ecomZera Blog

Google AdWords recently updated their landing page quality scoring algorithm. This means that advertisers who do not provide useful landing pages to users will have lower Quality Scores.
Read More from Inside AdWords, the Ad Words Blog.

This tools help you build a LOT of quality backlinks, it searches for websites of the theme you specify that contain keyphrases like "Add link", "Add site", "Add URL", "Add URL", "Submit URL" etc. Most of the results could be potential backlinks.

by Matthew Richardson, Amit Prakash, Eric Brill

Since the publication of Brin and Page's paper on PageRank, many in the Web community have depended on PageRank for the static (query-independent) ordering of Web pages. We show that we can significantly outperform PageRank using features that are independent of the link structure of the Web. We gain a further boost in accuracy by using data on the frequency at which users visit Web pages. We use RankNet, a ranking machine learning algorithm, to combine these and other static features based on anchor text and domain characteristics. The resulting model achieves a static ranking pairwise accuracy of 67.3% (vs. 56.7% for PageRank or 50% for random).

Read the Technical Paper on Machine Learning for Static Ranking

You ever want a way to determine the number of supplemental results a particular site may have? In the past, you did a site command and sifted through the available pages to get an idea on that number. Now, Google appears to allow you to see those results by entering in the syntax [site:www.domain.com ***].

Ref:Checking a Site's Supplemental Results in Google

by William Slawski

This post doesn’t describe the actual creation of content for a site, from an SEO stance, but it does detail some of the planning and steps that can be taken to help in the process.

It also doesn’t discuss some of the technical aspects of SEO that should be planned for to make a site easier to be found by search engines. But it does provide a number of questions that may make it easier for someone who is considering optimizing their site for search engines as they are putting together content for the pages of their site.

One of my favorite articles of the past few years on design is a Digital Web article from 2003 by G.A. Buchholz, titled A Content Requirements Plan (CRP) helps Web designers take a leadership role.

I think that part of the planning of the content of a site also should include an awareness of search engines, and a knowledge of some SEO goals. Those goals aren’t too difficult to keep in mind when it comes to creating the words for a site, but are definitely worth considering

Read this Article

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, February 27 - March 2, 2006, New York, NY. By Anne Kennedy, SEW

When it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, when is enough... enough? And why is overoptimization a problem?

Overdoing on SEO tactics to enhance performance on search engine results pages can backfire, said panelists Heather Lloyd Martin,president and CEO of Successworks, Matt Bailey, an SEO Consultant, and Michael Murray, Vice President of Fathom SEO in the "SEO Overkill" session.

At a minimum, your site will look clumsy and risk red flagging as spam by search engines; at worst, your conversion and usability will suffer, as your visitors become confused or frustrated and leave. "That "back" button is so close," warned Lloyd-Martin.

Search engine performance matters, but conversion matters more. "We're in business to make money, and the search engines are not paying our bills," said Lloyd-Martin. "Whenever you put the computer first, you're leaving customers out," said Bailey.

SEO Overkill Kills Rankings

Excessively lengthy strings of keywords stuffed into domain names, page and file names, title and over-the-top keyword tags, meta tag bonanzas and overdone visible text look ludicrous to both search engines and website visitors, said Murray. Similarly, getting too many links pointing to your web site too quickly may get you in trouble with the ranking algorithm.

Using hidden text and micro sites is just really naive. "And watch out for stuffing "no-frames" tags," he added as he displayed an egregious example containing 2000 words.

SEO overkill kills conversion, warned Lloyd-Martin. If you walk the spam line and live on the edge, it will come back to bite you, if not from the search engines, then in your marketing, she warned. Cookie-cutter copy in order to get clicks looks stupid. Linkorama losers drain link popularity away, but more importantly, having too many choices scares people; they don't know what to do.

Pointing to concern for visually impaired website visitors, Bailey said, "Accessibility is optimization." Screen text readers expose over-optimization by presenting only the text, and all of it, scanning just like search engine bots, "Remember, you're only hiding text from people searching with browsers." Similarly, Web-enabled handhelds and cell phones strip out all graphics but display all text including supposedly "hidden" batches of keyword-stuffed copy, as well as longwinded title tags, meta data and alt tags. Plus, scrolling lengthy text on such tiny screens can make visitors quickly lose patience before they do business with your site.

Keyword stuffing doesn't work when it's impossible to understand, said Lloyd-Martin. Misspellings trash your brand. "If you can't get your site right, how will you get my order right?" It's better to build out customer-centered, relevant content than to focus on misspellings of your brand name. Google's "did you mean" function takes care of most misspellings anyway.

If you're spamming, you're on borrowed time, Lloyd Martin warned. "Imagine what would happen to your business if you were to lose all the revenue from your Google referrals."

Further, there's no excuse for an SEO firm putting a website at risk. That's grounds for dismissal. "If your SEO makes you feel funny, and you don't get a good answer, cut 'em loose!" she said.

Overcoming SEO Overkill

Murray recommended adding and measuring one link at a time and being very deliberate about what you're doing. "Yes you need traffic," he said, "But pace yourself. Even sound practices may fail if they're rushed." Proceed at an appropriate pace. Conduct good research. Evaluate your progress. Make major headway with basic SEO practices. Optimize your homepage with four or five keywords that are realty important to your website.

"Write impactful headlines. Use inverted pyramid style to put the most important words first," said Bailey, adding "Everything I know about websites I learned in journalism school." Short domains, title tags and concise text get them quickly to what they want—good business for your site. Writing for search engines algorithms is vastly different from writing for visitors.

Lloyd-Martin recommended avoiding conversion confusion by putting calls to action in the content. "Think about the car salesman who slides the contract over and hands you a pen with 'Let's get you a ride home in that baby today.'" Use the "Marketing Rule of Three" to funnel people in.

