OK… this isn’t exactly an SEO post, but it sure is a rant! Why are there so many crappy, unresponsive domain name seller companies out there? My latest irritant comes from DomainsNext.com … yet again!. They have been a pain in my butt in the past, but this one really bugs me. I bought a domain name from them, I have the receipt and my account shows that I purchased it. Yet, it does not appear in my list of domains and I can’t manage it (eg. for DNS purposes). Now here’s my rant… despite phone calls (which only ever gets me a voice mail) and emails (which have yet to be replied to after WEEKS of waiting, I still can’t manage that domain name!

I think I’ll switch all my domains to a new vendor… and keep my fingers crossed that they will understand the meaning of “customer service”!

Google is indexing real time posts.

This means that the old adage “What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook” no longer holds the same weight.

If you are applying for a job remember to take those pictures of you smoking doobies while getting a lap dance from strippers dressed as nuns off your wall. If you are looking to protect your privacy then go into your privacy settings and set your profile to private. Feel a bit safer now? Good. As long as you trust your friends you can run for office. I promise not to make any jokes about John Edwards. Ok. Moving on.

If you want to go use your Facebook for SEO purposes go to the Public Search Listing option and click : Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing (see preview). Also make sure your profile is set so that everyone can see it.

Keep in mind that there is more than one way to get SEO milk from Facebook’s delicious udders. There is the obvious method, which is appealing to the Mother of all Search Engines our God Google but there is also an internal search engine within Facebook that has its own ranking SERPs and can be used to your advantage. By increasing your Facebook visibility you increase your chances of appealing to a market of over 250 million users world-wide. Half of their users check their Facebook accounts at least once a day. Each month they share 1 billion photographs and over ten million videos. There are 45 million active user groups. Up until recently it has been the Great Wall of China of SEO, keeping a whole world inside its borders inaccessible from Google’s prying eyes.

It seems very likely that the reason Google began categorizing social media posts in the first place is because of the very real threat that Facebook poses to their complete web dominance. Many websites have recently said that Facebook refers more traffic to their site than Google and since Google has had little access to Facebook’s content this makes them a real force to be reckoned with. Albeit at this point they lack the force to fight Darth Vader but let’s just say they have Luke warm chances of becoming the internet’s new Hope of defeating the evil Empire…

If you are interested in finding out a little something about Facebook’s algorithmic ranking structure go here. You can move up your search ranking in Facebook through wall posts, status updates, links and notes. Most importantly make sure that everyone can see your profile. The more often you contribute links and content the higher up you will be in Facebook’s internal search as a large amount of their physical search results depend on how much participation you’ve had over the last 30 days. Contribute content unrelated to your products on a regular basis to avoid being known as a Facebook spammer. The more content you share the better, the more friends and fans you get and the more people go to your website.

It’s still somewhat of a mystery what parts of Facebook Google actually has access to. There are a couple simple things you can do to maximize your chances of using your Facebook to increase your Google SERPS.

Turn your Facebook profile to public. Set up Facebook fan pages because these are automatically public and as such you can use them for link juice. Make sure that you have links pointing back to your website/blog. Include links in your Social Media websites that track back to your site. It’s common sense but it will work.

Remember that Facebook has become the most visited website in the world, even surpassing Google. SEO strategies of the future will have to take this into account. Or maybe they won’t. Things change quickly… Maybe the Empire will strike back and Facebook will itself become yesterday’s news… Until then may the SEO force be with you.

Google’s enormous influence on SEO often makes us ignore their competitors. For years Ask.com was the only search engine which ignored Google’s no follow rule regarding Twitters and as such was the only search engine which could find social media posts. Ignoring Ask.com meant ignoring the SEO potential of Twitter. Now Google is on the social media bandwagon and people who used ask.com have experience that their competition lacks.

Working in SEO means you have to take the extra steps that your competition might consider to be unnecessary. Considering millions of people search on Yahoo everyday it is not like you are ignoring a midget, you’re ignoring King Kong just because Godzilla could beat him in a fight. This doesn’t mean that King Kong can’t beat the crap out of Tokyo if you don’t pay him his due.

Despite what many of us are led to believe, Google is not a synonym for Internet. Yahoo remains the world’s most visited homepage and has over 60 million users of its messenger services. While it’s unlikely Yahoo is going to take back the web from Google, it is also wrong to ignore their influence.

