There has been a lot of talk about Google and MSN’s new algorithms and Yahoo’s search engine changes. When these changes finally do occur, it is always important to remember the number one rule in SEO: Don’t Panic!

If there is one guaranteed constant in this business it is that there will always be changes in the search engines’ rankings. Our job, as search engine marketers, is to stay on top of the changes and to monitor how the change affects our clients’ site’s traffic.

I am actually excited about any algorithm change, because it means that the search engines should actually get better.

What follows is a “back to the basics” on getting good rankings:

Keyphrases
First things first: Always be sure to research the keyphrases you intend on using. Find out what keyphrases Internet users most often employ to find your product or service. There is no point optimizing your site for “online web marketing” if everyone types in “Internet marketing”.

Once you have a list of potential keyphrases with a high amount of Internet traffic, comb over that list and see which keyphrases best describe your product or service. These are the ones you should consider.

Here are some sites that can help you in your research:

• WordTracker
• Google AdWords (Click to sign up, it is free to do the keyphrase research)
• Snap

Competition
Research your competition with these questions in mind:

• What keyphrases are they using (take a peek at their keyword Meta tag)?
• What are the titles of their sites?
• When you do a search for the keyphrases you are considering, who comes up in the top five rankings?
• What is their title/keyphrases?
• Are the top ranking sites your competitors or are they industry associations?

Use the keyword effectiveness index (KEI) tool at WordTracker to compare the effectiveness of your keyphrases. A higher KEI signifies a better ratio of demand-to-competition for a keyphrase.

Do a link search to see who is linking to your competition. In a search engine, type in “link:” (without the quotes) followed by the URL you want to verify. This will allow you to see all the important links to the site that the search engine tracks (I would recommend doing this in both Google and Yahoo).

Can you get links from the same sites as your competitors?
Are there industry associations or organizations that are linking to the top sites, but not to you?
Get your link campaigns going! (See the article about linking for search engines to learn why links are important)

Optimising Your Web Site
Now that you know what keyphrase you are optimising for, here is how to optimise your site: write good quality content that focuses on your keyphrases.

Above all else, this is the single most important factor.

Sure there are other on-site factors such as:

• Getting the keyphrase into the title (this is the second most important factor)
• Getting the keyphrase into the Meta description tag, the Meta keyword tag, the headers and sub headers, the alt tags, and into some link text (some of these factors are VERY minor)
• Having a good site map so that the search engine spiders can easily navigate your site
• Having a robots.txt to include the pages that you want the search engines to include
• Don’t use frames
• Use flash wisely (not the WHOLE site in flash)
• Use external files for your java-scripts
• Use cascading style sheets (a .css file)
• Use dynamic URL’s wisely (Avoid using URL’s with? or & in them)

Content is king
Oh…and did I mention that you need to write good quality content that focuses on your keyphrases? All of the points above are superfluous if you don’t have good content. Content is the food that the search engine spiders like to gobble up with a voracious appetite. The items below are just the side dishes. You need good content to get decent rankings, but you need the side dishes to become a serious competitor in your market.

• Write about your keyphrases.
• Write extra pages.
• Write about your industry.
• Write about your product or service’s uses.
• How will your product/service improve the life of the consumer? Find out, and then write about it.
• Why is your product/service better than your competitor’s? Think of a reason and write about it.
• What is the history of your product/service? Or your industry? Write about it.
• Who are you? Everyone always enjoys “about us” pages…
• And of course, be sure to serve the search engine spiders with a tasty main dish full of keyphrases!

Whatever you do, be sure that you don’t write junk or filler copy and double check that everything reads well. Keep in mind that writing about your keyphrase doesn’t mean adding the keyphrase unnaturally into the text. If you have any doubts, employ the talents of an expert to do the writing for you!

