Considering a Paid Search Budget Cut? Think Bizwatch & Start Saving Money

May 19th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I know a lot of people who are dealing with budget cuts, and determining if they should bring search in-house. The question is how will you manage search marketing analytics with less resources, and less tools? What about learning curve? How will you manage all those paid search campaigns? How will keep up with your SEO ranked competitors? How will you track which keywords convert? And how will you find the time to do all this?

I’ve been talking about search marketing and website analytics since 2001. I’ve advised a number of search marketing tools how to improve their tools. I’ve issued wish lists so many times and improvements have been made. Of course, I had our own tool, Bizwatch, but never marketed it publicly. And the tool was developed in 2001 and it was beginning to look a little shabby in the fancy tools market. So, I completely re-engineered Bizwatch and we’ve now launched a fabulous new application.

Here’s what I didn’t want: One more tool that just did paid search, or analytics, or SEO. I didn’t want to do what some tools do very well. I didn’t want to be a link checker, a metatag generator, or do what Google Analytics, Adwords Editor or Omniture does well. I didn’t want to do what Wordtracker does well. I didn’t want to charge percent of ad spend, or percent of page views. I didn’t want to charge per user. I didn’t want it to be completely self-serve, but capable of being self-serve.

Here’s what I did want: A 3-in-1 tool that combined SEO tools with paid search tools, web analytics with keyword research, and even competitor research. I wanted to charge flat rates by whichever tool was being used. I want to offer affordable hourly consultation rates if you’re using the tool and need some one-on-one guidance. I want to be able to import Google Adwords, and Google Analytics data easily and organize it into monthly views. I want PDF exports. I want professional tables and charts. I want color filtering. I want it to be easy to use.

So, we brought on our existing clients in late 2008 and continued to add features, like the new paid search filter which highlights campaigns and ad groups that are operating in the red. The first month that red filters were used, we made some recommendations to our client’s CEO and showcased the info. We showed a trend analysis to the CEO and marketing manager of how five campaign ad groups were not profitable to the company. We suggested that we re-allocate funds to another campaign that has shown recent improvements. Within one month, here’s what happened with their Google Adwords account:

Cut the month’s ad spend by $2,300.
Increased the month’s web leads for Google Ad campaign by 17%
Spent just 1-2 hours reviewing the information, preparing presentation to CEO & marketing manager
Spent 1-2 hours making changes on campaigns operating in the red
Logged into Bizwatch May 1 and saw we were no longer operating in the red on 4 out of 5 campaigns worked on

Bizwatch simplifies the paid search analytics process. It’s too difficult to determine which campaigns, ad groups and keywords you should work on when there are numerous campaigns. We focus on one thing:

Keywords that convert at an acceptable cost of conversion. That’s it.

If your keywords aren’t converting at an acceptable cost of conversion, then we should talk about why. Consider using Bizwatch at just $595/month. Learn more about the paid search tools, SEO & competitor analysis tools, and website analytics tools.

It will not require more code if you’re already using Google Analytics, tracking goals, and Adwords. If you’re tracking conversions on Adwords, then we’re set for that as well. No more code installation, just a verification that it works correctly and is tracking accurately.

Consider Bizwatch and start saving money on your paid search Google Adwords campaign. Simplify monthly reporting with Bizwatch Search Analytics Platform today.

Posted in Paid Search Tools, Search Analytics. No Comments »

 

How Long Should It Take to Get New SEO Content Ranked?

April 20th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I’m often asked how long will it take to get SEO results after the work is done. Good question. You can actually begin to figure this out using a really simple, inexpensive tool called NetTracker.

NetTracker is an oldie but goodie web analytics tool that enables people to easily delve into robot/spider analysis so that you can determine when and how often the spiders are crawling your specific web pages in question. You can trend the data over time, to figure out the averages of when a search engine visits a particular level of your website, and the pages within that level.

Before you can see ranking improvements, your pages have to get picked up by Google, Yahoo & MSN first.

What if you don’t have NetTracker (info on how to get NetTracker is below)?

