tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14357352499547215152011-12-02T12:24:22.538-08:00A blog about Search Engine optimization for the rest of us. If everyone should be publishing on the Web, everyone should know about SEO!News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.comBlogger451100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-14001467326772335302010-01-05T09:12:00.000-08:002010-01-05T09:13:21.619-08:00

Self-styled financial mayvens and fools, motley and otherwise, are insisting that the "wave of the future" is cloud computing. The bulky and expensive PC will be replaced by a low powered and simple computer that runs a "thin client" software program connected to an Internet Software Services Provider, such as Google. The provider will run the latest versions of spreadsheets, word processors

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-680312791607988682009-08-21T04:23:00.001-07:002009-08-21T04:23:27.668-07:00

Rupert Murdoch and others have decided it is time to end free news content  on the Web. One of the reasons that someone like Murdoch could make such a proposition is that he admittedly knows nothing about the Internet or how it works. I think there is no way at all to really end free content and that paid content will never be able to compete with free. Consider firstly all the legitimate

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-44269150446485372372009-05-22T17:48:00.003-07:002009-05-22T17:48:51.340-07:00

As a long time frustrated user, submitter and ex-editor of the Open Directory (AKA Dmoz) I had feelings of Schadenfreude mixed with sadness when I learned of its decline. It has lost a lot of its viewing public, mostly because search engines do the search job better, but it has also stopped accumulating new listings. Triplicate listing of garbage pages, editors that tyrannize people with

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-59674642886776867552009-05-22T17:48:00.001-07:002009-05-22T17:48:51.104-07:00

When I wrote the article: The Decline of Dmoz. it got me thinking about how to give Web page and other media raters objective criteria for deciding if an article or other media item is useful or good or if it is flotsam to be ignored. If there was a directory for "everything" how would you keep out the flood of garbage in internet, printed matter, video and TV, and how could you spot and

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-49877442053441871232009-03-16T11:23:00.001-07:002009-03-16T11:23:40.512-07:00

According to  Google's  AdWords tool, sex may be going out of style. That is,  Google's data show supposedly that over a 12 month period, on average there were 124,000,000  (One Hundred and Twenty Four Million) searches for keyword Sex each month, whereas in the month of February there were only 90,500 (Ninety thousand Five Hundred) people searching for sex. No mistake about the number of 0s

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-83327235607779205742009-03-16T09:32:00.000-07:002009-03-16T09:33:13.021-07:00

A political-social search engine optimization issue developed around the hate web site jewwatch.com. For many years, searches in  Google for the  keyword  Jew returned this odious site at the top of the  listings or among the first ten. Jewwatch.com features standard Anti-Semitism fare including ZOG, the Zionist Occupied Goverment and the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Attempts

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-16269259877333430902009-02-15T11:27:00.001-08:002009-02-15T11:27:33.474-08:00

One sort of duplicate content happens because of plagiarism, copying to forums, copying of articles to blogs (see  How Google Treats Duplicate Content). In those cases, there are really several physical instances of a page for various reasons.    But there is another sort of "duplicate content" that is often really just an artifact of how the Web works and in part a bug of search engines.

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-75396617326523437342009-02-14T03:37:00.001-08:002009-02-14T06:06:21.011-08:00

Duplicate content is a headache for Search Engine positioning. Duplicate content is created in these situations: Syndicated news items that appear in many Web sites Sites that legitimately archive news items Blogs that legitimately quote part of an article, or provide an entire article for reference.and link to the original under "fair use" doctrine. "Classic" articles

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-17452266485519799272009-02-14T02:55:00.001-08:002009-02-14T06:10:52.068-08:00

The recession is upon us. That seems to mean that for many topics in many locales, AdSense may display the same advertisement in more than one ad slot on a page. Of course, this reduces Click-Through Rate (CTR- the percentage of visitors to a page who click on advertisements) because nobody will click on the same ad twice, and people who are not interested in finding out how to get a flat

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-33057438409388982582009-02-08T03:50:00.000-08:002009-02-08T03:51:05.563-08:00

Take a look at this news item:   Screen resolution 800 x 600 significantly decreased for exploring the internet according to OneStat.com   Amsterdam - July 25 - OneStat.com ( www.onestat.com ), the number one provider of real-time intelligence web analytics, today reported that more and more internet users choose for screen resolution 1024 x 768 which is the most popular

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-19871799010477905192008-12-19T04:07:00.001-08:002008-12-19T04:07:35.972-08:00

