2011
12.13

Defendmyname.com has announced the launch of its new multi media website on Jan 1st New Years Day! The new site will have a new Internet Training Center to educate businesses
on how to improve their online reputation and market their products and services on all the top search engine!

2011
11.06

Google’s latest search change encourages updated content

Retailers hoping to boost search rankings need to keep sites from going stale.

Google Inc.’s most recent change to how it ranks natural search results promises to make new and updated content on e-commerce sites even more important for online retailers.

Google this week said it would change its search algorithm in order to give consumers “fresher” content in search results, according to Amit Singhal, the Google fellow who announced the move in a blog post. The change affects 35% of search results, Singhal says. That is significantly higher than Google’s Panda update, a ranking algorithm change introduced in February aimed at rewarding what Google considered high-quality web sites, and which Google said affected 12% of search results.

This week’s announcement focused on how the ranking changes will affect news and events obtained through search results, but the revised algorithm also is designed to help shoppers find the latest product information, Google says. “For example, if you’re researching the best SLR cameras, or you’re in the market for a new car and want a Subaru Impreza review, you probably want the most up-to-date information,” Singhal writes.

INDUSTRY STATISTICS

Paid search spending increases 7% in Q3
/ SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

Google’s new paid search program ties retailer inventory to ads

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Retailers need to ensure their sites are ready for heavy traffic

Search experts this week encouraged retailers to adjust with the Google changes by finding ways to put fresh content onto their e-commerce sites. “Merchants should rethink both their own product descriptions and also make sure that user reviews are happening whenever possible, especially when they are good reviews,” says Kevin Lee, CEO of search marketing firm Didit.

Unclear is exactly how Google’s web crawling technology will label e-commerce content as stale. But merchants can’t afford to take any chances, Lee says. He advises retailers to update content, and to start the effort with best-selling products and pages that already rank high in search results. “A balanced approach will be to add user reviews to existing content and rotate new reviews in regularly,” he says.

Google didn’t address how the algorithm change will work with updates delivered through social media, including Twitter, through which retailers can communicate information about deals, sales or brand issues. Barry Schwartz, news editor of the Search Engine Land blog, wrote this week that Google cannot crawl Twitter fast enough to keep up with all the messages delivered via that channel. “Google is only introducing a ranking change, not an indexing change that brings in more tweets,” he writes.

Still, that doesn’t mean retailers are off the hook when it comes to social media, another search expert says. “The ‘freshness algorithm’ is Google’s attempt to continue to provide more relevant, real-time results for search queries, further highlighting the need for marketers to accelerate their focus on integrating SEO and social marketing practices to ensure pertinent, up-to-date content is accessible to Google,” says Todd Friesen, director of SEO at Performics, an online marketing firm.

Besides participation in social networks, retailers hoping to keep ahead of the Google changes will want to invest in such marketing services as price optimization—technology that can help a retailer better compete with competitors’ offers—and display ads based on consumers’ behavior, says Eric Best, CEO of Mercent Corp., which helps retailers sell online through marketplaces and comparison shopping engines. “The more frequently a retailer can update ads, price and offers, the more relevant it will be to consumers searching through Google,” he says.

Whatever the effects of the algorithm change over the next few months, retailers hoping to keep up or improve their rankings are unlikely to earn those rewards if their pace proves too slow. After all, Google made its recent ranking change after the completion last year of its Caffeine web indexing system. According to Google, the Caffeine system enables its crawling technology to take in the web in smaller bites than the previous system, resulting in quicker updates to its search index.

“Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and (more) comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you,” said Google software engineer Carrie Grimes when Caffeine was introduced.

Check out the full story on Internet Retailer

2011
10.27

SEO Marketers Start Optimizing BING

Here’s the issue simply. Almost every SEO Company works completely on Google optimization. In fact, almost SEO companies seem to spend all their time obsessing over Google’s infamous algorithyms, how these affect the search engine results and what they can do to get better results. Without knowing what Google is doing, how to make the changes, they can’t advise their clients and make money. If you are to believe the news, Google Panda is Causing Job Losses.

Depending on Google Optimization is a great strategy, but let’s be honest here, it’s one of diminishing value. Since Google’s Famous Panda Update, a lot of the tricks and strategies that “grey-hat” marketers use are not working. Read my article on Google Panda and notice why content is king.

However, if you are late to the Google optimization game, there is something you need to pay attention to. It’s called Bing. Yes, Bing, Microsoft’s Search engine service is slowly growing as much as 3-4% each month and according to some numbers Google is loosing as much as 1-2% of their users each month. If you are focusing on Google, you are ignoring a great opportunity in Bing.

