Search Wars! - MSNs Opening Salvo
January 7, 2010
With all the recent publicity given to Google as the Internet’s number one search service, it’s hardly surprising that Microsoft has already started work on re-vamping their MSN search service. Okay, it’s still powered by the Yahoo engine, but according to Microsoft it has been “cleaned up” and the new service mirrors much more the kind of “non-commercial” results which are currently displayed by Google.
Costing some $100 in development costs and lost advertising revenues, MSN’s makeover offer the end-user a much more uncluttered screen and again this aesthetic change mirrors the simple interface of Google. Results too are served quicker than the old system, or so Microsoft claim, although they supply no data on how this compares to Google.
The web search market is currently dominated by Google and Yahoo although Microsoft are now openly stating that they will be edging their own search engine into this market by the end of 2004.
This mega-upgrade, which is currently undergoing full testing at Microsoft, breaks away from the Yahoo engine and be powered by their own software engine and algorithms which will, they claim, enable people to search for what they want rather than be presented with a number of paid/sponsored results. Should this happen, the move away from paid-for results will be a big step for Microsoft, who, in the past, have come under universal criticism, as end-users have not had confidence that the results served to them were unbiased.
Microsofts New Search Engine
January 1, 2010
I tried out Microsoft’s new search engine (beta version) the other day. They have been working on it quite secretly now for almost a year. It has been rumored to be a Google killer once in full public release. They say its accuracy and ability to return relevant results will far surpass any other search engine on the Internet. That remains to be seen. I tried various combinations of single, double, and triple word/phrased searches to inspect the results.
To the casual observer I suppose a certain percentage of the results would seem to be accurate, but upon closer inspection and with a trained eye, the results for the most part ranged from poor to outright terrible.
I then attempted a series of searches on the same combination of words. “custom designed screen printed t-shirts” I was attempting to determine how much the results and rankings changed (or did not change) within the same set of query words. I searched with a variety of spellings on a particular keyword In this case, I selected the word “T shirts” then t-shirts (with a dash) and finally “tshirts” (no dash, all one word)
How to REALLY Profit from SEO
December 25, 2009
I want to give you a few more things to think about as you excel and grow in the craft of search engine marketing. If you are anything like me, you were hooked the first time you really made a difference to someone else’s success. I soon realized that being able to help business owners to get results from these optimization methods and strategies could also be amazingly profitable. I found out that customers are your greatest resources and many of them are quite generous when you make an impact on their business. So the topic here is for those who want to profit from their skills (if you are not already doing very well and having an awesome time already).
It may seem like a strange thing to talk about but before I begin, I’ll say this. There are many folks out there offering various SEO services and they are still not getting the profits that they would like to make. They are not REALLY profiting the way they might if they took a little different approach. The solutions that business owners need to really make a difference in the bottom line, require more than just bringing volumes of traffic to a site. You need targeted traffic mixed with a web strategy to compel response.
History of World / Regional Search Engines and Directories
December 20, 2009
Computers have become a way of life for people around the world. They are used to research term papers, check weather forecasts, track military progress, exchange ideas (blogs and chat) and to find the cheapest price on items etc. It is no surprise that as the computer age takes hold computer usage has increased. The number of websites that are being developed on the World Wide Web is growing at an ever increasing exponential amount. And because we live in a quick-fix society, with limited time on our hands, we need something to make surfing the web a lot easier, something that will sort out all this influx of information into a logical order.
Hence the wonder of search engines, which have transformed the meaning of search and has made our jobs easier. This paper focuses on search engine case studies around the world. Different search engine regions selected for research in this paper were: American, European, Canadian, Australian and the UK.
American Search Engines
Introduction
Keep Your Web Site Content Relevant
December 13, 2009
Visitors and search engines love content-rich web sites, but just having a lot of content on your web site is not enough. It all has to be relevant to a main topic with each page or section of the web site having a specific theme (And yes, this includes any resource or links pages the site may have). Each page should have its own topic and content should not stray to a different topic.
If you are promoting your graphic design business and have a page on business card design, stay on the topic and refrain from using a page title such as “Graphic Design company in Vancouver, Canada - business cards, logos, letterheads”. Your want the business card design to be the most important key phrase.
