After Google’s recent Farmer or Panda update, where untold thousands of webmasters, including myself to a lesser degree, perceive themselves as collateral damage in Google’s attempt to police the quality of online content. See my other post on Panda and solutions here.

Admittedly, things were pretty out of control. LOL.  The economics of outsourcing content creation, , then monetizing called Content Farming, are, hehe or were, compelling.    Freelancers overseas will produce blog posts for $1 or $2, a web page created, with advertising, ranked on the search engines, which earns back the ‘investment’ within days. Multiply by millions and a huge industry prospers.  And what fun it was!  But all good things come to an end.

Google spanked everyone’s butt with a new rule – if you have one page of poor content, that will drag down the whole site.  Whereas previously, low quality content was merely ignored, which created no or a very low incentive to raise the bar.  Now, however there is – low quality content is being deleted on a vast scale, in the hopes of raising search engine rank.    SearchEngineLand estimates over 1 Billion pages removed since March.

The idea of removing low quality content to reclaim rank is open to differences of opinion, my own experience with sites that have fully recovered from Panda, and the logic that G is applying, gives a clear and obvious incentive to do so.  Deleting poor quality content is a good start but that’s not all though.

Manually reviewing close to a thousand blog posts on numerous of my sites, it really does seem G has figured out a very tricky way of detecting good content from bad.  Which may not really be so tricky, just applying massive processing power to the information G already has about a website, which is substantial.

At this point, Google knows who 70-75% (my guess) the users are and what they are doing on any given query, and can guess accurately at another 15-25% based on browser/software/system profiles (even if your ip changes and you are not logged in, Google can match all the above metrics to a profile on you)….

Finally, after all that data, the user probably types in a query: (if the search didn’t come from off site).

Also while reviewing and evaluation blog posts, I have pondered the information hierarchy -

Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom.

Or as T.S. Eliot Put it,

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

This speaks to the heart of what G is trying to do, and various economic incentives have really messed things up.   Most blogs are just data, divided up into little bits, without enough connecting threads that establishes the context either to the blog and website or to the larger Web.  Most often blogs are ‘sensory stimuli.’   Try making your Blog into a book.    Simply assembling your blog posts together into a book doesn’t really work- it can be done, but be prepared for a huge amount of editing and writing transitions.

Something falls through the cracks – the part of life that is lost in the living.   That is the editing and transitions.  Scientifically assembling blogs for search results misses out.    It worked splendidly in monetary terms for quite a while, but no more.  And, surprise, surprise, some of the high brow advice on blogging, actually turns out to be true!  Imagine that!

And indeed – it turns out that blogging requires more than installing Open Source software, downloading keyword lists and hiring freelance writers overseas.   Blogging requires a higher order of skills that are more academic and research oriented, like a librarian or University professor.

Daily Kos, (www.dailykos.com) engages in very different, but still very important, form of election activism. It’s a type of activism no one else is working on, and it is well-suited to our medium as a blog. It’s a grassroots-based search engine optimization campaign, which I call Grassroots SEO for short.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/8/908577/-A-different-way-to-make-a-big-difference-in-2010

Canadian Advertisers, Pull Thy Collective Head Out of Thy Collective Butt? That could have been the subtitle of some recent speeches and writings by Gord Hotchkiss, a well-known Canadian search marketing guru.

This week, in person and in writing, Gord was tearing into the Canadian business community for its poor record on adopting online advertising and especially search visibility tactics. This is juxtaposed with the Canadian people’s world-leading Internet usage. This theme’s been rolling now for a couple of years, statistically speaking, thanks to reports from companies like comScore, and now buttressed by survey research being disseminated by companies like Yahoo. In terms of quiet rants, it’s been out there since 2001 or so, since some of us began seeing the post-bubble surge of quiet interest in search as the most cost-effective direct marketing and public relations tool going… by our US-based clients, who moved quickly on the opportunity and kept us all busy with work. (It didn’t hurt that our dollar was very low, so we were low-cost providers who otherwise looked, quacked, and smelled like American consultants.)

Full story at WebProNews >>>

If you want to buy golf equipment for your golf vacations, you would fare better if you order everything from your golf shoes to bags, from reliable golf sites. This holds true for baseball as well as tennis.

