The Bulls Roar » Tracking and Analytics

Internet SEO Lies Designed To Keep You Poor

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:56:09 +0000

This post is quite obviously going by the title a little bit of a wrist slap for all you people who think that old tired and ‘Black Hat‘ SEO and marketing methods are going to miraculously put your tiny site on the “first page of Google” which seems to be some hackneyed ideal that every one is still searching for.

The bad news: It WON’T!

Matt Cutts verified this himself: “NO-ONE can promise you the first page of Google any more!”

Unless, yes there is an unless… unless they are promising you to put you on the first page of Google under one keyword, in your locality (small defined area) with two adjectives that creates one long tail search term and most importantly you will be there more often on your computer not others because of Semantic Search practices.

Basically semantic search (and this is Google and Bing and all other search engines are following suit) where the search algorithms take into account your own search history on your IP including your locale, your previous search history and your keyword semantics – the meaning you put on those keywords or search terms e.g. if you search for fishing and your previous history shows you really mean fly fishing when you search the term fishing, your searches will be based around fly-fishing whether you want them to or not, until you show enough search history to Google to change the meaning placed on your ‘fishing’ search.

Please read the previous paragraph several times, enough times for you to fully understand the repercussions to your site and to your SEO practices!

There are heaps of SEO firms out there right now still trying to make promises they cannot keep. Read these vital posts I have collected for you over the past few weeks to validate what I am saying to you:

Don’t Get Google Slapped!

Link Farms – Link farms are a whole bunch of websites set up with one job in mind – to link to other websites and create backlinks. They have minimal or zero useable content and simply link out to other sites. You can usually purchase links from these farms (so as to increase your number of backlinks) for a price, but this is simply not worth it. As soon as the search engines recognize the site as link farm, they ignore all the links. It’s quite possible that you could get “blacklisted” for this sort of thing and end up ruining all your efforts.

When I was new to SEO, I bought 1000 backlinks from one of these link farms and anticipated huge results. Google Webmasters only picked up about 30 of them (out of a thousand!) and within a month or two they were lost (or removed). I was just lucky that I didn’t get banned!

Cross Linking – Similar to link farms, this is the practice of linking between a whole lot of websites that you own. Apart from being ineffective, the cost of this sort of practice is simply a waste of money (considering that you can easily get links from writing articles, etc).

Cloaking – Cloaking essentially involves having two different pages – one that your visitors see and one that the search engines see. This allows you to create a heavily optimized page for the search engines, and a very “pretty” page for users. This practice is strongly frowned upon by search engines and will in most cases get your site banned within a few months.

Duplicate Content – Whether it the same content placed on different pages within your website, or content copied from another site – the search engines don’t like this for one reason – there’s no value to the visitor.

From www.site-reference.com via clp.ly

Understanding Metaweb The Official Google Blog (Semantic ‘Entities’)

Google Buys Metaweb What this means for you!

Metaweb’s technology could change the way Google Search works.

Metaweb is a difficult concept to describe, although the video above does an admirable job. Essentially, it views keywords, the way we search now, as an inferior search method to what it calls “entities.” Words can vary in meaning, refer to different things, have different levels of importance or relevance at different times, and often return inexact results. So Metaweb has created a constantly growing database, or directory, of 12 million “entities,” which are really just persons, places, or things, and all the different ways you might refer to them. Wording isn’t so important with Metaweb, it’s the end meaning that matters.

Once Metaweb figures out to which entity you’re referring, it can provide a set of results. It can even combine entities for more complex searches–”actresses over 40″ might be one entity, “actresses living in New York City” might be another, and “actresses with a movie currently playing” might be another. Instead of searching through that jumble of keywords, Metaweb would just connect you to those three entities, and file down your results.

From www.fastcompany.com via clp.ly

and of course this excellent post on what Google thinks of your Squeeze or Landing Pages:

Google Slaps Squeeze Pages

It’s true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue – relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isn’t that relevant to many, if any, actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.

Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content (”classic” squeeze pages, after

all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales letter – in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.

