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3 Reasons You Might Have Been Affected By Google Panda

Yesterday I posted about the negative impact the Google Panda changes are having on all sorts of websites, and with each day that passes, more webmasters are realizing they have been affected by the black and white bear of search. I thought it might be useful to offer a few tips on how to fight back for those sites that have been affected. Please bear in mind (no pun intended), that these tips are based on general research and my experience of the changes.

Eliminate Spammy On-site Links

If you have spammed your footer or sidebar with longtail keywords in an attempt to gain extra “Google points” then you may well have felt the force of the panda. Unless these links are linking to relevant and visible pages in your sitemap, then this could be a reason for Read more

18/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Usability & Conversion

A Conversion is So Much More Than Just The Final Click – Do Your Homework Properly!

Website owners often only concern themselves with analysing the last click, i.e. the conversion. In an excited state they want to know the ad clicked, the keyword responsible and from where the user was referred. But this is actually a bad place to start. The likelihood is that the person who made the purchase had been to your site a few times beforehand, perhaps they stalled on the sale checking out the competition, or perhaps they forgot completely and were prompted by a second advertisement to come back again. It is rare that a person buys straight away, and for that reason the picture is usually bigger than it first looks. Read more

11/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Blogging, Link Popularity Building, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Get In Bed With The Right People and Improve Your SEO

How important is off-page optimisation compared with on-page optimisation? I get asked that question a lot and whilst it’s a good question I am reluctant to answer it because I feel it isn’t the right question. What we should be focussing on is how rankings are weighted between the two rather than one being more important than the other. On the face of it, off-page is more important because 70% Read more

11/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Blogging, News & Updates

A New Kid on The Local Search Block

The latest in a string of search engine services to hit the block is search tool called ‘Local Trend Search’ created by fwix . Currently in beta version, the tool provide users with a list of things happening ‘right now’ and recently in a specified local area. For example, if you type in ‘Yankee Stadium’ you get a display of results including news, events, photos and updates. The updates include posts from Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla. The news results are generated form media sites and local blogs, and events from sites such as Eventful and Stubhub. The photos from what I can see are generated mostly from flikr.

* Picture Reference: http://searchengineland.com/fwix-launches-hyperlocal-search-engine-46948

There is also a sponsored link section at the top which merges the search engine advertising via the fwix Adwire facility, a product they developed some time ago. This allows small businesses to leverage local user search to their advantage and apply a more reliable, targeted approach to local advertising. At the moment coverage is limited when it comes to small towns, always a thorn in the side of map creation, navigation and search in general, but no doubt something fwix will work on over time.

Of course there are alternative search engine services for local search including Sency which integrates similar features to the fwix application, Bing maps, and of course Google maps. Google could easily rival fwix by adding news, events and general updates to its agenda. But in the mean time fwix is one tool to keep an eye on, not only for its user friendly application but the rates for search engine advertising may turn out to be cheaper than existing options.

10/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Copywriting

Over Optimized Copy Isn’t Good Web Site traffic Optimisation & It’s Just Plain Stupid

If I asked you to write ten sentences on your holiday to Greece would you include the phrase ‘my holiday to Greece’ five times within those ten lines? No, because that would look unnatural and like it was written by a six year old. So why is it that people still insist on stuffing web pages full of keywords that make for an extremely off-putting read. For some unknown reason it is still believed by many that this practice serves as good web site traffic optimisation.

I see copy everyday and wonder whether the owner has any intention of providing valuable information or selling a product/service. I wonder if they even thought Google would appreciate this methodology. Over optimised copy doesn’t look good, it doesn’t read well, it isn’t SEO friendly and quite frankly it’s just something people do because a friend told them that this constitutes good SEO. Read more

10/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Good News For Marketers As Yahoo Answers Implement Major Search Improvements

It really is about time. Yahoo Answers always had the potential to be very useful as a web site promotion service if the internal search facility was more efficient. Yahoo Answers is the most popular Q&A on the web and it certainly is very useful if you want an answer. But if you are looking to search out topics and create some decent back-links for your web marketing strategy it has always been long-winded.

Well the good news is that some major changes have been made. You can now conduct search by relevance and time. This enables the user to keep a date log of Q&A previously searched. There is also an option to search by number of answers. These options were available previously when browsing categories but not when searching the search results pages.

On the left sided menu there are several new search options. There are also additional filtering options for ‘number of answers’ and ‘date submitted’ menu dropdowns. See the diagram below:

You can even save your searches and have a daily email delivered with new questions that match your search (see the diagram below). This is great for monitoring topics surround your business and keeping your finder on the button to answer them immediately. You can also monitor particular keywords. For more information on these changes you can read the Yahoo Answers blog post . This will serve as a neat web site promotion service for marketers and business owners alike, and of course for what the facility is meant to be; a general knowledge resource base.

Yahoo Answers is no longer an effort to maintain as part of your web site promotion strategy. Now the facility is set up to contact you when you should be responding, rather than spending hours trawling through endless posts to little avail.

09/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Website Design & Development

Before Visiting a Professional SEO Consultant Give Your Website a Diagnostic Check

When you first visit a professional SEO consultant they will begin by analysing your website and getting a feel for just how search engine friendly the pages are. Many experts will spot problem areas at a glance, but some things take a deeper analysis to diagnose. One simple check that all specialists carry out is a diagnostic page analysis to see how Google views your home page and other pages of your site. Successful website marketing relies on how Google interprets your website and in turn this directly affects your rankings. This is a test that you can carry out yourself by taking a look into Google’s ‘text cache’. Read more

09/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Neglect Title Tags at Your Own Peril & dash; You Have Been Warned

Ask any search engine optimization expert and they will tell you that without a doubt one of the big 3 SEO must do’s is the title tag. Title tags are weighted as part of your overall SEO score and they provide a chance to plug particular keywords and your company name. A title tag is an HTML tag with text describing a specific web page but is not displayed on the actual webpage. If you are using internet explorer you can see the title tag in the blue bar across the top of the screen, please see the example below. Read more

07/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

News & Updates, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Carol Bartz Yahoo CEO Tenure Over With a Phone Call

With a disappointing second quarter her cards were already numbered, so today’s sacking via a telephone call won’t have come as much of a surprise to the now ex-Yahoo CEO, who will forever be remembered as the woman who ended Yahoo’s love affair with search. And for me this is the real story here.

With all Yahoo search, except display, now powered by Microsoft, what does Yahoo really represent and where are they going from here? This past week saw the launch of their new mail system, but is even that too little too late. Users have left in their droves in recent years as Yahoo mail bug reports continue to overflow, not to mention suffering heavily at the hands of Googlemail and its all encompassing facility. Even the Yahoo Site Explorer tool is set to be cut down this month, adding another self-inflicted wound to a tough few years. Read more

07/09/2011/by Ash Mehta

Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

So You Want to Become a Search Engine Marketing Specialist

Lately we have been focussing on a myriad of topics pertaining to SEO. These have included, how to choose an SEO company, how to utilise Facebook and Twitter and SEO mistakes to avoid. So today I thought I should say a few words for those wanting to be on the other side of the fence, those wanting to start a search engine optimisation firm of their own.

Becoming a search engine marketing specialist is no mean feat, there is an ocean of knowledge to attain and the learning curve is endless. But for the purpose of this post let’s just presume you have the credentials in the bag already Read more

08/06/2011/by Ash Mehta