Google’s newest version of Google Trends is now live. The tool still have the ability to show ecommerce business owners how popular particular search terms are across geographic regions and languages. The latest update include numbers on a graph that is downloaded to an excel spreadsheet.
This is possibly one of the most powerful, free keyword analytical tools available. In the first graph you’ll notice that I’ve added several SEO/eMarketing keywords. When I start analyzing keywords, I start at the lowest common denominator and work my way up. You’ll notice in the following chart that SEM was once an unused term. IT has been growing dramatically in the last 12 months. The last half of 2007 saw an increased exposure of the word eMarketing. However, notice that Internet Marketing is fast falling from the ‘user’s’ eye.
Complete article on Using Google’s Web Trends for Keyword Research
Google finally admitted to the existence of the ‘-60 penalty.’ This is not news to anyone who saw Google destroy their link campaign efforts last September, or saw their search engine placement plummet January 12, 2008.
This penalty pushes a web page/web site down sixty places, to penalize what Google considers bad links. The problem is, Google changes the rules so often, even the SEO pros are left scrambling to figure out what Google wants.
The two most common reasons for being banned are duplicate content and using non-Google PPC programs.
Complete article on Surviving Google’s Penalties
If you’ve ever tried getting a domain name that is topically relevant to your site and still contains your primary keywords, you know this can be an aggravating process! You can easily spend hours trying to find that perfect domain name with a .com extension.
Here’s the basic steps to this exercise in futility.
1. You type in your primary keyword phrase, but its taken.
2. Then you add some hyphens to separate your words, but that’s taken.
3. Then you try some plural and singular variations - No luck.
4. You might try adding extra words like "site", "depot", "online", "blog", or even using numbers like "4" to mean "for".
5. And when all that doesn’t work you find yourself contemplating how bad it would be to use the .biz or .info version with your primary keywords. Enough!
Complete article on A Trick to Finding a Keyword Rich Domain Name
Matt Cutts made a ten-minute keynote speech, at the Web 2.0 conference, called “What Google Knows About Spam.” The video is available on Matt’s blog. It is an eye opening look into SEO and how Google hits spam .
Matt Cutts has worked for Google for 8 years. He wrote hundreds of articles on search engine placement and the dangers of spam. Most of the news has become ghost whispers, always repeated, principally ignored. Google uses 100 different elements to rank a page. Most webmasters focus on linking and ignore the rest. Complete article on Google’s Matt Cutt Addresses Keyword Spam
Today, a colleague and I were talking about the Google Sitemaps error: URLs Not Followed. If you see this error in your Google Webmaster account, you know how irritating this can be! But fear not, because there is a relatively simple solution that you can implement to get rid of this error. Here is the most common error seen:
URLs not followed
When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot because they contained too many redirects. Please change the URLs in your Sitemap that redirect and replace them with the destination URL (the redirect target). All valid URLs will still be submitted.
Social Networking has taken the Internet by Storm. It changed how companies advertised. A social networking site is currently outperforming two of the major search engines. Myspace sent more traffic to web pages in 2007 than Yahoo and MSN combined.
Social networking is a cultural phenomenon that is still evolving.
The basic concept is simple: Online social networks enable people to create profiles, describe their interests, share their thoughts in blogs or postings, and connect with other people. But the variations on the theme are endless.
Social networking’s audience is comprised of 37% of US adult Internet users. 70% of online teens. A full 40% of these use digg on a regular basis making it one of the top 25 US, and top 100 websites in the world. An industry white paper by eMarkete - projects that by 2011, one-half of online adults and 84% of online teens in the US will use social networking. Complete article on An Introduction to Social Networking
Whether you’re a professional SEO managing 40 or 50 websites, or you’re a one-man operation with a couple of your own sites, you still need to track your search engine positioning. Are you moving up or down on the SERPS? How many keywords do you hold a page 1 placement for? Does MSN love your site, but Google hates it?
And, if you’re doing any kind of link building campaign (which you definitely should be), how do you know what’s working and what’s not? Sure, if you only have a couple of sites of your own you might be tempted to let the Google Gods do what they will with your site. But, if you’re trying to run a business, you need to treat your website like a business - and that means tracking your rankings!
How to Track Results
You can do it manually with a trusty Excel spreadsheet, a few hundred hours (ok, so I exagerated), and sheer will and determination. But why?
Just to give you an idea of one of my old manual ranking reports, here’s a screenshot of the whole grueling mess:
Complete article on How Do You Keep Track of Search Engine Positioning?
