“takes
a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for
similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.”

My
jaw still hurts from hitting the ground after my first viewing of
Photosynth many months ago. This software made a massive impression on
me that has led me to many interesting ideas on the applications for
this software; I will leave these thoughts to another time. For now,
however, lets just say that the advent of a technology such as
Photosynth provided a first glimpse into how images on the web can play
a far greater role than ever imagined.

Evidence 2) PicLens by cooliris
PicLens
is a fantastic plugin that allows searchers to navigate a 3d gallery of
images associated with the topic they are searching. The user can also
surf related images by simply clicking on a small play icon that
appears on images anywhere in their browser (the icon appears on the
image when the user’s mouse hovers over it for a moment). So where does
PicLens get its content from? PicLens has complete access to the image
caches of: Google, Yahoo, Flickr, SmugMug, Photobucket and DeviantArt.

This free, incredibly useful software is available now
and it represents a new way for the masses to think about search;
instead of showing information in a ranking format, PicLens makes
browsing images as simple as a flick of your mouse (momentum will
actually allow the images to move by). Right now PicLens is naturally
designed for images but who says it needs to stay that way?

Evidence 3) SearchMe
When my colleague showed me the preview of SearchMe
I knew I had the linchpin for this very article. SearchMe is a new
search engine in private Beta at the moment but this next generation
search engine has finally married image search in a manner that will
get many tongues wagging.

As the video below outlines in detail
SearchMe allows searchers to type in a search and then define the
intended topic of their search in order to provide the most relevant
results. Once the user selects their topic they are provided with a
slick but simple page showing pictures of each resulting web page that
can be scanned through in a manner similar to PicLens.



Now these are not images in a classic sense,
since they are actually just screenshots of the existing web pages,
however, the technology is extremely similar and it seems natural that
the final version of SearchMe’s image search option would utilize the
same technology.

Tying it all Together
What
is the one thing that all of these concepts have in common? The answer
is marvelously simple; they all focus on the simple concept that a
picture is worth a thousand words. Why show a snippet of content in a
search engine result page when a complete image could say so much more
about the destination?

Are You Excited Yet?
So
are we on the same page now? Are you as fascinated as I am with the
next generation of search? If not, you had better get on board quickly;
there is no doubt in my mind that image-based searching is the natural
evolution of search. Don’t get me wrong, on page content will still
play a large role in algorithms but the days of top 10 results are
numbered.

What Will this Mean to SEO?
Basically a few existing elements of search engine optimization will become more important:

1. Web
   pages will have to be designed with a tighter focus on usability and
   simplicity for screenshots to appear interesting/relevant enough to
   click on.
2. Images will always need to be appropriately tagged and described.
3. Web
   site images will have to be picked with more care from stock
   photography sites in order to capture the eyes of image-surfing
   prospects.
4. SEOs will find it useful to include sales-oriented information in images but not at the expense of the image.
5. Content
   around images and the overall page text must be extremely relevant to
   the image and the description and tags that are attributed to it.

In
short, the evolution of search will continue to do what it has always
done; make us all work harder to provide better quality content. One
thing is for certain… the evolution of search just makes search engine optimization services more interesting and necessary in order to maintain search success in multiple search environments.

Retrace Your Steps

Write
a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past
3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your
content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you
write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you.
Here are some common situational culprits:

• You
  just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site
  experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality
  hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers
  before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not
  removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while
  it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively
  affected but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search
  engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.
  




• The
  structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the
  traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not
  then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any
  visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the
  new site structure.
  




• Contact your hosting company to
  check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases
  search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and
  it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your
  rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has
  occurred then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking
  woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been
  offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should
  reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in
  rankings but in most cases they will return to pre-incident status.
  
  

Check Your Content

Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how
quickly a website’s rankings can drop when someone accidentally
overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the
content and if you find old content just overwrite it with the newer
content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your
website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even
a day.

Check Your Server Headers

When
a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any
commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable
in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect,
unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site.
We use the free SEO Consultants Check Server Headers Tool to review any headers and take action if required but there are others freely available as well.

Search Engine Webmaster Tool Resources

If you have not already done so I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center.
Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from
each respective search engine’s perspective) for site owners such as:

• Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why.
• Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
• Who is linking to your website.
• Which pages are the most popular on your website.
• Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.

