optimization (SEO) field will recommend that website content should be a priority. Without discounting the value of links and traffic, content is most likely the key element of a website's charisma. Good content will lead to links and traffic. So for those website owners that have to start from scratch and add large amounts of content, how much should they expect to pay for this service?

A member of High Rankings Forum asked yesterday

the estimated cost of producing the copy for a key aspect of the site

I encounter this question fairly often. When clients didn't have someone in house that could produce enough content for me to optimize, I have worked with a copywriter who interviews the client and creates the necessary number of pages matched up to the topics we would like to focus on. Generally this works out to a per-page basis and is fairly reasonable in comparison to "average" copywriting charges. Only one poster so far at High Rankings has given a range: about $90/page. Of course, there are copywriters out there that specialize in SE-friendly creative, and these would probably charge more. My thought is that if you are paying for optimization, you will probably do better by saving on the copywriting, since the SEO will be done by the organization responsible.

Hopefully some copywriters will see this and choose to add to the discussion at High Rankings Forum.

A featured Search Engine Watch Forum thread named SEO & Newspapers discusses a recent NYTimes article named This Boring Headline Is Written for Google. The first paragraph of the article somes it up;

Journalists over the years have assumed they were writing their headlines and articles for two audiences — fickle readers and nitpicking editors. Today, there is a third important arbiter of their work: the software programs that scour the Web, analyzing and ranking online news articles on behalf of Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Danny Sullivan explains the difference between browsing news and searching for news. This is an important distinction and I think Danny gets it right;

When I'm reading a newspaper, a catchy, funny headline might be what I need to pull me into a story. And I do love a good headline. But if I'm keyword searching for news, I know what I'm after. Your catchy headline isn't what pulls me in. Your headline using the terms I searched for is what will do it.

I personally do not know how to write a "catchy headline" that is not direct and too the point (i.e. keyword specific so that searches can find it). Do folks like us now need to worry about being outranked by the larger publishers? Not only do they have popularity on their side, they now know how to "SEO" an headline.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A nice thread has been started in the form of a rant by High Rankings Forum member "copywriter." In "It's Illegal And Unethical And They Know It!", she describes the recent fad of "creating unique content" by pasting together thoughts from different articles and other content already found on the Internet. Jill gets to the crux of the matter; describing it as “spammer software.”

...those spam machines that claim to produce unique original copy. The folks that use these and those that create it try to say that it's not stealing, because they're only taking a sentence from here, and another one from there.

This new "Frankenstein" content, as I call it, has the ability to not only look bad from a human perspective, but also to potentially dilute the effectiveness of some original content. People are jumping on the bandwagon in decrying this technique, rightfully so in my opinion. Rand makes a good action suggestion:

IMO, there are only two ways to solve this issue in the long term:
1. Dis-incentive the tactic - remove the monetary or traffic potential
2. Remove the ranking ability; this is up to the SE's algo teams

Speak your mind on the subject at High Rankings Forums (added 3/13: the software creator is now taking part in this discussion, which has really blossomed)

When was the last time you brushed up on your meta-description or content writing skills? Or how about the last time you actually considered the first paragraph of the page as the top of a content pyramid of that helps define your whole site or page?

On WebmasterWorld there is an excellent thread on the topic of Inverted Pyramid Writing. What is it and how does it influence a sites relevance? According to the thread, "Inverted Pyramid Writing uses the first paragraph of a page to serve as a concise summary or abstract of the page content". So Meta-descriptions and Google snippets are also good examples of such writing. One of the members explains that in newspapers inverted pyramid writing serves a couple of purposes. One, to give readers enough info right away to get them interested in the story (or decide they're not interested, and go on to the next article), and to be sure the most important part of the story actually made it into the paper.

To further explain the use of this style, the following explanation I found helpful :

To understand what the "inverted pyramid" name means, picture an upside-down triangle -- one with the narrow tip pointing downward and the broad base pointing upward. The broad base represents the most newsworthy information in the news story, and the narrow tip represents the least newsworthy information in the news story. When you write a story in inverted pyramid format, you put the most newsworthy information at the beginning of the story and the least newsworthy information at the end.

So what are the implications to helping SEO's and webmasters do their job better. I think it makes sense in order to clarify some of basic styles the members in the thread mentions. Such as following the 5Ws (who,what,when,why,where optional which) and one H's(how) important creating inverted pyramid stories/articles. This same format can be applied in the aspect of online copywriting and the creation of descriptions. The most important information first. For many this topic might be old hat, as when writing a description I know I follow a similar format to getting the most important information out first but may not realize it at the time I am following a style. One of the interesting differences I think with SEO's is that instead of focusing on subjects like "200 people were injured, and another 50 are missing" to write about we are focused on keyword usage in the desciption. Sometimes our grammer and syntax can fly out the door as there is too much importance on getting those important keywords first.

To illustrate, think of all the new SEO's or webmasters creating meta-descriptions for the first time. Did they ever do it at first while still making it legible? Such as using the meta-description just like the meta-keyword tag is being used. Usually not, its keywords crammed in there first and then sentence structure/syntax next, and finally marketing language to intice the visitor to the site. So if we can combine all the necessary elements and look at the benefits of using an inverted pyramid writing for some pretty slick and powerful descriptions, snippets and paragraphs and articles then we can create some powerful content in which IPW and SEO/SEM go hand in hand.

To add more credence to the technique one of the members explains some additional benefits of the IPW.

