Something to Bark About — Waterdog Specialties
Website Redesign
New design of old website combined with search engine friendly coding puts this new site front and center . . .
The new redesigned site is experiencing high traffic and rankings from potential customers and search engines alike. Not only do people visiting the website love the new modern design, search engines such as Google LOVE the new website!
http://www.mooredesignsolutions.com/enews/2009/08-001/index.html
Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has been getting quite a bit of press lately and for good reason. It’s the first search engine to present a real challenge to Google. But, I can say anything I want, the proof is in the pudding (as they say) so I thought I would do a side by side test between Google and Bing. Let’s see what the results show.
Keyword Phrase: Seo Services
Google search results gave me 10 agencies that provide seo services
Bing search results gave me 10 agencies that provide seo services
Keyword Phrase: Name Tags
Google search results gave me 7 companies that provide name tags
Bing search results gave me 9 companies that provide name tags
Keyword Phrase: South Florida Lawyer
Google search results gave me 8 South Florida law firms
Bing search results gave me 9 South Florida law firms
Keyword Phrase: Digital Imaging Services
Google search results gave me 4 companies that provide digital imaging services
Bing search results gave me 8 companies that provide digital imaging services
Keyword Phrase: Denver Limousine Services
Google search results gave me 8 companies that provide limousine services in Denver Colorado
Bing search results gave me 9 companies that provide limousines services in Denver Colorado
Keyword Phrase: Counseling Services in Atlanta
Google search results gave me 7 listings of counseling centers in Atlanta Georgia
Bing search results gave me 8 listings of counseling centers in Atlanta Georgia
Keyword Phrase: Spiritual Life Coaching Services
Google search results gave me 10 listings of spiritual life coaches
Bing search results gave me 8 listings of spiritual life coaches
So, out of 7 searches, the results are not so amazingly different. Some of the search results were the same but most were not. Although most of the time Bing brought back more relevant searches than Google, the differences were not that extraordinary. In other words, it’s not as if Bing gave me double or more search results that were better than Google. Bing just gave me 1 or 2 search results that were more relevant than Google.
Of course, this is only for 7 searches. It would be interesting to run a sample with 100 or 1000 searches – I don’t have the time for that. But I did want to see for myself if the commercials Bing.com puts out are true. Maybe if they’re compared with other search engines, but when compared to Google, it’s not so different.
But, having said that. It’s nice to have another search engine that does return relevant results. Now I can do my searches on Google.com and Bing.com and I’ll know that I’ll be getting good relevant results for my time. So, yes, Bing is the first search engine to really give Google a run!
Found a really great tool that works on Firefox browsers. If you haven’t yet begun to use Firefox, I have no idea what you’re waiting for. I couldn’t possibly do my SEO work without some of the great extensions that Firefox offers.
Anyway, Mani Karthik wrote a great little script that you can install onto Firefox so that when you do a search on Google, you not only get the Google results but you also get the top 5 results from Twitter! Now, that is pretty cool!
You’ll need the Greasemonkey Extension already installed (but you should have that anyway!)
So, how does this script help you? Well, let’s see…
1) It provides more exposure. Let’s say you’re a divorce lawyer in Colorado. You can Tweet about “divorce laws in Colorado” and you’re also marketing that phrase on your website. When someone does a search for “divorce laws in Colorado” not only will your website come up (if it’s optimized) but your Tweet will come up as well! So, you basically end up with 2 listings on the Google search.
Yes, I know, this only works IF the person has this extension installed on their Firefox and it’s true, it may be a small percentage but the concept is that it’s an easy way to get extra exposure.
2) For researchers (such as myself) it’s an added bonus to have an additional source of information on my search results. In addition, the Twitter information is real time so it’s more updated than the search results on Google (at least, potentially).
So, give it a try. You just might like it!! And if you do, pass it on!
Here’s the link to the full article – http://mt-hacks.com/20090302-realtime-twitter-search-results-on-google.html
“I typed my name in and I’m nowhere on Google?”
