Hermesmyth Internet Marketing Blog

SEO Key Performance Indicators

If you website ranking well and positioned well in search engine, and disappeared suddenly from the search listing after few content additions of content. No worries! All you have to do is check if there was duplication of content in your website or your website content was copied to a website which has a better page rank then yours. The below are few possibilities of a sudden disappearance of website from search engines.

Case 1: Duplication of Content

To check if the website content is copied from some other site visit www.copyscape.com and analyse your website. This shows the list of site which has similar content. So if you feel like the content in your website is same like the other, just tweak your content. In case your content is original and someone has copied it, report it to Google or any other search engine provider.

Case 2: Duplication of Content within website or from your old website

If you have the same content in 2 different web page links, then you need to block one from search engine index, if you want the other page not to be indexed. To do this, visit Google Webmaster central, add and block the link which you don’t want the search engine to crawl. (Though you can do this using the .htaccess or robots.txt, this method will also work in Google – as Google is most used search engine, importance is given to Google search)

In case your entire site or specific pages is the same as your old website, all you have to do is take the content and have them in the server backup, and see that the old website doesn’t appear. Once the entire website shows a 404 error, resubmit it to search engines, so that once they crawl, if there is no content found in the website, search engines will remove them from their index.

Case 3: Website Server IP

This rarely does happen, if a website has two servers 1. Live server and 2. Development server (which is not supposed to be available for public and is used in internal organisations). If you buy a website ip from a service provider, and by chance you get a the ip of the link, which was ranking good and now is dead, the content which you may post would reflect on the website which doesn’t belong to you. So your website will appear in 2 different website.(only the url will be different, all the others will remain same) This is something the Web host provider needs to take care off. In this case, you need to ask the host provider to clear the cache of the old server.

Case 4: Link Spamming

Link Spamming is frequently changing the links with the same content. When a search engine crawls the website, and if the links keep on changing, and each time, the previous link is dead/broken, then search engines will think, those are spamming links. So this may also lead to drop in search listings.

Also Watch the Video – These are the insights given my Matt Cutts, Google

Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Apart from this there are many reasons, but these are few important points, which optimizers see that there is a sudden drop in the traffic. (Even I forgot, these things, and later realized, these are the things, I missed out during analysis. Though I concentrated on the few things which does occur normally)

Source:  http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-site-review-session-from-google-io-2010/

Social Media Optimization has been one of the potential online marketing strategy followed by most of the companies. Whilst the TV ads are pretty costly, online video sharing is cost a bit and sometimes free.  The next generation would see a substancial growth in the video marketing. Here are top 10 video sharing websites, where you can post your videos free. Even I am planning to post one soon
YouTube -  www.youtube.com

MySpace Videos -  http://vids.myspace.com

Yahoo! Video Search -  http://video.search.yahoo.com

MSN Video Search -  http://video.msn.com

Google Video -  http://video.google.com
 
AOL Media -  http://us.video.aol.com
 
iFilm – www.ifilm.com

MetaCafe – www.metacafe.com

vMix – www.vmix.com

Daily Motion – www.dailymotion.com

Many of the fresh search engine optimizers (SEO’s) as well as experienced sometimes knowingly or unknowingly in order to increase the website traffic start using few unethical ways which doesn’t obey the SEO guidelines. These are done in order to bring the page rank, and increase the website traffic in a short period of time.

So what are the common black hat seo techniques that are followed and what happens to a website if black hat seo are used?

Here the answer for your question.

Generally, black hat seo is kind of spam and unethical, for which search engine companies penalize for misuse by banning the website from their search engines.

Using Invisible Text: This is a common method, in which website developers use to get the list of top searched keywords and put them in the page, in the website background color. When a person searches in a search engine a using a specific keyword might reach this page, whereas the page which he lands has nothing to do with that keyword, nor it would be visible to the website visitor.

Below is a recent site that I got in my Google alert for a keyword I subscribed. When I went to the website, there is irrelevant content to a furniture shop . Here is the invisible text “keywords” they used to rank it.