In addition these free webmaster resources allow you to submit an XML sitemap of your website so that you can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website.

Search Your Site for SPAM

It
is possible that your site has been “lucky” enough not to have been
penalized until now for certain content transgressions. You see, search
engines don’t always catch SPAM right away. In fact, I occasionally
find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see blatantly spammy
sites appearing in the top 10 search results. Your site may not be
entirely spammy but all it takes is for one transgression to come to
light for a search engine to penalize your search engine rankings. What
SPAM is and how to identify it is an article unto itself so here are
some helpful resources for you to review:

• 15 Shades of SEO SPAM by Jim Hedger (written in 2006 but still applicable)




• Wikipedia’s Definition of SPAM has some great content worth reading as well.
  
  

Contact an SEO or Request a Forum Review

If
you haven’t found a reasonable answer after following the instructions
above I would recommend either contacting a reputable SEO company for
advice or posting your ranking problems publicly on a popular search
marketing forum within a resource like Webmaster World.
There are a lot of people on forums that can be incredibly helpful and
may have an answer for you. But a word to the wise, make sure the
person providing advice has a solid reputation. I strongly recommend
reviewing a number of their previous posts and Googling them to ensure
they have suitable experience to provide advice – unless of course you
have a ‘no duh’ moment where their advice makes perfect sense.

• the internet address (loosely connected to location) known as the IP
• browser type (Internet Explorer or Firefox or..)
• the screen resolution of the browser used
• time and date of the request
• the page requested for viewing
• the website the visitor came from (known as a Referrer)
• if applicable, the keyword(s) that were used to find your website on a search engine
• etc.
  

Once
this data is collected it is saved on the server in a logfile for later
use and over time it is often overwritten with new data so the files do
not get too large; they bulk up very quickly especially on high-traffic
websites.

How Can Logfiles Help Improve Your Website?
Now
that you know what data is collected it is time to explain, in general
terms, how this data can be used to help your website. There is a wide
variety of information that can be gleaned from a complete logfile such
as:

• How long visitors stay at your website or on a particular page.
• What pages they visited.
• Where visitors are viewing your website from geographically.
• What keywords were used to visit your website and which search engines were driving the highest volume and/or quality traffic.
• Which pages had the highest or least traffic.
• The average time a visitor stays at your website: often a great indication of the ‘stickiness’ of your website.
• You
  can determine the effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaign by
  tracking visitors specifically delivered from the campaign.
• Identify potential pay-per-click fraud using tools like ClickTracks Professional that has a click fraud reporting tool.
• and much more…
  

So What’s the Issue?
Many
hosting company’s are smart enough to include a basic web analytics
program with every account. These programs are decent for anyone who
wants to simply find out the traffic to their website and a myriad of
other basic stats. However, there is often a pitfall to these basic
programs. You see in order to save on computer performance the hosting
company usually sets their servers to collect only the minimal data
these basic systems require. As a result, more complex logfile-based
analytics programs may find themselves starved of the data they need to
operate fully. This is where my clients have found themselves before;
they have sub-par logfiles and are forced to try and convince their
hosting company to change their data collection methods to meet more
advanced standards.

If you have no interest in website analytics
you may find this whole scenario to be a non-issue. I completely
understand, however, put yourself a year or even a month down the road
when your website is taking off and you need to know more about the
visitors to your website. You just might find yourself in this same
frustrating scenario and it will seem absolutely insane how hard you
have to push to get this data properly collected. Unfortunately, unless
you are leasing your own private (dedicated) server from the hosting
company they tend to set up their shared servers with only the basic
needs of the majority in mind. As a result, the only way to force
change is if more customers consider it a basic need – thus the reason
for this article. Help me affect change so that you save yourself a
headache in the future!

How to Be Sure Your Server is Collecting the Right Information
Most
of you cannot check your logfiles for completeness with an analytics
program so you will have to trust your server administrators to do
their due diligence based on the following question.

Note: If
you like you can just copy and paste the following question (noted in
red) and send it to your hosting company support staff:

Hello,

I
would like to make sure my website’s logfiles have the necessary
information to run a higher end web analytics program. Is your server
set up to collect the data on my website? I need this data to properly
analyze the traffic on my website.