If you are about to hire a Search Engine Optimization contractor, spend a few moments reading this - it could save you thousands of dollars.   Not long ago I wrote a little article about How to choose a contractor for Search Engine Optimization work. Little did I realize the vital importance of this information for the world.    I have since seen quite a few desperate forum pleas by people

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-53949715337545973872008-12-18T03:09:00.000-08:002008-12-18T03:10:08.002-08:00

Here's my year end nondenominational Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza and Eid el Fitr wish list from  Google. It's simple:   1- Don't penalize me for Google bugs. I really cannot control whether someone links to http://seo.yu-hu.com/ or http://www.seo.yu-hu.com/ or http://seo.yu-hu.com/index.html or http://www.seo.yu-hu.com/index.html. If your spider and software are too dumb to understand they

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-65277451069299598162008-12-08T11:57:00.001-08:002008-12-08T11:57:46.862-08:00

A number of people have complained in forums about the drop in Web site traffic in summer and weekends. It is certainly a fact. There are not a lot of data about this, but there is at least one published set of yearly statistics showing there is a trough every August. I could not find any data about weekends, so I posted some of my own. My own Web sites are more affected than most by summer

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-39978640526812069852008-12-07T06:47:00.001-08:002008-12-07T06:47:28.474-08:00

If you have Google  AdSense ads in  your Website then depending on the category of your site, you may have noticed that CTR (click through rate) dropped for a while - quite a bit, and then seems to have recovered. Less people may be clicking ads in a recession - they aren't buying. And Google may have less ads in stock for that category in each location, so they were putting up multiple

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-63927824959341588412008-12-07T06:24:00.001-08:002008-12-07T06:24:56.207-08:00

While many people get carried away by Web 2.0 and twitter and arcane marketing strategies, they often neglect the basics. Then they don't understand why their Web site/page is not listed. Optimization "experts" ask in forums why their customer's page isn't doing well. Usually it is because they neglected simple stuff or simply ignored all the SEO Basics.   If your Web page/site is not doing

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-51273181556919865162008-12-03T19:11:00.001-08:002008-12-03T19:11:30.169-08:00

All search engines are based on the concept of Authority of Web pages and Websites. The pages and sites that are deemed to have the highest authority are retried in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) at the very top. Google based its success on having the best measure of Website authority - the Google PageRank algorithm. The rationale for this intellectual and technical feat and the

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-47090091044398168752008-12-03T07:00:00.001-08:002008-12-03T07:00:24.771-08:00

Something a bit different this time. Phishing scams and the like are probably the ultimate in  Black Hat SEO and they are a real and costly danger to e-banking and any Web sites that allow financial transactions. (see Danger! Your identity is not secure). Phishing uses a variety of techniques to direct victims from a legitimate Web site to the scam Web site, where they enter their

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-381803152886053992008-12-01T02:19:00.000-08:002008-12-01T02:20:01.019-08:00

The logic of dialectics dictates that everything carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The basis of Web search engines is  Website Authority and Web page authority, determined by age and incoming links. That is also the basis for  The killer search engine bug. That's the short version. If you haven't figured it out: Older is not necessary better. An older description (say

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-30862275270177974172008-11-30T17:04:00.001-08:002008-11-30T17:04:46.438-08:00

I saw a Website that raised the issue of how to choose a Search Engine Optimization firm. It looked very promising, but in fact, I didn't find it particularly helpful. So I wrote an article of my own. The meat of that article is 11 things you must know before choosing an SEO firm. Why 11? Because it wouldn't fit in 10.  The most important things: 1- Understand when a Search Engine

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-22999997362473223392008-11-30T12:48:00.001-08:002008-11-30T12:48:19.603-08:00

In writing about Landing Pages, I studied several articles that Google found for this search phrase. Remarkably, almost all of them were really about Conversion Rate! A Landing page, for those who do not know, is the page that is meant to be an an entry way into the Web site. It is the "bait" in commercial Web sites. Conversion rate is the measure of how many suckers visitors go from this

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-42044188353830403262008-11-24T18:24:00.001-08:002008-11-24T18:24:00.600-08:00

Conversion Rate and Bounce Rate are SEO buzzwords that are getting bounced around a lot lately. If you have a low conversion rate or a high bounce rate, you should worry. It's like having too much bad cholesterol or not enough good cholesterol. Conversion rate is directly applicable to commercial online store Web sites and somewhat less applicable to other websites. It measures what

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-86464925664669958672008-11-23T07:10:00.000-08:002008-11-23T07:11:02.862-08:00

