SERP University

Why did the "Florida Update" Miss Us?

2003-12-10T18:11:00.000-06:00

It looks like Google's search engine result pages have settled down. I checked yesterday and ALL of my clients are showing upgraded listisngs and improved Page Rank. That would include 7/24 Leads. With all the furor surrounding the Florida Update, how could this be possible?

It looks like Google was targeting pages that were top heavy with keyword phrases and the ones that were havily baclinked with the same anchor text over and over. I have pointed this out over and over that if you choose to artificially alter a page to benefit the search engine results instead of thinking first of benefiting your visitor, it is the wrong thing to do. Stay withthe old advice of content and plenty of it, linking to other sites which have genuine, expert content and keeping the experience of your visitor or client uppermost in your mind.

I am glad to see these weeping changes! Like everyone else, I had unethical competitors who stuffed keyword phrases, employed hidden text and doorway pages AND acheived Google search engine results higher than mine. I am glad those days are coming to a close.

And latest news from 7/24? My portfolio is updated with 2 more recently completed websites here http://www.724leads.com/search-engine-portfolio.htm

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-11-29T15:45:00.000-06:00

Google Florida Update has Webmaters Reeling

Google "Florida Update" Has Web Masters Reeling

You ever get too much of a good thing? Search Engine Optimization experts world wide woke up to a much different world on November 16, 2003. A subject of much conjecture and hypothesis, the so called Florida Update on Google has devastated many web sites just in time for Christmas. The SEO community had done its' homework, figuring out the way to get high search engine placement on Google by following some basic principles. If you optimized your content and liberally sprinkled some well-researched keyword phrases through the content, if you put plenty on those keyword phrases in your Alt-Image Tags, if you used H1 and H2 header tags frequently, if you interlinked different domains you owned and if you freely participated in a link exchange program with little regard for the quality or content of those sites; chances are your web site has vanished from the Top 10 or maybe from the Top 100. The practices were not unethical but it is obvious Google consider it as "spamming".

At this time, there are thousands of theories floating around as to what the new algorithm consists of and how best to regain those lost search engine placements. Give Google credit! Evidently there are multiple factors involved in this algo change and the search engine gurus and statisticians are reduced to just scratching their heads trying to figure it out. The first thing I did was visit the source , Google's Information for Webmasters. While webmasters in the past have liberally interpreted this guideline, I am sure more folks will be scrutinizing it closely now.What else to do?

If you have pages with high keyword density-- take a look at them again! If the pages read awkwardly, if the keyword phrase placement is obvious they need to be revised.

If your Alt image tags are stuffed with keywords, get them out of there and use the tag for what it was intended-- a description of the image.

If you have links to multiple domains that you own, domains that share the same server and domains that list the same owner, rethink that strategy. In most cases, the domains are linked to benefit your search engine rankings and not your visitor. Google says that is not a good practice.

If you exchange links with websites in "bad neighborhoods" with little regard to the sites content or relevance, rethink that program also.

Content has always been king. My pages that had lots of ad copy that was focused on a central subject were little affected by the update. I have always been wordy and pages with more than 1000 words are not uncommon.

If you use doorway pages, dynamically generated trash content pages, cloaked pages, hidden text or re-directs. chances are you have been caught (or soon will be) and that is well deserved! I would like to see you banned from Google permanently!

Should you go out and revamp your entire site? I don't think so! Wait and see how Google settles down and what the new criteria is., tweak your site a bit according to the suggestion I have listed above and wait it out.

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-11-25T09:49:00.000-06:00

Go Daddy Claims Hosting problem with Google is Resolved

Go Daddy Claims Hosting Problem Is Resolved

GoDaddy.com is claiming their hosting problem with Google has been resolved. You can read the thread HERE. I have not seen any change in my Google SERP's yet with my sites which are still hosted there.

The Latest Project? Check it out HERE. It is another insurance site with an interface to a live online application. I would say this is the wave of the future.

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-11-19T08:36:00.000-06:00

Go Daddy is the BLACK HOLE of Web Hosting

GoDaddy.com is the Black Hole of Web Hosting

If you are into pain and suffering, duplicate this experiment. I have a website at www.selfemployedweb.com that has seen better days. It is among the first five or so websites I did and it has grown sort of old and stale. I was hosting it on earthlink.net and it was pretty pricey. In light of everything that has been going on with Go Daddy, I decided to do an experiment.