The factors in Google’s algorithm to rank sites in the Search Engine Results (SERPS) is endlessly discussed and analyzed. One of the factors that appears to have become more prominent recently is Click Tracking.

Here is a layman’s quickie overview of how Google uses some of this data to rank sites and what small business owners can do.

In the most basic form, browsers do a keyword search on a search engine and a list of results. Browses click on one of the results, and a timer starts. If the browser comes back to the search results very quickly, it can be inferred that the browser didn’t find what they wanted and that information (site, keyword and a de-merit point) is factored into the ranking algorithms along with all the other factors.

The opposite is also true, where a browser clicks on a search result and then (apparently) finds what they want, which is inferred from the fact that they don’t return immediately to the SERPs page.

This is somewhat of a faulty assumption as all kinds of things could happen to explain why a browser didn’t return to the SERPs, but it does say something.

This is quite an over-simplified and general explanation but it does give a basic understanding of how this works.

What it means for website owners is clear:

1) You aren’t going to rank for keywords that aren’t relevant to your content. Now more than ever.
2) Make sure your site is what browsers are expecting to find. If you site doesn’t look like an adventure tourism site or an art gallery site, browsers will hit the back button.
2) The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer. The sites that best serve the results that browsers are looking for will rise higher and the sites that don’t will sink to the bottom (other things being equal).

This gives a very clear message to website owners that is the same as ever — specialize in your niche and give visitors relevant content.

Beyond a simple timer, Google is very likely using much more intensive data in the same way. Google loves data and are one fo the few companies that really knows how to use it. Google’s free Analytics service collects massive amounts of data on keywords browsers use and how visitors interact with websites and many speculate this data is also being used.

Clearly though, Google is obsessed with visitor experience and so should every web site owner. Sign up for Google Analytics and watch how your visitors are interacting with your site and where they are clicking.

Not only will you increase your conversion rate, but help your search rankings as well.

From an antivirus software to other categories like 3d software, you can download software of all sizes if your cheap web hosting stands true to its word. Then cingular wireless has also contributed majorly to this. Now you don’t have to get the unreliable mobile phone software only because your hosting does not allow that size.

If you aren’t using Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) on your blog, it’s time to get on it! Everyday Akismet blocks about 100 spam postings by linkers.

Why so many?

Spammers are trying to get links to their website by posting comments on Blogs to increase their link popularity. Whether the search engines actually pay attention and count the links from blogs is highly questionable. Almost certainly Google excludes these links, but MSN may count them and Yahoo probably counts a few of them.

Why do they keep doing it if they all get blocked?
Obviously nobody is checking or they would see right away their comments aren’t being posted. If they aren’t checking that probably means they aren’t doing it themselves and they can’t be paying whoever they have making the posts very much.

Looks like freelancers in China, Russia or India.

After my short post yesterdday, I say this posting, with
8 steps to ranking well on local search

Local search has got to be one of the best bargains out there! Here are some local search results I noticed this morning.

Submitting to Google local search is free and ranking is easy.

A recent study by comScore found:

63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005.

Not only is local search increasing fast, the people that perform local searches are highly attractive to web merchants:

During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline. More than one-third (37 percent) made contact online as a result of conducting a local area search.

During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline. More than one-third (37 percent) made contact online as a result of conducting a local area search.

Why local search?
Local Search has been growing for a while and the reasons behind it make sense. If I am looking for a local merchant, or service, a website gives me a much richer experience than a yellow pages ad.

In addition, the only option a yellow pages ad gives me is to call, which I may not be prepared to do because I want to browse and check out other merchants first.

Combined with a marketing campaign targeting location keywords, you can get twice the real estate on the front page!

Content sites are a great way to soft sell your way to high conversion. I keep producing content for my own sites and client sites and watching the traffice increase slowly but steadily.

Something I have been noticing recently is sites jump in and out of the rankings for no apparent reason. Reading one of my favorities blogs recently BlueHatSEO, I found an article which goes into all the gory details of how Google handles fresh content.

Similar to BlueHatSEO, my sites would disappear completely from the Search Results, then appear a week or so later. I watched this several times, and the disappear/re-appear schedule was exactly in sync with the Google’s Cache date.