There are two main reasons for content relevancy. The first is so that visitors have an easy time understanding the flow of your web site. Visitors who have to search through multiple pages to find the information they’re looking for won’t be visitors much longer. The average web site user takes about three seconds to decide whether or not stay on a site. A clear idea of what your site is about should be apparent immediately, followed by easy navigation to other pages that display further topics in more detail.
The Changing Face of Search Engine Optimization
December 6, 2009
With the ever evolving internet market for just about anything you can imagine and Google’s index growing to almost 9 billion pages, and counting, there is little dispute amongst search engine optimizers that our job is getting much harder. From linking to articles, and density to ontology, our industry changes as fast as any other. The search engines, especially Google, seem to be on a daily diet of change and their algorithm seems to be growing at the rate of their index.
The word ‘related’ plays a much bigger part in SEO today than it ever has in the past. Instead of targeting an exact keyword phrase, it now makes a lot more sense to keep your site within context and to have related words to your keywords, compared to having density of one keyword phrase. Linking has also turned into a frenzy for relevancy. Unrelated links seem to no longer carry much weight at all. The theme through all of Google’s recent changes seems to come down to one cliché: quality over quantity.
Introduction to Google Page Rank (PR)
December 1, 2009
For anyone looking to enhance their Google Page Rank (PR) to get a better place in the search results, we now have software that makes finding good links so much easier.
In case you didn’t know, to get your PR rating up it is essential to have a significant number of good quality links to your site (the techy bit)… to make a link count, the page who is linking to you needs to have a PR of 4 or more (the higher the better). That’s not all though… Every link that page has to another site gives some of the PR away, and every inbound link gives it more, so to know if having a link from another site is going to benefit you very much, you need to look at the PR and then find out how many inbound and outbound links is has! phew!
Not easy I would say, so that’s why we now have special software - you give it a URL and the keywords you have optimised for, and it crawls its’ way round the web looking for pages to link from and analysing them. You end up with a CSV or HTML file that saves you hours in searching and tells you which links are worth having.
Get Personal With Google
November 25, 2009
Anyone who’s been on the net any time at all knows that Google has been the search engine of choice for many for a while now. Whether that continues remains to be seen, but for now, with MSN still in development and Yahoo going through some growing pains, many still feel that Google is the leader. As such, it’s worth dropping in to the Google Labs every now and then to see what’s going on there.
For example, Google’s Personalized search offers a fun and useful way for searchers to interact with part of the mysterious and closely-guarded Google search algorithm. You can set a search profile that’s stored as a cookie on your computer. The easy-to-use Google profile interface allows you to pick specific topics that interest you. Once chosen and saved, you can then do a search from the Personalized search page. At first, you’ll see normal Google results. But at the top of the page is a slider bar, and by moving this to the right, those same search results will be dynamically altered to narrow in to focus on your personalization settings.
Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search Engine Optimization
November 18, 2009
Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they go to the sponsored listings.
There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the search engines. The art is to make the site look and read normal in spite of filling it with key words.
Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and more visitors:
1. Pick the right Key Words and Phrases
These are the words and phrases that people will put into search engines to try to find your product, business or organization. Having good key words and phrases is foundational to have good optimization. This takes research using such tools at Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. They give you a good idea of what people are searching for and what you should focus on.
2. Use Good Header Tags
SEO India: Tips & Techniques
November 13, 2009
SEO is all about “Individualism”
According to me SEO is not only getting rank for keywords (Of course that is the primary objective) but apart from ranking your objective should be “Conversion” getting “Sales” (No matter if its personal site or clients site)
SEO Steps:
1. Understanding Business.
# What is your business all about
# How is it going to Operate.
# Target audience (Global/Local)
# Opportunity
# Competitor study operating in same business.
# “Core competence”
2. Target Keywords.
# Getting a good list of keywords. (More keywords maximum number of ppl can be targeted)
# This is something that will directly reflect your efforts (targeting wrong keyword will get all your efforts in vain)
3. WEB Designing.
# Navigation
# Page size
# looks n feel
# inter linking
# HTML Code validation*
4. Meta tags & Content
# Title
# Description
# Keywords
# Content
*This is something all seo do in their style, some do not emphasis more on 1st point (according to me which is very important) & shoot up with 3rd step then 2nd & 4th.