Page titles, and possibly the description metatag or Google snippet of the page content are one way to determine if Google has cached the new page content, specifically if you changed your page title. So, we’re going to assume you’ve changed at least your page title so you can follow this exercise.

Google SEO Snippets

1. Keep an Excel spreadsheet of the page changes you’ve made.
If you keep an Excel spreadsheet of “before” and “after” metadata for each URL, you’ll be able to do this research. If you visit Google’s SERPs 2-3 days after you make changes, you can see these changes in Google’s SERP snippets.

Example: Note a page title in the first Google SERP that says:
Dried flower wreath, wall decor ….
That is the site’s page title, as well as snippet, which may or may not be the actual description metatag

2. Do your keyword research using Wordtracker, and Google Analytics Goal Conversion Analysis to determine the best page title and description metatag
Let’s say they do some keyword research and determine that there is a better keyword phrase for that page, considering it’s their home page that’s ranked for “floral wreaths“. Of course, they may have already done their Google Analytics revenue driving keyword analysis and determine these terms are best for conversion, so this is just an example.

Wordtracker Keyword Universe tool

3. Update page title, description and update Excel spreadsheet
Example: If this company above decides to change their page title, after some search analytics are performed, to:
Holiday Wreaths, Christmas Decorative Wreaths & Floral Wreath - Linda’s Dried Flowers

4. Go to Google within one week, or five business days, to research the updates - see if Google has the new page title, and/or description metatag or snippet of page
If edits were made to your home page, it is often the most frequently visited page that Google hits, you might note that the pages are refreshed faster, if pages were made to the home page, over an internal page.

If you see the Google SERP snippet updated with the newly optimized page title, then you should

5) Rerun a SEO ranking report (Bizresearch can do this for you for just $9.95 - see Google Checkout to the right, and will include a trend report), or you do a spot-check on that keyword phrase “holiday wreaths”, “christmas wreaths”, “decorative wreaths” & “floral wreaths” or any combo of that.

6) Use NetTracker Marketing Analysis Robot Spider Reports -
A more accurate way to analyze whether or not that page has been picked up by Google yet, and how often they visit other pages on your site, is to use NetTracker’s Marketing Analysis Robot/Spider report (see picture below of left hand navigation).

NetTracker Log File Web Analytics spider report

The detail of this spider analysis (web analytics) report shows the time, date, page of entry and exit. It even shows everything they did in between - so all pages that they visited in between. You’ll probably wonder why the spider spent so long on a particular page - I can’t tell you that much. You’d have to ask someone else (aka Matt Cutts) or consult your Google Webmaster Central tools - as they’ll give you an idea of this information, but without nearly as much detail for better analysis.

NetTracker spider analysis detail

Here’s what I’ve noted for many SEO clients over the years:

Home page - top level of website - takes about 1-2 days to get updated - unless your site has been dormant for a while, and has a low page rank

Second level of website - pages off the root of the domain, or one category/level down from the home page link
Example: www.bizresearch.com/category/page.html - or /category=2&page=4
Takes 1-2 weeks, unless you have not updated these level pages in a long time
How to speed up indexing?
Make sure these level pages are in sitemap.xml feed, and in global footer throughout the website, if possible, and linked from other pages within the body copy

Third level - pages two category/levels down
Example: www.bizresearch.com/category=2/subcategory=3
May take one month or more to visit these pages, unless it’s linked from many places, or is in a blog and linked from the main blog page, and footer, sitemap

Further levels down - you’re likely to need to help Google find these pages through sitemap feed updates, as well as global footer, and body/copy text links, and lastly, inbound ethical, non pay-per-post links to these pages.

Let me know if this was helpful, or if you have more questions.

To get NetTracker for your website, you can buy the software directly from Sane Solutions, or you can go through a trusted web hosting provider such as iHost Solutions.

One last recommendation - just because you’ve optimized your website for popular search terms such as “christmas wreaths”, there is no guarantee that you will show up for this keyword phrase in Google, Yahoo and/or MSN. Or, you might show up well in one search engine and not another.

This is why you must do search analytics on which keywords convert at the lowest acquisition cost. If you need help understanding how to determine which keyword phrases convert best, before going after an SEO strategy, please contact Bizresearch directly.

