Sat, 19 Jul 2008
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Finally! Google has decided to reveal the monthly and yearly searches for every keyword phrase searched on Google.com. I hope there is an API for this so that all the keyword software makers can integrate this into their software as soon as possible.
According to Google AdWords Help Center:
The Approx Search Volume [Previous Month] column shows search volume statistics for the last calendar month. The Approx Avg Search Volume column shows average monthly search volume over a recent 12-month period.
Since Yahoo’s Overture keyword tool is officially dead, this tool is the next best thing at the moment. Google should have done this earlier.
Tagged As: AdWords, Google, Google Advertising Professional, Google search, Search Engines, Searching, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
I really messed up my home page of my Oasis Fanatic web site. What I did in the beginning was I redirected the default home page “/index.php” to “/home/index.php”. I initially put the home page in its own directory “/home/”.
Over time, I began to realise the dumbness of this idea. Therefore, I made the home page at “/index.php” the default while I kept the other home page at “/home/index.php” intact.
Another problem is people usually link back to my site directly to the domain name http://www.oasisfanatic.com. In the search engine’s eyes, I have 3 home pages:
The reason why home page 2 exists is because I link back to my home page on my web site’s navigation to that address when I should have linked it directy to home page 1. There are no links to home page 3 on my web site but there are some old back links to this page.
How Did I Fix My Multiple Home Page Problem?
What I learnt from this experience is to simply link back to the domain name of the web site for the home page. This would improve the SEO of your home page as well as your web site as the search engines won’t think you have duplicate content on your “multiple home pages”. They regard “http://www.domain.com” and “http://www.domain.com/index.html” as 2 seperate pages.
Tagged As: home page seo, multiple home pages
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
I have never really understood how to use nofollow links until last night. I guess I must have been very slow to pick up this technique of preserving your Google Pagerank.
On Wikipedia’s entry on nofollow links:
Search engine optimization professionals started using the nofollow attribute to control the flow of PageRank within a website. This is an entirely different use than it was intended originally. Nofollow was designed to control the flow of PageRank from one website to another. However, SEOs realized that a nofollow used for an internal link should just work as well as nofollow used for external links. It makes sense, for example, to use nofollow for internal links to pages that are not relevant for search engines and only for visitors who are already on the website. This includes pages, such as “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Terms of Use” or “Privacy Policy”. Matt Cutts, one of the initial designers of the nofollow attribute, encouraged this use of the attribute.
At the bottom of this snippet, there is a reference to an interview with Matt Cutts, in which he endorses the use of the nofollow link. Evisibility has a great blog post about nofollow tags with nice illustrations to explain the “Google Juice” theory.
Dan Thies has a free SEO book that explains the basics and advanced uses of the nofollow tag.
What I did for my own blog was to add the nofollow tag on these links:
I also made some minor changes to my blog by removing the “month chunks” plugin, which had a lot of links to my older blog archives. It would be interesting to see the effects of this minor change on the traffic of my blog and other sites.
Categories: Blog Updates, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
I wrote a review on OnlyWire last August. Seems like they have gotten worse. I only see my Delicious working for me at the moment. The other social bookmarks that were supposed to be posted through OnlyWire never made it.
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Google just released a blog post about why meta description tags are important. One sentence caught my eye and this clarifies a lot of misconceptions people have about meta descriptions.
Google says:
“Accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t affect your ranking within search results“
Visit Google’s webmaster blog to find out more on what they consider to be good and bad meta descriptions.
I use the popular Another WordPress Meta Plugin to enter my meta tags for all my WordPress pages and posts. With the release of WordPress 2.3, some plugins are now obsolete and I will have to update my list of favourite plugins for WordPress very soon.
Tagged As: meta-description-tags
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
I tested hundreds of article directories back in the day when I fell for the hype of the effectiveness of article submitters. My belief back then was if I had more links pointing back to my web site, the better my site would rank. I was expecting an avalanche of traffic to come to my web sites but I was disappointed when the traffic was so pathetic.
Instead of submitting to hundreds of article directories, I only submit to about 9 article directories for my article marketing (bum marketing) campaigns. This saves me a lot of time, money and prevents my articles from competing against one another for rankings in the search engines.
My Top Article Directories by Alexa Rank
I ranked my list of article directories by Alexa traffic stats and this is the order of the article directories. I know there are article directories with better Alexa rankings than some of the ones listed above but these are my “approved list” of article directories.
I grouped my articles directories into a list of article directories worth submitting to and another list I consider worthless in terms of getting traffic.
My Condemned List of Article Directories
I compiled my findings with my tracking links at the end of each article’s signature. I usually use a tracking link to keep track of the number of people who clicked on my affiliate links of my articles. I also monitor the number of visitors coming from the articles directories. The condemned list above generated very little visitors and almost zero sales for me.
