SEO Builder: Internet, Mobile, and Search

Insect image in Google Blogger w/o border

2007-04-01T12:26:00.000-04:00

Social Bookmark Icons

2007-03-13T15:24:00.000-04:00

SEO myths: Matt Cutts

2007-02-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Myths: 1) sites on the same server, 2) IP, or 2) including off-domain JavaScript - Launching sites ... all » with millions of pages: how should I do it best? - Google images: updates on the horizon, and current Google Images technology

Yahoo PPC new platform officially launched

2007-02-07T20:32:00.000-05:00

Yahoo's Panama officially launched, but there aren't too much buzz about it. I guess most of the users have already been using Panama during the pre-launch anyway.

Search Engine Land sums up with,

The new system is streamlined, easier to use and offers more campaign management tools. Criticized, because the previously relatively simple system of higher bid equals higher placement has been replaced with a more complex formula that includes factors such as ad "quality," brand recognition and other variables that have reduced the transparency of the system for many advertisers.

At the end, it is a better system and just a little more complex compared to the last model. However, there is still a gap between Adwords and Yahoo but Panama would still help Yahoo make more money.

Technorati's Where's the Fire?

2007-02-02T01:13:00.000-05:00

Technorati just launched a new feature "Where's the Fire?"

On January 31, 2007 Technorati released a new feature to help people to get explations on things they see popping up in the blogosphere. Sometimes, that's a personality or topic, like Paris Hilton or Tammy Nyp, sometimes it is an explanation of an obscure topic, like Second Life or BuzzTV.

I am trying to figure how this thing works, but all the blurbs look pretty messy to me. If it is their attempt to catch up Netscape, Reddit or Digg then they have to do better than this.

Google Adwords Keywords Insertion

2007-01-31T23:49:00.000-05:00

Using Keyword Insertion in Google/Yahoo ads means creating dynamic ad title for ad copies. If someone typed in "ipod shuffle" in their search, the ad title will automatically insert "ipod shuffle" in it.

This is how it works:
(1) {KeyWord:Ipod Shuffle} = All words with initial caps
(2) {Keyword:Ipod shuffle} = First word capitalized
(3) {keyword:ipod shuffle} = All words in lower case.

Source

Yahoo to launch individual brand portals

2007-01-31T21:55:00.000-05:00

Yahoo is beginning to reveal its plans to create Brand Universes—vertical content portals that aim to attract large communities for a specific brand. Yahoo has had all of this content available on various parts of its site previously, but it was more spread out across the site.

The company told reporters earlier this week that they previously did not "connect the dots for our users around those brands," but they recognized that as a weakness. Yahoo's head of games, entertainment and youth, Vince Broady, continued, "Brand Universe is designed to fix that problem." The Brand Universes will be aimed at being a main media hub for users looking for information on their favorite brands. So far, Yahoo has announced that the Wii Brand Universe is already available and the company will continue with six more: "Harry Potter," Halo, The Sims, The Office, Lost, and Transformers. Yahoo plans to expand to 100 Brand Universes by the end of the year.

In addition to presenting strong imagery and other unique media content, the Brand Universes will pull photos from Flickr tagged with that specific brand name, Yahoo Answers related to the brand, and user-generated bookmarks and links from Del.icio.us tagged with the brand, giving users the power to control parts of the site's content. Yahoo is not asking for input from marketers nor seeking licenses for the content, however, Broady told reporters. "We're doing what makes sense for the users," he said. "Yahoo has loved to work with brand owners, but we've shown we don't need them to promote the content. We don't pay a license, we're tapping a community within Yahoo."

The benefit to content owners will be both increased visibility (even in the event of repeated content elsewhere) and Yahoo's willingness to track usage trends and report them back to the content owners. For the time being, the Brand Universes do not have any sort of advertising (although the Wii Brand Universe is currently running off of some gaming and movie sponsorships), but the company plans to implement advertising on the portals at a later date. When that happens, Yahoo said that it will discuss ways to share the revenue with brand owners.

It is a pretty big project for Yahoo this year, and given the trackrecord of Yahoo. This portal should be a success for the company. More

On a side note, Yahoo has merged the flickr (one of yahoo's properties) and Yahoo account. Many users don't like this idea.

Google, Apple, YouTube Topped 2006 Global Brands

2007-01-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

In a survey conducted by the online branding magazine brandchannel.com, 3,625 branding professionals and students were asked to vote for: "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?".