Posted in Search Optimization (SEO). No Comments »

 

Big Brands & Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at Google SERPs

April 7th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I’ve seen a number of people write about big brands complaining that their sites aren’t doing well in Google SERPs (search engine results pages). I’ve worked with a number of big brands in the past 12 years. Let me tell you the most common reasons that big brands don’t do well in Google’s SERPs:

1) Their sites are not search engine friendly
Case in point - I worked on a major retail site that had their URLs controlled by the FAST site search engine. The search engine URLs were not getting indexed in Google. Do not expect Google to remedy this situation. It’s up to you to have a search engine friendly website, and to ensure your URLs are indexed.

2) Do not assume that the sitemap.xml or .php page is going to get your entire website indexed. Another common myth about big brands is that if a sitemap exists, surely Google will index all of your pages. Does not always happen this way.

3) Don’t know about Google Webmaster Central Tools - love this ever-growing, web-based console for webmasters to learn how Google is accepting a site’s content and any errors they might find. Suggest big brands verify their sites using Google Webmaster Central, then monitor messages in the console.

4) Because people can’t control Google SERPs, although they may try and occasionally succeed, big brands often don’t invest even 10% in SEO compared to their paid search campaigns. Because they can’t control SEO results, they often don’t invest in SEO nearly as much. I’ve seen about 10% of paid search budget allocated for SEO. It’s also over-scrutinized compared to paid search, which is ironically on auto-pilot most of the time.

5) Big brands don’t add new content enough - many sites do not add new content enough, or post content in select sections of the website. Thus, large parts of a corporate website may not get updated frequently enough. This can create stale content, and search engines may give preference to updated sites who continuously post content.

6) Blogs often get people to link to content pages - and corporate sites could learn to use social media to their benefit. I blogged a lot about the Explorer II (now known as Minerva) ship after the Explorer I ship sank in November 2007. I had Abercrombie & Kent’s PR person in frequent communication, as well as the family who owend the Explorer I ship that sank before selling the ship 3-5 years before it sank. I was impressed by the level of communication both companies extended me, as a simple blogger, who was talking about their brand. But here’s the thing (as the new female judge would say on American Idol), a blogger can write something about a given brand and show up within minutes on the Web, as if it were a news headline. So, if a blogger can figure this out, and begin to control its influence on the Google SERPs real estate, certainly big brands with millions in advertising budgets can. It’s an issue of priority - it’s also an issue of mindset. It gets little of both.

7) People identify free with something that is not valuable, nor trusted. If something is free, then you can’t trust it, right? Google Analytics often gets little respect despite being a robust search analytics application. Sadly, it’s because it’s free, or considered free, but really Google Analytics is a result of participation in Google Adwords paid search advertising program. Of course, people can have Analytics running without Adwords running, but that is why it was originally available - to track your paid search program better. However, the search analytics program is extremely valuable, and is the first program people should be investing in before investing in more sophisticated programs such as Omniture. Same with Organic - SEO - it’s free - or so people think. But to get a site listed in Google SERPs, with concentrated efforts, is not free. It takes time, strategy, and there are no guarantees it will work. There are tricks, games, and frustration - lots of it with SEO - if you want to rank in Google’s SERPs for popular terms. SEO is not free, and should not be treated as such.

8) Big brand corporates sites often have complex dynamic data-driven websites that can’t be indexed by Google. Unrelated to the situation above with the FAST site search engine controlling URLs and not getting indexed, sometimes sites are unable to be indexed for a variety of reasons. However, in many cases, some large brand sites are simply not easily optimized. They either have URLs that can’t get indexed (want to know if your site is fully indexed? - go to google.com and type in “site:yourdomain.com” without the quotes), or can’t easily optimize page titles, content, due to the content management system. They might have little content on the page. They might not be able to make the headings H1 tags. They might not be able to easily update the content quickly due to regulations, or other things that large brands deal with - like health regs, or pharmaceutical regs. This slows down the ability to affect change on a website, and thus the ability to impact Google SERPs.