Usually, a day or two after I begin marketing a new website, I get this question in an email or phone call. Even though on the proposal I sent out to the client and on the contract I have the client sign it clearly states that it takes 3-8 months to get listed and ranked in Google’s engine. But, the questions still come. So, to answer this question, here’s a quick little summary of how Google lists sites.
1) Contrary to what some people will tell you, it is not necessary to submit your website to Google, or any of the large search engines like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. The reason is that these search engines find websites mainly by following links on other websites. So, if you launch a new website, the very first thing your SEO firm (or you) should do is to write an article or press release and submit that article or press release to a website that is already being crawled by Google. That usually means a website that is already on Google’s index. Of course, in your article or press release you want to add a link TO your website!
2) Google literally looks at over 200 different factors when they crawl your website. They look at everything from the age of the domain name, to the manner in which the website was created, to the words on the website pages, to the links to and from the website pages and oh so much more!! The score that your website page gets at the end of that crawl determines where the website will be for a particular set of keywords. In other words, if your trying to market your website page for the phrase “small business loans” but because of the content, the structure, the links on the website page, Google determines that the page is about “small business financing”. So, when a search is made for “small business loans” the website may come up as #35, but when a search is made for “small business financing” the website may come up as #3.
3) Basically, Google performs 3 functions that work to determine the ranking of your website page…
a) Crawling – when the Google robot finds your website page it “crawls” it. Basically, it scans the page for words, coding, etc.
b) Indexing – once the pages are crawled, the next step is that they get put into the index. Into the list, if you will. But this doesn’t mean it’ll be found on page one, two or three or maybe even page 100. It just means the website page is now part of massive list of pages.
c) Ranking – when Google reviews your website pages and puts your website through the over 200 rules it applies, it then ranks your website page by page. Not every page of your website will get into the first page of search results in Google, at least not right away.
4) Google receives over 5 million new websites every single day. There are literally billions of web pages on Google’s index and web pages are continuously scanned and crawled. That is, if they are being changed. If you create a website page and then don’t make any changes to it, after a few months, the ranking of that website page will decrease. Why? Because Google has determined that it’s an inactive page. So, when your SEO firm tells you that you need to add new information to your website pages, listen to them!
5) Obviously, all this takes a little bit of time. Mostly because one of the 200 factors that Google looks at are incoming links. It takes time to get other websites to link TO your website (and to use anchor text linking as well!). So, don’t despair. It truly is worth it! The average ROI is usually over 200% but you just have to give it time to work!
Getting top rankings on Google is not as impossible as it may seem. It depends, of course, on the keyword phrase you want to get top rankings for. But one factor that often gets overlooked when websites pursue top rankings is the incoming links. Whether it’s one way links or reciprocal links, incoming links play a very important part in gaining those precious top Google rankings.
So, with that in mind, let’s perform an experiment.
1) In Google, type the phrase “name tags“, without the quotes. The first website to come up (at least on my Google search on this particular day) is nametag.com
2) So, what kind of links are coming IN to nametag.com? After all, if I want my website to beat the competition I’ve got to know what the competition is doing!
3) Using the excellent backlink checker tool by seopro.com – we can find the incoming links TO nametag.com
4) As I scroll down the list I can see incoming links from website directories like Yahoo, freestuffcrazy.com, and Business.com. These are one way links. Meaning that nametag.com is not linking back to these directories. I also see incoming links from home pages of websites, link pages of websites and of course incoming links from blogs and press releases. Some of these links are reciprocal.
5) Nothing out of the ordinary really. But that was just one website. Let’s try a few more.
6) A search for “men’s rights in florida” (again, without the quotes) brings up troumandwallsh.com in the top position. A backlink check reveals incoming links from legal directories, general directories, reciprocal linking websites, blogs, craigslist and press releases.
7) A search for “free accounting advice” (again, without the quotes) brings up taxhelp-expert.com. Again, a backlink check reveals incoming links from bookmarking services, reciprocal link traffic sites, blogs, and directories.