This annual survey by brandchannel.com often throws up controversial results, such as in 2004, when Arabic TV station Al Jazeera was named the world's fifth most influential brand. So, take this result with a grant of salt. To much of my surprise, I wondered how Wiki can make it to the top 5 global.

Top 5 Global:
Google
Apple
YouTube
Wikipedia
Starbucks

Top 5 America:
Apple
YouTube
Google
Starbucks
Wikipedia

Top 5 Europe:
Ikea
Skype
Nokia
Zara
Adidas

Top 5 Asia:
Sony
Toyota
HSBC
Samsung
Honda

Google's relevant ads score

2007-01-26T17:31:00.000-05:00

I was doing a search in Google and came across with this "Was this link useful?" link. It looks like it is a scheme from Google to determine the ad relevancy of some paid ads. Interestingly enough, I have tried the same search in other computers and this doesn't pop up.

Paid Links (Truly Undetectable)

2007-01-25T23:25:00.000-05:00

In a recent post from SEOmoz, randfish has listed out some ways to get paid links that are truly undetectable by Google.

1) Links you buy yourself from the website's owner
Oftentimes when making a link request, you offer something in return. On many occasions, that something can be a direct monetary exchange. Trust me when I say that even Google's spam hunters don't have time to call up every site owner and grill them CIA-style until they reveal what links people have paid for.
One-to-one link building services

2) Jim Boykin's crew may be most famous for this service, wherein the SEO will contact relevant sites and offer to buy links or "rent" pages on the domain.
Smart link brokers

3) I think that every link broker around has two kinds of inventory - the ones they sell to their general clients and the ones they keep for their own sites or sell at a very high rate to their best clientele. This latter type is usually 100% under the radar. It's completely customized on every site, fits in with the content exceptionally well, and is designed so it couldn't be detected even with a very savvy look from an experienced SEO or spam hunter.

How to obtain full referring URL in Google Analytics

2007-01-25T23:20:00.000-05:00

Many people are using Google Analytics because it is a freeware from Google. There are many better analytics out there, but it is still one of the better one.

I saw a post on Reuben's blog showing us a trick on how to "unlock" the full referring URL in Google Analytics.

SEO Diggers

2007-01-17T16:37:00.000-05:00

Two SEO / active Diggers Neil Patel and Todd Malicoat share their unique perspective on the market. An interview with Neil and Todd at Search Engine Strategies from WebProNews.

More

Online Dot Mobi Training

2007-01-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

Training covered by Dev Mobi:
- The mandatory dotMobi rules
- XHTML Mobile Profile
- Validating your code
- Testing using desktop browsers
- MIME types
- Use of mobile emulators
- DotMobi site templates
- Useful tools for mobile development
- Getting your site indexed by Google
- World Wide Web Mobile Web Iniative best practices

Visit Online Dot Mobi Training

A fitness .mobi business

2007-01-15T10:43:00.000-05:00

PumpOne (mobile fitness business) has a press release to get more people to sign up on its service. It is a personal training services features programs in the categories of weight loss, strength and flexibility, which make it easy to search for workouts specific to user needs and includes levels from beginner to enthusiast, as well as seniors and teens.

Workout sessions are also available for mobile workforces or travelers who find themselves unable to get into the gym. These workouts include water bottles and luggage and hotel rooms into the routine.

To access the workouts, users can connect via their cell phones browser at PumpOne.mobi or have the workouts sent to their phone via the PumpOne.com website.

More

Apple's iPhone expected to spark Mobile Ads

2007-01-10T10:04:00.000-05:00

Steve Job has announced yesterday that iPhone is going to be released this year. Its pictures and video are everywhere and it is going to be one of those must-have for the year. Anyhow, what can be expected other than seeing this mediaplayer/phone everywhere on the street in June?

We could also see that it would change Mobile Ads now that a lot more people will have a bigger screen on their smart phones.

Re: The year 2006 search review

2007-01-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

I didn’t see any fine print on the list when I dug up Google’s list, but Google's list is surprisingly clean and manipulated. After reading MediaPost's SearchInsider by Gord Hotchkiss, here is what I found ...

Google Coming Clean? Unfortunately, one has to read between the lines on these various reports. The list isn't actually the real list for any of them.. These lists are heavily filtered, and in Google's case, seemingly altered to a substantial degree.