" IPW and good newspaper-style copy are relevant in terms of accessibility as much as in general usability. IPW has a great influence on understanding for users with cognitive disabilities. Users that fall into this group tend to have difficulties understanding navigation, and large blocks of content can be a daunting experience. IPW helps by presenting a summary which enables the user to access enough of the information without having to tackle the entire text."

Lastly, one of the members says this is "giving away all the secrets". If its a secret then, then I would recommend checking this out if you are not familiar with the subject.

Check out continued discussion at WMW - Inverted Pyramid Writing

The latest craze in the SEO world is to write articles for the purpose of link building. Everyone is doing it these days, there are companies that specialize in writing content for search engines, there are companies that put it in their link building plans. But as time moves on with SEO, tactics to rank well changes. I believe the fundamentals to not change but influencing those rankings, when the core of your work is not 100% true, does change. What do I mean by that?

Yesterday, some person calls me asking me my advice on having a company write articles for him to build up his linkage and page count. I asked him, how long have you been in business? He said about a year or so. I asked him, are you an expert on what you sell? He said, not really. I asked him, can you write about your business and products? He said, no not really, there is nothing much I can say about them. Then I told him, you can pay someone to add content to your site, but I am not sure about how beneficial it will be in the long run.

He then continues by explaining that this company told him that they can write the content because they are experts in search engines. They tailor the content to the search engines, he told me. I laughed at that. I said the whole purpose these days is to write content that people want to link to. Search engine do not give you links that are counted to your link popularity. You need to write content that others want to link to. And in my opinion, if you are not passionate about what you are writing, then it will be hard to get links pointing to your content. So that content will just count towards your page index count and nothing more.

A good thread at Search Engine Watch Forums sprung up last week named Recommendations on Content to Attract Links which caught my radar this morning. Justilien wrote a post that covers many of the questions one must ask himself, when writing an article. If those questions are answered positively, then you have a great change of getting inbound links to your articles, if not - then probably not. But it all boils down to, in my opinion, "writing about something you believe in" as Andy AtkinsKruger said.

A member at High Rankings Forums posed a very detailed question the other day that is drawing out some nice answers from copywriting experts. Karri details a specific content-creation job that she feels should probably be split into two sites but needs to be on only one site. Her problem: how to introduce both products on the home page without getting into too much detail, and possibly "losing" some visitors before they get to "their" copy.

I like some of the comments so far, including:

Never underestimate the power of candor. Can't you just explain things to your web site visitor the same way you've explained to us?

...if you've got two different target customers coming to one home page, you're going to have to create a funnel effect...

See the thread at High Rankings Forum

Many have heard of the seemingly declining value of the META keyword tag. The consensus seems to be that Google doesn’t use it, and that Yahoo and MSN have limited interest in it. However, the tag is still a tag, and for those who chose to insert it into their code, it may be wise to use it in a manner that will not trip any filters. Although this is an often discussed topic, it still brings out good advice from experts in a variety of Forums.

An interesting thread from last week at High Rankings Forum starts off with a question about a string of keywords and whether or not they are valuable/kosher. After a few posts it was determined that the string was meant for use as a keyword META tag. Some very interesting comments made, particularly Michael Martinez’s statement that “It smacks of desperation and implies a lack of confidence on the site operator's part in the value of their content…”

Arguments for or against using this tag aside, what is considered overuse of a particular keyword within a tag? Some additional discussion about Title tags adds a little bonus to this topic.

See the discussion at Jill’s HighRankings Forum

A related post by Barry here.

A High Rankings thread named How Do Search Engines Treat Punctuation? discusses a common problem people have when trying to optimize for keyword phrases that are searched on 50% of the time with a punctuation and 50% of the time without it.

In the example in the thread, we have these two keyword phrase combinations.

(1) St. John's
(2) St Johns

You can see how the results differ. Normally punctuation is treated as a space by a search engine. So how do you optimize for both phrases on one page? Most people do not want to use the phrase improperly, because it looks like you don't know how to spell. But one thing you can do it get links to your page with both types of phrases. This way the people linking to you look bad, and you don't.

Forum discussion at High Rankings Forums

Jill Whalen started a thread over at her forums named H1, H2, H3 Placement, per W3C standards. In that thread she asks if it matters if the header tag sequence in the source code displays in order of header number hierarchy. Meaning, does the h1 tag have to come before the h2, and h3 and h4 in the source code and in the visible content on the page, as per "W3C standards." I tried looking up the answer, but I failed to find anything where it said it had to be in a particular order.

The thread discusses the topic and most people agree that is makes most logical sense to place the header tags in order of number, much like a structural document for a paper's outline. But in terms of SEO, does the header tag matter? Some say yes and some say no. Does the header tag hurt? If you use it properly, and don't overdo it, I can not see how it would hurt you. Would it hurt if you placed it in the wrong order? I doubt it, the standards on the Web are far from standard. :)

But does anyone know about the W3C standards on this topic?

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

A Cre8asite Forums thread named #8 with appostraphe, not listed without discusses one members dilemma with using an apostrophe. He says, "I'm number 8 when I use "men's [plus my phrase]" on yahoo.com search" but when someone searches without the apostrophe, he is no where to be found.

What does he do?

