Performance Marketing Blog

Many people do not realize that search engine spiders cannot see ANY images from your website.

Do you know what your website looks like without any images at all? For the most of us, this is probably a pretty ugly picture.

When people refer to the “look” of a website, they are referring to styles and images. None of these are present when a search engine spider crawls your website.

Do you know what your home page looks like to a search engine spider? No? I suspect many people don’t.

Since you’re reading this, I am going to show you how a search engine spider sees our home page:

As compared to how it is generally viewed through a web browser:

As you can see, there is a big difference.

So, if you would like to see how your website looks to a search engine spider I suggest you checkout http://www.seo-browser.com.

This site will give you a look at your website through the eyes of a search engine spider. It will also show you information about your headers which will allow you to optimize based off of the recommendations given.

Keep in mind that the spider will read your page from top to bottom, so the order of appearance for elements on your page will affect the value placed on the content of your website.

If you’re wondering why the descriptions that show up in the search engine provide no value to your listing, it may be because of images that are pushing certain content above the content you would like to show on your search engine listings.

In conclusion, it is always a good idea to view the top 10 pages of your site that you are trying to distribute page rank to in order to see how the content is being viewed by a search engine spider.

http://searchengineland.com/a-big-roundup-of-link-building-tools-13400

I found a few neat tools on this list.

The auto form fillers help out tremendously when submitting your site to directories.

They also mention http://www.marketleap.com as well, which has always been a fantastic first step when link building and analyzing your website.

Finding the best keywords to optimize your site for can take forever. Make sure you start with the right tools so you get good answers and use your time wisely. Try some of the most used keyword building tools and some of the others before coming up with your final keyword targeting strategy.

I have been reviewing some tools for an SEO project we are working on and thought I would share some of my initial findings. Our current need for this project is a tool that allows you to pull keywords via an API. A lot of my personal experience has been working with tools more along the lines of Hitwise (closer to Enterprise solution and $70K/yr last time I checked). In this case we don’t have that type of budget, who does nowadays?

Let’s start with the free tools first:

Here are some general SEO resource sites you should take a look at-

Name: UITEST

Purpose: End to end help in building and optimizing your website.

URL: http://uitest.com/en/analysis

When to use: Well it is a robust enough list that you can use these tools form the site planning stages all the way through to optimization and marketing, really the full life-cycle.

Price: Free

Keyword research tools-

Name: SEOBOOK

Purpose: This keyword suggestion tool is good for finding related search results to terms you want to target. It also provides semantically related phrases and has a handy CSV export option. Of course it’s bid prices are very useful if you want to target either high paying terms for targeting traffic or which terms you want to bid on in your ppc campaign.

URL: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook

When to use: Useful when launching a new site or when you just need some new ideas for targeting new keywords in order to optimize and existing site.

Price: Free

Name: WordTracker

Purpose: Find 100 related keywords to your search term of interest and get an estimate of their daily traffic volume.

URL: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

When to use: Anytime you need some quick info about related search terms.

Price: Free

Name: SEOCHAT

Purpose: Keyword suggestion tool for Google. Helps find relevant and popular related terms. Seems to be having some problems lately based on a Google Algorithm change.

URL: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-google

When to use: When you need a quick tool to find Google related results.

Price: Free

Name: Trellian

Purpose: Keyword discovery and multi-search engine benchmarking during keyword list build. Useful for building out multi-search engine lists and industry lists.

URL: www.keyworddiscovery.com

When to use: Useful for a new site during the first month of optimization, nice to have for 2 months (ongoing support)

Price: $69.95/month or $599.40/year

Name: Keyword Country

Purpose: Keyword discovery and competition benchmarking during site review of existing sites. This is a good tool for those people focused more on content development and who need help on how to choose anchor text. It is also useful for finding keywords with high Click Though Rates to predict results for Key Performance Indicators. The tool provides the ability to review competitor keywords and search engines that they competition is using. Keyword Country also shows number of pages on competitor’s sites using certain keywords so you can target content for future development.

URL: www.keywordcountry.com

When to use: Nice to have for content suggestions component during first 90 days. If you are a content heavy site then you may want this ongoing.