A little investigative work at Google Trends (thanks to Danny Sullivan) soon uncovered the inconsistencies. Google's reported No. 1 term, "bebo," actually has nowhere near the volume of "myspace" and "world cup." In fact, "bebo" is almost flat-lined at the bottom. I suppose there are internal excuses Google might have for the inconsistencies, including aggregation of misspellings, but just how many ways can you misspell bebo anyway?

I was searching "bebo" on Google and the search result that came up was disappointing. I just can't see anything that interested me there. What does people trying to look for "bebo"?

The list actually becomes more interesting when you include some of the terms that got filtered out. A quick look shows that Google is often used for navigation. Terms like myspace and wikipedia are not queries for information, but a quick way to get to a site. Google has already deleted many navigational terms from the list, so let's add the big ones, Yahoo, Google, MSN and YouTube and see what the trend chart looks like. Now we see the true search volumes, and that a lot of people are using Google to get from point A to B. What is a little disturbing is that searches for "Google" on Google hold the No. 2 spot, just behind Yahoo. This drips with irony, and not a little stupidity. "Hey..how do I get to Google? Oh..wait a minute, I'll just search on Google" Duh!

I am one of those people.

The year 2006 search review

2006-12-28T00:28:00.000-05:00

Top 10 search queries of the top 3 search engines in 2006

Google
1. Bebo
2. Myspace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

Yahoo
1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Shakira
4. Jessica Simpson
5. Paris Hilton
6. American Idol
7. Beyonce Knowles
8. Chris Brown
9. Pamela Anderson
10. Lindsay Lohan

MSN
1. Ronaldinho
2. Shakira
3. Paris Hilton
4. Britney Spears
5. Harry Potter
6. Eminem
7. Pamela Anderson
8. Hilary Duff
9. Rebelde
10. Angelina Jolie

So, what did we learn from this?
1) People like to read about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton
2) We had World Cup this year
3) Googlers don't use Google to search for celebrities' stuff
4) Googlers like social "net"-working
5) People actually type in "Metacafe" and "Wikipedia" in the search box (i m not quite sure what they are looking for)

More
Yahoo
MSN
Google

Is your website Mobile ready?

2006-12-20T11:34:00.000-05:00

Check the mobile-readiness of your site using industry best practices & standards

MobiReady Report

Links exchange program beta

2006-12-19T20:52:00.000-05:00

Beta signup ...

Google Webmaster Central

2006-12-19T12:25:00.000-05:00

Google has a bunch of blogs for their products, news and technology. One of their blogs, Google Webmaster Central is a nice blog to visit in learning the good practice of creating websites (the google way)...

Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google Patent Search beta

2006-12-19T12:13:00.000-05:00

Google has released the beta for Google Patent Search, which makes it easy to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus. You can search by criteria, patent number, inventor, and filing date. It also include the images of the original (if there is any). United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Google access to 7 million patents entries for now, so it is not the entire database.

More

Google's Fox: PageRank, Sitemap and more

2006-12-17T01:40:00.000-05:00

Vanessa Fox (Googler) explains sitemap, xml, duplicate content and the page rank on the tool bar in an interview with WebProNews in SES in Chicago.

Sources: webpronews video

Blogger Upgraded!

2006-12-14T02:08:00.000-05:00

I just upgraded this blogger account... everything looks good so far. The load time is faster than before and I am not getting any error message when I am trying to post a pic.

We don't have to click re-publish site everytime we made some changes for it to show on the web. It looks like we can now we can also tags our posts as well!

Internet Junk Mail

2006-12-14T02:03:00.000-05:00

A study from Postini stated that for the past 12 months, the number of junk email has been increasing 120% everyday. In October 2005, people are receiving 3 billion junk mail everyday and by October 2006, this number has been doubled!

There are two main reasons why these junk mail can growth in such a rapid rate.

First, there are large number of servers got hacked but unoticed. These hacked servers were used by the junk sender to send out mail/virus remotely. Postini estimated that there are over 1 million servers got transformed to a junk mail sending server everyday.

Second, the latest junk mail can get through the the mail filter (image spam is one of the latest method). It also counts as 25% of the total junk mail. Most of the mail filter are using keywords or analysis to try to filter out junk mails. However, many junk mails are still able to bypass these filters.

The latest trend of the junk mail are using it to sell medicine and advertise 3rd-4th tier stocks. There are also lots of fraud email that is trying to trick the receiver for personal information/password etc. It is good practise not to open any emails that you don't know who the sender is.