(1) Keyword research; see which phrase is searches on more. I am not 100% sure if there are tools that differentiate between an apostrophe or not. If not...
(2) Look at your statistics. Do a PPC campaign and try out both (um do PPC campaigns differentiate between an apostrophe or not, even with exact match?).
(3) If not, do it the slow way and try to change it and target it without the apostrophe. Then wait and pump links to the page.

Overall you need to test to see if conversions and sales increase. If they do, then you know which way to go.

Discuss over at Cre8asite Forums.

Basic practice when optimizing for more then one keyword phrase is to have a specific page for each phrase you want to optimize for. If you want to stretch it, you may be able to optimize for up to three keyword phrases. But typically you do not want to go that route.

Jill's HighRanking's Forum has a thread named How To Do Seo For More Then One Phrase? In that thread, Jill and friends explain why its not best to try to stuff all your keywords on one page.

(1) It is hard to optimize for an unlimited number of keywords on one page.
(2) If you do succeed in ranking well for all of those keywords, when the end user lands on your homepage for that keyword phrase, it is much harder to drive them to a landing page that they can convert on. Why? Because the page is also targeting dozens of other keyword phrases that may not relate to the one they came in on.
(3) Managing uncontrollable changes at the search engines is much harder.
(4) The page will not read too well.

And other reasons, forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

I had the privilege of having a client come to me and ask me my thoughts on an ethical and business dilemma he is having in regards to his search marketing campaign. Let me start off by giving you a bit of vague background on the situation.

The company specializes in a very unique niche, manufacturing a product specifically for a need. What this means is that they will not sell a product off-the-shelf. They design solutions in the form of customized products based on a customer's problem. This type of detail requires that an engineer from the company speak with the prospect before a solution (i.e. product) can be designed. The company has engineers that speak the languages, English, German, and Hebrew.

The company is a big user of PPC engines; Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Second Tier PPC Engines. They want to target a wider market, because they know they can offer a solution to anyone in the world. The only issue is that they can not understand all the languages in the world, in order to be able to understand the problem, in order to formulate a solution (i.e. a product).

The idea of creating specialized landing pages in any other language outside of English, German or Hebrew sounded both good and bad. (Good) By creating these pages they can effectively provide an avenue for other markets to find them and the company's offerings. (Bad) Since they do not speak the language, (1) the prospect might feel deceived and (2) it will lead to unnecessary costs in translation and PPC spend.

So I decided to post a thread on this topic over at Search Engine Watch Forums. The responses were kind of contradictory to each other. Mikkel feels that you must be able to speak the native language to offer a product, such as this client is offering. Others believe that if the copy on the page explicitly notes that the company engineers do not speak that language and they must have an English, German or Hebrew speaking representative call the company - then it is perfectly ok.

Mikkel places a good logical statement down in the thread:

In my experience people search in the language they expect to be serviced in.

A thread at Cre8asite forums named uppercase - lowercase asks the question if it matters to search engines in the body copy, title, url and so on.

Bottom line is that it does not matter. Titles should look nice, headers should look nice and the URLs should look nice to the end user. But I don't think search engines will care much if you didn't upper case the name of your cat.

A thread at WebmasterWorld asks Yahoo & Grammar: Does Yahoo Detect Proper Grammar?

A member says that he took over a client's Web site from an other SEO. He noticed that the client's ranking in Yahoo dropped. He also noticed that the content in the title tags are not grammatically correct. If you put one and one together, it can imply that your rankings will tank in Yahoo if your title tag is not in proper English.

But that is absolutely wrong. Most title tags don't read 100% grammatically correct, some times on purpose. It is important it reads quickly and catchy and sometimes that means you need to put grammar on the back burner.

So you are like me and the other millions of people who write original content for your Web site. And yes, you find your original work taken in whole or pieces and placed on other Web sites. Jenstar posted a new thread at Search Engine Watch Forums basically telling us What to do when someone steals your original content. By the way, her presentation at WebmasterWorld New Orleans, Peaceful Coexistence - Writing for the Engines talks about this as well. The reason I am covering this thread is because I promised to follow up on the entry I wrote yesterday named Cache Pages are Not Duplicate When Not Indexed and because of the post I wrote this morning combatting the term Content Spam Remix.

I'll summarize by quotation of the thread:
- Send out a Cease & Desist
- State the content must be removed within 48 to 72 hours
- Send it to every single email address I can ferret up

If that doesn't work, then...
- Fill a DMCA with the hosting company of the content thief (or C&D)

If that doesn't work, then contact the search engines at...
- http://www.google.com/dmca.html
- http://docs.yahoo.com/info/copyright/copyright.html
- http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_CONC_AboutDMCA.htm

Personally, I can't keep up with all the stolen content. I do not have the resources to report and then follow up on these DMCA requests. It is not a big deal to locate the stolen content, there are programs that automate that. Also it is very easy to find them manually as well. But from that point on, there is just too much work for me to follow up on. I hope it gets easier.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

There is a nice thread over at SEO Chat Forums named Unique Content vs Reprinting Articles. In the thread, members discuss if it is better to write your own content or reprint (with permission) content already published.

As many of you know, I am all about unique content. I rarely republish anyone else's content, unless it is written specifically for this site. Why? Nothing at all to do with on-page search engine optimization. It is about you guys. I want you to have new, fresh, unique and (I hope) valuable content on a daily basis.

There is no doubt in my mind, since we have all seen it, that reprinted content can rank well and make money for the publisher. I like how Egol put it in message number 11;

You can reoptimize someone elses content, empower it with links and outrank the original. Still, you will always be in competition with all of those other versions of that content which are out there.