Links
Start soliciting links today! Get people in your industry to link to you. Contact:

• Industry associations and organizations
• Web sites about your industry
• Sites related to your product or service
• Suppliers
• Resellers
• Competitors who don’t compete in the same region
• Sites that sell products/services that relate to yours, but don’t compete directly

See my article on soliciting links for more information on how to go about it: Linking is Queen

Submissions
Submit to all the directories you can find, so long as they are related (e.g., don’t submit to the Abba directory unless your site is about Abba). Submitting to a directory should not be a mindless activity. Read the directory’s directions on how to submit Very Carefully. Write your description very well, and tailor it to each directory in order to follow their guidelines. Make sure you submit (and get in) to www.dmoz.org - it is probably the most important directory out there today.

Do research and find “vertical directories” that focus on your industry, and submit to them. These directories are very important because, for example, if you have a dodo bird site, what better potential client than someone who found you through a dodo bird directory!

Search engines and directories are different. Do not confuse them. You can submit to all the search engines you can find, but it usually won’t do much because the good search engines will find you anyway. Submitting to random search engines will usually only increase your email spam. Don’t waste your money on search engine submission software for the same reasons.

Here is a partial list of the current important search engines:

• Google
• Yahoo
• MSN

Conclusion

• Build your web site for your customers, within the guidelines that the search engines set out.
• Don’t make the site awkward by over-conforming.
• The site’s first focus should be on what your clients want.
• Create good content. Good, quality content that reads well and flows seamlessly.
• Update it regularly. An active, living site is healthier than a stagnant, dead one (the search engines spiders like their food alive and full of life).

And remember: Content is King!

By Shawn Campbell

These days it’s rare any new, widely accepted Web technology has a huge effect on the way we marketers do business. Sure, new stuff comes along all the time, little experiments that make us go “Gee whiz!” But as Web technology has matured, the lag time between major new innovations that can fundamentally change online ad models has increased greatly.

Flash has been around for nearly a decade now, and there have been incremental improvements in online multimedia (such as audio and video). For the most part, though, the technologies used to deliver online content into browsers haven’t changed all that much.?

Mostly, that’s good. The learning curve has been pretty steep, and the industry is still figuring out the standards necessary to reduce reporting discrepancies between advertisers and ad servers. Heck, it was only back in November that the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) announced a joint set of standards for defining an impression.

Experiments abound in new forms of advertising (e.g., podcasts, RSS advertising, and advergaming). But mostly those who want to deliver ads through the browser have a pretty common set of standards to work with.

Enter AJAX.? Short for “asynchronous JavaScript and XML,” AJAX is basically the engine that drives such sites as Google Maps and Google Suggest, sites that load content behind the scenes as a user interacts with the page. This eliminates the click-and-wait aspect of Web surfing so many of us have become used to.

Basically, AJAX works by loading a chunk of JavaScript code (the AJAX engine) into an invisible frame when the user first encounters the page. As the user interacts with the page, the AJAX engine works in the background, asynchronously communicating with the server and loading content automatically. Although this sounds highly technical (the geeks among you may want to check out this detailed technical explanation), the result is a seamless Web browsing experience created using current Web standards. No funky plug-ins or extras required.

If you’ve used Google Maps, you know what I’m talking about. As you move around the map, zoom in, and interact, there’s virtually no waiting. It seems like one giant page you can scroll around forever. In effect, it is. Because content is preloaded, there’s no waiting and (hold on to your hats, media folk) no real page views to talk about.

That’s right, no page views. The whole site can, in effect, be one huge “page.” It never needs to be reloaded or refreshed. If the success of such sites as Google Maps and Flickr are any indication, consumers like the model and will probably get used to the idea of moving around instead of “turning pages.”

Of course, media measurement companies are pooh-poohing the idea this will have much of an effect on their measurement. And it’s true measurement technologies and serving software will catch up — in time. For now, we may be seeing a new technology with a huge effect on the ad model basics we currently subscribe to.

And it’s going to get more difficult. Microsoft has announced plans to include AJAX support in its Visual Studio products, making it a heck of a lot easier for average developers to include automatically updating content into future sites.? If you don’t know AJAX now, you will.

Even if AJAX development does undermine the basic ways we expect the Web to work, it’s a good thing in the long run. As technologies such as AJAX, streaming video, online gaming, and iTV and place-shifting tech such as Orb and Slingbox take hold, advertisers will face a whole host of challenges. They’ll also have a huge range of opportunities to break out of the old metaphors and develop ad forms that truly take advantage of the medium in new, innovative ways. Get to know AJAX now and prepare yourself for the day the fresh-faced new intern asks, “What’s a page?”