On 11/13/03, selfemployedweb.com showed 48 listings in Google. Average traffic was about 50 visits per day and I got 5-10 leads a week off this site. Not bad considering I haven't really touched the site in months. I moved the hosting to Go Daddy on this date. 6 days later, I have 23 listings in Google BUT only 3 listings actually have ANY content. The rest are bare URL's. I had ZERO visitors yesterday and only 3 the day before. All appear to be coming in from linked sites. No leads for the last 4 days.

Now what does this mean? It shows, unequivocally, that Go Daddy has a HUGE problem! A change of DNS to Go Daddy and NOTHING else caused this website to literally vanish from the Google search engine results pages in the space of a week. A small business person such as myself cannot afford a loss of income such as this!

The problem was first discovered almost 5 weeks ago and I see no progress being made at all as far as Go Daddy fixing the problem. It absolutely boggles my mind to think about the thousands upon thousands of web sites which have got ot be affected by this Go Daddy problem.

My only recommendation of you are hosting on Go Daddy is to find a NEW host ASAP!!! You may get back in the Google search engine results pages by Christmas if you act quickly!

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-11-13T22:42:00.000-06:00

GoDaddy Still Doesn't Have It Together

GoDaddy still doesn't have it together!

The web sites I moved to other servers on the 9th are now regaining ground in Google as we speak!!! The few I left on GoDaddy are continuing to lose ground. I have canceled those accounts as I moved them to other servers and Go Daddy just continues to go down the toilet. Counting my losses and those of my clients, the conservative figure is around $16k and growing. One of my e-commerce sights rushed to get her website online EARLY in order to get established search engine results pages by the Christmas Shopping Season --- she is now watching her results return a handful of pages at a time. When I think of the thousands of websites that must be affected by this, it just boggles my mind!

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-11-08T22:35:00.000-06:00

GoDaddy.com is Ruining my Business!

Want to do EVERYTHING right and still lose your shirt? Use GoDaddy.com to host your web site! 4 weeks ago I had multiple top listings on Google for each and every web site I owned. 3 weeks ago, you couldn't find my listings anywhere! I didn't change a thing -- not one thing and all of a sudden I noticed ZERO traffic from Google overnight! I contacted Google first to see if I was being penalized - they wrote back almost immediately and told me that no, I was just partially indexed. What? Looking at the Google SERPS, I had dropped from 111 listings to 12 listings. Those 12 listings were ONLY simple URL's -- no description at all! To my horror as I checked the other dozen web sites I was responsible for, they also showed just the minimal URL listings for a fraction of the previous page listings. In the space of time it took Google to update their index, all the hard won gains had been wiped out. I was at a loss for the cause.

My next step was to check with the experts at the I Help You forums. You can read the complete thread HERE. After about a week of research I think I have come to the root of the problem. GoDaddy has made some change that is preventing GoogleBot from indexing the pages it crawls correctly. I emailed GoDaddy and asked about this and was told there was no problem and "if" there was, it was Google's problem and I should check with them. A week later, after a very threatening email, GoDaddy replied that there WAS a problem (duh!) and they were working closely with Google to resolve it. Just this past evening I received a phone call from Nick at GoDaddy (give them credit for that). He had read my posts in the thread on I Help You and seen fit to call. The conversation boils down to this--- GoDaddy has a problem. They don't know what it is or how to fix it. It is also affecting the GoDaddy site in the same fashion so they have managed to shoot themselves in the foot too. I felt like I could not wait ANY longer for them to resolve the problem. I have moved most of the sites to different hosts -- most of them to Infinology and Yahoo Small Business. In the meantime, I have lost a month's worth of business as have some of my clients -- and right at a critical time before the holiday shopping season. Hopefully, we will get back into the listings quickly.

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-10-26T16:46:00.000-06:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

I made some additions to our Resource library you may find useful:

Top MSN Listings Are Easy - Step by Step Process to gain top listings on MSN, Inktomi and HotBot.

Website Design Basics - Initial Website Design - Combine Search Engine Optimization, Credibility and Image. Do some simple homework and your business website will prove to be an asset instead of a useless expense.

Website Design Resources - Free Website Design and Search Engine Optimization Resources that I have found useful.