But normally, the "source document" (original content) gets a link back from the reprinted versions of its clones. If you are not actively in the mode of working to get links back to your articles and you do not "optimize" the content better then the source, it is more likely that the source will rank higher then the reprinted materials. Of course, there are tons of factors involved.

Think of it from a search engines perspective. Do they always want the original source? Or do you think they want the version that has the most value (i.e. user reviews, feedback, comments, links and so on)?

I am not a lawyer, I do not pretend to know copyright law, but I do have a pretty strong set of ethics and morals. I was shocked to see a thread at SEO Chat Forums where a member asked, and I quote:

I started a search engine marketing blog

A. Am I covering my butt when reposting articles as long as credit is given??

B. How do I make money with this thing?

Please take a look and let me know your thoughts.

Of course other members take offense to such a post. (1) I started a search engine marketing blog. (2) I want to repost articles, but do not want to ask for specific permission, just give the author credit. Credit how? A link? A name? Does it matter? (3) After reprinting other peoples articles and hard work, this individual wants to make money from it. You and I can do the same. We can all set up a blog in about 20 minutes and then copy and paste articles from other sites in the blog. It just doesn't seem right.

What is more shocking is that this member said he writes for SEO Chat's article section. As an author, would he want others to take his work and post it anywhere without his permission. I guess it doesn't bother him, but it must. If I knew about it, and someone was reprinting my original work without my permission, I would be very upset. It is very much like building a huge snowman and then having someone knock it down with one big push (maybe a bad example, but that is how I would feel). I know it is done all the time to my content, and I tend not to look for the reprints. Why? It takes way too much time and it is upsetting.

My thoughts on the topic; do unto others, as you would have others do unto you.

I haven't talked about the topic of keyword density in a really long time. Why? Basically because I have never used it when writing pages. Last week, the resident scientist at SEW forum (orion), Dr. E. Garcia, wrote a detailed article for e-marketing-news named The Keyword Density of Non-Sense. In that article he clearly detailed his objections to using keyword research tools and keyword density analyzers when optimizing a Web site. There was a session at SES NYC 2005, the last session of the conference, named Advanced Search Term Research Tools.

After the panelist spoke, Dr. Garcia took the mic and gave a five minute speech on how some of the tools these vendors were providing were "bad." It is unfortunate that Dr. Garcia did not have more time to make his point, but most of the panelist agreed with him. His point was, as the article says at the end, "To sum up, the assumption that KD values could be taken for estimates of term weights or that these values could be used for optimization purposes amounts to the Keyword Density of Non-Sense." After you read the article, feel free to join the thread and discuss your thoughts. One thing many say is that they do not have other options, so they rely on these tools. But its extremely important to understand the math behind the tools, if the math doesn't work, you need to know.

The internet likes the word free, and one of the benefits of using free content is because you don't pay for it. Yet with anything free on the internet, there comes a price, and sometimes free content may carry one all its own. There is a good thread at SEOchat describing just this and many of the members are giving feedback as to what the pro's and con's are of using this type of content.

Some are reporting that a lot of the free content isn't cracking up to be: free. One of the main problems is that people are using these articles multiple times in many different locations. I mean its free right? Why wouldn't you paste it on your site in hopes it does whats its supposed to do: Get Readers. If you didn't grab the article first or at least get it spidered first then, you may not really realize the traffic you had hoped to obtain. Personally, I don't use Free Content to publish on my sites. I either write the article myself and create all the marketing and information copy, or I hire someone to write the article for me on an area that deserves a large amount of research I don't have time for. It's actually not relatively expensive to hire a copywriter to make this happen for you. Average people (non-copywriters) can write content just as fine as one that does it professionally. I have heard stories about people hiring college students, friends, family, and those that have time to write some content on whatever subject that might interest them.

One of the members, oldmanrunner mentions that a good way to get around getting caught for duplicate content is to place "different headers, different titles and descriptions, swap a paragraph or two and change a few words" and you should be fine. Other members are reporting that they are removing many of the articles they have put on their site after the recent update, as it didn't help them. Others are saying that free content has returned substantial amount of traffic for their site.

A place that should be on your radar if you are using free content is Copyscape for checking to see how many people are using the same article, it will not however tell you whether its the article is benefical to your site. Another tool that comes highly recommend is a Similar Page Checker that compares the two articles to look for differences. You can also use something I really fond of, its the program called Beyond Compare that compares everything from articles to php documents.

Something funny, but a member asks where in the world you would get content for a site entitled "Green Squirrel Shirts". I can't say I have ever come across an article or company entitled that. Maybe you could get articles pertaining to various species of squirrels, or the benefits of wearing green squirrel shirts, or the benefits of wearing a green shirt with a squirrel on it. ;-)

Continue discussing free content on SEOchat.

Besides for the white hat versus black hat link spam discussions, an other large topic that is debated in the wonderful world of SEO is to SEO by formula or to SEO by natural, organic, artistic means. What I mean by natural, organic, artistic means is - one should write copy so that it reads well and is user friendly. What I mean by SEO by formula is - one should test the copy to ensure it has the right amount of keyword density, right number of related words and so on.

There are those SEOs that do both. Some SEOs that write copy are actually so good at SEO Copywriting that they don't use formulas, they simply know what makes for good, optimized copy. In fact, most of the time, if you run it through one of those programs or have an algorithmic junky review the copy - they will agree that the copy is not bad. Then there are those who count the words on the page, ensure like (~) words are on the page enough times and run the page through programs.