• Date and Time
• Client IP Address
• HTTP Method
• Requested file and Query string
• User Agent
• Referrer
• Status code
• Cookie (preferable, but not required)
  

If you are unsure of the answer or you need to set this up then please review the settings that need to be enabled on Apache servers or Microsoft Internet Information Servers; these pages include instructions if you need them.

Sincerely,
<>


My Hosting Company Disregarded This as Nonsense
I
fully expect some will and that is because many website owners still
care little or nothing about web site statistics so they have not even
used the basic data to its fullest yet – and hosting company’s are
aware of this. In fact, a good friend who owns a hosting company
himself guessed around 95% of his website clients never even look at
their stats. This is all true, however, does that mean that important
data should not be collected for those who do want to delve deeper into
analytics? I don’t believe so and the changes you are requesting will
only increase the size of the logfiles for your website a small amount.
Unless of course you don’t even have logfiles which is enough for me to
recommend you take your services elsewhere.

Why Not Use Google Analytics Instead?
Google
Analytics is an awesome solution for many small businesses. It does not
require logfiles and it takes a marginal amount of work to begin
acquiring proper data. In fact, I think it is a great tool for the
majority of businesses that want to wade into a mid range analytics
solution providing you are comfortable with Google having access to
your stats. That said, there is one MAJOR flaw in using Google
Analytics… it does not have reliable click fraud reporting. You see
many of my clients use ClickTracks to monitor their pay per click
campaign for click fraud which is not something I would ever trust
Google to police itself on. That does not mean I do not use Google
Analytics. In fact, whenever possible I use both ClickTracks and Google
Analytics in tandem for redundancy especially when certain capabilities
such as cookie tracking are not available from a hosting provider -
Google includes cookies by default.

In Summary
Many
website owners have no idea what they will or will not need in the
future to properly administrate their online marketing campaigns. This
article discusses a simple adjustment to the accumulation of website
logfiles that I strongly believe all competent hosting companies should
implement in order to provide scalability for their clientele. The
adjustment will provide the additional information that a competent
analytics solution will need to provide accurate statistics.

ASK OVERVIEW

Ask
differs from the other search engines because it has fully rolled-out
universal search. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term
universal search is the integration of results from a variety of
sources (i.e. images, video, local information, news, blogs, etc.) into
a single results page. Although Google has implemented universal search
to some extent Ask is the first search engine to leap head-first into
these complex waters and they have done a great job of it. Since
universal search is slowly going to be rolled-out across Google, MSN
and Yahoo, Ask is a great place to prepare for the competitive world of
universal search. The areas I will cover are images, blogs and feeds,
local search and mobile.

ASK IMAGE OPTIMIZATION

Just
how do you get an image to show up within Ask.com’s universal search
results? The key is to remove any doubt of the image’s relevance to the
keyword you are trying to achieve rankings for.

1. Alt tags need to be created and must clearly represent the topic of the picture while utilizing the target keyword.




2. The
   content nearby the image should be relevant to the picture and for best
   results should include the keyword used to describe the picture in the
   Alt tag.




3. The filename of the picture should utilize the keyword.

ASK’S LOCAL SEARCH: ASKCITY

AskCity
is Ask’s local portal where various maps and locally themed content
(such as event news, theatre tickets, etc.) can be readily found.
AskCity was launched in December 2006 as a far superior upgrade over
Ask Local and it remains a solid leader in the growing and highly
competitive local search marketplace. Fortunately having a presence at
AskCity only requires that your business is added to their database if
it is not already there.

How to Submit Your Business to AskCity

Submit your business information to askcitybusiness@help.ask.com with the subject line “Ask City Feedback – Business”. Ensure the following information is added to the email:

• Business name and complete address
• Phone number
• The category your business best fits
• The website URL
• A contact person’s email address

According to Ask the turnaround time is no more than 28 days.

Tip!
You might notice that your business profile (once it is online) has a
rating system attached to it; shown as a five star system. If you wish
to influence your rating then I suggest sending your happy customers to
CitySearch, Yelp.com, and Insiderpages where these results are drawn
from. Once they are there have them find your listing and provide a
positive review of your business.

MAXIMIZING VISIBILITY IN ASK BLOGS & FEEDS

Ask is the proud owner of Bloglines
which is one of the foremost news aggregation tools on the web and
happens to be the database behind Ask Blogs and Feeds. To ensure that
your blogs and feeds are included in this system I suggest creating an
account at Bloglines and be sure to include your feed within the
profile.