Do an SEO audit, and then fix your main pages first. Gradually figure out a way to clean up excessive key word use and links. Once you do you'll be doing better with better ROI.

Anne F. Kennedy is managing partner of Beyond Ink, a search marketing agency based in Portland, Maine, with operations in Seattle.

They’ve been called "the Kiss of Death", "Google Hell", and "Screwed Pages", but in any case, Supplemental Results is not where you want your pages to be if you expect traffic from Google.

Why does google put pages in the Supplemental Results?

Ideas on Washing Out Supplemental Results

Lots of research has focused on inbound links to a site, but little has focused on the number of links actually on a page. Many SEO gurus have recently been talking about something they call ‘PR Leak’ which seems to be a theory that the more outbound links you have, the more your page rank on Google "leaks" away.

This concept isn't found in the academic papers published by Google, but does seem to be accepted by a majority of SEOs. I decided it was time to take a look at the number of links present on a page and how that number correlates with ranking. Read more...

by Melinda Krueger, Tuesday, February 28, 2006

DOESN'T EVERYONE want their e-mail list to be larger? It's not uncommon, however, to find companies that have not checked off the basic steps. Have you?

1. Make sign-up ubiquitous. The invitation to join the e-mail list should be part of your primary navigation so that no matter where consumers land on your site, they don't have to search to find the opt-in page.
2. Make sign-up easy. The more information you request from potential subscribers, the less likely they will be to sign up. Capture the impulse with a single box for the e-mail address and an "opt-in" button. You can gather additional information after you have achieved the primary goal.
3. Include a request at check-out. If you are conducting commerce or require information for premium content, always include an opt-in box.
4. Include a request in transactional e-mails. If you send auto-responder e-mails to confirm purchases, allow tracking, etc., include an invitation to opt-in.
5. Invite customers in traditional media. Leverage your print, broadcast and other efforts to encourage e-mail sign-up.
6. Promote your e-mail in others' e-mails. Look at non-competing efforts that reach your audience and include an ad for your program with a link to your sign-up page.
7. Promote your e-mail via search. Use search engine marketing to promote not just your site, but the unique content you deliver via e-mail as well.
8. Try co-registration. Co-registration is an option to check boxes to subscribe to other e-mail publications, offered after the consumer has opted in on a site. New ESPN e-mail subscribers, for example, are offered options to subscribe to other e-mails of interest to their demographic, by simply checking a box. I have seen both great results and horrible results from this tactic, and suggest tracking co-registrants separately through a series of e-mails to see if you've gotten responsive opt-ins or dogs.
9. Enlist your friends. Always include a Send-to-a-Friend (STAF) promotion and new subscriber invitation to help your friends build your list.
10. Build an e-mail program customers value. The foundation for success in all efforts is creating e-mails that your customers want to read. If you are truly considering customer needs and desires first and your marketing goals second, you will have a program that draws customers to you, is easy to promote, and merits recommendations.

WCAG 1.0 was brought into existence in the last century, when there were few web applications and no CMS-managed web sites. Actually, the web has evolved considerably, and we have moved to the next generation of web applications (Web 2.0). This article will explain how it is still possible to apply WCAG 1.0 (and also how to comply with the future WCAG 2.0 and ISO 9241-151) to create an accessible e-shop shopping-cart and backend management system, analyzing the problems and the proposed solutions.

E-shop accessibility: from theory to reality

Author: Roberto Scano

Some good email marketing tools:

• Free ContentChecker tool
• Free HTML templates

Here is a list of words that get tagged as spam or get our emails into bulk emails.

In this article, Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar is used for a preliminary assessment of a web site's accessibility.

Although awareness of web accessibility has steadily increased in recent years, many web developers are still uncertain about how to evaluate their sites. The relative complexity of documents such as the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 and the wealth of - sometimes contradictory - advice found on sites dedicated to the subject can leave developers wondering about the practical aspects of testing.

Often developers lack time or training and simply rely on one of the many automated testing tools such as WebXACT, Cynthia , or Wave. But even those mechanical checks need to be supplemented (and, to avoid false positives, counter-checked) by manual checks.

Based on some of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints, this article aims to provide a quick outline of how Mozilla Firefox and the Web Developer toolbar can help with these manual checks.

Ref:Excellent ways to jumpstart buzz about your product, Kalena Sep 13, 2006

• - Create a professional press release and circulate it via distribution channels such as PR Web.
• - Send the press release to key bloggers in the SEO industry and ask them to blog it.
• - Send the press release to editors or widely-read SEO newsletters, ezines and publications.
• - Send a free evaluation copy of your product to journalists in the search industry and/or influential names in the industry and ask them to review it. If they like it, they will most likely blog and/or write about it.
• - Start an affiliate program for your product and begin recruiting affiliates and sub-affiliates.
• - Write an article/review about the product yourself and syndicate it via search-related article announcement groups such as those described here and in our articles about article marketing.

What do people see when they view a news website or multimedia feature? Is it what the site's designers expect? ... Perhaps not. The Eyetrack III study literally looked through the eyes of 46 people to learn how they see online news.

The Internet is a vast place comprised of millions of computers sending information back and forth in packets. It came into being in the early 70s as a U.S. Defense Department network called ARPAnet. This was an experimental network created for military research, initially, for the design and testing of network survival under wartime conditions.

Much is discussed on the Internet regarding its growth and user-driven, decentralized nature. This part overviews the current state of searching and search services on the Internet. The essential arguments are that your time is well spent learning how to issue more effective queries and to understand the basic operations of the search services you employ. Go ahead and learn the techniques of effective searching on the internet...