Both work. One is pure science, and one is pure art. If you do not have the science part down and you do not have the art part down, then you simply don't have it. But practice does make perfect.

There is an interesting thread over at HighRankings, where typically you have the more artistic folks hang out. In that thread, they discuss a topic named Term Vector Theory and Keyword Weights (forum link to SEW), which was one of the many highly scientific threads started by Orion, Dr. E. Garcia, at SEW Forum. In this thread, you will see exactly what I am talking about above.

Enough talk on how to prevent link spam, now lets talk about how to write content in order to get quality links. Jenstar wrote an excellent post in a new thread she named How to come up with ideas for new quality content.

The first piece of advice she gives is "Don�t get too overwhelmed". She says that your articles do not have to be 3,000 words, she says "stick with 250 - 500 word articles." But if you do go with the 3,000 word article method, Jenstar recommends to "split it up into multiple pages."

Then go to your customers and ask them what are the questions they have about your business. I wrote several articles just because I get the same question over and over again. I now send people over to the articles, instead of giving them the long speech on why this does that and why you should or should not do it. Of course, most are too lazy to read the articles, but at least it is there. :)

Don't be afraid to answer or write about the "dumb question," Jenstar said. They make for excellent articles and someone can be helped by them. So start a basics guide to your product, simple questions and answers for the beginners. After you have those basics, write new articles that expand on them.

Jenstar recommends using a message board to get ideas. Sounds familiar to me...Pretty much everything written at this site has been sprung off a forum topic, that the author finds interesting. Over 1,300 articles written here...Works well, don't you think?

Check out the thread and learn and add to it.

A HighRankings thread asks the question, what is the ideal word count for a home page. And a quick and witty reply by a forum moderator read;

Copy should be like a woman's skirt, long enough to cover the essentials, short enough to be interesting.

How funny...

I was listening to the radio on the way to work yesterday, and they were talking about the "Big Unit", Randy Johnson. I am not a Yankee fan, I am from the other side, being a Met fan. However, they said something that did interest me. The radio guy said he was reading some of the titles of the news reports in the papers that morning about Randy Johnson's big stink with the camera man. The titles included some very funny ones, but the one that topped it all off was "Lanky Yankee Gets Cranky."

--- Lanky Yankee Gets Cranky ---

Pretty funny. Of course I thought to myself, these guys are not thinking about ranking their news report well. It makes for a very funny, yet thoughtful title. Too bad SEO copywriters can't leverage their artistic side and rank news releases well with titles that are witty and fun. Can't win them all - or can we?

Sorry for the short posts today. Still recovering from the server crash.

There is a thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Do Men and Women Search Differently? which discusses that topic. In addition, a poll is set up where you can vote:

Question: Does gender matter in search?
Answers:
(1) Yes - Viva La Difference!
(2) No - any differences are due to practice, etc
(3) Yes, but not enough to matter

At the WebmasterWorld conference I met an individual that just began writing for Web sites. He explained to me, briefly, how he has changed his writing style. He just thinks keywords, keywords and keywords when writing his page copy. He then asked me how do I go about it. To be honest, I said I really do not think about it. I said its really just how I write these days, I think keyword without having to think keywords. But I think almost any copywriter can easily transit from the old school offline copywriting to the new school online seo copywriting in a matter of a day.

A thread at HighRankings named When Does A Copywriter Become An Seo Writer?, where the member asks "how do you convert to an SEO writer?" Jill Whalen, probably the most well known SEO copywriter, responds with "Basically, for the copywriters I've worked with, I've just given them the keyword phrases, then they do their research on the topic as usual, and just try to write with the keywords in mind. It's often very difficult the for the first page, but after that they always pick up right up."

An other member offers the following advice:

I've been a copywriter for going on 30 years, writing for websites for about 7 and I still don't know whether I could call myself an SEO writer!
I can tell you that I do apporach a few things a bit differently when I'm doing web work. I'm a tad more self conscious about defining the page structure and working from fairly detailed outlines into relatively short blocks of copy - partly to make the page more scannable and partly to guide the type spec more finitely: indicating H tags and bold type as appropriate to highlight the overal content and maybe attract a couple points from the SEs.
Compared to print, I'm more goal-oriented for each page and para, knowing that, unless I keep the sign-posts to "what's next" in the foreground, the visitor is as inclined to click over to another site as to click through to my other pages for more info.
I also find that SE 'bots aren't real clever about metaphors & jargon & such, either, so my copy tends to be a little more grounded and literal than it would be for print or video. For the same reason, where I used to use benefit statements as anchor text for links to deeper pages, I work a bit harder at mentioning the product or feature by name in the text so I can anchor my links to soething more like a keyword. That's a fine line, though, sinceit can get repetitive and spammy - I use go that way more often on top level pages that linking to fairly different topics.
Meanwhile, I haven't done enough sites end-to-end to be sure whether the my approach is really helping or if I've just been lucky with the keywords I've gone after!
As others on this forum keep telling us, just focus on writing for your customer/visitor/user and the rest is gravy.

This makes for a nice thread.

A thread over at Highrankings, details whether or not too much content could be detrimental to page or or website. For the most part it should not be a problem, content can be beneficial but is it useful? Thinkweb, a member at Highrankings, addresses some good points "you can have gigabytes of content, and yet miss the whole point of having a website". Additionally, another good question to consider: Have you ever grabbed a 5 inch instuction manual, when a 1/4 inch book would have done the trick?