In order to have any chance of
influencing your position within Ask Blogs and Feeds you need to be
aware of a couple things. First, the order of results within Ask’s
Blogs and Feeds is determined by a combination of Ask’s ExpertRank
algorithm (their intensive search engine algorithm) and Blogline’s vast
12 million plus blog database. Ask uses this combination to create the
first order of results which is dictated by relevance; not by date
which is the most common first viewing at Ask’s competitors.
Consequently, it is important that you pay close attention to the
relevance of the keyword density in your title, body and links within
each post you write on your blog. By keeping your ideal keyword ranking
in mind while writing your posts you will have a better chance of
obtaining a ranking based on relevance.

Secondly,
aside from ordering results by relevance and date (noted as “most
recent”), Ask also offers a sorting by popularity. I can only postulate
how this works but it makes good sense that a popularity ranking is
derived from a mingling of Ask’s monitoring of the stickiness of
certain articles (how long users stayed at an article before returning)
and how many times a feed and/or a post is accessed within the
multitude of user accounts at Bloglines. Considering these factors it
stands to reason that creating a sticky blog post is the clearest and
most obvious first requirement. The second requirement would be to get
active in the Bloglines community and try to spread the word about your
quality blog(s) throughout your community. The more people that add
your blog feed to their Bloglines profile and interact with it, the
better chance you have of achieving a top spot when results are ordered
by popularity.

ABOUT ASK MOBILE

Ask Mobile
utilizes ExpertRank and appears to be based on Ask’s standard website
database. This may seem odd at first. After all, how can Ask provide
mobile users with full size websites? The trick lies in their use of
Skweezer technology that squeezes normally unwieldy websites into more
digestible one column sites for mobile users. It may seem that there is
nothing that can be done then to influence mobile rankings at Ask. Not
true, the answer lies within the fact that Ask Mobile is focused on
providing local results to cell users while they are on the go. With
that in mind it makes sense that you improve your website’s odds of
being found by ensuring it has a comprehensive listing in AskCity.

Tip! If
locally based results are extremely attractive to you then I also
suggest adding your physical address information within the footer of
every page so that Ask and other locally focused search engines have a
better chance of associating your website with a region.

SITEMAPS ARE CRITICAL

Ask’s
spider is the least active of the big 4 search by far. When reviewing
client spider reports I see Ask visiting websites 50% less or more than
MSN, Yahoo and Google. In fact on many websites that have not yet added
a sitemap or have less than ideal site structures Ask often does not
even index pages deep within their website(s). As a result, submitting
a sitemap to Ask is critical if you want your deep content to be
properly indexed.

1. First create a sitemap. On StepForth’s recommended SEO tools page we noted our favourite tool currently: Vigos Google Sitemap Generator.
   Download this free utility and have it spider your website. Once it is
   complete set whatever custom data you want (info is provided within the
   program) and then generate the sitemap.xml file. Place this file within
   the root of your website and move to step 2.
   




2. To submit your sitemap to Ask
   you have two options: add a link to the sitemap into your Robots.txt
   file or simply inject your sitemap.xml address into the following URL
   and then visit it:
   
   http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
   
   
   Of the two options I strongly recommend going the route of adding the
   sitemap auto discovery link to your robots.txt file because this is now
   an agreed method of submitting a sitemap amongst the major search
   engines. Just place the following code on its own line within your
   robots.txt file:
   
   SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

USING ASK AS A RESEARCH TOOL

Ask
has a helpful resource included in its universal search layout called
“narrow your search”. Try typing in your keyphrase in Ask and then take
a look at the narrow your search section of the page. There you will
see popular searches that are relevant to your keyphrase. Record this
information when conducting keyword research because it is a valuable
glimpse into what Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm considers closely relevant
and it may also show what users are actually searching for.

OTHER INFORMATION

There are a few personality traits that you should be aware of when working with Ask that are quite unique:

1. Ask
   does not currently support the “nofollow” tag which could mean that any
   link leaving your website is considered a vote of confidence for the
   destination site.
   