Stuffing Keywords: Lot of keywords are stuffed in a specific page, with lot of repetitions, which is against the search engine policies. Also the Meta tags also have lot of keywords.

Website Cloaking: A webpage is created for the sole purpose of increasing the website traffic by identifying the search engine’s spider user agent or ip address. When a user visits the page, he would be taken to some other page which wouldn’t be related to what was shown in search results.

Doorway Page: A page is optimized for specific keywords and once starts getting in traffic, the website would be redirected to the real website. This is also similar to website cloaking.

Link Farms: This is a kind of spamming the search engines indexing algorithm. This is also known as spamdexing. It linking to site whereever possible, but which are not relevant to the content or keywords. This is made with the only intention to increase the backlinks, reciprocal link, which search engine see as spamming, as it is against the search engine indexing policies.

 Penalty:

 Is there a good penalty other than blocking or re-ranking the site? Yes, good penalizes by blocking the site or by dropping site from its current position to some the bottom of the results.

Here is the site, that was blocked by Google  for using Black Hat Technique. ( I have provided the image of the invisible text given in the html code)

Today as soon I came in, I just checked for few seo alerts. I found this news and thought I should definitely share with you all.

“In the last week, more than 280 search terms have been attacked by more than 6,600 black hat search engine optimization (SEO) operations, according to a study by SonicWall.”

Read the full article here: http://www.lastclicknews.com/black-hat-seo-operations-become-rampant-101052.html

Everyone wants to host a website these days. Be a small shop or a big multinational company – Internet marketing is a part of their plans. In spite of the fact that this is a healthy scenario, there is flipside to this. Just wonder if you have a online shopping website and its webserver is down for a day or two.- So its better make the best choice at the beginning itself.

Web-hosting use to be privilege, for a select few when internet started kick off, but these days its available to a common man. This has increased the number of websites from a few million in 1999 to many billions in 2010. This has resulted in information over load. There is only so much of information a human mind can process, we re receiving information faster than what most of us can perceive. It is not an uncommon experience, when we can come out looking for specific information; we end up getting a lot of junk information.

The second decade into the 22nd century, there are many challenges that will posed to us in terms of web-hosting. It is likely that other domains like “ .com “ , “ .net “ will be introduced. For example there can exist a xyz.com and xyz.net. Though on one hand this will open up the scope for more sites, it will dilute the traffic to the intended site. Users are more likely to get misdirected.

Internet in general is expected to become slower by the end of this decade, because of information overload. Unlike what most people think, the future of internet can actually be slower than current days, since the number of activities of the internet per person is increasing as compared to increase in bandwidth.

Web-hosting is gradually becoming a reselling base affair, since most site-names have been bought out already. Now there is new industry that is emerging, that actually engages in aiding acquisition of websites. There are various levels of elements involved in the internet industry from brokers to sellers.

Though the rates of web space and domain names are available for cheaper, the cost of acquiring a site name alone is becoming expensive. But its more important that you choose the right web host service providers, who update the security patches regulary, so that our website account or web host account is not vulnerable to hacker attacks.

This decade, will pose a rat race for establishing a web identity. It is important to plan your web profiling as soon as possible to ensure that the desired effect is produced.

There is likely to new technological enhancements on the web-hosting sector. With increasing number of option like, video, audio and other 3D effects domain into website designing. Web-Hosting will be more advanced than ever before. It is likely that the prices of web space and allied expenses will fall. But deployment of newer technology to enhance the aesthetic feel of the site will prove more expensive.

So its better choose the right and best webhosting provider who provide you good speed, enough space, cost-effective, security, 24/7 support and most importantly that you believe the host provider to be reliable and hassle-free.

Now one of the biggest challenges that this age brings us is the constraint of time and of course global resource usage and its impact on the environment. Online shopping in its own way can positively impact both these problems.

