The Rank Magic Blog
 July
25, 2007 ::: Site Pro News has a nice article about Google Analytics.
If you're unhappy with the site log analysis reporting offered by your web host
– or if they don't offer any at all – then you should
consider Google Analytics. It's free, but you do need to insert some code into
all of your web pages for it to work. It's worth the effort.
4 Reasons to Use Google Analytics
1. The Map Overlay
Essentially, this feature brings up a map of the world, highlighting the
countries your visitors come from. Clicking on a country produces a close-up
view, along with a geographical breakdown according to the region and/or city
from which visitors accessed the site. This tool is particularly helpful if your
site focuses on a specific region.
2. The Site Overlay
This allows you to navigate your site and see exactly how visitors travel
through it.
3. Goals and Funnels
This allows you to set up specific goals for your site, like tracking a visitor
to the "Thank you for your inquiry" page. It also lets you set up specific
monetary values for each goal, and track your site's financial performance and
profitability.
4. Graphical Representations
You can choose among views on many of its reports, allowing you to work with the
view you're most comfortable with. Some of us prefer line graphs, some pie
charts, and others tables. You can set it up to work they way you think.
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Much more in the Site Pro News article.
 Click
Fraud Debate Heats Up
July 23, 2007 ::: A
recent
report by Click Forensics alleges that incidents of click fraud have spiked
to 15.8 percent across the internet. Subsequently,
a story in Infoworld says both ad networks and advertisers may be guilty of
a lack of transparency and questionable math.
According to Click Forensics, click fraud within all PPC networks, including
Google and Yahoo, jumped from 21.9 percent in 1Q 2007 to 25.6 percent in the 2Q
this year.
The Click Forensics study accused Yahoo of doing little to combat click fraud,
but Yahoo disputes that, calling their vigilance against click fraud a "top
priority".
Three Kinds of Content for Your Site
July 23, 2007 ::: Devin Hansen, owner of
SEO Copywriters,
a web-content development company based in Illinois, has written
an article for Site Pro News in which he claims that there are three
kinds of content for your web site, and that there are pros and cons to each of
them. He defines them as
- Fluff -- Written cheaply by non-native-speaking writers, and
used to fill up a web site with inexpensive content.
- Leased - Articles that are well-researched and written, but
sold to numerous web sites.
- Custom - Well-researched, authoritative content that is
tailored specifically to meet the needs of you and your business.
In his article, he describes the pros and cons of each, but it seems pretty
clear to me that the first two choices should be non-starters.
 July 16, 2007 ::: In her newsletter High
Rankings Advisor, Jill Whalen reported on the recent
SEMNE meeting. (SEMNE is
the Search Engine Marketing Organization for New England.) She wrote "At
SEMNE, "we
were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the
beans about how to get your site into Google."
 One quote jumped out at me, considering a couple of recent clients we've taken
on that fell into this trap. She wrote: "Dan mentioned that Google still isn't
doing a great job of indexing content that is contained within Flash and/or
AJAX. He said that you should definitely limit your use of these technologies
for content that you want indexed."
There's much more contained in
Jill's article. It's worth checking out.
 July 11, 2007 ::: A common complaint is that
after trying a specific link building process, the website went from result 300
in Google's results to page two or three of the search results. Then a month
later, the website dropped to around 100 in the search results as the link page
slipped into Google's Supplemental results. These people often conclude that the
link building process used was not effective.
In Site Pro News, Bill Platt explains why this sometimes happens. Bill
also points out that the three top search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN,
calculate link popularity as part of their ranking algorithms. But he explains
that your website will never gain link popularity if you don't take actions to
increase the number of inbound links. And without link popularity, you can't
hope to rise in the search rankings.
This is a good article with lots of solid information.
Could Microsoft Knock Off Yahoo To Become Google’s Biggest Competitor?
 July 3, 2007 ::: According to the latest
search market share figures released by Compete, the MSN/Live search engine
increased its market share by 67% from May to June 2007, putting Microsoft’s
share of search at 13.2% behind Yahoo at 19.6% and Google on 62.7%. Over the
year, Microsoft’s search traffic is up 47%.
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July
2007
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