Learn About SEO

NJ Web Design Consultant

Why does Google consider me the #1 and the #2 result for the competitive phrase:

NJ web design consultant?

Good question. I’ve been working as a professional SEO since 2001 to be able to tell you the answer to that question. Even better, I can tell you how we could get YOUR business listed at a #1 position on the search engines for competitive phrases.

First of all, if you are talking with a so called “web design consultant” and she or he guarantees you a #1 Google ranking, thank them for their time and steer them towards your competitor. They are lying and they are unethical. I see this sort of thing all the time unfortunately. A prospect will tell me they are going with a competitor because they guaranteed them a #1 Google ranking in the contract. Wow. That’s totally negligent and morally wrong to guarantee a Google #1 ranking in writing. Companies and individuals that do that are scam artists and there are lots of them out there – beware. None of those people owns Google. And if they have a secret method that will trick and manipulate Google to making your site #1 then I can guarantee you that the trick won’t last long. Google has a team of engineers that look for what we call “black hat” or manipulative techniques. In the long run it could be bad for your ranking health to be involved in these bad practices.

I got to be the #1 and the #2 ranking on Google for the phrase “NJ web design consultant” because of more than 200 reasons that make up “the Algorithm“. First and foremost, my site has been live for a few years so I have a good “aging factor”. Next, I have lots of solid inbound links from relevant authority sites. Third, I have lots and lots of excellent unique content. My site is structurally perfect or close to it and I have all the latest patches and updates. And the list goes on for 200 more reasons that we will get into more on another blog post.

The bottom line is I got to the #1 and the #2 positions for NJ web design consultant due to a lot of careful planning, honest effort, and hard work. Sometimes you may find a bogus listing in a #1 spot in the Google main index but it got there most likely due to an error in the Algorithm. Major ranking errors like that are usually corrected within a week or two. How do we get your site to a Google #1 position? I’ve got the same answers for you: we carefully plan a strategy and we work on the plan using techniques that are recommended by Google in their WebMaster Guidelines.

Spam Scraper Site Example

I hate spam on the internet but when a site with 50% Google AdSense advertisements that has pure scraped content becomes #1 for a highly competitive phrase in the Google main index it makes me cringe. Here is a site that fits the description:

• 50% of the entire screen is simply PPC advertisements. In this case it’s Google AdSense that’s paying this spammer to do his spam thing.
• the rest of the site has zero unique content. It’s all duplicate content that was scraped from other websites.
• The quantity and quality of the inbound links to the scraper site is always poor

The spam scraper site is called OfficialSite.com and it’s at: http://www.officialsite.com/index.asp?regionid=9&categoryid=61

Here is a Link Diagnosis Report showing all the backlinks and their PR plus the Link Type (is it a do follow which is good or a no follow). Basically this is showing that the entire spam site has very little in terms of quality do follow inbound links. The page that is ranking #1 for the highly competitive phrase has only a single inbound link known to Link Diagnosis. Hardly enough muscle into the poll position against thousands of other competitors for this lucrative phrase.

URL	Page_Rank	Link_Type
http://www.roadhog.com/browse-companies.html?-token.alpha=O	2	Good
http://www.splicedwire.com/00reviews/nextbest.html	N/A	Good
http://wikitravel.org/en/User_talk:Tiger	N/A	Good
http://hannu.biz/aolsearch?id=1446591	N/A	Good
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/primeval.html	N/A	Good
http://dvdfever.co.uk/reviews/domov017.shtml	N/A	Good
http://www.toronto.com/music/event/608663	N/A	Good
http://www.4spainrealestate.com/dir.aspx?cat=60	N/A	Good
http://www.4portugalrealestate.com/dir.aspx?cat=60	N/A	Good
http://splicedwire.com/00reviews/rulesof.html	N/A	Good
http://www.gateholidays.com/lay1/en/packageDetails.php?packageId=50	N/A	Good
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/32259/t763828-resident-evil-cover-unveiled/	N/A	Good
http://www.newsinspire.org/feeds/web/cowgirl-pussy.php	N/A	Good
http://www.quarkbase.com/city-sites?page=2	N/A	Good
http://www.abrazrj.com.br/	1	Missing
http://teenwag.com/s?q=10036+ny	N/A	Missing
http://www.theinternationalman.com/travel.html	N/A	Nofollow
http://www.killerstartups.com/tag/traveling/	N/A	Nofollow
http://judgespot.com/review/officialsite.com	N/A	Nofollow
http://www.aolstalker.com/5151692.html	N/A	Nofollow
http://www.aboutus.org/OfficialSite.com	N/A	Nofollow
http://www.tagurls.com/tag/nyc/100	N/A	Nofollow
http://www.golflink.com/list_16297_old-new-york-restaurants.html	2	Text
http://www6.miami.edu/equality-administration/directories/recruitmentdirectory.pdf	4	Text