2. Ask utilizes a site/content
   preview window for each listing it presents; represented by a binocular
   icon. Since users may use this tool to get a glimpse of your site
   before visiting it is more important than ever to ensure the content
   above the fold (that appears first without scrolling) is enticing to
   users and relevant to their search.

CONCLUSION

I
am solidly impressed by the technology at Ask and its successful foray
into the realms of universal search. In fact, my research for this
article has moved Ask from a bystander in my set of daily search tools
to the forefront. I highly recommend utilizing Ask for your search
needs and to keep an eye out for future technology additions to this
solid search engine. In my opinion Ask is cutting edge enough that we
can expect many search engines will be copying their successful
implementations in the future.

Now… if only
Ask could get the positive attention it deserves. If I were them I
would start by creating a stronger connection with webmasters to
interact with them and build awareness. That would be far more
effective than the ad campaigns they are currently flooding the
airwaves with.

WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION

Except for the following elements, optimizing for MSN is identical to optimizing for Yahoo.

Fresh Content is King: I suppose technically this is not an element of ‘optimization’, however, this article would not be worth its salt if I didn’t express how highly MSN regards fresh content. If your site is in a competitive marketplace and you are finding it difficult to get a leg up on your competitors in MSN then write original content in order to build up your site and reputation. MSN appears to elevate websites that regularly update their content and a blog is a great way to post this content for others to read and favour you with links. If you would like some information on how to get a blog up and running from start to finish then I suggest reading Blogs 101.

Themed structure: this topic is identical to that of my Yahoo article, however, it is vital enough to mention it again. Construct your website using a themed structure where core site topics (themes) have their own unique section of the website to themselves. When the search engine spiders index the content within this section they will be given absolute clarity as to what the section is about. For more information see the example within the Yahoo Optimization article.

Basic optimization principles hold true: take out your SEO basics handbook and follow the rules when optimizing for MSN and you have done the best you can. Specifically focus on inline links (links to pages within sentences) and the use of heading tags to fortify rankings at MSN.

Navigation: pages with text navigation which lends itself to simpler and more relevant indexing are performing well.

WEB SITE SUBMISSION

Unlike Google and Yahoo, MSN does not yet have a fully operational Webmaster Central for webmasters to submit sitemaps and to acquire insight into their website profile on MSN; it is currently in private beta so it is not available yet. That said I feel that submitting a website sitemap is extremely important. Fortunately there are two known ways to get your sitemap submitted to MSN:

Option 1) The best method for submitting your sitemap is by adding a sitemap reference in your Robots.txt file using the following format:

Sitemap: http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml

Option 2) A back-door strategy can be used to submit your sitemap to MSN through the news aggregation service called Moreover. To submit your sitemap substitute the bolded text with your own information in the following URL:
http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml

LINK BUILDING

MSN places a great deal of weight on incoming links and does not appear to apply as many filters to the links that Google or Yahoo do. As a result, ethical or not, many link building strategies such as reciprocal link building and paid links appear to pay dividends.

It is also noteworthy that MSN’s spider is very active so any incoming links that you receive will often be spidered within a week. Furthermore, MSN’s link filtering systems are not as bogged down as the other search engines (less traffic perhaps?) so incoming links appear to affect rankings faster which tends to help when tweaking a campaign and measuring the value of links.

CONCLUSION

As you can see there is little to report on the intricacies of optimizing for MSN because, quite frankly, MSN is fairly predictable and by the book; write good original content, optimize it well using the techniques outlined in the Yahoo optimization tutorial and ensure to submit your sitemap to MSN. If you combine those elements with a solid link building campaign then you are sure to move into a ranking where you can continue to tweak your optimization until you reach the top

OVERVIEW:
Optimizing for Yahoo!

Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling.
I say this because many of the requirements for a successful
ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago
and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content
boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly”
I do not mean use SPAM; by nature SPAM and optimization do
not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black
and white in fact).

The following
are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid
rankings in Yahoo.

WEB
SITE OPTIMIZATION

SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10
years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect
time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization
for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some
search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page
elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property
with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following
elements:

Title
Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium
sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase.
Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase
in the title tag. For an example check out “car
sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the
top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites
listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase
or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The
ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that
have are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization
is not required to attain a top ranking.

Meta
Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence
of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium
sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include
one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep
in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the
description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to
make it alluring.