Google Expands to Radio Ads

2006-12-11T22:43:00.000-05:00

Google Inc. announced late last week that it has begun testing its new radio advertising service, a move that represents the company's most elaborate attempt to expand its operations beyond the Internet.

Well, Google is keep on expanding its empire everywhere. Radio, Mobile, Web, Pay per call ... I bet their next step is traditional tv commericals. The result of the radio ads should be quite different from the Internet, they are two totally different medium and audience base.

read more digg story

Mobile-Friendly Blogging with WordPress ... Nice!

2006-12-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

I was looking into some reliable platform that allows blogging in mobile phone (.mobi TLD). At the moment, there aren't many not there as it is still pretty new. But there are always some players that are ahead of the game.

Wordpress, one of the most popular blogging platform out there. It is not natively mobile friendly, but with the help of a handy mobile plugin developed by Alex King, it can be optimised for mobile devices. By installing this mobile extension your wordpress blog becomes mobile friendly.

Read more
Download plugin

Hakia

2006-12-09T00:11:00.000-05:00

Hakia is a new meaning based search engine. The main difference between a traditional search engine (google) and Hakia is that instead of using keywords, you type in a question. The "W5" in the search query seems to be matters a lot (Who, What, Where, When and Why?)

More: Hakia

Adwords hosting small business page

2006-12-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

Google continue to find ways to help small business in online marketing with Adwords. This time, they are going to host the advertising landing page for these individuals for free. The hosted business pages are not full-featured web sites, but rather landing pages with basic information such as phone numbers, addresses and simple images. They would like to give these to small business with limited resources so that they can try out Adwords. At the end, Google want them to make profit so that they can be profit from it.

Anyway, letting someone hosts your own landing page may not be a long term solution. But it is good for now if someone need to have a landing page yesterday to take advantage of the holiday season. Search engines seems to be push hard on giving out incentives to get more business on board for the holidays.

More on Clickz

Free Advertising Credit: Microsoft $200, Google $50, LookSmart $300, & Ask $50

2006-12-07T23:47:00.000-05:00

This is the season for online advertisers to attract new customers. Yah Christmas! If you have a website, blog, etc. and are looking for the perfect time to build exposure while freeloading, then these offers are for you.

read more digg story

Major PPC search engines are giving out for advertising. Search engines always give out signup credit for new users to attract more business, but usually not this much. If you would like to take advantage of this but don't want to pay a buck. Then make sure you stopped your ads when your credit run out.

Google Webmaster Tool

2006-12-07T00:36:00.000-05:00

Another product from Google Google Webmaster Tool, it shows stats and information on your website. You can also find the Google Bot's crawling time on your website.

If you are selling anything, check out Google Base. You can list your products and sell there.

Strongest Links

2006-12-07T00:32:00.000-05:00

Submit your websites to these directories: Strongest Links

Yahoo intergrates Answers into search

2006-12-05T22:37:00.000-05:00

With Google Answers slowly closing down and Yahoo intergrating Yahoo! Answers into their search results.

We can look for more people taking advantage of this opportunity. Don't be surprise if Yahoo Answers become an advertising channel for marketers.

More: Search Engine Watch Blog

Magazines underperform online

2006-12-05T22:27:00.000-05:00

A recent study show that magazines are underperforming online.

"In terms of online functionality, newspaper websites clearly outperform magazine websites, even considering all of the problems with the newspaper industry's general online strategy," the report said. "Despite the fact that magazines have succeeded in providing online content that enhances printed content, the availability of various Web 2.0 features on magazine websites was disappointing."

One of the main recent is that 62% of the magazines omit blogs and there was a lack of reporter blogs employed by magazines' sites.

People like to be heard and interactions.

More on this:MediaPost

What is Marketing?

2006-12-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

Create RSS Buttons

2006-12-04T23:18:00.000-05:00

RSS Button Creator allows you to create your own RSS buttons images for your website.

dot mobi domain

2006-12-03T02:32:00.000-05:00

There is not too much hype with the dot mobi domain yet. People are saying that it is simply unnecessary to create seperate domain for mobile, as the website should be able to adjust when people is using a mobile phone browing the site.