Search Phrase on Google

Manhattan Bakery

AllInTitle:manhattan bakery    6,500  That means there are 6,500 other pages Google knows about that have the words “Manhattan Bakery” in their meta title… Thats a LOT of competition.

I looked at a phrase that I found on the spam scraper site… and I found it on 7 websites on the internet:

At Fat Witch Bakery, we’re not in a hurry. * We bake in small batches and do what is known in the trade as “scratch baking.

Of course it was stolen or scraped from the original site at: http://www.fatwitch.com/FWBphilosophy.html
The troubling question after looking at all this evidence is:

How did a spam scraper site get to be #1 on Google in the main index?

For years SEO pundits have suspected that garbage MFA made for adsense sites got a boost from Google in the main index because they were putting out lots of impressions and making lots of money advertising for Google’s paid search clients. I really believe that was true years ago – probably due to errors in The Algorithm. Google created a philosophy called the “Chinese Wall” where they claimed you could never again effect your ranking on the organic search side of the Chinese Wall by either paying for PPC advertising or selling it on behalf of Google from the paid search side of the wall.This example is one that has somehow slipped through the cracks.

Although I rarely rat out the bad guys I reported this one yesterday from my main Google WebMaster Tools account. Anytime you can help take out the trash on the internet I encourage you to do so. Spammy scraper sites used to litter the SERPS and now when they clog the highway like a log on the road I try to scrape them off.

Wordpress SEO – All You Need To Know

Learning WordPress SEO – All You Need To Know

Here is my WordPress SEO Checklist you can use as a guide:

1. Figure out what keyword phrases you want to rank well for and assign 1 or 2 per page.
2. Use the great WP plugin “All In One SEO Pack”.
3. Don’t use the WordPress default permalink structure… I use /%post_id%/%postname%/
4. Get inbound links from high PR authority sites using your keyword phrases as anchor text.
5. Add good H1 or H2 titles and use more h2’s for subtitles throughout your blog post.
6. Include bold or italics or even some bold + italics text on the page.
7. Link out to at least 1 high PR authority site per page.
8. Create interior hyperlinks with a keyword you need for the target page.
9. Make bulleted lists (ordered and unordered) whenever you can.
10. Write in targeted keyword phrases and their derivative variations in your text.
11. Add Alt tags for some images using your target keyword phrases.
12. I always add images to every blog post and static page.
13. Use Google’s drive toward Universal Search to your advantage.
14. Encourage commenting with do follow links and respond to good comments.
15. Be cleaver with your blog post titles and use 3 or 4 word most of the time.
16. Check your robots.txt file to make sure you are not blocking search engine spiders.
17. Update your sitemap.xml file automatically with a plugin.

If you type “wordpress seo” on Google, the first entry on the SERP is from WordPress legend and SEO pundit Joost de Valk. Joost is from the Netherlands and his name is actually pronounced like “yoast”. And that’s why he named his famous and incredibly high (I’ve been to Amsterdam 7 times so far) PageRank 6 website yoast.com.

OK so you can see what one of the brilliant stars in SEO and WordPress says about the subject by going to his site first. Joost is one of the world’s leading WordPress plugin developers and he is almost scary smart. It’s a good article.

We all know Google Loves WordPress right? Well it’s true. The Master Mind Anti-Spam King at Google is Matt Cutts and he himself uses a WordPress blog even though his company makes Blogger. Matt talks about WordPress in positive terms because there are many features that just lend themselves to automatically following the recommended Google WebMaster Guidelines. That being said, here is what you can do to improve the built in linky goodness.