... and don't forget we do website tuneup and design work too - Click Here

10/24/03
MSN Search Engine results had a recent hiccup that remains unexplained. Overnight, my serp's went from Top 5 down to the 175+ range. It is discussed in the IHelpYou forum here. Speculation about Looksmart being out of the mix and MSN positioning itself for a run at Google are rampant. As of 10/22, the listings were restored to their former positions - for the most part. The hiccup lasted about 16 days.

This brings up an important point - The different search engine and various directories are the main source of traffic for many web site owners and yet we have no control over what they list or even IF they list us. If you were dropped from one of the search engines, do you have a contingency plan?

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-09-25T00:15:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |
My Latest "Scratch Built" Website

I recently took a website live that I have been working on for a few weeks. It is a small family business in North Texas that has been selling natural skin care products; handmade soap and other handcrafted products for over 100 years. It was an interesting project because the owner had a definite idea about the "look and feel" of her website. She wanted a classy and refined web presence that would appeal to women --plenty of pictures and warm, soothing colors. This made perfect sense to me because women are the most frequent buyer of this type of product.

I found this particular small business niche to be quite competitive and with the emphasis on graphics it proved quite a challenge . You can view the website here: Paris Soap Company.

I had robots.txt set to disallow all robots while the site was under construction which I think is good practice. On 9/20, I reset robots.txt to allow the spiders to go to work and the Google Bot hit the site about 4 hours later. On 9/24, all the pages on Paris Soap wre in the Google index--not too shabby!

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-09-18T23:04:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |: "Top Google Listings - Hard Work Pays Off
A quick of look at some Google search engine results as of today's date
'real estate lead' 1 out of 2,350,000 results pages
'real estate lead generation' 1 out of 519,00 results pages
'real estate sales lead generation' 2 out of 239,000 results pages.
If you go back and look at my 9/6 entry, you will be able to see my reasoning and logic in driving this keyword phrase series to the top. I was concerned about this being one of the listings that just sort of 'float' into the number one position as Google aligns its' databases. I used the Google Dance Tool ( http://googledance.seochat.com/ ) to check all 10 servers and the listings were identical. I believe these number one's might actually stick.
The question I get asked most is ' What is the ONE thing I can do to improve my position the most?' I don't have the magic bullet answer. Remember, the search engines like Google are not looking at just ONE factor. They are looking at a combination of factors AND how they relate to each other. The chances of someone copying my exact pages and then getting the same search engine results is extremely unlikely. That is one reason why it is useless to try and protect your html source code from prying eyes. There is plenty more to search engine optimization than just simple items that are available for cursory inspection. A drive toward a number one listing starts with keyword phrase research and then progresses from there. I give complete details in my Sales Leads for Pennies e-book."

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-09-16T23:04:00.000-05:00

FREE E-Book "Top MSN Listings Are Easy" proves to be wildly popular!

FREE E-book 'Top MSN Results are Easy' is wildly popular!

I didn't anticipate the demand for my latest, FREE e-book 'Top MSN Listings are Easy'. The server has been jammed for the last two days with people downloading the 4 page instructional e-book . It makes sense though. The e-book is FOR REAL! I don't know how many times I have downloaded a 'free' e-book that was supposed to be the latest and greatest only to find it was just a bunch of generic crap that you had to hunt for among the ads. What a waste of time! This short and sweet free e-book gets right to the point! Read it through once and you will be well on your way to getting those top listings on the MSN search engine listings! You can get your own copy here. The free e-book is yours to distribute to friends and business colleagues, publish in your newsletter or put on your website. While you are visiting, you might want to look at our HUGE library of search engine optimization and website design articles from industry experts. Lots of good information or content to post on your website or in your newsletter. The library is here. Click th elink above to go directly to the website.

Top MSN Listings Are Easy

2003-09-10T23:51:00.000-05:00

Top MSN Listings Are Easy
FREE E-Book Download! Top Rankings in MSN are Easy!
Top Search Engine Listings in MSN and Hotbot are easy to attain if you know the search engine optimization secrets! Click the Link above.