9) Google doesn’t owe anything to large brands in its SERPs. That’s what paid search is for - you want to control SERPs - well, paid search is to the right and above the organic listings.

10) Corporate large brands can learn alot from bloggers - and how their sites and what they say gets distributed across the Web quickly. It’s the survival tactic of the small guy, evening out the playing field. The ability to be quicker, nimbler - but here’s the good news - if a corporate brand site invests in SEO, and has a high page rank of 5 - 7 or higher, a little SEO goes a very long way - really! I can speak from experience. Optimize your page titles, headings, and make sure your pages are getting indexed. Ensure your content is updated using cross-selling tactics. Have a corporate blog that many share responsibility in updating. Use social media to drive other users to your content. SEO can work, if done correctly. Watch your Google Webmaster Central account to make sure you aren’t blacklisted, or worse. SEO and paid search should work together. Neither should surpass the other.

Posted in Uncategorized. No Comments »

 

Twitter Grader - Do You Know Your Twitter Rank or Score?

April 4th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I attended SMX Analytics Toronto this past week. The guys from Hubspot.com gave a presentation on competitive intelligence. The tool featured by Dharmesh, in his presentation, is http://twitter.grader.com . They checked out Vanessa Fox’s Twitter rank and compared it to Danny Sullivan, the former of which scored a 99.8, and the latter - a 100.

So what’s your Twitter grade, rank or score? Check it out.

I reviewed my Twitter.com/bizresearchlmt grade - a 94 - an A. Yay! The rank - not so good - 102,000 something. Hmmm. Might need to work on that. Now what I really like - you can see my Tweet cloud - or the topics that are trending. Very cool. According to Twitter.Grader.com - my trending topics include Toronto, SMX, Analytics, MattCutts, and Danny Sullivan. You can also post your Twitter grade on Twitter, through a link on the page.

So, I wanted to check some others’ scores:

@Romeothecat - cool cat trying to raise money for animal rescue: uh - oh - a crash on the site. May have to add to this later??

Okay, back online Saturday night, early Sunday morning:

Checked out the grade for Guy Kawasaki - a 100 score @guykawasaki - note his Tweet cloud - nothing that sounds of interest. Guy has recently been criticized despite most of us liking the “guy” - for his use of spamming Twitter. He has nearly 100,000 followers.

@randfish - 99.9 grade score - Tweet cloud shows reference to SMX Sydney
I’m fascinated with his number of updates and number of follows - so about the same number of updates that I’ve had, but over 5,000 followers. Impressive. He also just keynoted the conference, which could have sig impact on followers.

@leeodden - 99.7 - nice tweet cloud

@carolethieme - my mom - who just started the other day - so I was beginning to wonder if anyone had a bad grade. Yes, my mom does. She needs to Tweet more often, but pretty cool that my 65-year old Mom, who is a techy graphic designer, is on Twitter.com and now Facebook.com, not to mention Linkedin. She’s going to have to find time for Twitter if she wants to improve her grade. It just goes to show that what you put into it, you get out of it - like any other class in school.

Posted in Blogging, twitter. No Comments »

 

Recap on SMX Analytics Toronto 2009

April 2nd, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I just returned from SMX Analytics Toronto 2009. I drove 12 hours up on Monday to arrive the evening before the conference began. I took my 4-month old with me. One of my clients, www.beezix.com - Beatrice - she made some amazing arrangements for Melina so I could make this happen. Imagine speaking at a conference, and having your 4-month old with you - challenging to say the least on so many unspeakable levels, but we did it. We travelled, I presented, we did it. Honestly, neither of the two presentations were my best presentation, out of 30 plus major conference presentations, but it was good to get back into the water and swim again. So, what did we talk about?

Top Ten Custom Search Analytics Reports - we talked about Bizwatch(TM), our new search analytics reporting platform for paid search, organic, and web analytics. Omniture, iCrossing and Red Bricks Media also presented. Search analytics tools offer so many reports, in fact we offer over 60 different custom analytics reports you can run for your SEM, organic or website marketing analytics campaign. With all the various dashboards, and programs you can run, what matters most to you?