I take a straight forward approach to WordPress SEO that may be simple, but for the person out there who needs help, you can get by on this and maybe get some great rankings that might have otherwise escaped you. As a web design consultant I don’t do this for the sake of art. I build beautiful WordPress sites that rank well on Google, Yahoo, and Bing so my clients can get new prospects from the internet and make millions of dollars. These recommendations are what I do for every professional site I build and maintain.

1.) Figure out what keyword phrases you want to rank well for.

Assign one or 2 phrases per page and know that your homepage and your about us page are going to get the most views and have the best luck getting ranking for your primary keyword phrases. Most websites do best shooting for 1 or 2 primary keyword phrases and a total of 5 phrases all together. Professional SEO’s sometimes will map out 50 keywords on a large website but it takes a lot of work and it’s really for professionals. My personal record so far was a site that I got 34 Google #1 rankings for at one time in English and almost as many in Spanish. I also had a total of 110 Top 10 rankings on that site in English the same month. So it is possible to map 50 or even 100 keywords to a website but it’s hard. Most of you out there would do well to find 1 keyword or 2 and go for it.

2.) Install the plugin All In One SEO currently maintained by Semper Fi Web Design.

Every blog post and every static page on your website should have a custom written meta title and meta description. This plugin will do the job of making these meta titles and meta descriptions automatically for you. It also gives you the option in every blog post and static page to enter your own titles and descriptions. Being a professional full time SEO, thats a big part of my job every day and I make custom titles and descriptions that are way better than the automatic ones the plugin creates. But I’ll tell you about that in another post. For now just know this is the single most important thing you can do for yourself in terms of WordPress SEO. Plugin developers need your support with a small donation every once in a while by the way.

There is a 3rd field that is optional called the meta keyword field. Google does not use it but I think they still look at it and I’m sure other search engines do look at the meta keywords. I enter them. Just add a few words that appear on your page and don’t do any keyword stuffing here. That might give you 1 strike with some of the SE’s.

3.) The WordPress default permalink structure is bad for SEO, don’t use it.

I use this permalink structure: /%post_id%/%postname%/    That gives me keywords right in my url so search engines can grab onto them.

4.) Get inbound links from relevant high PR authority sites using your keyword phrases as anchor text.

Don’t pay for them from cheap outfits – that will get you caught and it won’t get you banned, but it won’t help you. Don’t ever get involved with any linking schemes – they don’t work anymore. Those “you link to me and I’ll link to you” schemes are terrible… your PR out and PR in negate each other. You get a tiny bit of credit but it’s simply not worth your time to do it any more. The single best way to get inbound links from high PR authority sites is to use paid directories like Best of the Web and Yahoo Dir. If you have a huge spend available then buy every directory listing that gives you a do follow link that you can find. Avoid any directory that links to a lousy community of course.

5.) Add a good H1 or H2 title as the opening characters on a blog post and use more h2’s for subtitles throughout your blog post.

6.) Add some bold or italics or even some bold + italics text on the page. Use secondary keywords for these.

7.) Link out from the page to at least 1 high PR authority site. You can link out to a hand full but try not to go over 5 for an average post. If it’s a list of some kind then by all means link out like crazy. If it’s a site you like and trust, use do follow outbound links. It’s going to take PR from your page whether you use a do follow or a no follow anyway.

8.) Use at least one interior hyperlink with a keyword you need for the target page. You can use 2 or 3 internal hyperlinks if you want but remember each takes a percentage of the potential PR on that page.

9.) Add bulleted lists and ordered lists when you can. I try to get one per post at least.

10.) Use targeted keyword phrases in your text. Use them several times and especially at the very top of the page where they are deemed “prominent”.

11.) Add Alt tags for images using keyword phrases. Don’t over do it with alt tags. I don’t use them on every photo but I do use them maybe once or twice on a page.

12.) I always add images to every blog post and static page. I don’t know if this helps much with ranking but I think it must because it makes the blog posts more robust.

13.) Play the Universal Search game.

Google loves to find references for search phrases in meta titles, on page text (especially in H1 or H2 tags), anchor text from inbound links, in alt tags, and in Podcasts and Web Videos. It’s called Universal Search when Google includes all forms of media. Get yourself some web videos that are relevant and use keyword phrases you are trying to hit for in their titles.

14.) Encourage commenting and respond to good comments.