Relevance equals Top Search Engine Placement

2003-09-07T00:32:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

09/06/03
Relevance equals Top Search Engine Placement

Search Engine Ranking Report for Google as of 09/05/03
Website:http://www.724leads.com

Keyword Rank
health insurance sales lead 5
life insurance sales lead 20
mortgage sales lead 4
business sales lead 10
generate mortgage lead 11
health insurance lead 20
mlm sales lead 4
internet sales lead 2

Website:http://www.724leads.com/real-estate-lead-generation.htm

Keyword Rank
real estate lead generation 1
real estate sales lead generation 4
real estate lead 3

The point of this table? Two things, The first is optimizing for Inktomi/MSN/Hotbot through their PFI program does produce good results on Google! Here is an excerpt from my July Blog:

"7/12/03

Let me explain the next step. Google is the 900 pound gorilla. They rule the Search Engine market right now. This could change. Nothing is ever constant in our fast changing Global Economy. The problem is Google does things their way, after all they weigh 900 lbs! A typical scenario would be to get your new website up and running, collect some inbound links and then hope GoogleBot finds you in short order. Sometimes you are in the directory in 2 weeks and sometimes it is 6 months.... and you gotta hope you optimized everything correctly and picked the right keywords. It sure can get stressful!! Let me tell you about a little workaround.

There is another player out there called Inktomi. They have been around for awhile and were just recently acquired by Yahoo. I bet they become more important in the months to come. Right now, Inktomi provides search results to MSN and HotBot. they have a little paid inclusion deal that is a perfect setup for SEO's. For $39 annually, you can get one URL included in their database and their robot will crawl your site every 48-72 hours. See where I am going with this? For all practical purposes, Inktomi indexes your site just about the same as Google. Close but not exactly the same. Close enough that if you can get a decent listing in Inktomi, the same should be true for Google.

So while I am waiting for old GoogleBot to come visiting 724 Leads, I am tweaking and refining and adjusting the 724 Home Page on Inktomi."

So you can see the results in the table - as Google lists more and more of the 7/24 pages, the results are favorable on the FIRST index. I don't have to wait and see how Google is going to treat the pages and then adjust

The second part of today's Search Engine Optimization BLOG entry concerns relevant search engine results and the best way to really target specific keyword phrases. I identified several different areas I wanted to target when I first started construction of 7/24 Leads, Basic Sales Lead generation breaks down into several industries. Insurance, mortgage, real estate lead generation and even mlm lead generation were my specific targets. My method of targeting these highly competitive areas was to make a separate page for each industry and then really target specific keyword phrases. The second part of the Google Search Engine results table above shows the results from http://www.724leads.com/real-estate-lead-generation.htm . As expected, this page targets real estate lead generation. These are highly competitive terms as evidenced by the results returned in Google:

#1 Real estate lead generation 497,000 results pages

#3 Real estate lead 2,350,000 results pages

#4 Real estate sales lead generation 223,000 results pages

You can see the advantages of specifically targeting relevant keyword phrases. An even better example can be seen by clicking the thumbnails below:

These are MSN Search engine results that actually show the week by week climb for some specific terms. It is interesting to see that the term "real estate lead generation" was showing in the 117th spot when just the index page for 7/24 leads was included in the serps. One MSN indexed http://www.724leads.com/real-estate-lead-generation.htm, I climbed 116 places to the number #1 position. What better illustration could there possibly be? If you want the specific details on exactly how I did the search engine optimization on these pages, Check out my Sales Leads For Pennies e-book. If you want to see the complete MSN Search results for all of my terms, it is here.

Click the link above toget usable hyperlinks

Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility

2003-09-01T23:04:00.001-05:00

Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility

From our resource library, A comprehensive list of website do's and don'ts:
"
Don't build a "canned" website. Don't be tempted by those offers from a hosting company or other source to build a website in a few minutes. These "canned" websites allow little flexibility and most only allow you to enter text into a field. Likewise, don't be tempted to use the templates included with Microsoft FrontPage. Either one of these websites will adversely impact your credibility. They look like just what they are -- a minimal effort! Would you send a flyer out to a business prospect written in crayon by a six year old? Why build a website that is the equivalent of a crayon flyer? A tacky website will lose you prospects!
Don't have a one page website that looks like a flyer. You have seen those type pages with flashing banners, scrolling marquees, mission statements, flashy resumes, animated "click here" buttons and repeated exclamation points. What better way to tell the prospect you are offering nothing but hype?�Your opportunity to make a great first impression is limitless on the internet, why destroy that opportunity with one tacky page? Is this the image you really want to project?"
Read the entire article Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility, Click the link above

Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility

2003-09-01T23:04:00.000-05:00

Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility

From our resource library, A comprehensive list of website do's and don'ts:
"
Don't build a "canned" website. Don't be tempted by those offers from a hosting company or other source to build a website in a few minutes. These "canned" websites allow little flexibility and most only allow you to enter text into a field. Likewise, don't be tempted to use the templates included with Microsoft FrontPage. Either one of these websites will adversely impact your credibility. They look like just what they are -- a minimal effort! Would you send a flyer out to a business prospect written in crayon by a six year old? Why build a website that is the equivalent of a crayon flyer? A tacky website will lose you prospects!
Don't have a one page website that looks like a flyer. You have seen those type pages with flashing banners, scrolling marquees, mission statements, flashy resumes, animated "click here" buttons and repeated exclamation points. What better way to tell the prospect you are offering nothing but hype? Your opportunity to make a great first impression is limitless on the internet, why destroy that opportunity with one tacky page? Is this the image you really want to project?"
Read the entire article Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility, Click the link above

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-27T22:34:00.000-05:00

Website Design Enhances Search Engine Results |7/24 Leads |

How many websites have you been on lately that just piled one hyped up statement on top pf the previous one? I get sick to death of those visits which just completely waste my time! I will guarantee you this visit is not a waste of time because I will show you the results my customers are attaining.

On August 4, 2003, I completed consulting work on a real estate lead generation website which had been started only seven days earlier called Doe Run Properties located in Paris, TX. It was a fairly simple site of only 5 pages. The Doe Run Owners had purchased my Sales Leads For Pennies e-book and had requested a minimal amount of additional help. They chose to target the real estate keyword phrases "north texas property" and "paris texas property". You folks in the real estate business will appreciate how tough the competition is on those two keyword phrases. The two thumbnails below show a Number One and Number Five listing for our Top Two Keyword Phrases on Google as of August 25, 2003. "Paris texas property" is number one out of 271,000 results and "north texas property" is number 5 out of 1,390,000 results. 3 weeks and they have 2 Top Listings and all five pages are indexed! Click the link above to read the whole story.

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-21T21:36:00.000-05:00

Inktomi/MSN Search Engine Results Manipulation - The Whole Truth

MSN Search Engine Manipulation - The Whole Truth

All the search engine experts are speculating about how the major search engines are going to align. Yahoo bought this second tier engine and Google is doing this and that and Microsoft doesn't have its' own search engine to display results from, So where will it all end? One thing is for certain, for the Inktomi/MSN/Hotbot results to be viable and relevant, they are going to have to change their algorithms so their search engine results are not so easily manipulated. I told you in my last entry that I had left the term "'sales lead generation" out on purpose to show how easily the results could be changed. Here are the latest results. Check the actual Search Engine Commando Results Here. If you want to try Search Engine Command FREE, this is the Link.

sales lead generation 36 Up 35 Positions
mortgage lead Not in top 30 No Change
insurance sales lead 3 No Change
health insurance sales lead 1 Up 1
life insurance sales lead 2 Up 4 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead 18 Up 3 Positions
life insurance lead 20 No Change
mortgage insurance lead 21 No Change

I am going to tweak it some more just to see what will happen.

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-16T19:57:00.000-05:00

Manipulating Inktomi/Hotbot/MSN

08/16/03

How easy is it to manipulate MSN/Inktomi/Hotbot??

I added 3 words back into my title and you can see the results:

sales lead generation 71 Down 23 Positions
mortgage lead Not in top 30 No Change
insurance sales lead 3 No Change
health insurance sales lead 1 Up 1
life insurance sales lead 2 Up 4 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead 21 Up 42 Positions
life insurance lead 20 Up 31 Positions
mortgage insurance lead 21 Up 6

The MSN/Inktomi/Hotbot listings are driven by the META tags as this illustrates. Adding health, life and mortgage BACK to the Title tag resulted in these huge SERP gains. It really is simple and I explain it in even more detail in my e-book Sales Leads for Pennies. Notice the big drop in the 'sales lead generation' search term? I purposely left it out of the Title tag to see what would happen. It is prominently listed in both the keyword and description listing. For the next index, I have added it back into the title to see what will happen to the results. Manipulating the Inktomi Search Engine Results this easily is actually a bad thing. People have taken advantage of the algorithm because it is so easy to figure out and manipulate to their advantage. The result? Databases filled with spam and useless search engine results. This is THE reason Google is the most popular search engine. It is much harder to manipulate results.