From www.sitepronews.com via clp.ly

The Death of Squeeze Pages

Google Buys Metaweb for Better Search Results (dailyfinance.com)
How has social media affected search? (simplyzesty.com)
Why Semantics Is Important For Search Engine Optimization – Semantic Web (semanticweb.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, Matt Cutts, Metaweb Technologies, Search Engines, semantic search, SEO, Web search engine

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A TZB Collection: Best SEO Advice

AnnieInfinite — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:21:47 +0000

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

There is a LOT of advice out there, some of it pure gold some of it ok and let’s face it – some of it pure drivel.

I have numerous RSS subscriptions to the ones I know are good to great and I thought you might like me to share the best of the best with you on certain topics each week, this week seems to be SEO week and here are the posts I thought were most relevent to you regarding your Search Engine Optimization:

Noone Can Guarentee #1 Ranking on Google
This first link is I believe the most important one as I had a (very short) conversation with Matt Cutts himself a couple of weeks ago and he verified that “..no-one can guarantee you the first page of Google..“, so please read this one carefully and do not be taken in by those emails that tell you they can. Let me tell you if they can, they can only do it for local searches and for certain keywords that will not necessarilly be the main search terms (keywords) you want to use.
The Problem with SEO Advice
Expect Change..
SEO Traits Your Strategy Should Contain
Headline says it all
Matt Cutts says: Give Each Store Its Own URL
Do Categories Matter for SEO
The Second Biggest Search Engine is
… wait for it….
Tips to Double RAnkings Traffic and Conversion
3 Search Types Every SEO Should Know
The Top 25 SEO Blogs
Now you could read these blogs yourself every day, or you could trust me to let you know the most relevent posts and get them here

The Zen Bull

More Meat, less potatoes..

The Basics Of SEO (ronmedlin.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, Matt Cutts, Promotion, search engine optimization, Web Design and Development, Web search engine

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Tracking Your Social Media Analytics

AnnieInfinite — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:08:51 +0000

: Image by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML via Flickr

One question I get asked quite a lot about is whether there is any way to track your Social Media Marketing success. The short answer is Yes! although in the next breath I have to explain that it is done in a different way to your ‘other’ marketing. Would you like to know how?

* Google Analytics: First of all, let’s not forget Google Analytics, this wonderful free tool by Google still has it’s place. by setting up some pages to be tracked and then only using those for your Social Media you can see what is working and what is not – yes you really can split test your social media. Try this and see: set up two pages with similar, but not the same content or even (of you have the ability two smaller sites), now set those pages or sites up in Google Analytics and use different types of social media – for instance only Twitter for one and Facebook for the other, or try different types of marketing content and posts to market those sites. Easy!

* Twitter Stats: Other than site stats try these Twitter trackers Twitalyzer, TweetStats, Twinfluence, Twitter Analyzer, Tweet Effect, and BackTweets. All of these work a little differently and give you different types of results, but the effect is an all round picture of your social marketing on Twitter. there is a new site called Klout.com which is also very useful for figuring out your reach and influence on Twitter, it is in open Beta right now, so give this one a go.
* Facebook Stats: If you market on Facebook and haven’t got a Facebook Fan Page you are missing out on your Facebook Insights which comes with every business profile/page. These have several views and some very noteworthy information for Admins, including how many people are interacting with your page, whether there are more male or females, how many people clicked your links and more..

* URL Shorteners: many of the better URL shorteners are now incorporating tracking your link stats for free when you sign up for an account. Most noteable are: bit.ly, budurl,and ow.ly from HootSuite. Not only will these shorten your links to a more managable size they will provide link tracking stats which are invaluable to check what kind of posts people are clicking on most. You can then change your comment and post strategy to take advantage of your insights. Personally I use bit.ly and ow.ly more often than not, as I like using HootSuite and bit.ly is available on Seesmic my Twitter App of choice. I have a new one I am testing out from Stumbleupon called su.pr and it seems to be working out as well and best of all there is a Worpress Plugin for it too.

Whatever you use, and I suggest for a complete picture you take a look at most of these, one way to track your social media influence and success is the conversations people are having with you. How much interaction there is, how many people comment on your links, or ask questions of your as the expert in your niche. Don’t forget that social media is social and understanding that this is a key component of your social media tracking and insights.

Have fun!

The Zen Bull

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Add new tag, bit.ly, Google, Google Analytics, HootSuite, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

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The Bulls Roar » Tracking and Analytics

Internet SEO Lies Designed To Keep You Poor

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A TZB Collection: Best SEO Advice

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Tracking Your Social Media Analytics