Allow Do Follow on good and relevant comments but strictly do not allow spam comments. If surfers know they can get a good do follow link from you they will more often than not leave you a good comment. Spammers and spam bots will feast on it if you let them. Use the Akimet plugin developed by Matt Mullenweg and delete all spam comments frequently. I eyeball every comment and delete all except for the 1 or 2 decent comments from real people and friends. When your WordPress site is popular enough you can just do away with the do follow and go to the default of no follow.

15.) Be cleaver with your blog post titles.

On WordPress sites I have that are “heated up” where they have been around a while and I post to frequently… my post title goes to #1 on Google within a few minutes of me submitting the blog post. That’s not just because I’m a good SEO, but also because I use 3 or 4 word titles that I carefully construct that will get me hits for my keywords but will not be competing with IBM or HP for top ranking on 1 or 2 word phrases. Trying to rank top 10 for a title like “web hosting” is nearly mission impossible. Trying to rank top 10 for a title like “cheap reseller web hosting” is doable.

16.) Check your robots.txt file every once in a while to make sure it is not blocking bots and search engine spiders.

The robots.txt file is an ascii text file at the root level of your WordPress site that gives specific instructions to search engine spiders that they may or may not abide by.  Usually the directives tell bots where they are welcome to look and where they are not welcome to look. The big SE’s will usually agree to your robots.txt directives but sometimes in the search for images even the big bots will ignore exclusion directives here. You can even try to tell “bad bots” to stay away from your entire site, but that rarely works. You can also specify the location of your sitemap.xml file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

17.) Keep your sitemap.xml file updated, and since it’s so time consuming, make sure you do it automatically.

Search engines look at the sitemap.xml file on your WordPress site to see if you have added a new file. They also spider the site and discover files but they will get the new content faster if you automatically update the sitemap every time you add a new blog post. I use a couple different plugins for this on different sites but mostly I use the “Google XML Sitemaps” plugin by Ann Brachhold and I recommend it.

(I was not paid by any persons or companies listed in this post – Cheers – Mal)

Web Design Consultant Test

Web Design Consultant Test

How do you know the self proclaimed “web design expert” you are talking with has real skills? Give them this test:

1. Ask to see their best 3 pieces of website design work and then check their Google ranking for their top phrase. The most beautiful website in the world that does not rank well on Google might as well be under a rock because it’s not going to bring you in new business. Web designers that don’t understand the design has to be integrated with SEO on every page should work for your competitors – not for you.  I’ve talked with many web designers that told me they were a “real graphic artist” and their artistic vision was more important than visibility on Google. Wow, that’s from the stone ages of the internet and they just don’t understand clients in competitive industries want more business from their websites, you are not interested in “supporting the arts”.
2. Ask to see their top 3 most competitive Google #1 rankings. If they tell you that Google ranking has nothing to do with web design tell them they are right, don’t waste another minute of your life with them, and hope they work for your competitor. I want to rank top 10 for my most competitive phrases on Google so I can get more business. I really want to rank #1 for several phrases but I’m realistic and I know just getting on Google Page One in the top 10 rankings is outstanding.
3. Ask your web design consultant how they built “relevance” into each page of the website. If they can tell you that the page name, the page title, the page headings, the page text, and links to that page from other interior pages of the website all more or less have a relevant match on the primary and secondary keyword phrases for that page… you got yourself a web designer that knows SEO. That’s vital to bring in more internet shoppers. If you just want to look at art you can always go to a museum. I want a beautiful website that ranks well on Google so I can make more money.
4. Ask your prospective web design consultant to show you the meta title for your “About” page and the meta title for your “homepage”. If they are identical, it means the so called “expert” was either lazy or really did not know what they were doing in terms of integrating their design with search. That’s not going to get you any new business. Send them to work for your competitors.

Old School Web Design Has Nothing to do with Search Engine Optimization SEO

• 9 out of 10 web design consultants don’t know the first thing about SEO (search engine optimization) and that can cost you millions in new business.
• The same 9 out of 10 web consultants will tell you how design and SEO are 2 different things and you don’t need SEO for a website.
• I can tell you from experience 9 out of 10 web design consultants will tell customers they are an “expert” on SEO when they don’t even know the basics.

First of all, no matter how beautiful a website looks, if it does not rank well on Google… it’s nearly worthless in terms of attracting new prospects for your business. A website that does not rank well on Google might as well be invisible. Why bother?

Is it Important to Rank Well on Yahoo and Bing?