No, Matt Cutts didn't say rank was dead. He didn't even come close, but if you want to believe that very much, you might decide that is what he said. Nobody ever explains where by "rank" they mean Google page rank or rank (position) in a list of search results. Cutts seems to have discussed the latter. But trust me, you will need both to get traffic. Without being ranked high, you get no

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-24472379590990255632008-11-23T07:05:00.001-08:002008-11-23T07:05:52.403-08:00

What's the difference Between SearchWiki and  Search Wikia  and what's it all about? Read about Personalized Search. Is Personalized search going to mean the End of SEO and LIFE AS WE KNOW IT? (LAWKI). Is GOD or Matt Cutts planning the End of Days. "For these are latter days we know."  I don't think so. Life will go on and so will SEO. Read why here:   Personalized Search: End of SEO? Rank

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-69422398275406205542008-11-10T09:21:00.000-08:002008-11-10T09:22:44.340-08:00

Google is great but not perfect. I am not going to list the problems here, but here is one try at a solution - there are others out there. I don't like this particular solution, because it somehow uses the preferences of my social network as a way of ordering my search results. If I just use the information everyone else has, I am creating an incorrect virtual reality for myself. Besides,

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-74437655094567523242008-10-05T04:47:00.000-07:002008-10-05T05:46:54.994-07:00

It seems everyone knows everything better than I do. What do I know?   Someone commented that the blog about Cookie Stuffing is really about cloaking and that dear Google is innocent of any wrong doing as they are not responsible for content of advertisements. By that logic, Website owners should not be penalized for external broken links, since we can't check each link, and we shouldn't be

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-44098695794388453492008-10-05T01:31:00.000-07:002008-10-05T02:30:50.129-07:00

Google prides itself on ethical business practices and Google Webmaster guidelines repeatedly warn against unfair  Black Hat SEO practices. But Google allows  AdSense advertisements for  Cookie Stuffing. Here's the ad, collected today Sunday, October 5, 2008, for a search for keyword [cookie stuffing] Cookie stuffing is an unethical way to earn lots of money from  Affiliate advertisers.

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-61351140665565244252008-10-04T11:28:00.001-07:002008-10-04T11:28:04.080-07:00

All of Search Engine Optimization is divided into three parts (not two, as most "experts" would have you believe. The first two are:   On Page Optimization - Things you do to a Web page to make it more readable for Search Engines.   Off Page Optimization - Everyone tells you this means adding backlinks from other Web sites. They mean Off Site Optimization.   So now you've got your

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-42525830154144237242008-10-04T09:41:00.000-07:002008-10-04T10:11:35.824-07:00

Wikipedia has introduced a rel = "nofollow" tag that is evidently used on all outbound links. This was evidently done to reduce link spam that is part of Black Hat SEO. However it is applied indiscriminately to all links, including those on which the articles are based, which makes it somewhat unethical. What it will mean is that the gigantic volunteer encyclopedia which Google lists as #1

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-20596338531606725242008-09-28T16:28:00.000-07:002008-10-01T11:30:20.385-07:00

Yesterday I wrote about Google Quality Rater Secrets - how Google uses humans to rate its search engine results. Improving the quality of search engine results was the aim of the original search engine and ranking algorithm described by the Google founders in The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine and The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web. Google

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-22129478033239774922008-09-27T08:10:00.000-07:002008-10-01T11:31:35.271-07:00

Google's philosophy was oriented to obtaining high quality search engine results from the beginning. This is evident from the original papers published by Page and Brin,  The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine and The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web,  High quality is defined by them, basically, as the results that the user would want to get. The

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-39079306217552799192008-09-26T08:47:00.000-07:002008-09-26T08:46:58.530-07:00

How many actual people come to your Web site and how can you know?   How many people actually visit that Web site where you want to advertise? Is it better or worse than the competition?   See Web Site Statistics Versus Truth and  Web site statistics and don't believe every number someone tells you until you have checked!  