Meta
Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered
ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however
Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt
to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase
and then all following words or phrases should be ordered
according to their relevance to your website; place the most
important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should
be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat
words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within
the tag.

Keywords
in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely
represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based
filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past
your competition.

Headings:
Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page
where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In
other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading
1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on
the page.

Alt
text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate
ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must
not provide information that is already written on the website.
ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description
of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an
incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is
totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility
to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes
the page.

Inline
Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial
to include links to related pages from related content. These
links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized
for the same keyphrase you linked from.

Site
Structure: Site structure is a vital component to
ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces
where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method
that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as
well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true
technique that revolves around the linear progression of related
content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing.
The following example should shed some light on this subject:

Your site
is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a
linear site structure you would focus each section of the
site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi
A5″ as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move
deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content.
The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted
by links to other vehicles – only information on the
A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of
the website and because this section of the site is utterly
focused on the subject “Audi A5″ the odds of achieving
a ranking for that term increase considerably.

LINKS

When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity.
Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize
in content directly relevant to the content on your own website.
Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating
it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility.
In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is
entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order
to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they
like your site so much. Finally, there is another tactic that
has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using
PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press
release can easily build the links you need in no time at
all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press
releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link
relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press
releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should
be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.

SITE EXPLORER SETTINGS

Yahoo’s
Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your
website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not
already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer
and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that
you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website.
Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site
Explorer functionality that may help your website perform
on Yahoo:

• Make
  certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo
  
  If you haven’t already done so use a XML
  sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website
  and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed”
  form within your website’s Site Explorer profile.
  
  
• Removing
  unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on
  within Site Explorer
  
  Does your URLs content session ID’s or other dynamic
  content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this
  information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately
  can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has
  implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management
  section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”. Here are
  the
  instructions to use the Dynamic URLs tool.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo
promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results
the following points appeared noteworthy:

• Ensure
  open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
  
• A lot
  of our client’s older content appears to be sticking
  to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a
  result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content
  is not currently gaining much weight in the Yahoo algorithm.
  
• In
  many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and
  their sites border on SPAM. Considering the top ranking
  these sites have it appears Yahoo’s SPAM filters are
  far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will
  change this in the near future but then again I have been
  surprised how long this has been the status quo.
  
• One
  common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement
  in the Yahoo Directory provides an instant boost to Yahoo
  rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence
  that the annual $299 fee will increase rankings dramatically
  in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a
  Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link
  that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine
  that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
  
• Yahoo
  Search Submit was re-introduced
  back in February 2007 to significant
  criticism due to the potential favouritism to those
  who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative
  feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to
  paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting
  story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster
  got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for
  inclusion (“Banned
  from Yahoo?”). A second reason Search Submit may
  be worthwhile is the guarantee that your site will be indexed.
  Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service
  allows you to recommend your own title and description tags
  for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not
  normally be indexed by Slurp.

• URLs vs Name Brand:
  the big advertisements are more often recommending prospects search for
  their name online rather than provide a URL. This is because a high
  percentage (sorry can’t remember the #) of prospects cannot remember
  the URL later but have little problem remembering the brand.
  
  
• Cover Your Assets: When
  advertising offline make certain to buy paid placements for the many
  potential misspellings from your campaign. This recommendation also
  includes purchasing the applicable misspellings of the campaign URL for
  those that use it. If you fail to cover these gaps you can lose a
  substantial number of potential buyers.
  
  
• The Special K Campaign: One
  of the speakers noted a branding campaign that many of us likely
  witnessed during the 2006 Christmas/New Years season by Kellogs. The
  concept of the popular TV commercial was that Special K wanted to help
  you in your bid to become healthier. The crossover to the Internet
  occurred when anyone typed in “Special K” into Yahoo (who was a
  participant in this campaign) they were provided with a co-branded
  customized search result page that provided targeted routes for users.
  One such route was to a forum area where users could get help and ask
  questions about their bid to get healthier. The other was a co-branded
  tips section where there was plenty of advice on snack eating,
  associated diets, food myths, etc.
  
  So what does this branding
  campaign demonstrate? Special K took an approach that is now the spirit
  of social marketing; they were not directly asking people to buy
  Special K but they were building credibility for their brand by
  partnering with their prospects in their bid to get healthier.
  Brilliant!
  