Bing isn’t that different than Google, and from what I’m told, uses algorithms similar to Google and some of them make a lot of common sense. One thing that is evidence in Bing is that similarly, Content Sites that have more than 300 words do better than sites with little or no text.

One huge difference in Bing is that backlinks take a significant less priority than Google. This means that people who have sites that have been around a while, with more content, will always almost be favored more than those that just came around and are trying to use backlink strategy. If you want to think “Bing” you need to start now with creating high content sites that will be around a lot.

2011
10.06

Optimizing For Google Panda

Our search engine climate has drastically changed and evolved this year, there is no doubt that the game has been changed severely by Google this year. That being said, there are still some very strong SEO techniques that are succeeding around the web while other techniques could get your site devalued and even banned quickly. I’ve been lucky to have the majority of my websites and client’s sites do better after each round of Panda, but I took specific steps to ensure their success. Let’s take a look at some of those tips and how you’ll need to be implementing them to stay ahead of the competition.

Panda demands high levels of content for any website to become an authority and you’ll gain trust quicker if you can distribute high volumes of content and gain inbound links from relevant domains in your niche throughout the web space

1. Relationship networking – never before has it been so important to prove your interactions with other peer websites to your own. Especially if your are a blogger or content management system style of website, you’ve got to make sure that you are distributing more unique content across relevant websites throughout your market and niche. Google’s Panda update loves to see relevance in your inbound links and you can build trust quickly this way.

• Distribute unique, quality content across RELEVANT networks online to gain inbound links and authority quickly
• Keep creating high amounts of unique and well-written content on your own site as well
• Panda loves these 2 combined and will greatly increase your ranking weight as your information bank builds on your own domain and others..

Google is focused on improving user experiences in search, imagery and videos are a major player in delivering higher quality user interactions and information communication

2. Incorporating Media into your pages/posts – is more powerful than ever. Since the Panda update we have seen Google place a lot more emphasis and ranking weight on the integration of unique images and video into content creation. In my own experiments I have witnessed that a lot of times a page/post in the SERPs with images and videos will easily outrank a higher word count, but media-less page or post. Not only that, but it seems these pages/posts are indexed much sooner due to their incorporation of media and I do not mean crawled, but actually indexed into ranking on the SERPs. It is very clear that Google wants to improve user interactions with websites and media is a vital part of that.

• Make sure to add keywords to all meta tags
• Target specific keywords from your research
• Distribute the media through all available channels; Youtube, Flickr, Google images, etc etc

Inbound links found in high volume, keyword rich content are highest valued since Google’s Panda updates, many non-contexual backlink methods have been greatly devalued, i.e. profile links

3. Contextual Linking – just like #1, Google has increased the weight of inbound links found within well ranking content pages/posts throughout the net. Non-contextual linking like profiles links, link exchanges, directory listings, etc have been devalued and are nowhere near as powerful as they once were. So how can you establish these types of links?

• Focus on finding backlink sources where you can incorporate your own written content
• Make sure to do some keyword research for each article/topic
• Add keywords consistently in the body, title, description, etc
• Keywords need to be added to any meta tags available
• Press Releases, Guest Blogging, Web 2.0 building, these are all good platforms for contextual links
Loading times and valid HTML/CSS code is vital to receiving first page rankings, Google wants to be sure that their search users will have no problems loading and accessing various sections of your domain

Click here for Webmaster Tools Video on W3C Validation, HTML Errors and SEO

4. Loading Time and Universal HTML/CSS Standards- since Google has made their algorithm updates this year we have noticed that a lot of websites that have majorHTML/CSS errors and/or very slow loading times have dropped in their search engine rankings. Matt Cutt’s specifically talks about these issues in his webmaster tool’s video series and makes the point that, “websites that have minor HTML/CSS errors will not be penalized, but any major errors that affect loading times and usage can be devalued or penalized until fixed”. This seems to have a direct correlation with Google’s focus on improving the user experience when they do searches, if it takes a search user a few minutes to load a website that has broken frames and java script crashes, how will they extract worthwhile information that they are looking for?