There are many prejudices against online shopping on the lines of unsafe fiscal transactions, inadequate information about the product and the lack of opportunity to actually view the product. But the perks are more than evident. The time saved in travel, the effort saved in actually physically going across the shops and the possibility of getting a good review before the purchase.

Today, most successful products sold on the internet are that ones that do not require a great shopping experience, or the essentials.. Like computer parts, software etc. on the other hand people would much rather buy cloths after they wear it once, would not prefer to shop for it on the internet. But this scenario is soon to change with the invent of ways to make the shopping experience better with video, audio and other multimedia effects on the internet. It is interesting to note that there are places where people buy cars on the internet these days.

On the other hand, sectors like grocery stores etc are fast adapting to the internet revolution. It is possible in most parts of the world these days to buy products on the internet.

Like mentioned before time is a premium for everyone. Both the shopper and the seller save a lot of time when It comes to online shopping. All the host has to do is to set up a clean website and a good payment portal, the buyer come in and do their bit. On the other hand the buyer can shop at leisure with his computer where ever he wants. It’s a win-win situation.

Considering the money saved and betterment in shopping experience, online shopping is here to stay for some time to come.

Most organisations send promotional emails to sell and promote their brand. Do they  really know how many people have really read their email and have visited their website?  75% of the organisations don’t know how many visitors have visted the website after a email campaign.

Here is a simple online tool by Google, which makes your task easy by showing the click throughs in your google analytics account. All you have do is just tag your url providing a campaign name which would be shown in analytics once someone visits your website through email campaign.

Visit: Google Analytics URL Builder for URL Tagging

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

For More Information Visit: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55518

Soon will make a new post regarding the traditional method of tracking open rates while doing email campaigns.

Many of you if not having a website, would surely use a blog either Blogger or WordPress. You may be posting lot of good articles, but still you may not see your blog listed in any of the first 10 pages of your favourite search engine.  Are you really interested in bringing your blog within those first 10 or 5 pages or even to the first page, then follow the below simple web blog optimization tips.

1.      Choose a domain / blog name (With a keyword, else if you want you to have general name then go ahead and follow the below optimization points – a domain name with a keyword is an add-on to seo technique.)

2.      Have a theme / template that is really pleasing to the eyes. There are lot of free templates available, use them

3.      Checkout for a good and reliable webhosting provider. Also if you use a wordpress or blogger for blogging, they can you their self-hosting.

4.      Avoid overloading the widgets in your blog, it will slow down the web page ie. It will take long time to open the blog itself.

5.      Provide a Descriptive Title with right keywords in it. Title should not be more longer.

6.      Use original content, do not copy somebody’s content and post it in your blog, it will be duplication and your site won’t rank at the top.

7.      Permalinks – while give the links for the post, use the month / date and title of the blog. And again in wordpress you have an option to edit the link itself. Say if you have a got link as “blog.com/november/26/Web-Blog-Optimization-Tips-and-Techniques-for-all-blog-beginners.php “ you can make that as “blog.com/November/26/blog-optimization-tips.php”

8.      Make use of the RSS feeds. Submit the feed links to RSS feed reader sites, this will help your content travel. Customize your feed content like only first 2 paragraphs appears and there is a option to read more which brings the feed readers to your blog.

9.      Submit your blog to web directories and search engines.

10.     Keep posting and updating your blog regularly

11.     Use descriptive and relevant keywords in the tags. The tag clouds will help in bringing visitors when indexed by search engines.

12.     Keep submitting your blog links to social networking sites like digg, delicious, stumpleupon , technorati and many more

13.     If available install some seo supported plugins in your blog. Also when there is newer version of blog available upgrade it.

14.     Add social media websites icon in the footer of the blog to share your posting in social networking sites.  You can do this by visiting www.addthis.com register and add the code provided in the template footer.

15.     Keep you blog interesting and precise. (This is a pretty long post for me….but thought this would be a great interest to my readers )

16.     Keep reading the latest Search Engine optimization (SEO) techniques and follow them

Submit your press releases for free