John Thomas Wieber   Search Engine Optimization- SEO By John Thomas Wieber

Just a quick one here, I discovered a very cool new tool called SEOquake.

This tool when placed in the hands of the right person very powerful, it can be used to examine a multitude of on site and off site SEO (search engine optimization) factors. I just discovered it, and it is fairly accurate and displays a lot of information required to get a quick snapshot or your current SEO.

Have a look, well worth the 4 minutes it takes to install.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

It appears that webmasters are beginning to simply write off Yahoo. Recently Yahoo started to scan websites and display the results within the search results:

Yahoo has labeled this “searchscan” and this with the over active crawl of Yahoo’s slurp is beginning to annoy webmasters around the world. On a thread in webmasterworld there are discussions about slowing down Yahoo Slurp and banning it all together.

Personally from an SEO standpoint, I am torn, traffic is traffic and even if Yahoo only gives you 10% of your traffic that is still good quality free traffic. Now the “grey hat” seo part of me, says block Yahoo Slurp, but not because of it’s over active crawl or because of its new site scan, but block it to stop your competitors from seeing what you’re doing with your link campaigns. Most software tools and competitors use Yahoo to check websites back link profiles. Your back links let your competitors have a clear picture as to what links you have, what links may be new and what links may be paid. Blocking Yahoo will eliminate the competition from seeing what links you have and what links may be new.

If you want to block Yahoo Slurp here is where you can do it.

If your heavy into link building in a highly competitive market, blocking Yahoo may be the answer to staying ahead of your competition.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Until now websites created from Flash (Adobe Flash (previously called Shockwave Flash and Macromedia Flash) is a set of multimedia technologies developed and distributed by Adobe Systems and earlier by Macromedia. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and, more recently, to develop rich internet websites), was invisible to all search engine spiders. This meant that a beautifully created flash website could not be indexed beyond and meta information or simple text included on the website.

Today Google and Yahoo announced that in partnership with Adobe they have the ability to index flash. This should come as a huge relief to high end web designers and site owners who have spent big bucks on beautiful flash websites. This technology has long been suppressed by the SEO (search engine optimization) community, because of this indexing problem.

According to Google software engineers Ron Adler and Janis Stipins:

Google can now:

Index text content within Flash

1) This Flash text can be used for the snippet that appears beneath your link in Google search results.

2) Flash text will be used to compare with keywords used in Google searches.

3) Index able Flash content includes text within Flash buttons and menus.

Index links with Flash

1) Links within Flash files can be followed by Google’s web crawler.

Google cannot index non-textual Flash content

1) Google can’t index images within Flash files.

2) Google can’t index text that appears in Flash-based images.

3) Google will not generate anchor text for non-text, Flash-based links.

Google is referring to this as the “Flash indexing algorithm” which is long overdue considering that flash has been around since 1996, and 12 years is not really the anticipated call to action that one would expect from 3 multi-billion dollar companies (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft).

The SEO community does not recommend creating websites exclusively created by flash, but using it within your site should be just fine now.

I have been reading and studying the term negative search engine optimization (SEO). I find it quite funny how people at Google in particular (Matt Cutts) says Google Bombing or negative SEO is difficult or nearly impossible without high jacking someone’s website. This is totally wrong, but then again he is the same guy saying you need links to get your site to rank, but don’t buy them… (If I hear that loaded answer one more time!).

Google is very smart, what they do is rely on a human being’s general perception that if something is deemed wrong or is generally unacceptable, that most will avoid it. They have been pounding down everyone’s throat that paid links are bad, if you buy links your a bad person or evil webmaster. They talk about penalties and banning websites. In the past penalties were very rare, but recently I have seen several link buyers penalized.

As soon as I see a client penalized, I see the clear path to negative SEO. Each and every time I see or hear about a website penalized for off site SEO work, I create a log of what transpired and what the effects were. Does Google think SEO’s or people involved in search engine optimization are dumb? Well we are not. I have a list of places where links are penalized, I have a list of the types and quantities of links that have been penalized, I know how long it takes and how to avoid it or how to cause it.

I am not talking about buying links for Viagra for a number one ranked website for the search term homes, but you know if the site that ranked #1for homes, ranked between 4-6 for home sales, sell homes, buy homes etc. these are the keywords that a top quality website can be penalized for, you simply build just a few too many really good links. Do not be obvious, do 100% legit SEO (buying links is OK in my book) work for the target site, just do a little too much, a little to quick, and guess what they will be given a -30 or a -45, for several of the over optimized keywords. They will not be penalized for their primary keyword which would require a 100% hand removal from Google or a Hand Penalty from Google, but it is not difficult to get them hammered for their 2nd tier search words.