What do you want to track? What do you wish you could do faster, easier than now? Do you still have to export everything into MS Excel? Do you want reports on your desktop, your iPhone, in your email, the Web?

We’ll be putting up a YouTube video, re-recorded, derived from the session and what we learned. We’ll post it here. This weekend, I’ll update the blog with the leading thoughts that came out of the conference. While the conference was very, very small, less than 50 people in the one-track session on Tuesday, it was at the end of the day, it was in Toronto, and it was on Analytics only.

I think if the Analytics only conference were in Chicago, or another midwestern city, such as Columbus, OH (why not?), or another place, it would have attracted more analytics folks. No one from Columbus, OH attended, and many of my colleagues in this space did not attend.

So why not? Is it the economy, was it the location, was it the topic?

What I will say is this - the small group reminded me of the early days in 2001 where search marketing conferences were small, but very educational where you learned something very good, new and applicable to your SEM, SEO or analytics business. So I hope that they will repeat the SMX Analytics conference again, but perhaps in Toronto or another location?

Let me know if you attended. If you go search.twitter.com and search “SMX” or “SMX Analytics”, you’ll see the number of people talking about SMX. You have to give Danny and Chris a lot of credit. There’s a LOT of people who talk about SMX - by the minute. SMX Sydney is taking place now.

Posted in SMX - Search Engine Land Conferences. No Comments »

 

Search Analytics : SMX Analytics Toronto 2009

March 22nd, 2009

by Laura Thieme
Presenting at Search Marketing Expo’s (SMX) Analytics Show Toronto 2009

I will be in Toronto to speak at the SMX Analytics Conference. This is the first Search Analytics show - kudos to Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman for daring to make a conference all about search analytics. I of course wonder how attendance will be affected by the economy, its location in Toronto and its themed analytics focus. There is also a Sydney Australia SMX show the next day after the Toronto conference ends.

But the economy is just the reason that search marketers should be investing in this particular search marketing conference. The bottom line, and proving that you are at least breaking even if not making money is crucial right now. You have to prove leads are occurring from your web marketing efforts, and if you can’t prove leads are resulting, you’re likely to see a change in vocational venue.

Bizresearch began developing a search analytics platform a year ago, Bizwatch. Our team of programmers created a web-based console where you could track and analyze organic (SEO), paid search (PPC/CPC), and web analytics data trends in one place. There is an extraordinary amount of data to sort through in tools that focus on a particular search marketing vertical arena. We counted the number of tools that our employees would need to use to do their job, MS Office included - there were at least 35 tools to manage approximately six search marketing accounts.

That number of tools is largely due in part to there being organic search marketing tools, paid search tools, bid management tools, website analytics tools, keyword research tools, competitor analyses tools, and yes, Dreamweaver or HTML editing tools. Don’t forget other tools that include rank position checkers for SEO positions in Google, Yahoo & MSN such as WebPositionGold, or keyword density tools, or link checker tools. Then you add on that the ability to use MS Excel to import/export data, set up master spreadsheets, or Powerpoint - oh - and of course there are two versions that people use today - MS Office XP and Vista - that creates another level of challenges. SO much learning curve required for employees new to search marketing, new to various accounts, and yes, new to website analytics regardless of whether they are agency-side, or freelancers, or in-house corporate marketers.

I often found as an employer, and recently, as an OSU Marketing 754 instructor, that the number of tools for search marketers and web analytics were frustrating to the point of discouraging tenure within the industry. Long-time search marketers were getting so frustrated that they had to learn data-centric tools, many of which they found to be counter-intuitive, that they often left as they felt their creative juices were stymied by the requirement to analyze so much data. In fact, reporting became the main focus of some search marketers. Thus, we decided to update our old patent-pending (withdrawn a month ago due to new Bilski patent ruling) system with a new platform, which is created in Java, Bizwatch(TM) with an all-in-one search analytics reporting system.

We use mostly API licenses for SEO, paid search (CPC), bid management, and web analytics and then create what we consider are the most important data analyses that marketers need to be focused on - and yes, while we have visitor trend data, that’s not the most important part of what you’ll see. Come to Search Analytics : SMX Analytics Toronto 2009 : and hear me speak on March 31, 2009 at 4:30 p.m.