85% of all searches are done with Google. Many Professional SEO’s don’t bother doing anything for Bing or Yahoo. So the short answer is: No. I do a few things for Bing and Yahoo including verifying websites in Bing Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer… but in terms of on page optimization Google is like the 800 pound Gorilla these days and you don’t get much in return when you score big on Bing or Yahoo anyway.

Web Design for business goes hand in hand with SEO for business, they can’t be looked at as different entities anymore. Web design and SEO are intertwined. They compliment each other. If your web design consultant tells you any differently, get a better one and send yours right to your toughest business competitor because you will be able to outrank them and gain an advantage using internet marketing.

Google Local Disappeared Me

My Google Local Maps listings disappeared off the face of the earth again recently and I’m going to explain how I think it happened. But first a little background and I’ll start with the naming conventions. Google Local Business Center listings are known my many names…

• Google Local
• Google Local Maps
• Local Maps Listing
• Google LBC
• Maps Listing

and there are also Yahoo Local listings and Bing Local listings. But this article is on a problem I had with my Google Local listing. Since Google search is still dominating 85% of all market share in search many professional SEO’s like myself will add a listing to all 3 main SE’s but only spend time enhancing the Google LBC.

Above is a screen print showing 3 Google Local Business Center listing that I maintain. In the last 30 days I’ve gotten an outstanding 3,500+ impressions for the Manhattan Bakery I work for. That’s quite good especially considering the competition for bakeries in NYC is intense. It’s what SEO’s might call a highly competitive phrase in a “Tier 1″ city. Cities and States are ranked by a lot of factors in SEO but in this case New York City generates a tremendous number of searches that are geographically local giving it the top shelf rating or Tier 1. You can see I have an off the hook 5,000+ impressions for my NJ Diner site. Since the geographic ares is “NJ” That’s also a Tier 1 category… it generates a huge amount of searches. I’m lucky with that total as well because the competition in NJ for Diners is intense also… there are over 700 diners in New Jersey. Now for my problem listing… and it could not be closer to my home… IT IS MY HOME !!  (I have an office in my house as well as an office in New Rochelle NY and one in midtown Manhattan).  My own listing has an almost invisible 79 impressions in the last 30 days. My main phrase is NJ web design and I currently rank #12 in the main index for it. Now that’s quite respectable and I’ve been on Google Page One in the 10th position for a few days but I’m happy with being at the top of Google page Two for now.

What Happened to My Google Local Listing?

There are a set of rules and recommendations provided by Google to help you to setup your local listing. It’s called the [Google] Business Listings Quality Guidelines or the Local Business Center Guidelines. That’s the good part. The bad part is this guide is also your main tool to figure out where you made mistakes that caused Google to downgrade your listing. In terms my Russian friends might use “if you disrespect them they might disappear you”. One time Google “disappeared me” in the LBC because I made the mistake of using the words “Google Maps Listings” in my “Description” field. That is a no-no according to the Guideline and it was confirmed by Google Local Pundit and Internationally recognized expert Mike Blumenthal. If you want to learn a lot about Google Local you have to read Mike’s blog. It’s the bible of local search.

How Can I Get restored to Listing Health?

Within 2 days of fixing my problem with my description the last time I was restored to listing health and I was actually back on the top of a Google 10 pack. So when I noticed they disappeared me again I had to go back to the guidelines and read them again and look for clues as to why they might think I disrespected them. I think I found it. I had tried a little experiment and instead of calling my Company / Organization field just Web Design Workplace, I thought I would be smart and call it NJ Web Design Workplace. It states in the guidelines “Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name..” Whoops !! OK I fixed the problem and I’ll see if it can get me back on top.

<No persons or companies mentioned in this post have paid me in any way for this article – Regards, Mal>

Is Twitter Helping?

As a professional SEO who tries everything to do with social media I often debate this question. Is Twitter helping your SEO? Helping your bottom line in terms of PageRank or leads?

My short answer is NO. Twitter is NOT helping. It’s an additive play toy that has no redeeming qualities that inherently build Google PageRank or increase the number of high quality backlinks to my web pages or move my rankings up on competitive phrases. But that’s just me. I have friends who swear by it but I still remain cautious.