Needless to say, I can present Google with multiple instances of Proof that this is a fact, and I can certainly repeat the results if required.

Google is crossing it’s fingers that the general SEO community will frown on the part of negative SEO, because of the bad Karma, but in reality what is the difference between getting your site to rank higher (therefore lowering your competitors site) or simply lowering your competitors site so your site ranks higher?

Google is really beginning to upset me with these link threats, and link penalties. If they continue this barrage on SEO companies, everyone will just do very low profile SEO for their client’s sites, and over optimize 3-4 of their competitor’s websites. When multiple SEO companies adopt this theory, Google is really screwed. They will lose nearly all control, and be left unable to properly address which sites should be rewarded and which should be penalized.

For now Google is OK, because of the bad Karma factors and the “it’s wrong to do this”, but it will only take Google penalizing 2-3 top clients before SEO companies will all decided it is so much easier, and more profitable to negative SEO their competitors.

I will say that it is NOT hard, it is NOT difficult. If a group of top SEO and link builder got together, they could probably get nearly any site penalized.

I have been reading about a new search engine called search me http://www.searchme.com

It has an excellent user interface, it appears to be always displaying 3 search results per page, which would heavily increase the importance of being in the top three search results. It is easy to navigate, and is very effective way to shop. It allows you to make judgment calls ahead of time, so you do not waste your time clicking on site that you would have no interest in seeing. An interface and user experience like this will accelerate the speed of search.

In looking at the log files, it appears that their spider is running some type of javascript that allows them to capture everything on your site and allow them to display your entire home page within the search results.

This graphic interface is hot, but the system resources required to scale this type of searching would be enormous. I would imagine they would need a huge amount of infrastructure for this to work efficently.

The search results appear to be heavily weighted towards the URL; a few searches display results with the search term as part of the sites URL are always on top. Needless to say, a great interface is a good start, but the right search results is paramount.

Several large venture capital firms are investing heavily, a total capital investment to date of $43.6 Million. Investors include Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Deepfork Capital and Lehman Brothers Venture Capital.

I spent this evening reading about Link Building. The question is now, what is acceptable link building? The all mighty Google has recent issued warnings to us yet again. I know what used to be OK, but nowadays Google has said that any link that is paid is against Google’s guidelines and that Google plans on penalizing sellers and buyers of links.

I never quite understood penalizing buyers of links? Are you saying now, do not buy links for your website to rank well, buy bad links for your competitors sites so they get penalized? I think I may have to run an experiment on this :-P.

Well it seems now that the masses are kind of fed up with Google’s rules, and I have read in a very popular SEO (Search Engine Optimization) forum that based upon Google’s latest guidelines that nearly every single SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company on earth is now going to be considered black hat (black hat, a term used to describe SEO companies that do not 100% obey Google). Google does not want people “optimizing anything”, they do not want link building, they accept link baiting (although link baiting it now the equivalent of fishing in a pond with 8 BILLION other pieces bait, even if you have the best bait in the pond how is the fish to find you? Google. Can you answer this?) So tighten your drawers, Google is going to change the rules, yet again.

Many SEO experts have been discussing whether anything is really going to change, or if they are just going to scream longer and louder this time? The truth be told that most sharp link builders are always going to be 3-4 steps ahead of Google, and Google will never catch up to these guys. So why bother, all Google is doing is increasing the profitability of the really good link builders. Links are the glue that keep the internet as one, and without them, the internet would be 100’s of 1000’s little internets all completely separate, can never do away with links Google.

Most SEO’s now know that Google does not look fondly upon: links in footers and sidebars, labeling links as sponsored ads or sponsored links, so these old school techniques are now fruitless and hardly worth paying for.

So what Google has done is raise the bar, what we are all going to see is the price of great links going way UP! In recent history, you could get a nice bunch of PR4-5 links for say $35 per month, well I bet in the next 6 months a solid PR5 link is going to be $250 a month, why you ask? Because Google is making it much harder to build out links that are going to pass link juice and count towards your search engine ranking and placement. Google has been applying discounts to nearly all links, footer links, sidebar links, site wide links and any kind of link floating around your website is probably only worth about 25% of what it used to be worth, because Google has been discounting these types of links further and further.

Knowing this a multitude of options and opportunities for links in text have been born. Google views these links in text as a premeditated link. Of course people are all over this theory. There are Pay for Review sites now (where you post a review of a site or product and they include links back to your website), there are 4 versions of software that will index a website and turn any piece of text into a link and so on.