Interested in Bizwatch(TM)?

Posted in SMX - Search Engine Land Conferences, Search Analytics. No Comments »

 

Links in a Link Farm - Using Google Webmaster Tools to Locate the Bad Inbound Links to Your Site

February 7th, 2009

It’s again 11:30 at night - I’m having a hard time keeping my 40-year old Mommy eyes open - but I’m on the scent of some bad links using Google Webmaster Tools. I’m continuing to work on a Google blacklisting, or apparent penalty for a client’s organic visibility.

Here are a few of the sites that I’m investigating - check them out to see how the bad link farm code is being utilized - and here’s where to look

Scroll to the bottom of the home page if that is the URL I’ve provided below - see the small font, or invisible code by reviewing Source Code under the View menu bar

http://www.omproducciones.com/2007/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=2

http://zeffiro.org/ - this one is invisible - you have to View Source to see the “phentermine” type links - there are hundreds if not thousands of those links buried in the home page’s source code. Sad irony or intended irony? First line of the site - Behind the message is the thought - well, behind this website is a mess of a link farm either intentional or unbeknowst to the owner.

http://www.berensononcology.com/index.html - buried source code at the bottom of the home page - you can see this one a little easier than some of the others - you can tell some thing is there - just highlight the opaque content at the bottom of the page. You can see that some of the links (if not all) go to a Spanish (.es) domain, and then redirect to www.topmeds10.com - so are all of these sites in a known link farm, and participating in such services, or are they unaware and innocent victims that are getting penalized by Google?

So, here is another bad link noted by Google Webmaster Tools:

www.jeremyfoster.com - note the code at the bottom of the page

Here’s what my client’s web pages would look like:

Files that were posted to a hidden subdirectory containing keyword embedded URLs such as the one below:
/phentermine-same-day-shipping.html

It’s interesting to note that many of these sites in the link farm, which Google Webmaster Tools has identified for us, are from Korea, such as those below:

http://www.bitl.co.kr/

http://www.skad.co.kr/board/board_1.ph…de=tb_free&page=&v_number=23538 Jan 25, 2009
http://www.farmmilk.co.kr/bbs/zboard.p…=on&select_arrange=hit&desc=asc Jan 24, 2009
http://www.farmmilk.co.kr/bbs/zboard.p…amp;select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc Jan 24, 2009
http://disk.co.kr/

So, my question is for Matt Cutts and Google - once you’ve identified these sites - and you know that your site was hacked and these links have at least been removed from your site- how do you get back in Google’s good graces?

I’d be really appreciative if Matt Cutts would comment on this blog entry and offer some advice as to how to fix. Here’s what we’ve done thus far:

1) Removed hack attack folder from client website
2) Added folder to Google Webmaster Tools to block - accepted this past week
3) Added folder to robots.txt - Google Webmaster accepted this past week
4) Noted that 68% of our organic terms have fallen out of Google since hack attack and months that followed shortly thereafter
5) Reviewed Google Webmaster tools for other link problems - noted a few others that aren’t very good links - cleaning up now; requesting removal

Any other suggestions?

Posted in Link Building & Link Farms, Search Optimization (SEO). No Comments »

 

Using Google Webmaster Tools to Troubleshoot Your SEO Rankings & Penalties

by Laura Thieme

Have you ever wondered if your site could be banned by Google? Wouldn’t it be nice if Google told you this, specifically in big black bold letters at the top of your log-in screen?

If you are using Google Webmaster Tools, they’ll tell you how often they visited your site (sort of - nothing compared to the detail NetTracker gives you in the robot analysis), keywords used to visit your site (partial list), and technical errors they experienced in crawling your site. The type of information has grown over the past couple of years and become quite a useful tool in troubleshooting your organic SEO search engine rankings.

It gives you how many pages are indexed (google search site:yourdomainname.com), as well as sites that are related to yours, which is interesting to note (related:yoursite.com). Of course, it tells you the links coming into your site, which is where it gets interesting.

