3 Deadly Search Engine Marketing Sins

My inbox this week provided glaring examples of three all too common rookie search engine marketing mistakes. What you could call three deadly search engine marketing sins. Starting with
===> Inadequate Keyword Research
Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re focusing on the most traffic laden keywords?
Especially when typically the plural form of a keyword phrase generates way more traffic than the singular form. For example “dog dishes” rather than “dog dish”.
Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on the singular form. Evidently the owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.
Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access Wordtracker, the tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.
Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get the most out of that day.
Search for your target keyword in Google.
Visit the top ranking sites. Use the “View Source” feature of Internet Explorer to check out the keyword meta tag of each site. You’re looking for a site listing lots of keywords there. Do this with each of the top listings or until you find one stuffed to the gills with keywords. Ah-ha! There’s your starting point for your list of likely keyword phrases.
Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have a long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.
Enhance your list further using this tool:

http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtool-beta.htm.

It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and Overture.
Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.
Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.
That gives you the strongest keywords with the most searches. (And yes, I realize KEI assumes all search engine listings are of equal value. But I did say this was “quick and dirty” didn’t I? However if you want another approach that improves on KEI there’s a spreadsheet available at http://www.seo-works.com/seo-resources/keyword-effectiveness-rank.html)
Anyway, once you’re sorted your keywords in some way to highlight the most profitable, simply take the top 25 on the list and create content for those first. No, not every one will be a natural born traffic magnet. But enough of them will be to get the ball rolling.
Repeat with the next 25. Don’t stop until you have at least 100 pages of hot content.
Remember, two or three word keyword phrases are usually your best bets. And I really like keyword phrases that are actually several keyword phrases in one. For example “irish setter dog dishes” gives “irish setter”, “irish setter dog”, “dog”, “dog dishes”, “setter dog dishes”.
===> Site Bloat
Twice this week I was asked to look at sites that would have let me read War and Peace while waiting for them to come up. And no visitor is going to have a copy of that handy.
To avoid losing any precious visitors lose the huge graphics. One of the sites had a graphic 501K in size! No wonder it took nearly two minutes to load up on a 56K modem.
Then too lose the Flash – unless you have a very good reason for using it. Even then lose the Flash.
If you’re wondering how your site’s download time measures up test it here: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm
It won’t cost anything to find out. But a slow loading site can cost you plenty. Because as the Net Mechanics follow up reports says, it’s a good idea to keep your page load times under about 12 seconds on a 28.8 modem. Otherwise your visitors will be wearing out the back button trying to escape.
===> Too Few Links
Did you know links can account for up to 80% of your success with Google? Yet someone else complained to me about how much work it took to get them.
Well doh! Ever think that maybe that’s why (in part) Google assigns so much value to links? Because you can’t quite as easily game links as you can on page content? Meaning you actually have to work to get links. Both by having link worthy content and by actively seeking them out on a regular basis.
It’s a given that most niches require you have a healthy collection of links to be competitive. Yet if you’re lucky enough to be in a niche that doesn’t, but you do, then you can easily dominate those rankings.
Anyway in a nutshell you can easily avoid these three search engine sins. Do your keyword homework. Keep your pages on a strict diet. And don’t forget link up with as many other quality sites as you can.
Do all that and you’re well on your way to search engine success. Ignore this advice and you’re, well you know, your Google goose is probably cooked. Leaving you perpetually stuck in Google purgatory.

Google Adsense AdLinks

The Google Adsense Search is a much overlooked feature of the Adsense program.
When you register at the the Adsense program, you can choose to serve content bases ads, but also you can select to join Adsense Search.
What Adsense search does is that it gives you the option to place a “Google Search” field on your website, similar to the one below. You can define the look of the search field from within your publisher center, and choose where to display the Google logo, submit button, colours etc.
It is possible for you to “brand” your search result page, by defining the colours used, and even include a logo (50 x 50 px).
A great feature about the Google Adsense Search fields is that you can choose to have the results displayed on a new page, and thereby keeping the visitor on your site.
You can then choose from 2 different types of search :
Google Adsense Search
Google Adsense Site Search

Google Adsense search directs your visitor to a page containing both Adsense ads and search results from Google. This is the type of search listed on the bottom of the navigation bar on this page.
The second type of search, Google Adsense Site Search, searches all recorded pages from your site that is listed in Google’s database. It then shows the user a result page, containing pages from your site that matches the search criteria, as well as search relevant Adsense Ads.
You can track the performance of your search fields, by creating a tracker from your Adsense Publisher center. Any clicks made from the result pages, counts towards your Adsense income.

9 Ways to Keep Google Happy

A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals the direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in the way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:
- Search engine spam, and
- Ensuring that “fresh” documents score higher than “stale” ones
Here is a summary of some of the general principles outlined in the document. Most SEO specialists agree these are reasonable principles, and it is only a matter of time before they are adopted.
1. Anchor text of links is still very important. Focus on your anchor text. It should contain your most important keyword.
2. Google expects that anchor texts will vary. A lot of identical anchor text suggests an “unnatural” linking pattern. Anchor texts should vary, but contain related phrases.
3. Google will record when specific links were first discovered, and watch how they change over time. Links with a long life span are considered more valuable than links with a short life span. This adds support to the link delay theory — that links do not start “counting” until they have been in place for a few months. So get working on those links right now, but don’t expect immediate gratification from Google.
4. If a new website gets a flood of new inbound links, this will be an indicator of possible spam activity. Links should be introduced gradually and according to a consistent pattern.
5. Google acknowledges that there may be link “spikes”, and so an influx of new links will be interpreted as legitimate if some of the links are from “authoritative” sites. Go after links from authoritative sites.
6. If a stale webpage continues to receive new incoming links, it will be considered fresh. Keep adding links pointing to important pages.
7. Links from fresh pages will in some cases be more valuable than links from “stale” or old pages that have not been recently updated. Get links from pages that are active. If you have high value links from important sites, develop a strategy for keeping those links fresh.
8. Google places more value on a site where link growth remains constant and slow. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep getting those links.
9. Pages with many inbound links will require proportionately more new links in order to remain fresh. The assumption is that the more links a page has, the more it should be getting in the future. Otherwise it starts slipping into the “stale” category. Focus more attention on your most important pages.
Regardless of whether of not Google implements all of these criteria, the general direction is clear. More importantly, these points make good SEO sense, and provide a very good place to start when planning a link strategy.

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Using the Classic Search in Explorer

If you prefer to use the classic search style in Explorer,

Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState

Add a String Key called Use Search Asst
Give it a value of no