By Sean Carton

Don’t get too comfortable with what you already know about local SEO (define).

A new form of local SEO is being thrust into the mainstream. It requires different methods and tactics — no Web site required.

The strategy involves:

• Controlling core business data accuracy and distribution
• Enhancing business profiles with optimized meta content
• Monitoring local business reviews and rating channels and offering incentives

Properly implemented, a local business becomes easier to find in local search queries, and is able to convert more visitors into customers.

Last time, I introduced the idea of user-generated content in local search. Today, we’ll dig deeper into the user-generated content that helps shape the local search marketplace.

Control Core Business Data Accuracy
Core business data accuracy and distribution is critical to local SEO.

InfoUSA, Acxiom, and other authoritative business data aggregators license core business data to local search engines to feed and backfill local search results. Business owners must ensure their business records are accurate within these databases. The onus is on the business, or its local search optimizer, to obtain the status of current records to clean and enrich data with complete and current business information.

Making changes to this data isn’t as difficult as it used to be. Companies all along the local search supply chain are interested in obtaining more accurate data about local businesses. They provide a means for business owners to contribute directly.

If you submit or update your business data to Google Local, Google sends activation numbers through the physical mail to verify addresses. Other local search engines and data aggregators will accept a phone call to update business information. Others enable online business record changes.

Business owners who conduct routine business-vanity searches can identify new opportunities to submit, clean, or enrich their business data. Utilizing industry keyword searches further enables optimizers to identify business content aggregators and directories to propagate consistent data.

The status and accuracy of core business data are the heart of any local SEO effort.

Distribute Profiles with Optimised Meta Content
Rich business profiles serve users, businesses, and search engines. For local search users, business profiles provide access to structured and qualitative business details that assist in comparative local buying decisions.

For the local search engines, they help enable relevant results for pure local search queries while providing additional on-site utility. And for local businesses, business profiles represent an opportunity to disseminate rich business information to more potential customers.

Today, all major local search utilities enable businesses to publish profiles or to enrich business data with qualitative content, mainly for free.

Local search optimization concentrates on the proactive population of local business profiles with accurate business data and optimised Meta content. This Meta content includes business contact data, maps, descriptions, logos, products/services, operation hours, coupons, awards and certifications, payment methods, and many other data points.

Business profiles are crawled and indexed. Traditional search engines even crawl and index local search results pages from competing local search providers. Yahoo! Local and SuperPages business listings are being distributed on Google SERPs (define), for example.

Business profile optimization should employ basic keyword analysis and on-page techniques. Take advantage of all content population opportunities available in a profile.

Distributing profiles with optimized Meta content is like creating unique, freestanding Web pages for a business. These pages contain accurate, structured business information that places businesses in a unique position to capture and convert more local search prospects, often more effectively than a typical small business Web site.

Monitor Reviews and Offer Incentives
Businesses must pay attention to the opinions published about them. User-generated reviews and ratings are subjective. They can directly affect a business’s reputation, status, and even rank within local search engines.

Realize you can affect your own local search reputation. You can even control and shape that reputation.

Local search optimizers can work with local businesses to energize their base to influence their business reputation online. Savvy businesses will put forth strategies to compel customers to provide quality reviews and ratings. They’ll also strategically police and proactively clean their business’ reputations.

The key to review and rating optimization is to offer incentives. Tactics such as providing a discount or coupon in exchange for a quality review can be effective. Proactively soliciting user-generated content from trusted sources can improve a local business’ reputation, rank, and content quality within local search engines.

Conclusion
Maybe bringing small businesses online isn’t as difficult as we thought. True, starting a Web site design conversation with a small business is like opening Pandora’s Box. But it’s much easier and more effective to talk to businesses about structured, distributed business data.

Millions of local businesses are already in local search indexes. All we have to do is show, clean, enrich, and distribute them.

It’s a new form of local SEO. And it’s coming soon to a business near you.

By Justin Sanger