I have been working on a client site for several months now. They are under a penalty, or so it would seem. There is no black and white box that informs you of this status, it’s just that you begin to determine this if you are not improving for select keyword phrases, or certain terms have fallen out all together in Google. We are ranking well in Yahoo & MSN for the terms, and in fact have improved in those search engines for many of these terms. But in Google - most of the terms that we would like to have - have not done well, or not improved much. So, why is that?

We knew the client’s website was hacked last spring in 2008. What we didn’t know was that 30,000 pages had been appended to their site, and despite being once cleaned up, they resurfaced several months later. A colleague of mine reviewed the way the pages were excluded and redirected. We learned that we were not telling Google what to do with the hacked section of the site, and thus needed to update the robots.txt file, as well as do a 404 error. The previous SEO consultant had placed a 302 redirect on the website pages, which told Google that these files were temporarily moved as opposed to permanently moved or deleted. We updated the files with a 404 (file not to be found) message, and the robots.txt file excluding that directory from Google’s index. We followed Google’s recommendations for “if your site has been hacked”, or if you “need to remove a directory from Google’s index”.

The good news - within one business day - the site has had the requested subdirectory removed, as well as individual pages we’ve requested removed.

The bad news and the million dollar question - we’re no longer ranked for core terms for this client - so how long will it take to restore their search engine rankings?

More to come on this topic as new information to report is available.

Posted in Search Optimization (SEO). No Comments »

 

Unacceptable Link Building Tactics

February 3rd, 2009

by Laura Thieme

It’s nearly midnight and I’m getting crankier by the minute. I’m investigating a true mess of a situation where a client has been apparently blacklisted for select keyword phrases in Google in the past year. Cleaning up this mess is amazing, as it all started out with a hack attack on their site where thousands of pages were posted containing the words “vicodin”, “cialis”, and other interesting terms you can only imagine in the HTML files. A new subdirectory folder was created under one of their many folders. The sad thing was that the SEO consultant that worked on the project initially did not fix the problem correctly. Here we are nearly a year later, and I’m still discovering more problems.

Tonight, I’m reviewing the latest external links as noted in Google Webmaster Tools for the site at risk. What I noticed is that on the client’s site some 300 pages, there are about four pages that show hundreds or thousands of incoming links to one page in particular. That seems a bit odd, right? I mean why would most pages have a few incoming links, but then one internal page have 920 some incoming links? You have to look at that and wonder why.

So, I began reviewing the sites of incoming links. Google Webmaster Tools makes it easy for you to download the table, which you can sort/filter easily in MS Excel. I noted five or six sites, one of which had 900 plus links to my client site. The one site that had 900 plus links - it was a hacker type forum - and my client is noted on every single page by an include file footer. 900 plus pages. Great link building strategy, yes?

The second type of sites where link building was apparently the desire? Pay per post. A media blogger has mentioned my client in one of their thousand pay per posts blog entries? Yes, let’s tell Google we’re getting paid to blog about a topic to ensure high authority, what do you think?

The other type of site that was in a link loop - was this one:
http://greatfurniturestores.com - and believe me, nothing on this site relates to the topic of which my client sells

So, if you are hired to do link building, please do us all a favor - don’t enroll us or your clients in a link farm (more on that later), and don’t blog about us and label it pay per post in blogspot, and lastly, don’t put links on non-related topic pages or sites (such as greatfurniturestores.com).

Let’s just say that my client is Playtex, and they sell (not what you’re thinking) BananaBoat suntan lotion. So, if I need to build links for suntan lotion, where do I go first?

Well, who uses suntan lotion? What kind of demographics? You can’t just say women, body builders, or teenagers going to the beach, or California or beach-centric places? But, you could begin with this - find women, body builder, teenager, college/Spring Break or beach enthusiast type websites. Find out where it makes sense to list your site.

Do not assume that reciprocal or pay for links is your first desired type of link. Reciprocal link requests typically get ignored or refused. The client would prefer not to have to pay out of pocket for more links, as that’s what they’re paying you for. So, try to find places where you can submit a site (your client’s site) to a site that is not competitive, isn’t reciprocal, and doesn’t require a fee.