Setting up a Google Local account seems like an obvious step for a business looking to make its name known on the net. Yet people often ignore Yahoo Local. They know Google Local is very important in your organic ranking as Google tends to place Google Local listings at the top of the page during searches. Putting your business in both Yahoo Local and Google Local increases your chances of being in the top rankings of each search engine. The Internet is like high school, everyone likes the popular kids and being known by the cool kids gets you into the in crowd.

As Yahoo Local is a trusted website, linking your business to it increases the number of trusted websites that stand behind you. Since your Yahoo Local is already in Google ‘s index this will push you up in their ranking for the targeted terms as long as your website has at least a small reputation already with Google.

To get your business listed on Yahoo Local is extremely easy. Go to the Yahoo Local and click add a new business. Correctly fill in all the information about your company and then click submit. Then all you have to do is wait on Yahoo for approval. To boost your websites credibility you need to seek out former clients to write positive reviews. The more positive reviews you have the better. Since Yahoo Local recommends businesses in their local searches it can really aid your company to come up in those best of listings. If you can get citations from major data providers this is also extremely useful in boosting your ranking.

If you work in SEO you are familiar with the jerks that have given you a bad name. Con-men with laptops have already given many of your clients SEO complexes that you now have to work through.

Companies that market online are going to be targets for these slimy sales men. For every real SEO webslinger you are likely to find a baker’s dozen selling snake oil, promising they can make the crippled walk and the blind see.

Unfortunately it is impossible to punch every single one of them in the face. This being so, my goal in this blog is to give a couple of hints as to how to tell the difference between a qualified technician and a quality conman.

One of the easiest indicators that someone selling SEO is in fact selling snake oil is how you get approached.

An SEO cold call is often a good indication that something’s up. Be more worried if they promise instant results. They might just tell you that they can get you a spot on Google’s first page right away. Often this means they set up a pay per click program. Pay Per Click is a sponsored listing. You get on the first page because you pay to be there. Once the money dries up your ranking disappears as well.

Also beware if your so-called SEO expert talks about a secret method that only they know and then refuse to divulge details. Guess what….people know how they get the caramel into Caramilk bars. In the world of the web there are no secrets, there are just people who do their research and keep up to date on the newest techniques. If they won’t tell you what they do, it probably isn’t worth hearing in the first place.

Another good indication that things are not on the up and up is when you are guaranteed results. The only way anyone can guarantee anything in this business is if they are investing in useless keywords or they are making promises they do not intend to keep.

Another easy way to find the slimy salesman is if they focus exclusively on your Google ranking. This is a tricky one because the actual SEO experts will also talk about rankings, because getting on that first page of results is in fact quite important, but how you get there influences how long you stay there.

Another good indication that you’re dealing with a grifter is if they sell themselves as practicing only offsite or onsite optimization. You need both. Period. If they approach you and tell you they can make you rich and only talk about content optimization, keyword research and visibility analysis, take a second look. You should be equally suspicious if they tell you that their process is entirely based on links. Once more, repeat after me…SEO involves both offsite and onsite optimization or it won’t provide long lasting results.

Ask to see early clients they have worked with. Ask how they are going to achieve these miracles. And if they promise too much, they are probably going to deliver little.

For all of you that wrote 140 character tweets believing that they would remain isolated in the twitter world of tweets, followers and followings, welcome to a changed world.

Since its inception Twitter, a seemingly ideal SEO tool, couldn’t be used for link juice on Google. Twitter added a nofollow attribute to links submitted by its users. This no follow attribute recommends to Google and several other search engines to disregard the link in its searches. Thus twitter couldn’t raise your ranking in Google’s SERP page. The only search engine which didn’t follow Google’s “nofollow” was Ask.com and they have significantly less traffic.

However things have changed.

Google has changed its indexing policy and is now looking to index in “real time”. This means that Google can now see social media posts such as Facebook status updates and yes even tweets. Which means that pretty soon when someone looks up your name they will be able to find out what you had for breakfast, whether or not you liked Avatar and what pisses off your significant other about the way you dress in the mornings. It also means that Twitter has become a much more effective tool for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO experts are particularly eager to discover how Google ranks these real time results. Real time results tend to be posted on the top half of the page, which means they are the first thing a searcher will see.