Google results are based on keywords in the title, headings, page body, Alt Image tags and link popularity. It takes work to get a decent listing in Google. You have to work to select the correct keyword phrases. You have to work to generate good ad copy and you always have to remember that with Google - Content is King!

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-12T22:27:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

Time to Make Some Changes

The MSN SERP's have stabilized quite a bit and 7/24 leads has 20 pages listed in Google -- all of this progress in less than 40 days. I was analyzing my tracking information from HitsLink, I found a good portion of my visitors are not making it off my home page. I did some research and the re-wrote the entire page. It has been the subject of a lively discussion on the IHelpYou forums. I guess we will see what the effects of a re-write are in short order as MSN is due for a re-index this evening. I reduced the keyword density quite a bit to make the ad copy more user friendly so I am quite apprehensive about the results. We shall see.

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-09T17:50:00.000-05:00

BAD SEO is Thievery

I am afraid I got off on a bit of a rant. Taking advantage of naive web site owners is NOT an ethical way to make a living as far as I am concerned.

"If there is one thing I hate it is someone who gains through deceptive practices - in other words a liar or a thief!

One of the first challenges anyone faces when deciding to develop a web site is wading through all the BAD Search Engine Optimization advice to arrive at the truth. It is even worse when you pay good money for BAD advice -- and even worse yet when this BAD advice may get you banned from the search engines. I was checking through my Google listings today and ran across a web site that has such BAD advice, it just plain pissed me off. These folks are passing themselves off as search engine optimization experts and charging $1000 dollars per month and you have to sign up for a six month subscription!! ALL of their advice is BAD news -- so much so that refuting their claims one by one in this article will serve as a tremendous educational article. " Read my entire article at the link above

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-05T22:16:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |: "Google still King of the Hill"
The latest MSN update is in and the results are listed below. Once you figure out what Inktomi is looking for it is comparatively easy to manipulate the listings at will:

sales lead generation 25 Up 1 Position
mortgage lead Not in top 30 No Change
insurance sales lead 3 No Change
health insurance sales lead 1 No Change
life insurance sales lead 2 Up 3 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead 15 No Change
life insurance lead 17 Up 27 Positions
mortgage insurance lead 32 Up 2

Now for the real news... It looks like Google has done away entirely with the use of the META description tag......just like they did with the META keywords. I expected this to happen. When you can manipulate listings and results as easily as I have done with Inktomi by massaging the description and keyword fields, someone is going to take advantage of it and use it to spam the search engines. When that happens, the results pages are less meaningful and the relevance of the search engine decreases. Google did the right thing though I bet it upsets plenty of web site owners. What it boils down to with Google is CONTENT! If your pages have relevant content and if you have some great backward links, you will get a decent ranking on Google. Pretty simple concept isn't it? And of course, that is what keeps users coming back to Google! They can actually find what they are looking for."

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

2003-08-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

Expecting an MSN update on 8/2...check back for details tomorrow. There were a couple of great articles I read today regarding web design and search engine marketing. The first one deals with logo design and the rationale behind what makes a logo successful. It is a MUST read! A new window will open when you click here 8 Criteria for a Great Logo.

The second article discusses the importance of knowing your target audience. Written by a young web designer from Atlanta who has some great, fresh ideas; I know you will get some good info from it. It is in our Articles section HERE

Search Engine Optimization Roller Coaster

2003-07-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

To see this entire blog with clickable links, Click the link above.

7/30/03
The Search Engine Optimization Roller Coaster

You win some and lose some I guess. The results from the latest MSN Index are in. You can look at the complete results from Search Engine Commando by clicking HERE. You may find the complete results interesting and you also get to see what a real Search Engine Commando Report looks like. So here are the results from today's re-index:

sales lead generation 26 No Change
mortgage lead Not in top 30 No Change
insurance sales lead 3 No Change
health insurance sales lead 1 No Change
life insurance sales lead 5 Down 3 Positions

And the heavyweight key word phrases:

health insurance lead 15 No Change
life insurance lead 44 Down 21 Positions
mortgage insurance lead 34 Up 2

Several factors to consider with this latest re-index. One, in normal, every day life you should optimize for 2 keyword phrases per page to get the maximum impact. To make a point, I am optimizing for at least 8 keyword phrases which is NOT recommended. The second thing is Inktomi still weights the META tags heavily in a rather outdated fashion. I had my META Keywords listed in this fashion: "life insurance sales lead, health insurance sales lead, sales lead generation" etc right on through the list. My concern was the repetition of certain words (sales lead) in the META Keywords. I do think GOOGLE would consider this as borderline spam. With this update, I changed the META keywords in this fashion "health insurance sales lead, life, generation" etc and made sure I repeated each individual key word only once. I am not pleased with the results and I am going to change the META Keywords back to the complete phrases and see what the impact is.