I’m experimenting with a twitter plugin called “Twitter for WordPress” at http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/twitter/ (See below)

What Twitter does effectively is it allows Pundits of all kinds to churn out and publish interesting, helpful, and funny commentary all day and all night to a stream of zombie like drones (and regular folks too). Instead of having “SEO Radio” I can just follow tweets from the top 5 in the field who like to Tweet, like Matt Cutts for example. I can login to Twitter once a day, send a tweet to my followers and read up on what Matt Cutts has been tweeting. I might gleen some useful information that way and I have.

The big problem with Twitter it is that people get addicted and it becomes a time drain and gossip tool rather than a productivity tool. People get hooked and they tweet all day… until they quit. Email can become a time drain, I get 500 emails a week and I process every one. But I do it 2 or 3 times a day for 10 minutes each. And my iPhone helps me to crank through the volume quickly when I have time commuting or wherever. Twittering is a form of communication like email, but it’s more additive and less substantial because each tweet has a max of 140 characters.

Tweet away and when you need help, remember there are half-measures with Twitter. But when you are making the switch from addict to user, you might have to just put it down and walk away for a while before you can go back to it and control it… one or two sessions a day.

Made For Adsense

What are AdWords and AdSense?

Years ago Google became a “kind monolith” (remember 2001 A Space Odyssey?) overshadowing and enhancing all life on the planet. Some might phrase that “manipulating all life on the planet”. In any case, Google adopted a recent invention called Pay Per Click or PPC advertising. It was a way for advertisers to get instant leads and sales with search engines because you could pay for advertisements. These paid or “sponsored results” would appear above the fold and in directly in the hottest places on the page. They became very effective at making sales because surfers would type a phrase into Google or Yahoo, and the first thing they would see was a paid ad in a light blue background area or prominently in the sidebar.

Marketing firms rushed to spend money to buy PPC advertisements from a company called Overture for Yahoo ads or from a division of Google known as Google AdWords. It was such a good idea and so effective at providing excellent ROI return on investment for advertisers, that it actually became the #1 source of revenue to propel Google into the Fortune 500. Yahoo eventually purchased Overture but by then it was too late for them as Google took 85% of the market share for search. Google split their PPC business into 2 halves… the side where you could buy advertising became Google AdWords. The side where you could use your own websites to display Google advertisements became Google Adsense. Literally hundreds of thousands of advertisers flocked to Google AdWords, and tens of thousands of webmasters flocked to Google AdSense to sell real estate on their websites for AdSense “impressions”.

What is Made For Adsense?

A Made For Adsense website (known by SEO pundits as an “MFA site“) is a website designed to lure searchers to their site using “link bait” or artificially manipulated ranking in order to deliver Google AdSense impressions or page views where the ads are present. A classic MFA site will provide almost no helpful information to a searcher and it’s only function is to deliver pageview or impression hits for Google paid search advertisers. MFA sites will typically use up to 2/3 of a webpage to display Google advertisements.

MFA sites are SPAM. They are garbage that floods cyberspace and detracts from a search engines usefullness.When Google started pushing AdSense, they actually became the #1 spammer in the world themselves and it took a couple years for them to develop a way to prevent MFA sites from tainting the user experience surfers wanted. There were many MFA spammers that made 6 figure incomes with template driven RSS fed MFA sites in the beginning. They were sold by the thousands on eBay. Now I must admit Google is fair to excellent at keeping MFA sites off the first page in the SERPS. Occasionally one will slip into the Top 10 Google rankings for a short while. I provided an example in this post where an MFA site is actually ranking #1 on Google for a coveted and lucrative phrase.

How do you identify an MFA site?

An MFA site generally has these characteristics:

• provides zero useful information to searchers
• usually has PageRank 0
• much of the screen is taken up by Google Advertisements and up to 2/3 of the screen might be just Google Ads.
• if the site makes it to Google Page One, it probably won’t be there for long. It may have manipulated the Google Algorithm to get there in the first place and they almost always get caught over time.

What is click distribution?

Click Distribution

is a fundamental part of SEO Theory that attempts to explain how the ranking order and position on a SERP (search engine resuts page) effects the number of clicks a web page gets. SEO’s like to tell their clients “If I get you ranking #1 for this phrase you could get 6,000 additional clicks a month”. PPC salespeople tell prospects the same thing essentially. Something like “If we get you on the top of the sponsored results you will get X numbers of extra clicks a month”. Click distribution explains how surfers pick between the sponsored results, the natural results, and now additionally the local maps results.