Simply put real time results are ranked according to the reputation of the sites that link to them.

However nothing in the world of Google is ever simple.

Some links have more value than others and this comes down to reputation. Google doesn’t only look at quantity of links or popularity of the Tweeter but rather the quality of the sites that link to them. In simple terms the more highly respected followers you have the better your ranking, the higher ranking the websites that link to your site, the more link juice you can squeeze.

Be careful though. Even if you have a lot of followers if your posts appear to be spam they will be blocked from Google’s index. Google has connected hashtags, related to trending topics on facebook, as being linked to spam tweets and consider these links to be “junk links.” The quality of your tweets is likely to be a major factor in how you end up ranking, as it will also determine your follower to followed ratio. We’ll talk more about ratio a little later on.

Now that we know a major way to lower yourself in the ranking system the question is how can you increase your chances? Google’s ranking system is incredibly complicated and there are literally hundreds of factors to be considered. As this is a new system here are a couple of suggestions on how to optimize your twitter account.

1)Relevance: Keywords are extremely important. Having your links connected to keywords will also increase your chances of rising in the real time ranks, as this is also how their regular index works.

2) Age: How long you have been tweeting aids in your reputation, so seasoned pros will likely outrank newbie prodigies. Think of building your Twitter account the same way you would build a brand name. The more recognizable the brand the more power you have.

3) Keeping Current: Inactive counts are less likely to be crawled regularly and as such will be lower in the rankings. Keep telling us what you are doing and we’ll keep coming back. Unless you’re boring… try not to be boring.

4)Ratios: Users following a lot more people than they have following them will obviously be ranked lower then tweeters whose followers outpace the quantity of people they are following. After all the number of people you are following says little about the content you offer. Users who use pyramid software tools to maximize their number of followers can be identified by the almost even ratio between following and followers. Google most likely won’t look too kindly on users trying to trick their ranking systems. It’s sort of on the same level as Mr Burns using all those dead pets to get himself elected as Mayor in the Simpsons. By which I mean…bad practice.

5) Unique Content: Provide something no one else does. Keep your links useful and people will keep coming back. No one wants to hear about what you had for breakfast unless you provide links to the best recipes for breakfast sausages. Use those 140 characters to reach out to the masses. Weirdly enough they are making TV shows based on Twitter accounts. I guess they ran out of video games.

While there are a lot of factors to consider in optimizing your Twitter account, there is no doubt that the SEO world will be changed by Google’s decision to index our social media posts.

One of the problems with SEO is that few people really understand it, and some may even not appreciate its value. When dealing with complicated projects with sensitive budgets and many hands in the pie, getting everyone on board with the project may be… uh… “challenging”…

The problem with convincing clients and management to use SEO is twofold. First of all you have to convince them that SEO actually works. They have the right to be skeptical when so many people have used complicated SEO jargon to sell their services without providing the results clients expect. Once you convince them that SEO can work, you have to convince them that you are the person who can make it work for them.

How do you do it?

To put it simply do the opposite of the jargon talkers who have burned your clients in the past. Avoid the clever buzzwords and explain briefly why your process works and then show that it works. Instead of talking the talk, make your numbers speak for themselves.

To do this you have to be clear:

Explain what SEO is, because a surprising number of people are unaware

Explain what specific services you can offer

Show them the increase in website traffic and conversions and Google ranking to show how your work has benefited others and then be specific about how it can be benefit them. Once they see how their crawlability can go up with specialized links, controlled relevant content, they will see how SEO can serve as the foundation of their successful online business.

The first part is easy. Everyone uses search engines to surf the net. If you can’t find a website when you search on Google, there isn’t much point to having the website at all. By explaining how SEO increases your search engine ranking, you can easily explain how that can change the utility of a website.

Marketing changes dependant on the medium you use. After all you wouldn’t put a colorful illustration in a book for the blind. In the same sense a gigantic billboard would be useless if it was placed in a location where it was obscured by high rise buildings and impossible to see. SEO is like that, only instead of being obscured by features of the landscape, your client’s website can be hidden by ignorance of how the online landscape works. There is a great pile of information on search engines. The question is how can you make your website stick out of the pile? The most important part of any message is that people read it and SEO is the process of securing the proper location for your customers to see your products.