The content on the site where you’re submitting a request for a link (through automated or moderated service) should be related to the products or services that your client sells. Now there are truly some blogs that talk about all kinds of topics. My blog is like that on www.laurathieme.com - it has numerous links to a variety of topics. But, while I’m signing up for affiliate marketing, as well as already have Adsense running, it’s clear that I’m not writing posts for the sheer purpose of showing up for a keyword phrase. Although I probably should show up for things related to pregnancy and breastfeeding with the number of posts I’ve done in the past year on the topics. So, blogs don’t always have content dedicated to one topic alone -and therefore, you need to use your best judgment as to whether or not the blog is appropriate content for posting a link to your client.

What’s the most frustrating type of link site - the type that’s been generated for the sheer purpose of link popularity - building hundreds, thousands of links for no other reason that to try to show great numbers of inbound links for ranking improvements. You know, Google, it’s all your fault. You and your damn page rank system that people mis interpret as “link popularity” not “link quality”. We know that you don’t reward this type of link program, right, or do you?

Why is it that my client can get penalized for select keyword phrases, but other sites that are clearly link farms can post links to my client after a hack attack - can’t you determine that the client website is a victim, not a player in the link farm scheme?

Okay, it’s late and I need some sleep - time to get back in the game on this problem tomorrow morning, in between diaper changes and taking care of little M.

Posted in Search Optimization (SEO). No Comments »

 

Twitter, Tweeple, TwitPic, TweetUp - Do You Know What These Mean for Your Business?

January 24th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

You can’t watch CNN, or Brothers & Sisters, or many TV shows without hearing about Facebook and MySpace. In fact, you hear more about Facebook these days, than mySpace. But what about Twitter? Have you heard about Twitter? News reporters use Twitter to communicate with their viewers. Businesses are beginning to use it - it’s a great way to communicate for free to the masses - 160 characters at a time. When you don’t have time to blog - just send a quick Twitter note out from the Web, or the convenience of your cell phone. I thank one of my 2007 Search Marketing OSU Fisher College of Business students, Ben Bleikamp, for getting me up to speed on the need for a Twitter account (www.twitter.com/bizresearchlmt).

So, if you’ve already heard about Twitter, and have checked it out, you probably see just a bunch of 2-3 line notes across a screen. It’s less than glamorous or sexy. Some people talk about non-sensical stuff, others use it to exclusively promote business objectives. Some use it now as a way to communicate with others, instead of email or even Facebook. Now, you want to get a hold of someone? Not getting an answer via email, or Facebook - try Twitter instead.

I’ve been using Twitter for several months now, but I’m behind on the applications and the jargon. So, in my own journey to learn more about these applications and jargon - I thought I’d post a blog on the topic.

Twitter Jargon You Should Know - A TwitGlos -

What’s a TweetUp? - A Meetup with Tweeple

What are Tweeple? - People who Twitter

What’s a Tweet - a note sent out via Twitter

What’s a Dweet - a Tweet sent under the influence

What’s a Twhirl? -

How do you track a Tweet term, like SEO? - Go to http://search.twitter.com and type in SEO. You’ll see all the Tweets that include the word “SEO”. I tested it, posted a test SEO Tweet, and immediately showed up at the top of the list for that moment. I can see people spamming the heck out of this.

I figured there was some type of feed service set up, because whenever I use certain keywords in my Tweets, I get new followers almost instantaneously. For example, when I blogged about McCain in October, their SEO person must have had the “McCain” term feed set up, as PardonMyFrench immediately began to follow me. I Tweet about SEO, I get new followers interested in SEO. I Tweet about Anderson Cooper, I get him to follow me. No just kidding, actually I got an imposter following me. AC360 still has yet to follow me. ;-) So, if you want people to follow you, Tweet about topics using the jargon appropriate to the industry and topic - and you can gain friends and followers through Twitter, using the free feed service.

You’ll also occasionally get less than stellar content followers - so beware and block them, unless you’re into that. ;-)

Okay, I’m continuing to compile this list. Will update accordingly.

Posted in Blogging. No Comments »

 

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