Continuing reading and discussing Is Too Much Content Possible?

Do content thieves keep you up at night, tossing and turning in your bed, worrying that someone evil person might steal you content and you may never know about it. This is a problem for some people, and especially those that write articles and post them freely on their sites. Sometimes a copyright notice just doesn't cut it. There is a good thread over at Highrankings, asking about how to protect your copy, but still allow spiders to get access to it. The member who started the thread said they had considered cloaking as an option, but quickly decided other measures were better suited for this. There are some gems of advice in there that I will highlight below.

Ways to Protect Your Content & Allow Search Engine Spiders

1. Monitor Your Competitors. Send out notices should you see they are the midnight bandits that ran off with your content with permission.

2. Use a Copyright Notice. At the end of all your pages.

3. Try Putting a Transparent Layer Over the Area. This will prevent the text from being copy and pasted outside the site.

4. Use CSS or a Liquid CSS Layout to prevent copy and pasting. Due to how CSS arranges content sections, it prevents most people from copy and pasting sections. If they try they usually end up with highlighting the stuff they don't want, or the entire page.

5. Use a Disable Right Mouse Click Script. or similar script. This is one I have used in the past and continue to like mainly just for images on my blog. Basically it prevents people from viewing your source, lifting your images off the sites, or stealing your webpages. You can find a version of the disable right mouse script here.

6. Lock Down Your PDF documents. Not sure exactly how this is done, but it was mentioned as one way to prevent downloading or copying.

7. Your Own Research. Stopping those that steal your content is best served if your do it yourself.

Its seems to be rather difficult line between protecting your copy and still providing spiders with all the stuff they need. As one member, chrishirst, pointed out, who is to stop competitors from looking at the Google cache, even thought you have done all these things to protect it? If anyone has any more suggestions on protecting your content, please post them in the comments section. If I get enough I will update the article with them for a more comprehensive list.

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

The most competitive keyword on the planet, the big blue pineapple chair. Of course I am being sarcastic. Besides, the closest place I saw that sells big blue pineapple chairs is this one, but its not really blue. I guess I can paint them, and resell them at this page. :)

What is my point?

Again, I had a client who was contacted by an 'SEO Firm'. They drew up this huge guarantee, top rankings or your money back. My client was wise enough to send me the email exchanges, between the seo firm and himself. From what started as nicely targeted keyword phrases turned into very obscure, none relevant keyword phrases. Just like me ranking for the big blue pineapple chair. Which I am sure this page will rank number one at Google in a weeks time (I guarantee it). )

Did you know that there are 598 different ways people spell Britney Spears? Respree (Garrick) posted a topic over at Cre8asite Forums that discussed this and had a link to a unusual page over at Google. Google named this page the Britney Spears spelling correction page and it can be found at http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html.

View Large Image

Are you a keyword copywriter that has writer's block? If so, join the KWBA (keyword writers block anonymous) group over at HighRankings. You can learn things such as:
- project mode at WordTracker
- Source code for your competitors' home pages
- Digital Point keyword tool

Jakob Nielsen came out with a new one just a few days ago named Time for a Redesign where one area he discusses that his problems with search and where part of the fault lies with "[The content] does not explicitly say what you want to know."

There is currently a dialog taking place at the Search Engine Watch Forums where Associate Editor, Chris Sherman explains this quote as follows: "If information is missing, there's no way a search engine can manufacture it to help solve the need of the user. That's the fault of the content creator, not the search engine."

Ron Carnell then accurately points out "I think Nielsen's example of a hotel web site not providing more information on off-site parking exemplifies his own lack of understanding of real world business practice."

The scenario is that Dr. Nielsen conducted a search on a hotel, to find information on that hotel. Then Dr. Nielsen wanted to learn about the hotel's parking accommodations but was surprised to see that pricing was not available at the hotel's Web site. Ron points out that for the hotel to manage 3rd party pricing on their own Web site would be inefficient. As Ron said its a "lack of understanding of real world business practice." If you want to know about parking at the hotel, conduct a new search on parking in the area of the hotel. Most probably you will find what you are looking for.

Of course search has a long way to go but to blame it on content providers is not always accurate. Why? To get more general, when I write on a topic here, I make sure to answer the readers anticipated questions when they read the title of the entry. So with this entry, titled "Content Providers - Provide the Content Already", I expect you to think something to the affect of "What are content providers not doing? "What should they be doing?" I am not going to be covering topics such as where to post content, how much it costs to post content and why I post content. I might start a new topic on such a question, but that topic probably wont cover the answers to What content providers should be doing.

Get my point. The content is out there. The searcher can't expect one search to act as a catchall for all their questions to be answered.

No one ever talks about misspellings on forums or in articles anymore but they are still a very viable source of traffic. And synonyms are a whole new realm of traffic potential that many of us are aware of but I'll be honest I slack a bit when doing my research for anything below 2000 searches on the overture search tool.