  
• A Funny Bit About Contextual: I
  have never been a big fan of contextual advertising so when the search
  agency representatives on the panel were asked how they felt contextual
  worked into their marketing plans I perked up. What I heard made me
  grin ear to ear… the panelists seemed a bit perplexed for a moment
  and then in their own turn essentially said contextual advertising was
  only considered with any money that was left in a campaign. In other
  words…. forget about it unless you have some pennies to spare and you
  want to really blanket the world.
  
  
• How will the growth of universal search affect paid search marketing?:
  I was surprised by the answer to this question. Essentially the agency
  panelists agreed that universal search could be bad for paid
  advertising. The reason they cited was the more accurate organic search
  becomes the less likely it is that searchers will act on paid
  advertisements. I was surprised more by their candor than anything. In
  my opinion they are entirely correct which is why I firmly believe that
  organic search engine optimization is a key component to every online
  marketing campaign.
  
  
• Yahoo Universal Search: Yahoo
  representative Kelly Graziadei noted that Yahoo is currently testing
  various forms of universal search within its results. One such example
  can be seen by searching for “Transformers”. In this instance Yahoo has
  decided to keep the top 10 organic rankings intact but they have
  preceded them with a graphic enticing viewers to check out the movie
  trailer to the popular movie or see reviews and find show times in
  their zip code.
  
  
• Local Better than International: Scott
  Linzer, Director of Search Marketing at Universal McCann loosely noted
  that the campaigns which made the more time consuming foray into
  creating locally targeted campaigns experienced a better bang for their
  advertising dollar in contrast to the more common national approach.
  
  
• PPC and Organic are a Logical Pairing:
  both of the agency advocates noted that even after achieving a #1
  ranking for a specific term there are direct benefits to continuing
  with a paid campaign for the very same term. To back this up they
  stressed the benefit of multiple locations for branding but they made
  an additional point that I thought very logical: the content within
  paid advertisements are easier to control and to revise to improve
  clickthroughs than organic rankings currently are.
  
  
• What is a Reasonable Conversion Percentage?: I
  asked Scott Linzer this question and his response was that 2 percent
  was a reasonable conversion expectation for a paid campaign. Any lower
  than 2 percent requires serious scrutiny and continued testing. Of
  course, I expect no one ever stops testing. I should note that the
  company Scott works for, Universal McCann, handles a great deal of
  Microsoft’s paid advertising so I was happy to get his opinion on this
  question.

There you are ladies and gentlemen. I will have more
to come on Wednesday. For now I am signing off and preparing for the
next day of fun. All the best, Ross Dunn.

• It is extremely important that
  RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a
  website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users
  and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that
  you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without
  fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed
  provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification
  that a feed is available.
  
  Furthermore it is recommended to
  create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and
  place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I
  would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page
  content.
  
  
• A WordPress plugin was noted called the “SEO Title Tag Plugin“.
  This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to
  see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the
  associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags
  play a significant role in rankings.
  
  
• If you use paid
  Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it
  also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically
  used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated
  RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog
  directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
  
  
• If
  you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular
  piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the
  key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and
  contact them with your story.
  
  If your story interests even one
  of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount
  of publicity for zero dollars.
  
  During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic
  to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics.
  Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the
  capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will
  provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a
  particular topic.
  
  Step 1)
  Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within
  the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not
  find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording
  for the same topic.
  
  Step 2) Look
  at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or
  popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner
  subscription counter with the blog’s current readership OR take the URL
  of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using “linkdomain:www..com” (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.
  
  Step 3)
  Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s)
  starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.
  
  Note:
  I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of
  results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is
  certainly a great place to start.
  
  
• Promote your
  latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger’s vanity.
  Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name
  and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the
  blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their
  name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will
  read it.
  

General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:

1. Providing
   full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a
   far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
2. Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
3. Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
4. Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
5. Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.
   
   

Optimize Your Blog’s Linking Structure For Best Results

1. Provide
   a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not
   get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are
   performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get
   more mileage from them.
2. Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
3. If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the “Sticky Posts” plugin which allows you to ‘stick’ an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.
   
