Why Search Engines Results Are So Fluid

I've actually had a customer call from California and say that she just got her Search Engine Ranking report from me, but that she was NOT seeing the same results. The report and her search were just about an hour apart.

While on the phone with her, we typed the same exact search phrase into the same exact search engine and got different results! How in the world could this be? Isn't Number One on Google in Colorado the same as Number One in California?

The answer is no, and here's some reasons why:
1) Google does not update once a month, they are constantly updating their data.
2) Google has many data centers, all updating at different times.
3) Not all of the data centers are exact clones of one another. They can differ in what underlying data they contain as well as how they sort results.

The physical location you're searching from can also influence the results you see, as can the IP address of your machine (the designated residence of said machine on the Internet) and is biased by Google's guess about your location based on your, or your customer's IP address.

Cookies on the machine you're using to conduct the search, as well as things and specific terms you've searched for in the past will also influence the results you see.

While these items are not the only factors that can affect search results these issues are often among the more commonly identified issues that come up when speaking with clients.

And yes, it will be an interesting concept to pass along, to say the least. If you don't have excellent credibility with the client, you're not going to make much headway explaining this, so do some research and find articles and forums where "The Experts" reititerate your position.

Building Link Popularity with Press Releases

The quantity of links to your site is used by the search engines (like Google) to rank the importance of your site. This measure of incoming links is called "Link Popularity". Press releases are a powerful way in which you can promote your site, service or product while at the same time increasing your link popularity.

Off-page SEO deals with external factors like the number of people linking to your page. Press releases are one way to obtain incoming links to your site.

In trying to determine the importance of a website, search engines have developed sophisticated algorithms that rank web pages for their quality. The largest factor in determining quality is the number of links to a web page. Quality websites are the most popular and
so have the most links to them. So to improve your standing on the search engine you need a higher link popularity.

Another very important factor in off-page optimization is the text used to link to your site. This is called the anchor text. Instead of using the words "Click here", you should be using your keyphrases to link to your site. The phrase "Custom Web Site Design" would be good anchor text for a link to my web site.

Press Releases

A press release is a written communication that you submit to journalists in the media. They are used to make announcements which are newsworthy. Press releaes are about NEWS. Announcing a grand opening, a new product or service, or employee promotions are news. Press releases aren't for customers or consumers they are for reporters, journalists who will use them as a starting point for a larger story or feature. Press releases written as sales pieces will be completely ignored.

How can a press release help with building your link popularity? Most of the free press release services are text-based which means you will not be able to add any HTML tags and so you can't add any links into the press release. However others allow you to also supply some keywords for that press release to make it easier to index and be found. When that page is viewed by someone, including the search engines, the keywords will be used to create links within your press release back to your website.

This means:

There is a one-way incoming link to your website
The incoming link uses the anchor text of your choice
The incoming link is within a natural context of the press release.

Traditionally, a press release is short-lived, it has a limited amount of time to make an impact on the media before it becomes old news and is replaced by fresh press releases. Some services allow you to buy a cheap upgrade, which means your press release will remain permanently in their system. This means that your "in context" links with the anchor text of your choice remain permanently for search engines to find and so help improve your rankings.

When preparing your press release you should optimize it for the keywords which are important for your site, product or company. This means that when someone searches for information in your industry, your press release will be seen as relevant by the search engine.

SEO For The Big Three

I am hoping that none of you read the title and were expecting
to rank on the first page of all three major engines next week.
Ranking highly on all three major engines takes time, patience
and a good few rounds of tweaking to get the perfect balance of
onsite and offsite optimization. Although, done properly it's well worth the effort.

Ranking your website highly on one of the "big three" search
engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone
ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three
algorithms, three different sets of rules - and yet there are
websites out there that have first page rankings across them all
– how do they do it?

While all of the major search engines use different algorithms,
the end goal of all three is the same: to provide the searcher
with the most relevant results available. It is this one common
thread that makes it possible for an SEO to rank a website
highly across all the major engines.

For example, if inbound links are given 0% weight then
insignificant sites will rank highly for high-competition
phrases. Many reputable companies such as Microsoft could lose
rankings for their own names so links must and will always hold
value. On the other hand, if links were to hold 100% weight
then sp@mming the search engines would be a simple matter and so
there are a limited number of possible variables in between
these extremes that this factor can have, no matter which engine
we are optimizing for.

That said, there are still three main engines with three
distinct algorithms despite common requirements. To clarify how
to optimize for all of them it's easiest to discuss them
individually first. Due to the way their algorithms work, it
is best to expect rankings on MSN first, followed by Yahoo! and
finally Google.

MSN

While MSN has the lowest number of searches performed on it,
ComScore's report back in July revealed that MSN searchers were
also 48% more likely to purchase a product or service online
than the average Internet user. A very important statistic for
website owners that sell online.

To rank highly on MSN one needs to build a solid sized site, a relevant theme
throughout the site that focuses on your primary keyphrases and a
good number of links. MSN doesn't (at this time) employ an
aging delay on links such as the one employed by both Google and
Yahoo! so the effects of the site and inbound links can be
picked up very quickly and with good SEO efforts one can rank
well within a few months on MSN for competitive phrases.

Yahoo!

Until recently Yahoo! acted very much like MSN, but now it's
leaning a bit more towards Google. Ranking a website well on
Yahoo! requires a solid-sized site with unique content and a
very good number of links.

Yahoo! does have some type of page value factor at play. Many moons ago Yahoo! was playing
with a PageRank-like calculation called WebRank. They even went
so far as to put out a beta toolbar testing it. This indicates
that there is a factor at play in the Yahoo! algorithm similar
to Google's PageRank – they just don't advertise what a specific
page's value is.