When I was one of the brave affiliate marketers bring products to the online marketplace in 2001, we learned to live by click distribution and we used a mixture of paid search (PPC) and organic search to cover all bases. We had thumb rule figures based on early click studies that basically told us that:

• 40% of the clicks go to the #1 PPC entry
• 40% of the clicks go to the #1 natural entry
• 8% of the clicks go to the #2 natural entry
• all web pages listed on the first page of the SERP got some clicks – we called that being in the scoring zone
• almost no prospects ever looked at the 2nd page for a viable site. Some researchers did and people looking for information – particularly on their competitors. But there were generally less than 10% of all surfers that would actually go to the second page of the SERPS.

Click Distribution and Eye Tracking

OK, that ballpark list of figures being said, we can say at this point that some of the click behavior is effected by the placement on the page. There have been numerous studies on eye movement using heat images to display the hot zones on a web page. They almost invariably conclude there is a scanning behavior that people generally use where they look from the top left corner of the page going straight down to the bottom left corner of the visible page and they scan across the top the page the same way. Sometimes they make the pattern of the letter “F” where they do a straight down scan on the left column and then they do 2 horizontal scans – the first across the top of the page and the second being in the middle of the screen. The average time a surfer spends on a web page is still around 7 seconds and during that time they scan the page and determine if they should spend more time on the page or the site.

What does this mean for the SEO Client?

As a client paying for SEO services, you want to get the most new business for the lowest possible cost. You have to have a way to gauge the effectiveness of the SEO campaign you are paying for. One stat SEO clients focus on is the ranking for each phrase and more importantly than the raw ranking number is the number of unique visitors and the amount of time they spend on your site and the number of times they convert to paying customers of course. It pays to be #1 on either the PPC side or the natural side. No matter how much the SEO pundits tell you that “ranking is dead”, the bottom line is most SEO firms still send out ranking reports, and most SEO clients still want ranking reports. Ranking and placement on the page are important stats to bring to the table at the end of the day when you are determining the ROI return on investment for your SEO campaign.

What percentage of clicks does Google Local Maps get?

I hope to be able to tell you that in the near future. I’ve never seen click distribution studies that factored in Google Local Business Listings or Bing Maps or Yahoo Local Maps for that matter. We know being on the Google Local Map is very valuable in terms of clicks and exposure. Anything “above the fold” on a SERP is prime real estate and Google frequently puts a Maps 10 pack or a local 3 pack right on top of the natural results (and below the sponsored results). As soon as I can find click data on Maps I’ll let you know but for now check with David Mihm and Michael Blumenthal because they are the recognized SEO Local Search Pundits to watch.

Charity Banners

List of Charity Banners for Webmasters and SEO’s

Webmasters and SEO’s sometimes use charity banners to create outbound links to “High PR” authority sites. This makes the page with the good outbound links look more like an informational hub so it can boost PageRank. To explain further, you earn Algorithm points with Google when you link to a website that’s:

• already been live for at least a year and preferably many years
• that has PR3 or above
• and is considered to be an authority in it’s field

On top of the shameless self promotional reasons to add a High PR outbound link, there are other reasons… darn it, the so called “real” reasons. Relevant outbound links serve to provide readers with a good information that may be of interest. They also can promote the target you are linking to with a little link love if you use a do follow link. In the case of a charity link, you’re helping them to build PR and get ranking and qualified traffic for the phrases their SEO has targeted.

Here is a list I circulated with some of my full time SEO co-workers,  and I’m going to add for the next few weeks so bookmark it or link to it for future reference. Please hook me up with new recommended links via comments. Thanks !!  Cheers -

Action Against Hunger

http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/get-involved/no-hunger-web-banners

American Red Cross – Give Blood / Ready To Help

http://www1.givebloodgivelife.org/supporters/banners/

http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=imready_banner

Amnesty International

http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/banners

http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/demand-dignity/banners

ASPCA American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

http://www.aspca.org/about-us/free-aspca-stuff/free-link-banners.html

CARE Relief Organization

http://www.care.org/getinvolved/fight-global-poverty-empower-women/spread-the-word/free-care-web-banners-badges.asp