If you type in Google.com in your mobile phone, the xhtml version will be up. It is also understandable that people will just type in the .com when they are searching with their cell phone. We will have to see if the .mobi will die down like their .biz, .info brothers.

dot mobi auctions

2006-11-12T01:50:00.000-05:00

9 domains including flowers.mobi, celebs.mobi and Hot.mobi, were auctioned Oct. 27, for a total amount around $400,000.

Flowers.mobi has the highest price, $200,000. Online auctions of .mobi domains are to start next year.

Source - MediaPost

dot mobi

2006-11-01T13:36:00.000-05:00

.mobi, a new domain that is dedicated to mobile friendly websites only. Some of the names are reserved for auctions, but others will be open to public soon.

More info:
What is .mobi?
Build a monile friendly site.

Google AdWords Editor

2006-10-03T02:20:00.000-04:00

Please download the Google Adwords Editor if you advertise with Adwords. It is a great tool. It save lots of time in modifying campaigns and we don't have to wait for the web interface to reload anymore.

Do you like your co-worker?

2006-08-04T23:32:00.000-04:00

More Dilbert

2006-07-09T16:34:00.000-04:00

WebTrends

2006-06-07T23:36:00.000-04:00

WebTrends has a couple of useful web software that can help in search engine optimization and web analytics. I also like some of their marketing articles.

Happy Mother's Day

2006-05-14T01:30:00.000-04:00

Look at the comparison between Father's day and Mother's day. Mother's day win by a mile!

Google Trend - Mother's day and Father's day

Dilbert

2006-04-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

More MSN updates

2006-03-21T19:39:00.000-05:00

MSN has launched a couple of new sites this month:

MSN partnered with Billboard and launched a Latino music website - Billboard.latino.msn.com/
It looks like everyone is going to expand the Spanish market in advertising.
More detail can be found here - MSN and Billboard launch new music site

MSN has also launched a new search engine - live.com

MSN updates for March

2006-03-21T19:33:00.000-05:00

People are saying MSN ad center is giving good result. Dave Williams of 360i thinks that it is because of its features (like demographic data, including age, gender and home city. I think another reason on good ROI is simply because it is still fairly new and the competition is low.
Source:- MSN ad center

MSN Ad Center Beta

2006-02-23T17:16:00.000-05:00

This is probably old news, but MSN Ad Center Beta is opened. It is pretty easy to sign up, just go to the MSN Ad Center and request an account.

Happy Chinese New Year

2006-01-29T14:56:00.000-05:00

More Google Logos

2006-01-25T16:03:00.000-05:00

More Google logos can be found here:
Google Logo

Happy 2006

2006-01-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

Happy new year!!!

Yahoo bought del.icio.us

2005-12-12T22:21:00.000-05:00

Del.icio.us is an online bookmark website. It allows users to save, tag their fav sites/search result by keywords and organize the bookmarks. You can also see what websites people are bookmarking.

I think bookmarking sites may play an important role in SE ranking in the future. As of now, it is a decent source to generate extra traffic.

Sources: Yahoo! Finds Tagging Company Delicious

SEO Consultants Directory

2005-12-01T22:02:00.000-05:00

If you trying to find a SEO company or seeking professional SEO advice, you can take a look at the SEO Consultants Directory.

SEOmoz

2005-11-23T22:41:00.000-05:00

SEOmoz offer some of the best free SEO tools that can be found online.

Click here to check out SEOmoz's tools.

It requires registration and the loading time is pretty bad. However, I think most of their tools are pretty useful.

Some of the more interesting one are still under development (like Link Discovery Tool, Page Topic Analysis) ... I think both of them should be pretty handy in analyzing sites.

Also check out their SEO articles, they are very well written and some of them explain the methology behind their tools.

If you would like to test your skills or wanna see how well you know SEO, you should try out their SEO test ;)

Google's Products

2005-11-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

Besides Gmail and Blogger, Google has also created some other cool stuff as well ... I believe most of them are projects that developed by Google employees (like Gmail).

Also check out other services that Google has > http://www.google.ca/intl/en/about.html.

Google Web Analytics

2005-11-15T21:47:00.000-05:00

Web Analytics helps B2B websites track the conversion and lead generation from their marketing campagins.

All non-Adwords user have a 5 million page view cap per month, and it is free for all Google user. The web analytics market is a growing one and small web analytics companies should take a big hit from this. However, the web analytics companies should be focusing on providing more analysts services to anyone who is willing to pay.

However, people are saying that the stats is not 100% correct.

