Google Base & The v7ndotcom elursrebmem SEO Contest

Damn — just when I thought I could ignore the latest SEO contest, it does something appealing. First, Greg Rock star Boser notes that while Yahoo already has picked up 130 matches for v7ndotcom elursrebmem (and I see 296 myself, right now), Google comes in with zilch. Since the keywords for the contest were only announced today, one conclusion is that Yahoo is much faster at Google in gathering new content. (Another conclusion is that Matt Jagger Cutts over at Google is rallying the troops to keep v7ndotcom elursrebmem content out of Google). Whatever, the case, Google isn’t alone. MSN has no matches while Ask Jeeves comes in with two. But Thread watch reports Google results that not everybody can see. These appear to be flowing from Google Base into regular Google. Whether you see them seems to depend on whether Google has decided you are in the right country, frame of mind, hitting the right cluster, got the exact cookie or some other semi-voodoo factor to show them to you. Be sure to see the screenshot at Thread watch or the blowup Barry does complete with highlighting over at Search Engine Roundtable. You’ll see the special “Home Page:” or “More About” or “Author” links coming along with the listings. Funky results not sufficient for you? Want to join the competition. Well, you’ll find the rules of the originating contest here. The prize is $4,000 plus an iPod. Do a bit more work as explained here, and you could pick up an additional $3,000.

Tic Tac Websites Integrates with Online Business Opportunities Tic Tac Websites makes it possible for a website maker, newbie or otherwise to build their own website in a matter of five (5) minutes. Through the Easy Online Website Builder, website building becomes quick, easy and hassle-free. Newbie website makers can have a chance to build a efficiently designed and marketable web site as easily as professionals can. Tic Tac Websites now becomes a melting pot for drop ship centers and other online selling business resources where great opportunities are introduced for those starting websites to test the waters of online selling business. Vancouver, BC (PRWEB) January 17, 2006 -– Web site building can now be achieved without too much hassle in a space of five (5) minutes. This is made possible by Tic Tac Websites’ latest innovative website building system, the Easy Online Website Builder. By just logging in at www.tictacwebsites.com and subscribing to its monthly or yearly payment plan, website makers can start having the website they want without going throughout puzzling technical jargon. Recently, Tic Tac Websites integrates with wholesalemarketer.com a Drop Ship Product Center, Clickbank, an Online allocation Center, and Paypal, a credit card/checking account payment center. This combination means great opportunities for newbie and specialized website makers to test the waters of online selling business and earn extra returns. They can easily install these links on their website and form their very own e-commerce website. Tic Tac Websites and its new partners introduces lots of sources to be needed by those who are into the online business, either as an eBay seller, or other sellers on website stores and auction sites online. Tic Tac Websites website building program boasts of an easy-to-use system, which gives no difficulties for newbie website makers even if they have limited technical know how. They have easy-to-understand and learn technical support system that’s designed especially for the non-professional website maker. This is embodied by the “Getting Started” tutorial, 33 chapters of Online Documentation Help features, a knowledge base with a stronghold of 350+ articles and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) provision.

In-House SEO :: To Promote and Protect An appealing thread for in-house SEOs appeared at the IHelpYou Forums this morning. “In-house SEO” is a term referring to an SEO who is employed by a non-search connected company as a staff member in charge of website promotions. In the JohnC, an IHY moderator notes his job has shifted subtly from website promoter to website protector. “An SEOs primary responsibility is typically seen as “promoting” a web site. However, more and more I find for myself in the role of “Protector”. Someone will have an idea for a site feature or technology change and it is up to me to make sure this change will not hurt the web site in anyway, search wise. unavoidably, someone will read about a “cool” new technique to get better search placement. I find I must be on constant guard against these “Monday Morning Optimizers”. Usually, they don’t see the whole picture or understand that the information they found is years out of date.” (JohnC) With organic search again becoming a more vital component of website promotion, SEOs of all stripes are seeing more “Monday Morning Optimizers”. They are also dealing with the injure those well-meaning but ill-informed extra efforts can bring. Whatever his motives for addressing the topic this morning, JohnC has performed a public service for frustrated SEOs. “I think every person involved with a website has the potential to get it banned from the search engines. As the SEO it’s my job to see that they don’t.” (JohnC) “Recently i helped a client with their in-house design and seo guidelines. The list of warning/dont’s has become larger than the list of “do’s”. More than ever, it has become important to know what to avoid.” (Danny) Anyone with similar experiences or tips on dealing with armchair optimizers should read and add to the thread.

There are still a lot of questions to be sure, but there are some good beginnings of answers as well. Since this update was rolled out over months and in three distinct phases, it has been much more difficult to determine what factors have been given more or less weight.

What are some theories? Here are some of the top ones and, this is not a full list; there are most likely numerous other factors that affect Google rankings after Jagger that no one has recognized at all yet. Read the following.

Factors That Could Possibly HELP More in Jagger’s Aftermath

Aged Domains – Sites with domains that are older rank better now – the older the domain, the better its rankings with all other things being equal.
Very Relevant Links – Inbound links and outbound links relevancy is more important after Jagger. This means that if you point to related sites or you get links from other sites that are related to your website, you may rank better after Jagger with all other things being equal.
Links From Trusted Sites Help – Trust Rank is more important than ever after Jagger. Trust Rank is a concept that says if you get a link pointing to your site that is highly trusted by Google then you will rank better with all other things being equal.
Variety of Links – Links from .edu and .org websites are good for increasing your rankings and are more important than ever.
Aged Links – The older the link that points to your site, the more weight it’s given now.
Embedded Links – Links that are embedded in sentences and paragraphs instead of stand-alone links are weighted more heavily now.
Article Links – Articles are what directories had been a year or two ago for link building. Links from the author by-line or within the article that point back to your site will positively affect your rankings.
Fresh & Unique Content – Now, more than ever, regularly updated and added ordinal content will help your rankings.
High Traffic & Stickiness – User popularity statistics now, or will soon, affect rankings. In other words, user actions on your website, like how long they stay (stickiness), how many pages they visit, and even how many people visit your site in a given period, can all affect how Google ranks your site.