One last observation and I will close my search engine optimization blog for the evening. I just have one page indexed in Google so far. In MSN, I have a total of 11 Top 10 keyword phrase listings. Even so, Google is producing almost eqaul traffic to MSN. As soon as Google updates and indexes more of my pages, It will easily surpass MSN. Google is where you have to have the good listings to be successful. They are driving a huge percentage of ALL search engine traffic!

A Little Free Promotion; Viral Marketing is Dead?

2003-07-27T20:04:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

The ENTIRE entry and and links. Just click th elink above.

have been doing some research on blogs, RSS Syndication and XML Feeds. It is being hailed as the next generation of world wide news delivery and while I am always just a bit skeptical of the "next biggest thing" , the ease of implementation of this powerful tool and the growing acceptance makes me think it may actually be a huge factor in just a very short time.

Even the more traditional avenue of Press Releases has now been ported over to the Internet. I have been using a free Press Release Service for sometime now with decent results. PRWeb stays in business by donations and I have donated $10 per release to them in the past. If you donate you get access to how many times the release has been viewed, how many times it has been picked up by the news feed, how may times it was printed and how many times it was forwarded to someone else. The ability of PRWeb to feed your Press Release to the wire services is fairly new and I am glad they are staying up with the newest technology.

Here are some figures from past press releases. I released one in December and to date, it has been viewed 3550 times and been picked up on 106 news feeds. The Release I did this past Friday is doing quite a bit better. In 72 hours it has been viewed 950 times and been picked up by 70 news feeds ---all for $10. My web logs indicate several visitors to 7/24 Leads from this latest Release. Another advantage is these Press Releases are indexed by Google in about 7 days time which is an added plus with a new website like this one.

Do you know what viral marketing is?

You might want to read this article if you don't, Viral Marketing Article.

"Viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

Gives away products or services
Provides for effortless transfer to others
Scales easily from small to very large
Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Utilizes existing communication networks
Takes advantage of others' resources"
Viral marketing is attractive because you plant the seed and then it propagates using someone else's resources. I am not talking about a computer vir*s! Viral marketing is when you come up with such a neat idea that when people see it, they feel compelled to send it to their friends, and their friends send it to their friends and so on and so on. So think about this, you have the same internet access as IBM or General Motors and success in Viral Marketing depends solely on a great idea or concept. It seems to me a combination of RSS Syndicated Feeds, a blog and press releases would add powerful tools to a viral marketing campaign

It's a Seabiscuit Kind of Day

2003-07-26T14:31:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Blog |7/24 Leads |

I have been watching the trailers for Seabiscuit and it looks like it has all the ingredients that American movie goers love. Seabiscuit is a Classic Cinderella Story -- a tale of people and horses who were underdogs and had no business enjoying any success at all. The reason I put this in here? It parallels what I am trying to do here. Self-Educated, miniscule budget, totally presumptuous in even THINKING I can drive a website to the top of the Search Engines? Yep, That about sums it up. And it is not like I am trying to hide anything. Here it is on the internet for all to see! Click the link above to check out the whole deal.

Texas Gunslinger VS Corporate Goliaths

2003-07-25T00:47:00.000-05:00

Texas Gunslinger

Excerpt from my Latest Press Release. You can read the entire article at the link above.

“How do you pit one tiny web site against Corporate Giants with 50 or more web sites??” Small Town Texas Entrepreneur squares off mano a mano with the Corporate Big Boys. Using Ethical Search Engine Optimization and Common Sense will win the day for the little guy.

All the late nights surfing the Internet and reading hundreds of forum messages must have paid off. Jones now has 3 different web sites which generate a bounty of leads for him every week. Turning the Dell laptop toward me, he shows me multiple Google search results where his listings are interspersed with those from the MOST recognizable names in the U.S. Insurance Industry. “Don’t use real names of companies in your article” he warns me. “I am not about gaining anything at someone else’s expense and publishing those company names serves no purpose in this article.”