Click here to see the Google Analytics ...

Google Bombing

2005-11-13T15:48:00.000-05:00

If you typed in "miserable" or "failure" on Google, GW Bush's bio page in the Whitehouse would be the #1 search result. Do you think the Whitehouse wanna play a joke on themselves and optimize that page to those keywords? Of course not ;)

The main reason of this is due to the fact that numerous links (legit or not), with the keywords "failure", "miserable" pointing to that bio page. Snopes.com has a page explaining how does this work.

For more information:

Take a look at the definition of "Google Bombing"

and Steve Johnson's Google bombs put searchers on wrong path

Google Operators

2005-11-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

Google Operators will not only help in performing better searches with Google, but it will also help in site optimizations too.

example:

link: can be used to find the backlinks of a site
site: can be used to find how many pages were indexed
info: can be used to find out more information about a site
allinurl, inurl, intitle: can help in link building

Google update (Jagger)

2005-11-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

A recent article by Ken Webster, Google's Jagger Update. He has stated his point of view on how Google handle the latest update:

1) Make Inbound and Outbound links even more important
2) Give top (trusted) domain high Page Rank
3) CSS Spam filtering
4) Blog demotions
5) and more ...

Estimated Page Rank update date?

2005-11-08T20:36:00.000-05:00

Seocompany always get a good prediction on when the next Google update is ...

Here is the link to the - Google update history.

Extra Tips

2005-11-03T21:35:00.000-05:00

An recent article from Rob, he asked some Google employees about SEO. Even though I can't 100% be sure if everything is true, I think the answers make lots of sense and it doesn't seem like it is just some bull.

Some important notes:

Dynamic URLs are ok in indexing, but obviously, it shouldn't be too long
Google sitemap is recommended but not necessary
Number of links in sitemap = 100 or less
Clean code is good
Googlebot can identify links in JavaScript and Flash, but can't follow those links.

Building Links with Articles

2005-11-03T20:58:00.000-05:00

One of the hottest way of link building right now is writing and submitting web articles. Not only it helps promote the site (buiness), but also helps in link building. However, many people have started doing that and it is getting pretty competitive now ...

Scott has written an article on where you can submit your articles?

Google Bowling

2005-10-29T23:27:00.000-04:00

Again Black Hat SEO (unethical optimization that will get penalized by search engines), an example of how people are using it against their competitions now.

Google Bowling - doing Black Hat SEO for your competitors. This is one of the hottest topic with Black Hat SEO, which is get your competitors penalized by the search engines by linking them to bad sites, doorway pages, etc ...

For more information: Google Bowling
or Google "Google Bowling", etc ...

Black Hat SEO?

2005-10-25T20:58:00.000-04:00

Black Hat SEO

Using different techniques to trick the search engines - to get good ranking in the SE, but may get the site banned if get caught.

Basic Black Hat SEO techiques included:

doorway pages
cloaking
keyword stuffing
hidden text
link spamming
redirects
etc...

For more information: Google "black hat seo", "spamming" ...

or

check out these pages : www dot blackhatseo dot com & seoblackhat dot com

How old is your site?

2005-10-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

When does this domain created?

Who the registrant is?

When does the domain expire?

Check out : Whois

Google give this page a PR 4

2005-10-21T20:41:00.000-04:00

This page jumped from PR 0 -> PR 4 yesterday ... thanks Blogger

Link Building

2005-10-19T20:35:00.000-04:00

Here is an article I just read: Natural Linking Strategies.

The author Chet, has outlined a couple of link building method:

Reciprocal Linking
One-Way Linking
Multi-Site Linking
Directory Linking

Another article about link building - Digging for links ...

Oswald has outlined some methods (like backtrack top competitor's links) that would be quite powerful if done correctly.

There are always many ways to do it, we just have to find the most efficient way to do it. Either by link exchange or buying text link ad (depends on your time & budget).

SEO Guild

2005-10-16T18:44:00.000-04:00

Another SEO Forum- SearchGuild.com.

Google 300 years plan?

2005-10-12T22:37:00.000-04:00

At the Association of National Advertisers annual conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that it would take Google 300 years to index all the websites in the world.

Of the approximately 5 million terabytes of information out in the world, only about 170 terabytes have been indexed.

Of the $11.3 billion spent on the Internet advertising in the US, Google is about 1% of it.