W3C Validation is important, clean up all your coding
• Major errors in code CAN affect your rankings, small errors that do not affect loading shouldn’t harm you
• Use cache tools to help improve loading times (WP Super Cache and much more available for WordPress users)
• Make sure to remove old java and flash objects that can cause serious errors and very slow loading times

Panda has shown to place more emphasis on local search results so make sure to integrate all local marketing tactics possible in your SEO campaign

5. Maximize local SEO efforts – this is pretty much a no brainer for any successful SEO campaign, you’ve got to incorporate local targeting and geographic ranking signals as much as possible. Any sort of geographic directories, business listings, and more are vital to getting improved rankings for local terms such as your city, county, and state keywords. These can help you get organic traffic much sooner as well, while it may take you a year or more to break into highly competitive, high volume search queries, you can conquer the local rankings within months. This should usually convert a lot better as well since people often prefer to work with local businesses instead of far off corporations and such. Google Panda has made it clear that gaining any localized search signals will vastly help improve your rankings and organic search traffic.

• Look for Geographic based directories, business listings, forums, blogs etc
• Maximize the content added to these listings, fill out all you can
• Target keywords and focus on the terms/phrases you want to rank for
• Google places, Manta, YP.com, and more are mandatory additions asap to your SEO campaign

2011
08.01

IMPROVE YOUR REVIEWS RATINGS ONLINE

SIGN UP FOR THE FREE TRIAL

We all use search engines and review sites online to learn where to take our business
But, It ONLY takes one bad review or few reviews on the INTERNET to prevent new visitors from becoming your customers.
With Verified Credible you can improve your reviews ratings online in just

3 simple steps

Login to Verified Credible

Import contacts from your existing email accounts or social media sites

Send testimonial or review requests to ONLY your best customers
So in a flash you can watch your business review ratings online IMPROVE!

With Verified Credible you get great, positive, trustworthy reviews for your business on all the major review sites online.
Even Better, potential customers-will know they can trust you…because your reviews and testimonials came from REAL Verified Credible sources.

Get started today with a risk free trial and show your potential customers that your company has been Verified

2011
07.22

2011
07.22

Link Building Explained

Whether you have a small business website that just introduces your products and services to your customers or have an elaborate shopping cart, your website will be of use only when it gets good traffic. To get good traffic, you need good ranking in the search engines. Every niche industry is today filled with heavy competition so getting top rankings in search engines is not an easy task. If you want to beat the competition you should work on building links for your website. All the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing, Lycos etc., consider back links as one of the most important factors to rank your website. Given all the factors even, the number and the quality of the   back links you have will be the only differentiating factor for search engines when there is a heavy competition.

You must therefore have a highly strategic link building plan to boost your website. Link building is not a one time endeavour, it is an ongoing process. You can never sit back and relax saying that you have done everything for link building because your competitors are never going to do that. Only when your competitors stop, you will be able stop and that is never going to happen. So the equation is really simple, you need to work on your website’s link building regularly.

There many link building strategies available in the market today. Not every method available is equally good and effective. You should use the most effective link building strategies. This is indeed a highly time consuming affair. Don’t worry, we will be able to help you build links to your website in the most effective way. We have several years of experience in link building. We make use of only highly safe link building methods so you do not have to worry about getting your website blacklisted or banned by the search engines.

Our link building experts will bring the best link building strategies to you and we have helped several websites get good ranking through our link building services. We offer very affordable link building packages to suit your specific needs. All the links we get will be of good quality links. We will be able to provide you with links from the relevant niche industry and all the links that we will procure for you will be one way links. You will not have to link to any third parties. You do not have to spend all your time in building links, we specialize in building links for websites and take advantage of our expertise in this industry so that you will have your time spared for the other important tasks. Choose our link building services today and you will never regret.

2011
07.22

Social Bookmarking Benefits

Today social bookmarking has become the most popular way of marketing one’s products, brand name and service online. There are plenty of SEO and marketing benefits in social bookmarking. If it is implemented well you cannot find a better way of promoting your brand name on the internet. Today with the Web 2.0 technology, there are many social bookmarking platforms. More and more social bookmarking platforms continue to evolve. One of the reasons for the success of social bookmarking in marketing is because unlike many other marketing strategies, this is an interactive approach. You will be in direct contact with your customers and interact with them on one-on-one. You will be able to feel the pulse of your customers with social bookmarking.

There are many social bookmarking platforms such as blogs, online forums, community websites, video sharing websites, content sharing websites and more. People flock to these websites as they can meet many new people here and establish business relationships here.