So what is going on here in plain language?

Google loves fresh content, but not too fresh it seems. And it gets more complicated. To understand that we have to look at some of the factors Google uses in ranking sites. Google uses the history of your site as one component in the ranking algorithm. Things like how long your site has been online, and how often it has been updated, and how big the updates have been, on average since the first day. As well, the history of other sites in your sector are analyzed and their update history and frequency are compared to your history.

All of this goes into the mix of several hundred factors that are used to assign rank. So, for example, if your site is never updated, and suddently you start updating every week, and the other sites in your sector are only updated every 3 months, then Google of course notices and your site is penalized. Once the next index cycle comes around, all of the averages have normalized to some extent and your site goes right back to where it was.

OK, so what to do? Here are some tips and guidelines to staying just fresh enough:

1) Look at your competition and see if you can find out how often they update. I just realized I was updating every week, after few updates over the last year, and my competition are all old sites that almost never update. Generally I am #3 for my target keywords, but I kept getting penalized for a week or so then back to #3 — all because my update schedule is out of sync with my competitors.

2) Work to a schedule of updates and stick to it. First, as in #1, figure out how often your competitors are updating and use that as your starting point. Next, work out a plan to gradually move toward more frequent updates, keeping the averages in mind. If everyone else is updating every 3 months, say, then start off with every 3 months, then every 2 then every month.

If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. You don’t have to do it yourself though, and can easily hire a freelance writer or hire a blog writer.

4) Consider other ways of using content besides updates. If everyone else in the top 10 is updating every 3 months, why work harder? Content can be used in dozens of ways. Use your content for syndication, or for email followup. Set up an auto responder that sends out 10 tips about _____, or a series of articles followed by a special promotional offer.

Today’s post is several items that don’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to
small business owners:

Organic and PPC

Media Post’s Search Insider recently did a great article on the advantages and dis-advantages of Organic Search vs. Pay Per Click

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=54507

Thanks to cingular wireless, we can enjoy all internet services while sitting in our porch and placing our wireless router with the phone. This has been largely made possible by the efficient service of midphase. There are antivirus firewall software arrangements too because of the chat software in our systems, increasing risk of viral threats. Reliable names should be purchased like microsoft office software and only the genuine copy.

I had several conversations with webmasters and clients recently about how much traffic is required for a website to be profitable.

Several webmasters, who have around 200 unique visitors per day, complained that they were making nothing from their sites. The commonly held view of traffic and profitability is that you need thousands or tens of thousands of visitors to make money online.

Here is a short list of some of the factors that go into making a website profitable.


1. Product price. If you are selling a service for $3000 – $5000 and you are a one person business, then you will need less traffic and fewer sales. If you are selling a CD for $10, then you are going to need a lot of traffic and sales.

2. Not all traffic is equal. The value of traffic depends on where it comes from and what the browsers expectations are. Generally search engine traffic is better than traffic from links, though there are exceptions. Browsers following highly targeted links from micro-niche sites can produce a very high conversions and sales.

Of the search engines, Google is generally seen as the most valuable, but it all depends on your product. A high ranking on Yahoo is very valuable as well. My experience with MSN is the browsers tend to want free stuff, rather than buying right away. Which is by no means a wasted effort — a specific marketing plan can be designed to capitalize on MSN traffic and free give-aways.

In some subject areas, especially technical and web related, syndicated articles drive a small amount of traffic which converts like crazy. In other areas, the results are very poor.

3. Conversion Rate This is the really big one which will boost your business day in and day out. Given 100 people that visit your website, how many browsers, convert in to customers? If you can increase the conversion rate, even by a small amount, it is money in your pocket everyday.

Recommended places to learn about Increasing your Conversion Rate:

101 Ways to increase conversion — This is a great primer for getting started.

Marketing Experiments Journal — This is a great resource with free workshops, certification programs, and archived workshops.

Future Now Inc. — These guys are the Conversion Gurus!

For certifications like 642-661 and 70-526, getting 70-529 before is a good idea. However, doing 70-547 as well as 70-551 will ensure one’s admission into the University of Phoenix.