I don't think most of us will be living long enough to actually see this happen :P

source: news.com

Search Engine Ranking Factors

2005-10-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

A very interesting articles on Search Engine Ranking Factors.

It is not suprise to see the most important factors are ranked as follow:
#1 - Title Tag
#2 - Anchor Text of Links
#3 - Keyword Use in Document Text
...

Other interesting articles : allbusiness.com

Site Reference

2005-10-09T12:09:00.000-04:00

Yet another very informative website with lots of SEO and internet information: Site-Reference.

The website has a couple of useful Webmaster Tools:

Search Engine Submit
RSS Parser
Keyword Density Checker
Verify Your Site Links
Check Pages in Search Engines
Site Reference Forums

and they also allow you to read lots of SEO articles and submit your own as well...

I have noticed that their PR was dropped by G, the editors were saying it maybe because of the dup content of their articles in their site. We will see...

Seth Godin's new SEO eBook

2005-10-08T23:02:00.000-04:00

Seth's new Free SEO ebook.

WebProNews

2005-10-06T21:47:00.000-04:00

Webpronews.com is a very informative e-business news source.

Lots of news on Internet, ebusiness and web development. Highly recommended.

Free SEO e book

2005-10-03T20:53:00.000-04:00

I typed in "Free SEO e book" in Google ...

and I found this site ranked number 2 - Free SEO e book

FREE Ebook! ;)

Tips on creating content for websites

2005-10-01T23:01:00.000-04:00

Target one or two keywords per page.
Repeat keyword roughly once per paragraph
Insert keyword at the start of title, description and keyword tags.
Insert keyword as close to the start of the text as possible
Name the pages with the keyword - keyword.htm
Name the site after the major keyword?
Original content

Sources: Elixir Systems Newsletter

SEO Directory Editor

2005-09-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

There are quite a few human edited directories that you can join to become an editor.

The largest of all is dmoz. You can also join joeants, Skaffe, Zeal or Illumirate ...

The benefits of joining:

help the directory out
meet new people
submit your site for free

Need help to pick a domain name?

2005-09-25T19:28:00.000-04:00

It is always tough to pick a name.

You can go to pool.com to check their pending delete list. It shows the domain names that are going to expire very soon.

stuckdomains.com and deleteddomains.com also have similar features on their sites.

McDar Internet Marketing Consultants

2005-09-24T20:24:00.000-04:00

This is a Keyword Analysis developed by McDar Internet Marketing.

It shows the top 10 sites under a keyword search, which included the Page Ranks, backlinks in Google, links in Yahoo, etc...

A pretty cool thing to look at, but I am not sure why it would be voted as tool of the year by seocompany.ca :P

Bill Gates on Google

2005-09-21T22:42:00.000-04:00

Let's see what Bill Gates said about Google.

Click here for the Full article.

Also, look at the interesting comments that people made ;)

Update your site frequently

2005-09-19T20:06:00.000-04:00

Chesa Keane's article on How to get Search Engine Attention.

Some key points to get SE's attention so that the crawlers know that it is not an inactive site:

modify content
change the links text
link building
news feed
newsletter
basically, keep the site updated.

Site visitors counter

2005-09-18T18:54:00.000-04:00

This website visitors counter, Clustr Maps, show the number of visitors to the site. It also breakdown the location and countries of the visitors.

Whois?

2005-09-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

You can check the Registrant of a domain name in:
checkdomain.com or whois.net

If you want to hide your profile and your personal information, you can register as the webmaster or admin of the site instead of your own name.

Of course, most of the big sites would put the domain admin or webmaster as the registrant also.

Google Webmasters Guidelines

2005-09-16T22:46:00.000-04:00

This Google document, Google Webmasters Guidelines, give some important pointers in building a website:

rich in content
accurate links, tags
Google sitemap (beta)
submit to directory
don't spam, cheat, etc
don't use doorway pages, extra domains, etc ...

Page Rank = 10?

2005-09-14T20:08:00.000-04:00

Besides Google itself, what other websites have Page Rank 10?

You can find that out in Search Engine Genie.

Yahoo has dropped its PR to 9 this year. I am wondering if they will come back up this year.

Search Engine Genie provides SEO consulting services and they also has some pretty good free information on search engine optimization. It has also posted some strategies on how to check the backlinks for a website.

Keyword Density Again

2005-09-13T22:13:00.000-04:00

This article, Keyword Density Frequently Asked Questions from Wayne Hurlbert gives us some general information about keyword density in site optimization.