When ADOBE the software giant called me and said "Hey SEO Guy we need your help finding all the misspellings and synonyms for our products" obviously my first response was "ADOBE! No problem" but after I hung up the phone I realized that other then wordtracker and inventory overture there werent any decent resources I knew of to start hunting! So naturally I head out to forums in an attempt to learn what I should have in my pocket over the weekend posting thread such as http://forums.seochat.com/t10149/s.html at SEO Chat but it really hit home that I wasnt offering a complete service if my keyword research doesn't exhaustively involve the likely hundreds of keyword phrases that bring only 50-200 hits per month. I know most clients only have the budget for their top 10 to start but even to put together a package for them to follow to be able to take advantage of them on their own will only put more dollars in our clients pockets and mean then have more dollars to spend on us at the end of the day.

I have been meaning to discuss the power of the Google dictionary and how it can help your rankings. I simply have been putting it off until now. Everyone knows about the method of entering in Google "define: term" or "definition of term" and it brings back an entry at the top of Google SERPs with a definition pulled from an other site. It can look as follows:

What not everyone knows about (only those that rank well for popular definitions) is that Google brings a single definition back when you use the query "what is google", or what is term. So if your in the first slot for this definition, you will get a nice amount of traffic to your site.

At the SES conference in NY, I told everyone about this operator in the Q&A session of What is Content?. Or I think it was that session, I forgot - I jumped into that session only for the Q&A part. I was surprised to find out that only a few people in that room really knew about the "what is XYZ" query back then.

Now the secret is out, the news hit a forum based on viggin's careful eye. It might have been covered in other forums as well, but I now expect the news to hit the mainstream. But I did make sure to tell the SEO chatters back in November.

How long should I make my domain name? Common answer from a usability expert is, the shorter the better. Make sure the site name is easy to remember and can easily be related to your services. Some SEO's want to take that one step further by putting keyword text in the domain name itself. To what extent should keyword rich text with hyphens be used. A thread was started on this topic at HighRankings but it has not yet been fully developed.

The rule of thumb when it comes to using keyword text in the domain name is to not go beyond two hyphens. For example a site selling blue small widgets does not want to have a domain name that looks like www.cheap-blue-small-widgets.com. Many would say not to even go with a domain name in the format of www.blue-small-widgets.com.

At the Search Engine Strategies conference, the question was brought up and some of the expert panelists said that this is something that search engine can pick up on very easily. If your whole page is focused on selling blue small widgets and your domain name has that name in it clearly to the extent as above, then this looks a tad "spammy".

The search engines (in the future) pick up on this and serve up a penalty. They currently do not, as far as I know but they can.

Hi Everyone,

I'm honored to be a part of the SEOroundtable, and look forward to sharing the top discussions from WebProWorld.

How fitting that our hottest debate is one that started with a post I found here...

The content vs. link SEO debate continues, and as the debaters defend and attack they expose and test the fundamentals of search optimization. And they're mostly keeping their tempers.

From Ken McGaffin's post:
� You absolutely must have great content (and should never be afraid to link out to great content)
� A linking strategy, targeted at top sites can produce tremendous results
� Those results will be greatly enhanced through SEO
� Keep adding content.

SEO take away:
Content and links are king.

I found it quite interesting today about reading the below article in SEOchat.com, that the web analytics firm, Onestat.com decided to release information about the nature of keywords in which most people use to search. While I wasn't surprised in the least bit that two word phrases took the cake, does anyone think this news was a day late and a dollar short. If you are active in optimizing for two word phrases you know its where they most competitive sites are battling for those number one positions, and if you can't make it in the top 10 for a two word phrases, then you will most likely go after another two word phrases or better yet start to target some 3-4 word phrases, which work wonders when completely optimized on sub-pages. I believe this has been observable methods for some time that parallels with how users search to begin with, we are always looking for the best way to search and capitalize on those searches. The engines can shape this, but if we are really looking for something we will do deeper into the rift. So does the increase in three word phrase searching mean there is just too much information presented in two word searches to allow us to find what we really need? Onestat.com reported three-word searches rose by 1.3 percent, while one-word searches decreased 5.7 percent.

Check out the thread here.

There is an interesting post at SEOChat.com's forum in regards to the use of the correct English term "Web site" versus the accepted but not correct term "Website". The larger question in play is when to use incorrect spelling of a term when you know a large percentage of people searching for the term misspell that term.

I would love to hear from the copywriter people and the usability people here on this.

The thread can be found at SEO Chat's forum and is named "Website" vs "Web Site".

Death is the inevitable result of life. We are born. Somewhere along the way we become useful. Then we become useless again and die.

On this day, a life is gone. The life of the Content SEO.

There are two types of SEO's. Not WhiteHats and BlackHats, in case that's what you were thinking. I've never worn a hat and I'm not going to start now. Rumor has it they lead to premature balding.

The Content SEO
The first group I call the copywriters. This group likes to place the chosen keywords in the page titles, in H* tags and in optimized density within the body copy. This group usually also believes in creating redundant "content pages" targeting less than competitive keywords.

The targeting of less than competitive keywords is more often referred to as targeting "more relevant" keywords. For instance, instead of targeting a search term like "web hosting" which you could retire on, they choose to target "Florida web hosting", "expert economical Florida web hosting", and "cheap affordable PHP website hosting in Tampa".

One common trait of the content-focused SEO is the inability to compete for highly competitive keywords.

This is common amongst the SEO copywriters, or the "content SEO" people. They target lots of keywords that are typically less productive than the other group.

Another identifying trait is the common utterance of "PageRank doesn't matter." Or, "PR is dead". Or, "links should occur naturally".

The Link Mongers
The other type of SEO is the SEO that focuses on link acquisition. Sure, throw some keywords on the page, but the bulk of the energy is spent on acquiring links. The Link Monger knows the value of PageRank and the power of anchor text.