If you have been reading lately that Reciprocal Linking is dead, that you shouldn’t bother getting incoming links from small directories or reciprocal links from other websites, well then, why is it that the top websites in almost every search has a variety of incoming links? Yes, I will agree that one way incoming links will give you “more points” than reciprocal links but does this automatically mean that reciprocal links are dead? Should you automatically stop trying to get these types of incoming links to your website?
That kind of thinking reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me. He told me that his step-father noticed that the McDonalds in his town of 3000 people was not doing well, so he concluded that ALL McDonalds restaurants were doing badly!
That kind of general thinking just doesn’t work well in business and especially on the Internet!!
So, go ahead, conduct an experiment yourself. See who is linking TO your online competition. If you’re looking for ways of getting top rankings on Google and other search engines, don’t forget incoming links and reciprocal linking.
If you’ve done any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work or Internet Marketing work (or both) then you’ve probably read about Google’s rankings and how they look at website themes. And if you haven’t read this, well, let me introduce you to the concept.
Google’s “world domination plan” (sarcastically said) is to provide it’s users with the most relevant information as possible. So, they started off with matching keyword phrases.
The user types in “activities in Seattle”.
Google returns website pages with the phrase “activities in Seattle” and also websites with the words “activities” and “Seattle” in them. That worked for a while and most users go relevant results to their searches. But then competition began to increase.
So, Google decided they would try to figure out what the “theme” of a website is and put that score into the equation to help it decide if the website matched what the user was looking for. So, they created “Latent Semantic Indexing” (LSI) and added it to their algorithm. This means that now Google looks for the words in the phrase “things to do in Seattle” but also looks for other words related to that “theme”.
How can you find out which words would go with this theme? There’s a few ways…
1) You can go to Google and type in the search box…
~activities ~seattle (I omitted the words “in” because it’s considered a stop word)
That little squiggly line in front of each word is called a “tile” and it’s located to the left of your 1 key on your keyboard. This search tells Google to search for theme related keywords for these particular words. Look through the first 3 pages of Google results (organic and paid) and you’ll get a list of words like…
fun activities
recreation
projects
lessons
fun
games
crafts
2) Use a website like Quintura.com – type in your phrase “activities in Seattle” and on the left hand side you’ll be given a list of “related” keyword phrases. You’ll see phrases like…
guide
events
area
tours
sightseeing
attractions
trips
and much more.
Do you optimize your website page for ALL these keyword phrases? NO! But what you do is add as many of these phrases as you can to your website page content. That way, when Google visits your website, they will be able to determine not only an overall theme of the site (through your title tags) but also a theme for each website page (through your tags and the words in your body of content).
An added benefit to Keyword Theme Research is that it “shows” you what other categories you can add to the website to help increase the size of the site, the amount of content on the site which in turn help to increase the traffic to the site.
Just in case you’re not sure how to pronounce this new search engine, it’s pronounced “cool”.
The story goes that 3 of the co-founders of Cuil are former Google engineers so the speculation that Cuil will be true competition for Google can’t be ignored. But is it really? Well, let’s give it a try, we’ll compare some searches on Cuil and on Google and the results they present from the first page of results.
Keyword Phrase: name tags
On Cuil: I got 1,451,401 results – all relevant
On Google: I got 51,200,000 results – all but 1 relevant
Keyword Phrase: south florida attorneys
On Cuil: I got 3,063,754 results – all relevant
On Google: I got 2,150,000 results – all but 2 relevant
Keyword Phrase: vacations to hawaii
On Cuil: I got 22,353 results – all relevant
On Google: I got 13,1000,000 results – all relevant
In this short exercise, Google had more items “indexed” in 2 of the 3 examples, but Cuil had more relevant results in all their examples. Also, the layout on Cuil takes a little getting used to but I like the photos and I like the tabs, when they are present.
All in all, I think Cuil may present as an alternative to Google but if it will be able to truly compete with Google’s massive marketing? Well, only time will tell!