Now explain what makes your company different. Don’t give away your secrets, but let your clients know what you can do for them, and be specific. This same principle applies to dealing with management and the members of your team. Show Google analytics of websites you have worked with, tracking their site views and online sales. Once your team realizes how valuable SEO can be, they can make it an intrinsic part of their own process.

Because in this day and age, SEO shouldn’t be something you add on, it’s a requirement. Buzzwords are the stock and trade of charlatans, a successful SEO business offers results, not catchphrases.

Make your numbers speak for you and clients and management will have to listen.

A lot of SEO companies will tell you how they can put your business on the map. Please excuse the following bad pun but this blog will tell you how to literally put your business on Google Local and thus make your business appear on a map when people search for you. Hmmmmm….that wasn’t very funny but neither is missing out on the easy exposure Google Local offers customers.

So take a couple minutes, follow these instructions and excuse my tendency towards bad puns. I promise it will be a relatively painless process and will make it easier for customers to find your business online and is one of the easiest ways of using Search Engine Optimization to your advantage.

To get started go to Google Maps, sign into your Google account and go to where it says Put Your Business On Google Maps and click on it. You’ll be directed to a page called Local Business Center. Click the icon that says Add New Business.

Now it’s that fun time where you have to fill in the required fields. As you type in your address you’ll get a little preview of how your listing will appear on Google. Don’t get too excited, keep filling in the required fields!

Once you have completed this, click next to continue. If some kindly person has already put your business online, claim your business and make sure that the kindly person who first put your business on Google got their facts right. If your business isn’t on the web click add listing.

Now you can provide additional details like your opening hours, photos of your beautifully furnished business, important details like whether you accept cash or credit cards, menus to whet the appetite, links to customer reviews. Once more I have to stress that the more you can tell your customers about your business the more highly ranked your listing will be and the more likely that your advertising will earn you conversions. Click submit to go to the next step.

As I said in an earlier blog Google is kind enough to ask make you verify your information, to make sure that the errantly helpful or harmful huxsters are unable to dupe your potential customers with faulty facts. If you have your business phone on hand you can choose phone verification and get your information verified in minutes. Otherwise chose postcard verification and the pin will be sent to your business’s mailing address. Once your information is verified you will show up in Google Map searches and some Google searches.

Come back to your local business center whenever your information changes and keep up to date. There isn’t much point a listing that has the wrong address or phone number. You can see how many people visit your listings, make coupons to entice customers into the store and it will only take you a couple of minutes of filling in and then verifying your information.

Now your business is on the map. How frequently people see it on the map entirely depends on how up to date and in-depth you make your listing.

If effective SEO is a concern of yours (and it should be!) there are many things to avoid when building a website, many of which will have a very serious impact on whether someone can ever find your site using a search engine. Some of these are simple fixes, and some not so simple.

Boy… where do I start! There are so many… hmmmm… Here goes, and be advised that these are not in definitive order.

1. Not having sufficient on page content. This is amazingly common. The causes could be a variety of things. Pages built in Flash, text buried in graphics or design that doesn’t allow for the use of many words. But, the effect is the same. Google needs to find the words on the page in order to assign relevance to your website when compiling the search results. While lack of content can potentially be offset through other means, for the most part, you have to show Google and your customers what you are all about. And that means words.

2. Not developing a website with SEO in mind. Jeez, I wish I had a buck for every website owner that came to me for SEO services for their brand new, swanky website after it had already been built with a host of problems. Potential problems are many and varied, from having insufficient text (as in the above), excessive and clunky coding which hampers indexing, excessive java script, or poorly designed pages with high bounce rates, etc. I even saw a site once that was built in such a way that you couldn’t implement H Tags! The truth is, many programmers/developers just don’t know the requirements of the search engines.

3. Inappropriate use of keywords. Keyword selection is really where you separate the wheat from the chaff. It is crucial more now than ever before that you select the keywords that accurately describe you and have the potential to lead to a high conversion rate. Essentially this is because of two overall factors: 1. the SEO landscape is starting to get pretty crowded out there. Unless you have a super powerful website, it is very difficult to compete for a wide range of keywords. You are better off focusing your energy on those that will give you the best shot at highly targeted traffic. 2. Google is now looking at how effective your site is at retaining search traffic. If you start attracting unfocused visitors who immediately bounce away, Google will start to drop you down the SERPs. Google likes happy searchers…

4. Not devoting enough (or any) attention to linking. As has been the case for a long time now, Google looks at how interconnected you are with a community of similar websites. It uses this to guage how “legitimate” and valuable your site is… figuring that if many similar websites are linking with you, you must be good. Though this has been the case for a long time, it is shocking how many websites devote little attention to this. And, given Google’s recent changes, this is even more important than ever.