Though social bookmarking is one of the most powerful ways of marketing your brand name, products and services, if it is not done with proper planning, you will not be able to get the best results. Taking sporadic efforts here and there will not get your brand name the required attention. Rather, you need to spend a considerable amount of time in actual book marking efforts. The only way to get noticed online is by getting your brand name posted in as many social bookmarking websites as possible. This will not happen if you do not spend time regularly on social bookmarking.

Secondly, you must choose the right content type for your social bookmarking efforts. For examples, the approach you will take in social networks will be different when compared to the approach you will take in blogs. Similarly, the approach you take in content sharing websites will be different from the approach you will use in interactive forums. If you do not make the right choice, you will not be able to get proportional results.

Another important factor that you should note with social bookmarking is that you cannot engage in hardcore marketing with online social bookmarking. If you were to use hardcore marketing strategies, then you will make many people stay away from your networks. Therefore, it is very important to choose the right tone of interaction. Your approach should elicit attention and induce curiosity among the community members. They should not see you desperately selling your products and offers to the other members. You need to maintain a good sense of balance in your approach so that people will feel free to interact with you without the fear of being spammed.

Successful bookmarking requires meticulous planning and consistent efforts and random social book marking effort will only waste your time.

2011
02.02

For any website to succeed in the search engines it needs to have backlinks from relevant high ranking sites. A “backlink” is simply a link on someone else’s site pointing back to your website. In general terms, the more backlinks your site has, the higher it will rate in Google and the other search engines.

While the number of backlinks you have is important to increase you website’s rankings in the search engines, the quality of those backlinks is also very important. First, it is generally better if a backlink comes from a site with similar content. For example, if you have a site that sells dog houses, links back to your site from other sites specializing in dog products or pet products in general will be counted as more valuable than links from other kinds of sites. Second, Google gives more importance to links to your site that are found on pages that have a high PR (page rank). The higher the rank, the better.

Having just a couple links from PR sites of 4-5 can be much more valuable than 30-40 links for PR sites of 0-1. That’s why it’s important to get links from high ranking sites. One way to do this is to look for websites in your market (dog houses, for example) that have high PR and then contact the owner and ask for a link back to your site. This can be a tedious and unsatisfying process since most high page rank sites won’t give people they don’t know a link.

Another strategy is to add your website to high PR directories. This works better, but can get expensive, as many directories of PR 4-5 now charge a fee for your site to be listed.

A third way to get backlinks from high ranking sites is to search for high PR blogs that you can leave a comment on. Often times, you will be able to link to your website address in the comment. This takes some work as you must read the whole post and then leave a valuable, real comment on it. But it works pretty well provided that the webmaster approves your comment.

  • A Post Title
  • The post (at least 100 words)
  • Your anchor text and link
  • The category of your post

After that you submit the post for approval and enter another one. You may enter as many posts as you like for as many different websites as you like. Once your posts are approved they are automatically published on high PR (2-5) blogs that are relevant to your site.

2010
12.24

While Google has always made significant progress in identifying and removing systematic “cheaters”, these changes to the algorithm are more than a line drawn in the sand. Things like hidden text, unnatural keyword density and those comma separated lists are being heavily penalized. Sure, the buying and selling of links will continue, but as the masses catch on to the recent ineffectiveness of these practices it is inevitable clients will abate.

So what does Google’s new Caffeine algorithm want to see?

The new approach catering to Caffeine appears to favor a more altruistic SEO model and rightfully so. Marketers will need to shift priority and think “relevance” rather than just links.

There is general agreement on what a full scale roll out of Caffeine might include and what we can expect to see. I suggest re-examining the content on your site for freshness and uniqueness. You can also leverage your social media presence to diversify your link portfolio. I’m also in the camp of relevancy trumping links, but the two go hand in hand. When you’re developing a link building strategy target some quality and highly relevant backlinks. Take into consideration the link text and position in regards to textual content on the page. Audit your user interface and code, optimize images with related non-spammy meta-tags (GIFs or PNGs for smaller files and JPEGs for larger more detailed images), purge unnecessary duplicate content and take steps to increase page load speeds – there’s a direct correlation in site speed and indexing.

Our recent server upgrade yielded a 900% page loading speed increase and depth of indexing shot up immediately. The spiders don’t like to hang around and waste time. These are just a few quick tips; sustainable organic growth requires a commitment to unique and valuable content creation on a regular basis and the wherewithal to deliver it effectively. In a nutshell, the key to the new Caffeine algo is to build reputation and authority.

It’s not going to be easy to fool Google anymore. To rank well in a Google Caffeine world, you need to think about how you can encourage other people to want to link back to you within a meaningful context.