Another article On Page Keyword Density and Placement, is more advance.

These articles are from 2004...

Keyword Density

2005-09-11T13:40:00.000-04:00

A free tool from keyworddensity.com, which gives the keyword density for the selected keyword.

I always try to get density with 3-4% including stop words and less than 7% without stop words.

I will keep experiment with higher or lower density.

SEO tips from some experts in SEO Chat

2005-09-10T01:13:00.000-04:00

These are some SEO tips that I found out from forums.seochat.com. They are posted by some very experienced people.

Looking at keyword density, everyone seem to have a different opinion on what is the ideal number...

Freeware - pdf file creator

2005-09-08T21:14:00.000-04:00

I was looking to create some pdf document for SEO. There are quite a few free pdf file creator out there: PDFCreator & PrimoPDF ...

Type "Search Engine Optimization" in Google

2005-09-07T22:12:00.000-04:00

We will see Submit Express show up as #1 in Google and # 2 in Yahoo. Applauses to them to rank in the top over other optimization experts for the longest time I can rememebr. This really show they know what they are doing. By the way, I am not asscoiated with them in anyway. ;)

There are some free SEO tools and automated search engine submission services on the site also. It would be interesting to see how much they charge for optimizing a site.

I just tried the Meta tags analysis, looks like I have to do something about it:

Meta tags analysis.

Title:
Title meta tag contains no errors.This tag contains 77 characters.
Title relevancy to page content is excellent.The Title relevancy to page content is 100%.

Description:
This tag contains too many characters.This tag contains 221 characters. This is too many for what we would consider a 'robot friendly' web page. The maximum number of characters we recommend for this tag is 200.

Keywords:
Keyword relevancy to page content is terrible.The keywords relevancy to page content is 32%.

Robots:
Found no robots meta tag.This tag is not really required but helps spiders to index the web page.

Author:
The Author meta tag contains no errors.This tag contains 11 characters.

Keyword suggestions tools

2005-09-06T23:02:00.000-04:00

You can use word tracker, yahoo and google keyword suggestion tools. Also, Webposition and WebCEO have built-in keyword suggestion tools. I think they offering the same stuff though.

Anyway, you can also use this, which is another 3rd party keyword suggestion tool.

Here is another massive page that has many valuable SEO tools that are posted under this page. I don't have time to check all of them yet, but I'll check them out later. This SEO Company looks pretty good, just wondering what kind of services they provided and what result they guaranteed.

Compare sites in Google & Yahoo

2005-09-06T20:59:00.000-04:00

An interesting tool that allows us to compare the websites in yahoo-vs-google. The dots jointed the pages that appear on both search engine.

Type in a keyword and see.

Interesting pictures

2005-09-05T20:12:00.000-04:00

Link Building

2005-09-05T15:24:00.000-04:00

As everyone knows, link building is a tedious on going process. However, the time and resources dedicated to this process will be well worth it if it was done correctly.

One way of doing this is search for directory or websites that allows us to add a link there for free. Use keyword “suggest a site”, “add link”, etc …

Kudos to webconfs.com for developing something like this.

Alexa - Traffic Ranking

2005-09-04T11:30:00.000-04:00

Alexa toolbar allows user to check the traffic ranking for all the websites.

Or you can just go to Alexa.com and check the traffic breakdown of a website over a period of time. Yahoo Traffic Breakdown over the last few months or years can be found here.

Using the WayBackMachine will allow us to take a look at a website on how it looks back in the 90s. It is always interesting to take a look at what things look like way back ...

Link Building Software - Link Survey

2005-09-04T02:04:00.000-04:00

This software developed by AntsSoft, can help us in link building. It can rate the PR (Page Rank) of the links of the websites, save time in research the competitors' links and link building.

Link Survey

It is not very expensive either.

Google patent & SEO

2005-09-03T22:42:00.000-04:00

Google has filed a patent on how they rank web pages. It gives us some ideas on how they rank web sites:

content of the page (how frequently does the site update?)
domain name (interesting)
links (PR)
search behavior
and more ...

Studying Google patent is one of the way that SEM (Search Engine Marketer) can learn about the algorithm behind the search engine ranking. It won't give us 100% of the truth but it will get us closer.

Sources:

Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret's Out

The Google Patent And SEO

The Axandra newsletter

What The Google Patent Means For SEO