What About Squidoo?
I put Squidoo in my condemned list too because it has never managed to outrank my articles in my top list above. Seems like article directories like Buzzle, EzineArticles etc still outperform Squidoo for my articles. Maybe I am not using Squidoo correctly but I don’t really care since I have a bunch of article directories working brilliantly for me.
My Personal Favourite Article Directories
If I only had time to submit to one article directory, it would be Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com does not allow crappy writers into their directory. They take about a month before approving writers. Your articles will have to go through a strict reviewing process too. I personally get a lot of traffic and sales from them.
The remaining 5 article directories did give me some traffic and sales but not as much as the top 4 I mentioned above. If you do not have the time to submit to 9 article directories, simply submit to at least the 4 article directories above.
My Final Thoughts
Mass article submitters are a waste of time and money. I used to use Article Post Robot and it really does automatically submit to article directories unlike the other article submitting software. However, it takes a very long time for you to register at all the article directories and enter the login details into the software.
With the popularity of article rewriting software like Content Composer, many people falsely believe that they can spin hundreds of unique articles and submit them to hundreds of article directories again. I personally use Content Composer and I find that the greater the number of articles you try to generate, the more the generated articles will look like one another. Just because you can technically generate hundreds of copies of 1 article, doesn’t mean you should.
The biggest flaw of these article spinning software in my opinion is the inability to generate unique article titles! The less articles you generate, the easier it would be for you to brainstorm unique article titles to use with your articles. Since I submit to 9 or less article directories, by rewriting 1 article into 9 articles, I do not need to spend more than 15 minutes to create these unique article titles.
Free Article Directory Excel Spreadsheet Download
I organize my article directories in an Excel spreadsheet with additional information on each article directory. Download my article directory list and update it to suit your needs. Maybe some of the article directories I condemned could work out great for you or the ones I claim to be the best could be useless for you. The bottom line is you need to test them for yourself to decide which ones work for you.
Tagged As: Article Marketing, article-post-robot, article-rewriter, article-spinner, article-submitter, bum-marketing, content-composer, top-article-directories
Categories: Article Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 6 Comments »
Building on where I left off in my previous post on SEO: Quality Over Quantity, I found a good post at SEOmoz on the value of submitting to directories, link building and “nofollow links”. They interviewed Google.com’s head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, to find out more about Google’s attitude towards some SEO issues. I would pay extra attention to Matt’s reply to the following question:
What is Google’s position on the value of generic web directories that market to webmasters as a way to boost link strength, PageRank and relevance? Would you largely agree or disagree with my assertions about the value of generic web directories on the subject?
SEOmoz also has a post titled “The Wisdom and Folly of Directory Link Building“. You’ll get tips on what to look out for when selecting a directory to submit your site to. The good ones are usually very difficult to get in and they almost always require you to pay them a substantial amount of money to get reviewed with no guarantee that your link will be added. What’s worse, they might not even refund you your money if they reject your site!
Tagged As: directories, link-building, matt-cutts, nofollow-links, seo
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
I just downloaded and read Social Media Daily by Michelle MacPherson. Overall, I think it is a very good guide on social web sites. However, I need to point out in my Social Media Daily review about the theoretical benefits and the work required to get this social traffic to your web site.
Tagged As: Social-Media-Daily, Social-Media-Daily-Review
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
I was very disappointed to find out only 6 of the 22 bookmarking sites OnlyWire claims to post to actually work with their service. Check out my OnlyWire review to find out which 6 social bookmarking sites work and which ones don’t.
Tagged As: OnlyWire, OnlyWire-Review, social-bookmarking
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Froogle.com is now know as Google Product Search. If you look at the bottom of the page, you should see a list of random keywords like:
This keyword list changes every time you refresh the page. I discovered that Keywords Analyzer gets it’s keyword source from this keyword list when you use the “brainstorm” feature. I thought this keyword list was really great at first until I created a little PHP script below to grab all the possible keywords into a text file…
What I did was to keep on checking the site for new keywords. I did it for a couple of hours and grabbed a total of 954 unique keywords. I came to the conclusion that this keyword list is a gimmick! Google doesn’t update this list of keywords. My script returned 954 unique keywords last year and it Google is still returning the same old 954 unique keywords this year!
I contacted Google to find out if they have some sort of API to retrieve the latest search keywords made by their users. From what I found out, there isn’t such a service yet. Therefore, if you see any keyword research software claiming they have Froogle (Google Product Search) keywords as one of their sources, you might as well just download the 954 unique keywords from my blog!
Tagged As: Froogle, Google-Product-Search, Keywords, keywords-analyzer
Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