To understand what to expect from Yahoo!
one must understand that when you get a link to your website it
won't deliver its full value for a number of months. While the
exact number of months in unknown, it appears to be around 8
before it delivers its full weight, though it will hold some
weight from day one and this weight will increase as time passes.

To rank well on Yahoo!, you must optimize your site similar to
what you would do for MSN and you must build a large number of
inbound links and have patience as these links age. You will
not see a sudden spike 2 weeks after a large link-building
campaign. You will likely have to wait 3-4 months to notice any
significant effect.

Google

Virtually every webmaster and website owner is primarily
concerned about attaining Google rankings because of the
significantly higher number of searchers using it. Provided
that you are building your website following the best practices
of SEO (i.e. unique content, a sizable amount of content, and a
good number of incoming links), then your rankings are sure to
follow. However, because of the aging delay it will likely take
longer than for MSN or Yahoo! Google considers the age of your
links, your domain and even the individual page to be factors,
and the longer your page has been online the better.

Essentially, ranking a site on Google requires that you continue your link building
efforts on an ongoing basis to ensure that you end up with
more-and-more links, and that you update your content and add
content on a fairly regular basis (through the addition of a
blog for example).

Quality Content Rules the Web

Sharon Housley of FeedForAll.com writes a great article on developing quality web content.

Here's the abbrevieated version:

Fresh Content

The age old question keeps coming up, how do you retain website
visitors, how do you make visitors return to your website? The
answer should come as no surprise, fresh content. Content is
truly king, the fresher the content the better the site. What
many web stie owners fail to realize is that there is an endless
supply of content on the web that is freely available to
webmasters.

Not only can public domain material be freely used and
syndicated on websites, but a number of content publishers
provide content in exchange for a link back to their websites.
A variety of contents related to the website theme that is
integrated into the website will attract the interest of both
search engines and web surfers. The key to taking advantage of
free content is integrating or including content that is
directly related to the theme of the website.

1. Articles
Article repositories exist that categorize articles.
Searching the repositories using keywords that are related to
a website's theme will result in a wide variety of articles
available for publication that are related to the site's
existing web content.

Use the following to locate topic specific articles:

Article-DirectorySite.com
Free Website Content
GoArticles

2. RSS Feeds
The content of many RSS feeds can be syndicated. The added
benefit of syndicating feeds is that they are frequently updated
which will result in a steady stream of fresh changing content.

Webmasters can navigate categories of RSS feed directories to
locate related topic feeds or search for feeds using keywords.

Search the following directories to locate related RSS feeds:

RSS Network
RSS Locator

3. Forums
Consider creating a community forum where like-minded
individuals or at the very least individuals with a common
interest can discuss problems, concerns, related products or
ideas. The forum posts will generate a fresh stream of new and
self perpetuating website content.

Free Forum avalable with all the CD WebMaker Hosting packages:
PHPbb

4. White Papers
Provide white papers, customer profiles or endorsements that
detail how applications can be used in a specific industry.
Creating a white paper section that explains how a specific
product or service is used in a specific industry to solve a
problem or increase productivity gives potential customers
insight into how a specific service, product or technology will
help in the course of a day.

Sample White Papers


5. Newsletter Archive
If done properly online marketers see an almost instantaneous
sales or traffic increase when they send newsletters but many
do not benefit long term from the newsletter. Consider creating
a newsletter archive, the content is already built, why not
benefit from the potential traffic and unique phrases used, to
attract new or potential customers?

*FREE* E-mail Newsletter software included with all CD WebMaker Hosting
packages:
PHPList

6. Blog
Ride the technological wave. A daily journal with information
related to product or service launches, specials, technical
tips and new product announcements.

As search engines combat the problems with artificially generated
nonsensical web content, web site owners must integrate quality,
themed content that is going to legitimately interest prospective
customers.

------------------PAID ADVERT-----------------------------
Bring thousands of customers to your site with a great web site design. Rely on professionals to create a great look with professional web design. Get some helpful tips and ideas by browsing web design portfolios. Bring your design to life with the help of a web design directory for businesses in your area. By reviewing web page design resources you can learn important dos and donts for your company website.

Link

News Feeds Now Available

Today I added some business and marketing news feeds from my NewsGator account to my web site. Except for the setup, news feeds add fresh content to your site without any work from you!

I'll be keeping a close eye on the stats for this page to see how it does in the SE.

And I'm going to try very hard to get a Podcast out there about how to go about adding feeds to your site as well. I found a good post at Ask Dave Taylor, but it didn't take me quite far enough, so I see a need for simple instruction to do this.

Besides, I haven't been 'casting as much as I'd like, or need to, lately.

Post on New Blogger Beta

First post ever on blogger beta. I was setting up a new client's blog and it forced me to use the Beta. After seeing the Labels feature, I decided to switch.

Got a couple new web design jobs this past week and am going to be super busy til the end of the year! Gonna have to find a way to dodge all those taxes too LOL!

A bahamas trip might be in order after the first of the year (yeah, I wish!).

Later, gators...

Passed (IE7) Muster, Mostly

Insert big, big sigh of relief here...

I downloaded and installed IE7 yesterday and did a quick check of my web sites - OMG only a couple sites have small problems. I've been losing sleep over this for a couple months now, and have been putting off the dreaded task afraid of what I might see. I'm completely relieved, almost.

What I don't understand is if Microsoft fixed the CSS bugs in IE6, why does my code work in IE7? IE7 should break most of my CSS stylesheets - I'm using hacks (or "filters" as Microsoft so very gently puts it) in every one of those files.

I'm not impressed with the new interface. I mean, it's ok, but I've been using Firefox for a couple years and it's had tabbed browsing (developer's dream!) and better security since it launched. Also, I had to search around to get the toolbar the way I wanted it, and most users won't know where to look, or even that they should!

Why don't we all just use Firefox already?