Price: $99 for 3 month

Name: WORDZe

Purpose: You may want to use this during keyword discovery phase when building a target keyword list as well as during link building strategy development. This tool can be useful to compare how your keyword optimization strategies might work across countries. Provides information on how hard it is to rank in top 10 for particular keywords as well as demographic data on users searching for top keywords (relevancy) . Also provides link rankings and suggested authority sites to submit links to as well as city by city breakdowns and industry analysis. This tool is helpful for seasonality review and optimization adjustments by time of year.

URL: www.wordze.com

When to use: Critical for first month, nice to have for remainder (ongoing support)

Price: $45/month

Name: Keyword Domination

Purpose: Useful for keyword discovery while building a target keyword list and comparing that list across languages. This resource has an enhanced international suggestion tool. This tool is useful for keyword suggestions that are imbedded in content and long-tail keywords that might not show up in other tools.

URL: www.keyworddomination.com

When to use: Nice to have for international component during first 30 days of an internationally relevant project.

Price: $97/month

I hope this is useful. Please let me know if you have any keyword building or targeting tool favorites of your own. Oh, and if you find a good tool that has an API for keyword suggestions and/or one that provides bid prices on Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask.com please let me know.

I’ve spent years looking for valuable SEO websites that contain great resources.

Unfortunately on  more than one occasion I have lost those links.  Whether to a computer reformat or improperly managing my bookmarks, I always seem to lose the links that matter most.

Well, delicious.com all but solved that problem.

However, that is not a secret, most people are familiar with Delicious and how you can save your bookmarks to a remote location where you will always have them (assuming Delicious’ servers never crash and lose your data).

But what you didn’t know is how valuable a search of “seo”, “sem”, “search engine optimization”, or “search engine marketing” can be on this website.

Go ahead, give it a try… you’ll thank me later. Click the image below to get there fast.

SEO search on Delicious

This recent TechCrunch post it very interesting:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/27/look-yahoo-we-just-cant-afford-a-monopoly-in-search-advertising/

Who will decide if the Google Yahoo! convergence is good or bad? Well the consumers will vote with their searches.

If Yahoo! and Google continue in this direction people will get tired of using different methods to get to the same sponsored results. My thinking is they will probably look for new ways to get guidance and answers to their questions. Perhaps asking through their social network or services like Yelp or possibly relying more heavily on their favorite media tagging sites like Digg and Del.icio.us or new content aggregation products still in the making. Simply Ideas recently spun-off an internal project into MicroGravity Media to help the consumer find highly targeted content all in one place. More to come…

Recently I traveled to Boston for the Affiliate Summit. Between the networking and the parties I ran out to Davis Square to spend some time with an old college friend of mine. One of the first questions he asked me was, “what are you working on?” He knows me well enough to realize that I always have something new on the hopper. I told him about a new website Simply Ideas launched in Beta called www.collegematchingservice.com. Of course the next question was, why? Well there are a lot of reasons including the fact that education is one of the hottest verticals on the Internet and I have years of experience in the Education marketing space both on and off the Internet. But with all of SI’s ventures’ there is a BIGGER reason. Our company is built around a set of core values that are greater than just making money. We are a sustainable business with a very flexible work structure for our people and we believe in doing good in the world. So the main reason I decided to launch this new venture is simple; I love to learn and I believe that education is the best way for people to succeed in life. Helping people get an education is all about helping people lift themselves up and improve their situation no matter what stage they are at in their lives.

We are working hard to make education web sites that provide people interested in going to college the tools they need to figure out what they want to study and which school is right for them, whether an online school or campus based. My past experience starting one of the leading education portals on the Internet has taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t, but it really provided the motivation to “build it better.” Basically when I looked at all the education web sites on the Internet it appeared to me that they missed the opportunity to take advantage of some of the newest web 2.0 technologies, and more importantly, provide a very relevant and valuable service to potential students. So for now take a look at www.collegematchingservice.com where our mission is to become a leading destination site for individuals across the US looking for their perfect college. Utilizing our proprietary matching algorithm and advanced technologies as well as research and input from hundreds of schools, CMS knows what colleges fit individuals’ needs and profiles, and thus provides a highly refined matching service.

Over the coming months we will be launching several sites and services to address what we see as this market opportunity in the education space. As we continue down this path and further this social and technological experiment I will continue to share my own thoughts and ideas related to education on and off the Internet as well as more general information about the challenges and developments in Performance Marketing. I will invite people from the Simply Ideas Network, which includes partners, clients, and friends to provide their insights and I invite you to help us build on the knowledge and experiences in the Performance Marketing community.