   

Addressing Blog Duplication Concerns
By
opening up categories (a.k.a. ‘labels’ on Blogger) to the search
engines you increase the likelihood of having a great deal of
duplicated content. Fortunately the search engines have, so far, been
quite clear that duplicate content in blogs is not a concern because it
is a natural consequence of labeling. That said, there was a WordPress
plugin noted that would allow you to create controlled article excerpts
(or teasers) within the category pages. It is called “Optional
Excerpts” and by using it you can maintain the authority of the core
posting since the label pages will only provide a teaser versus the
full text of the article.

• Cost Effective Promotions: Socially promote your website and build links using interns. It is a great way to affordably promote a company and train potential long-term employees. After all, the interns will get to know your brand very well and become extremely familiar with the social marketing avenues.
• Accurate Keyword Analysis: Where accuracy is absolutely vital (most cases), when conducting keyword analysis you should check to make certain that your keyword data is consistent across multiple research tools such as Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool, MSN Adlabs, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, etc. This is especially important when you are suspicious of the keyword order from a specific provider. Note that MSN Adlabs was a tip within itself at the conference; it offers a wonderful toolset! (Google please copy this!).
• Write Headlines that Work: One of the presenters (I think it was Danny Sullivan) recommended reading an excellent article by the New York Times called “This Boring Headline is Written for Google” which gives valuable insight into how headlines that work in print and on web differ so greatly. Here is an excerpt that sets the tone of the article: “Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that,’ “observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.
• Go Google Local or You’re Loco: Getting a free local listing with Google should be a no-brainer for everyone because it can provide your company with a free listing above all other organic listings. For example, just type in “Victoria BC tours” on Google and you will see the first 3 rankings are local. These rankings were free and I am sure have paid off immensely by usurping the official organic rankings by 3 crucial positions. For more info learn how to add your company for free in Google Local.
  

Excellent SEO & SMM Research Tools
The SEO panel provided a few examples of the great widgets and applications they use to make their life easier. Here are a few, including my own favorites:

• SERPH: track the ‘buzz’ of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search tool
• SEO for Firefox: a great plugin from SEO Book
• XENU Link Sleuth: a popular tool for many SEOs, XENU can quickly analyze your own or a competitor’s site.
• Groowe Search Toolbar: install this toolbar and you will have access to at least 10 search engine bars within one application.
  Note: Here is where the SMX tips stop and my personal recommendations begin.
• Compete: this great free tool can provide a statistical comparison of up to 5 different websites. Excellent for competitor analysis.
• Alexa: Alexa is the granddaddy of sources for competitor analysis data. Check out your own website’s profile and see where it stands in comparison to your competitors.
• WWW or Not?: Is link popularity split between two versions of a domain name (i.e. http://domain.com vs http://www.domain.com)? If so, this tool will tell you. This is valuable if you want to see if your own website has extra link popularity sitting on the sidelines from other sites that have linked to the ‘wrong’ address. Learn how to fix this situation for your website.
• PR Prowler: although PageRank is not nearly as transparent as it once was PR Prowler is serves as a helpful method for finding the best sites to get links from or to advertise on.
• Check Server Headers Tool: although slightly technical this tool, provided free by SEOConsultants.com provides valuable insight into the setup of yours or your competitor’s servers. For example, StepForth uses this tool to verify that our clients have properly set up their server redirects (301′s) so that duplicate content issues are avoided. It is also used extensively within our competitor analysis reports; it is useful to see how your competitors might have an edge over you.
• DomainTools.com: Domain Tools is one of my favorite sites for competitor analysis. The most useful component, the Reverse IP Tool, allows me to plunk in a single competitor’s domain and then see every other website that is hosted on its server. In rare instances where the co-hosted domains are owned by the competitor I can get a hint at any future marketing plans my clients should be made aware of.
• Robots.txt Syntax Checker: There is nothing worse than making an error in a Robots.txt file and accidentally dropping a site out of the search engines. The free Robots.txt checker will review your Robots.txt file; ensuring it is properly created and it will provide you with the rules within the file in plain language to ensure everything meets your approval. This is a valuable tool for avoiding serious indexing issues.
  

More to Come!
I can’t believe how much info I have to write about from SMX and the latest related news! As I write down more information about SMX I come up with my own ideas and comments so this series is going to span at least one more article. I hope you are enjoying it. Next we will discuss Social Media Marketing.