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-76124774896819704922008-09-23T05:03:00.000-07:002008-09-23T05:02:27.722-07:00

Web sites have to keep running in order to stay in the same place - because the web is growing, and because information, like Paris Hilton, is aging.   Once you get to the top, you need to keep tending your Web site if you do not want to lose visitors and Web site visibility.   Read all about Web site Maintenance   Ami Isseroff    

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-75136002894526592412008-09-23T02:35:00.001-07:002008-09-23T02:35:11.317-07:00

If you have an online business Web site, don't bother reading this. But if you have spent a lot of time building a news Web site, an online dictionary, a site with a lot of historical material or other informational Web site, please read on.   Not long ago a friend died at a relaively young age. He had spent 12 years pioneering use of the Internet, and built a Web site of about 20,000

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-37077716016252874672008-08-25T04:34:00.000-07:002008-08-25T04:33:42.722-07:00

There is a very important article out in SEOMOZ  surveying what "expert" SEO practitioners opinion on what makes a page  or site rank well. It is mostly important to you if you have been listening to Voodoo practitioners, and there are a lot of them out there.   I will eventually get around to discussing each factor, but in general: * The highest ranked factors are certainly valid for

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-62088806495028614462008-08-19T15:54:00.000-07:002008-08-19T17:47:08.476-07:00

The brief answer to the above question is evidently "No." The background, explanation and evidence are below.   The Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) position of a Web page is determined in part by the number of links to it with a relevant  keyword. Thus, a page about Widgets that has 1,000 pages linking to it with keyword widgets will have a higher rank than a page with similar

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-54449128239205219822008-08-16T12:23:00.000-07:002008-08-17T18:32:40.151-07:00

A Webpronews article tells us: Blogging Success Takes A Few MonthsOh, really? Is that all it takes? True, the article has some fine print. But the headline is whopper.   If you think you are going to put out a Web log that gets thousands, OK, hundreds of readers a week for every article after a month or or two or even three, you are probably in for a big shock unless your name is something

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-63070828073915462372008-08-15T12:00:00.000-07:002008-08-15T12:59:33.083-07:00

I came across what might be the worst Search Engine optimization tip I have seen thus far. Some of these Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Superstitions are not just a waste of time. It seems they can actually hurt site visibility in search engines. This one is the "advice" that Deleting old Web pages helps SEO. The recommendation is to delete "outdated" pages when doing site maintenance.

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-16548868761051238932008-08-12T11:45:00.000-07:002008-08-12T12:44:40.639-07:00

Buried somewhere in all those newsletters you get from various SEO firms, you will find, believe it or not, an admission by a prominent SEO opitmization "expert" that they had simply invented a supposed optimum size of 250 words for Web page text.   Different "experts" and SEO tools have often advocated various small page sizes. This seemed strange to me, because in comparisons, I found

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-18085243181063670502008-08-12T11:25:00.000-07:002008-08-12T12:25:19.052-07:00

A recent article quotes an "expert" as saying that text of title tags must be at least ten words long in order to place well in search engines!   This is certainly false. Title tag text should be precisely as long as is needed to contain the page keyword, and keyword should almost never be ten words long.   For details - See Optimum length of title text

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And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites.   We know that Google is already gathering all sorts of information through their online software, and likewise Yahoo! and MSN. Now the plot thickens a bit. The technical question is, is how is

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-6472102979894167242008-08-09T10:23:00.000-07:002008-08-10T02:18:19.631-07:00

Can we remove some of the mystery from search engine optimization? The high priests guard the secrets zealously, but experimentation, a thing unknown while magic rules the land of SEO, might just reveal some of them.For example. What is Mysterology? Click the link to find out. Why am I creating links with the non-word Mysterology? Some of my pages are #3 for this word right now in Google. This

News Servicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02033603414923093624noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1435735249954721515.post-13290270762738456272008-08-09T08:58:00.000-07:002008-08-10T02:19:00.144-07:00

Long ago a primitive agricutlural people tried to eke out a living in the shadow of a volcano. Nobody knew what made the rains come and the crops grow, and nobody understood why the volcano would erupt periodically and destroy everything they had built. The people had no choice but to rebuild what the lava had destroyed, for they lived on a small island, and had no other home. Furious efforts

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The SEO book is getting corrected and updated as I convert it into Web pages. It is surprising and distressing how many pages and services can disappear in a few months. Here's what is posted thus far:The SEO BookBlack Hat SEOChoosing a Domain Name Choosing a Web Host Choosing Keywords Duplicate Content and Search Engine PositioningDynamic Content Essentials Getting listed in Search Engines

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For those who want to just wet their feet in Search Engine Optimization and find out what it is about: SEO Basics - An overview   SEO for Everyone - including Dummies - the major Search engine optimization things you can do even if you do not know anything about coding in html.   Ami Isseroff      

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for everyone is about optimizing search engines for Web sites and about the SEO Web site which has a brief online handbook to help you make your site number 1 on the Web.

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