5. Lastly, only doing part of the job. Google looks at a huge array of factors when positioning a website in its SERPs. Optimization means looking at as many of these factors as possible, and making the changes required. I’ve seen countless “SEOed” sites that only went part of the way. Good content, but no links… good Page Titles, but no supporting content… matching Titles and content, but crappy keyword selection… and the list goes on. These days, if you only do half a job you may as well kiss your investment goodbye.

So… like I said, these SEO mistakes aren’t in any particular order, but addressing them is crucial to success. Oh yeah… and one more thing: do yourself a favour and consult an expert

So, last week I was approached by a prospect (now new client) that had been working with another SEO company to improve their website’s rankings. The strategy they were employing was to purchase multiple keyword loaded domain names and deploy them as landing pages in the hopes of attracting traffic to those pages based on the keywords contained in the URLs. Thus far, the client has never seen any benefit from this whatsoever.

Now… this was a strategy employed some years ago with fairly high success (at least in terms of attracting eyeballs). However, as I explained to my new client, this strategy is very, very old school. Here’s why…

Begin first of all by thinking about what Google is trying to accomplish through its search rankings. The answer is simple: it wants to provide the best, most satisfying results to the searcher so that the searcher will continue to use Google as their search engine of choice, thereby ensuring its continued dominance of the Internet. Obvious…

Now, ask yourself how Google makes the determination of what searchers are going to like in terms of search results. The answer to this should also be somewhat obvious: really good websites! So, when Google is looking at and figuring out where to rank websites it is essentially analyzing them on the basis of usefulness to the searcher based on the keyword(s) they just searched for.

So, what do you think makes a website valuable to you? Well, obviously a site that reflects the keywords you just searched for in terms of the words on the page, the topic the content is about. But, beyond that, what else? How about videos also tagged with those keywords. Or a blog also full of that sort of content. What about podcasts? Or if it’s a retail site, a well designed and secure shopping cart system, with a secure payment system. What about good, simple navigation? And fast loading pages.

Getting the idea? Right. Google is becoming very sophisticated in its ability to analyze websites. And it is using these sophisticated algorithms to not just look at the text on a page, but also how valuable the site is to a user based on a wide variety of criteria. So, with this in mind, why does anyone think that Google would place high value on a single landing page that’s keyword loaded simply to try to attract search engines? Is there any value there? I think we all know the answer to that.

So… want to be in Google’s good books? Think like Google and start making great websites that people will love.

So… here we are in the depths of winter… New Year’s Weekend, the only thoughts of warmth and sunshine are associated with a beach down south. Who’s thinking of summer? Well, if you have a tourism based business in Canada, apart from skiing, that is ;-)… you’d best be thinking of this year’s upcoming tourism season now.

Websites are the best way for tourism vendors to reach their potential customers, whether they come from within your region or the other side of the world. (These days, this isn’t even a matter of serious debate.) To reach them effectively, you need to search optimize your website. And if you’ve already done so… to re-optimize it. Or at least, have it reviewed. Maybe the competition is catching you? Or maybe you’ve slipped down the SERPs because of changes to the way Google ranks websites?

The reasons for getting to it immediately are simple. First of all, the process can take some time to be completely effective. You should allow for at least 2-3 weeks, assuming everyone has their ducks in a row. And then, once the work is completed and uploaded to the site, you have to allow time for re-indexing of new content and other changes and, especially, time to index and recognize new inbound links. General indexing can occur in as little as a couple of weeks, though it almost always takes longer. Let’s say you’re lucky and the site is completely re-indexed within a month. And most of your new links get indexed within 2 months. Getting the idea? If you were to start today, you may get everything ship-shape by March… and that’s may…

Typically, February is when many people begin to make plans for the summer holidays. Figure out where to go, book cottages, etc. So, if you hope to take maximum advantage of the Internet as a tool to help your tourism business do not procrastinate! SEO is not a quick fix. It takes time to do right, and even more time to have the desired effect.