So the next step in Google trying to stay ahead of the link market is relevancy. Not your old standby, a couple of sentences on topic, now you will be required to have an entire page probably 400 words or greater on topic (and you better not even try to have more then 5-6 links per page) or Google will probably not count those links.

Google is driving the price of good, under the radar links UP, so you better forget about the old stand buy link brokers, where quantity was the ticket.  Now you better look for quality, as this is all that will matter, 1 super high quality link is going to be all you need to get vastly improved ranking in the near future.

It has been documented that Google, among other search engines, adds value to domains that have static IP addresses. I suppose that Google must view the expenditure on a static IP address as a sign of how serious the webmaster or domain owners’ intentions are moving forward. It would make sense that spam sites would go through a great expense to get all of their autogenerated websites on separate IP address’s. This would also go hand and hand with the information about the length of domain registration and age of domain having significant influence on your search results.

You may have heard of people in the link building world discussing C Class IP adddress. This is the 3 block of numbers in an IP address which is usually the one that remains static when assigning IP address to multiple domains on one server.

Example: An IP consist of 4 parts AAA.BBB.CCC.xxx - the first part is called A-class, the second part B-class and the third part C-class. So any IP under the last part will be in the same C-class. So for example:

111.222.333.1 and 111.222.333.2 are in the same C-class but
111.222.332.1 and 111.222.333.1 are in two different C-classes

Most small hosts manage very few C Class IP addresses. The search engines have discovered in the past link builders whom had multiple sites on the same C class IP linking to one another.  Google has since devalued or removed any value from links from the same C class IP addresses. They have also reduced the ability of multiple sites on one IP to pass link juice to any other website.

Until recently hosts did not care about keeping sites on dedicated C class IP’s. Recently you have seen a rise on SEO (search engine optimization) hosting services. These are people who have figured this C class IP address formula out and are offering the ability to have lots of C class IP addresses.

Last night I was looking to build out some keywords lists, and I remembered about a few cool tools for developing and building out keyword lists.

One is called spyfu.

Spyfu gives you the ability to review your competitors keywords, what they are focusing on and what they are using successfully (this requires a little homework).

Another is called Keyword Spy

Keyword Spy’s services is similar to spyfu, although they offer greater reporting and a little less data than spyfu.

Once you have compiled your keywords, if your looking to go deeper, you can use a keyword combiner like adwords generator

Just a few basic tips for keyword discovery and manipulation.

MSN, while lacking on its webmaster tools, has recently added some new tools in their MSN adcenter labs.

These are free tools, which are just fantastic!

If you looking to optimize your website, for particular keywords, or looking to micro manage your PPC ads; the tool for detecting commercial intent tool rocks. This basically displays the typical intent of the searcher (based upon their search query) and the probability of the user to actually buy. You can also use this tool to query URL’s or domains to see what the typical visitor’s action or reaction is going to be based upon statisics.

They also have a Keyword forecast tool, which will offer you details of internet search volume on daily and monthly bases, the search trends and the demographics of the searches. They offer this in multiple views, as detailed as one could possibly want (this is quite unusual for MSN or Microsoft).

The tools they are offering for free are second to none, everything: Text ad writing recommendations, keyword group detection, search funnels, product classification, even a tool for keyword extraction and keyword price estimation coming soon.

MSN has also created powerful new tool with API capabilities called the Keyword Services Platform. This information is so valuable to managing your e-commerce business, I am just starting to dig into this, but it has real promise.

I cannot recommend these tools highly enough, get in there and dig for the gold nuggets you need for your business’s future success.

Microsoft has outdone themselves with this tool and not even the master of the net Google has yet to create such useful tools, nonetheless making them free.

OK I thought I should circle the wagons on the webmaster tools, and show you something that will compensate for the short comings of all search engines webmaster tools, the software is called SEOAdministrator.

This has some very good tools. Best of all it will easily run ranking reports for your site, stores the reports and shows you updates each and every time you run it. This lets you watch your search engine rankings rise and (hopefully not) fall, it also shows you how many places each way. It works with nearly all major search engines and as long as your searches do not get too extensive, it runs smoothly without the use of proxies etc. It offers the ability to export reports, and an unlimited amount of URL’s and search terms.

The software does have lots of other functions/services like: link analysis, site index tools, link exchange tools, among other things.

I use this exclusively, I have tried most other software packages out there, and this seems to be the most reliable of them all.