Changing The Present

http://www.changingthepresent.org/hunger/spread_the_word

Compass Outreach Program

http://www.compass-om.com/homeless/banner.php

Covenant House

http://www.covenanthouse.org/action/banners

Earth Day / WWF  / World Wildlife Fund

http://www.worldwildlife.org/sites/earthday/item6784.html

Electronic Frontier Foundation

http://w2.eff.org/campaigns/banners/

Feed The Children

http://blog.feedthechildren.org/

GreenPeace

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/fungames/banners

Habitat for Humanity

http://www.habitat.org/gov/suppdocs/WHDWebBanner.htm

Homeless World Cup

http://www.homelessworldcup.org/content/addabanner

Kiva Micro Finance

http://www.kiva.org/about/do-more

Susan G Komen for the Cure

http://ww5.komen.org/

Missing and Exploited Kids

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=683

MS Multiple Sclerosis Society Walk-A-Thon

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/get-involved/events/walk-ms/digital-downloads-walk-ms/index.aspx

OxFam America

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatyoucando/pages/banners/?searchterm=banner

Save The Children

http://www.savethechildren.org/about/policies/banners.html

Second Harvest / Feeding America

http://www.feedingamericacentral.org/

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

http://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=a0c5fa2454e70110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD&vgnextchannel=5b2213c016118010VgnVCM1000000e2015acRCRD

SOS Childrens Villages

http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/donate-help/link-to-our-web-site

UN World Food Program Free Rice

http://www.freerice.com/banners.html

World Vision

http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/comms2.nsf/stable/sponsorship_banners?OpenDocument

http://www.worldvision.com.au/AboutUs/Webassets/web_banners.aspx

http://www.worldvision.ca/GiftCatalogue/Pages/gift-catalogue-banners.aspx

http://www.worldvision.org.sg/st_spreadtheword.php

What is Personalized Search?

When you type a phrase into a Google Search Bar, the results generated and delivered to you are personalized based on your Google Account (if you are logged in) or your IP address. Google keeps track of your previous searches by default if you are logged in, and it will use your search habits and apparent preferences to customize and bias the results it delivers to you. If you are not logged in, Google will attempt to personalize your search based on demographic statistics or other factors based on the physical location you are in when you search. It uses your IP address to help guesstimate categories to put you into for shaping the search results.

Personalized Search is a Game Changing Event for SEO’s

In the past, SEO’s demonstrated their effectiveness by giving ranking reports to their clients. Ranking Reports were one of several clear indicators that clients could use to determine if their SEO Firm was effective. Of course the end goal of SEO is to get more sales and more business for their client, but showing them that they were # 1 on Google for their key phrase was a great proof that their salary was justified. I handed out over 250 Google # 1 rankings in July of 2009 to my clients as well as over 1,000 Google Top 10 rankings. Now, a search done by an attorney in Miami will have a different result as the same search done by an SEO in New York. I’ve had to spend a lot of time teaching my clients how to handle these changes. Some clients only care about the rankings and I can tell you it’s a little difficult to change a mindset after clients have been accustomed for years to look at ranking reports.

Is Personalized Search Good?

My opinion is that it’s good for non-technical searchers because it helps them to get the relevant results they are looking for … most of the time… based on probability and statistics. For an SEO like me, I want to know what Google thinks without getting biased results from their index. And really I want to see the actual search frequency for each term I’m interested in and I’d like to see what was delivered not just to me but to everyone. SO it is good for search? Yes for some and no to others. There is no right or wrong answer to that question yet.

How Can I De-Personalize Search?

After you search for a phrase and you get to the SERP (search engine results page), take a look at your address bar on top of the browser.

To De-Personalize that search add to the end of the string that’s already in the address bar:   &pws=0

(that’s a zero at the end)

This is the same search with the de-personalize string added to it. Notice the results are different. Webdesignworkplace.com is listed #16 for that phrase and it was listed #17.

Do I have to Keep Typing That De-Personalize String?

In manual mode with you and your browser, the short answer is Yes. To get a de-personalized search you have to add that string to remove filters and bias. But there may be a better way. Yoast has just released a new plugin that works with IE and FF. Just search for:

Disable personalized search

I’m going to try this later because if I had 10 cents for every time I had to de-personalize a search in the last 4 months I could take my kids to Disneyland.

(I have not been paid by anyone mentioned in this blog post – Cheers – Mal Milligan)

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