Factors That Could Possibly Not Help Anymore, or May Even HURT More In Jagger’s Aftermath

Duplicate Content – Any kind of duplicate content can hurt your rankings. Some say this only refers to other sites having the same content as you while others say even duplicate content within your own site can be bad. I find the latter hard to believe since all sites have repeating slogans, phrases, checkout instructions, or any number of other duplicate sentences within the same site.
Hidden Text – Hidden text within your html, in div tags, CSS, or comments, can negatively affect your rankings.
Decreased Rate of Link Building – The speed and volume of inbound link creation to your site from other websites, if changed, can negatively affect your rankings more so now.
Linking to Bad Neighborhoods – Reciprocal link trades hurt your rankings when you link to sites that are considered ‘bad neighborhoods’ by Google, such as link farms or sites that are banned by Google.
Link Schemes – Participating in link schemes such as Co-ops or Link Vault can hurt your ranking more than help them.

A clean, simple, fast-loading site with natural links pointing to it from a variety of other related websites, some .org’s and .edu’s, others from trusted authority sites, and many from small related websites, that adds fresh and unique content daily, will rank well in Google over time and won’t be affected by any update, including Jagger.

From the earliest time of the industry, search marketers have rallied behind the idea that companies needed to hire them in order to increase a web site’s rankings in the search engines. The idea was that higher rankings equaled more traffic and more traffic equaled more sales. Online businesses large and small, disappointed to discover that traffic wasn’t exactly lining up at the doors of their newly opened web sites, slowly began to see value in the “voodoo” that search marketers promised to work on their sites. As such, an industry was born.
The problem was that as more businesses became skilled about the need for search engine marketing, the idea that search engine marketing was all about rankings sustained to spread. This set the entire industry up for a level of expectation that simply cannot be sustained. While top five or even top ten rankings could be achieved by skilled SEMs for almost any keyword phrase, the day is coming when the industry will grow to levels that make phrases so competitive that even the most skilled search marketers will have difficulty attaining top rankings.

Imagine, for a moment, that other marketing industries had set themselves up with similar expectations. That email marketers were measured unsuccessful if you didn’t make the top ten list in terms of visitors to your site, that public relations professionals were a failure if you weren’t one of the top ten stories of the year, that television commercials were a failure unless they resulted in more store visits than all but ten other companies in their industry. Starting to sound a little silly?

Of course it does! Marketing is about finding new and innovative ways to present a product so that it drives purchases. Commercial marketers work to capture an audience’s attention in a way that keeps a company top of mind when the need arises for their product. Direct mail advertisers seek to capture a potential customer’s interest with a compelling enough offer to create a sale or at least an inquiry. This is where the search marketing industry finds itself facing a challenge. They need to educate businesses to help them toss out the old “top ten rankings” philosophy in exchange for the more realistic and sustainable “positive return on investment” philosophy. Otherwise, the entire industry runs the risk of imploding sometime in the next several years. The industry did shoot itself in the collective foot by setting up expectations based on rankings, but a positive ROI can act as a powerful remedy to help get things moving again.

There’s a great article by Jason Miller, staff writer for WebProNews on the upcoming increase in Microsoft’s push for the search market.Microsoft’s counter assault to Ad Sense will be launching in full force in June, up from the 20% of paid listings it currently provides in the MSN search results. Microsoft unveiled its ad Lab yesterday.While it’s not up yet the ad Center will be available shortly at http://advertising.msn.com/searchadv/. This story will shed some light on this important move by Microsoft at this relatively early point in what’s sure to be a major battle for the eyeballs of the world by these two giants.

Clix Marketing, an Internet marketing agency, Louisville, KY, launched a site this week devoted to education and discussion of MSN’s test paid search program, MSN ad Center.
The MSN Genius site, www.msn-genius.com, includes news about ad Center, a discussion board for advertisers testing the service, and software and template downloads.
“MSN Genius aims to shorten the learning curve for new users of ad Center, while supplying advanced users with professional marketing advice and techniques,” according to a statement from Clix Marketing. In related news, MSN Ad Center users in Europe now have access to more demographic profiling tools.

Just as a head’s up, we’ve been seeing some significant fluctuations in the current rankings on Google and there appears to be some fluctuation of Page Rank going on.This is likely the beginning of the update that Matt Cutts (software engineer for Google) was referring to in his blog about an update early in January.As the first update after Jagger we can be certain that it will be big and include some very interesting changes to the way rankings and perhaps even Page Rank are calculated.

SEARCH GIANT GOOGLE HAS APPARENTLY entered into a deal with Dell Computers to provide a Dell-Google co-branded personalized home page, which will be the default home page set for new Dell PCs and laptops.

the recent dell computer we bought for our SEO company holds the google homepage, it has other modules attached to it,

Google has its own DRM ( digital rights management ) for their videos,

but a popular news site says,

Google is drawing criticism for its decision to use its own digital-rights management (DRM) system to control the distribution of copyright-protected videos in its new Google Video Store.
Google announced the Google Video Store last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Google’s own proprietary DRM technology represents a challenge to existing DRM systems from Microsoft and Apple, also used to control video distribution over the Internet.
By creating yet another DRM system, Google is restricting rather than enabling the distribution of content over the Internet, critics say.

www.cio-today.com/news/Google-Draws-Criticism-for-DRM-Scheme/story.xhtml?story_id=022000QKPE5O