"Link Mongering" - it sure doesn't sound pretty. In fact, it isn't pretty. "I want my son to be a doctor, lawyer or link monger when he grows up." ... You're not hearing that on a daily basis. But the fact remains, link mongers own the competitive keywords. It comes down to this:

You cannot keyword density your client into a #1 spot for highly competitive keywords. You cannot page title your client into a #1 spot for highly competitive keywords. The only way you're going to get there is by way of PageRank and anchor text of inbound links.

The bulk of SEO discussions should not be about SEO copywriting. They should be about link generation.

Rest in Peace
Persons practicing SEO would be well advised to note that the day of impotent SEO copywriters dictating the rules is over. The bell tolls for those SEO's of years past. Search engine optimization must focus on link acquisition to be useful.

This is common knowledge these days. No longer can an SEO pass themselves off as useful if they do not go after and get a respectable amount of links for their clients.

In what has become mainstream SEO, the content SEO is scoffed. The old "don't worry about PageRank - worry about creating good content" argument has become a laughable mockery of SEO. Even the beginning webmaster knows the value of PageRank, and that PageRank wins.

The discussions of content SEO vs real SEO may continue, but it's simply a formality. Content SEO is as dead. It's been murdered by the Link Mongers.

In 1996, Bill Gates published an article entitled Content is King. His premise was that on the Internet, content sites - not ecommerce sites - would be generating the bulk of the income.

Although my response to Bill's assertion is laid out in an rant suitable titled Content isn't King, I'd like to make a few points here on SE Roundtable.

Bill's Theory
Mr Gates states, "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting".

TV and Radio broadcasting generates revenue because it's expensive to operate a TV or radio station. The shows aired on TV is uniquely expensive as well. They can charge a premium because of it. Publishing on the web, however, is free.

And when it's easy to do, everybody does it. This brings the price down. Supply and demand. Doctors only get paid what they do because there are fewer of them. If every other person had the skills to be a doctor, they'd be making minimum wage like content publishers.

Bill goes on, "within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won't be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You'll just click on what you want, knowing you'll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis."

Can you imagine? Paying for content?

Bill's last line gives him away -

"Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content. "

"Ideas"? No. Ideas are still a dime a dozen. Ditto for experiences.

You can't charge for content. The consumer will go elsewhere. CPM for banner advertising is at an all time low. Most advertisers simply are not interested in banner ads. Advertisers want to pay for performance. And even pay per performance isn't paying much. Five cents per click through. Ten cents. Twenty five cents or even a dollar. It really doesn't matter because the consumers aren't clicking through.

Case in Point
Suzuki-Bikes.com is a little content site. Some 4,460 pages currently in Google's index. The site averages 2,000+ uniques per day. The Adsense earnings of the site aren't enough to fund my daily Starbucks run. Sure, there have been offers from dealers to buy advertising on the site. At five cents per click, I didn't figure it was worth my time to respond.

An identical site belonging to a Kawasaki dealer generates less traffic. Less traffic, but over $2 million in sales per year.

Content is King? Naw.

Here's a link to the forum thread:Bill Was Wrong

This Christmas, I received a stocking full of coal, with The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White buried among the coal.
It is one of the best presents I've ever received, and has inspired me to make a special plea to all of you to go out and buy it. This book, initially composed sometime in the first or second decade of the last century (in use by 1919 at least), is more utterly necessary now than it ever has been. Due to the explosion of the Web, and especially because of the search engines' love for content, people of many backgrounds are taking up writing to convey their messages to the world. Most of these people, sad to say, are not writers by nature, and it shows. Worse still are those who think they are writers, by nature or often by profession, and who still do not possess a firm grasp of the proper usage of the English language-- to say nothing of other languages, which I will not address here.

Continue reading "A Post-Christmas Thought: On Writing"

Hi everyone-- I'm honored to be a part of this little adventure and hope to have some good discussions here.

For my inaugural post I'd like to mention a little gem from a post on High Rankings Forum's Florida update thread. (Seems every forum has one or ten.) The moderator Old Welsh Guy, in his normal brilliantly funny fashion, has composed a verse for a Christmas card to Google.

Your Algo sucks
times are now hard
here's your XXXXXX
Christmas card

He's kidding, of course (he did fine in the update), but it's pretty amusing.

The upshot of this (long, of course) thread, and the related (very long) threads on the other forums I frequent, is that:
1) Florida's been really hard on a lot of people. The jury's still out on the conspiracy theories, and there's currently a lot of debate among those who chose to make changes to their sites to recover rankings and those who made no changes-- it seems ranking are returning to many, and they're returning to both those who changed and those who didn't.
2) Content sites have fared well. Content seems to be as important as ever, if not more so. Which is a premise from which I will be making a lot more posts in the future: if content is king, how do I get some good content?

3) Don't take free traffic for granted. We're all looking forward to the day when Google has some decent competitors.
But, again, see #2: they all like good, quality content.

I'm probably biased, as a professional content creator, but I think that's a good thing. As pointed out in the Cre8asite thread by member NorthStar, " a large content heavy site with unique content that people want to link to is very tough to fake."

As things settle, I'm planning on posting a bit about good ideas for content creation that I've come across recently. I'll leave the algorithm analyses to those who understand them better-- content can never hurt your site if it's decent, so decent content we shall pursue.