The Rank Magic Blog

SEO Introduction From Forbes

September 26, 2007 ::: "You, a peddler of fine-quality dictionaries, have just launched a Web site for your business. Most people can't spell worth a lick, so you are very excited about the possibilities.

Excited, that is, until you type the word "dictionary" into Google and it returns 318 million dictionary-related Web sites – meaning that yours is at the bottom of a very, very big pile.

The answer to this problem is something called search-engine optimization, or SEO, which is geek-speak for the methods used to improve a Web page's rank in search results, and in turn, the number and quality of visitors that go to a site."

 

So begins a pretty good basic introduction to search engine optimization on the Forbes Magazine website, entitled "Marching Up The Search Stack". Read the full article here.

Aggressive Link Building: Beware

September 20, 2007 ::: Google says, "Don't buy links to increase link popularity." Many web site owners say they have little choice because no one will link to them otherwise. Most mainstream SEO companies, including Rank Magic, agree that aggressive linkers don’t deserve emulation. There is no question the search engines’ combat against aggressive linkers has gotten more aggressive.

 

In fact, Sage Lewis writes "It shook me a bit when I realized how easy it is for a search engine such as Google to detect sites using paid links or boilerplate linking tactics." He goes on to develop a thought experiment on how he would approach the issue if he were Google in a thought-provoking article at Search Engine Watch.

Fix Those Slow Web Pages

September 17, 2007 ::: Back when most of us used slow phone modems to surf the web, the speed with which a page loaded was very important. Now that so many people have broadband, is it still important? You bet it is!

 

In an article called Surfers, Crawlers Find Bloated Pages Hard to Digest, Eric Enge discusses page bloat. How fast a page loads still clinches whether a visitor stays or clicks away. Can page bloat also deter search engine crawlers and raise ranking issues? The answer seems to be yes!

 

In a related article, Aaron Shear explains that concerns about page load times are not a thing of the past. Optimizing your site and addressing site speed can make a big difference in your search rankings.

Be Alert for Domain Scams

September 12, 2007 ::: Two of our clients have come to us within the past few days to ask about bills they got in the mail that looked like invoices for domain name registration renewals. They came from Domain Listing Service, and close inspection shows they are for "Annual Website Search Engine Listing" at a cost of $75.

 

If you get one of these, don't pay it!

 

They promise quarterly submissions to 25 major search engines ... which won't help your rankings in the least. But if any of our clients want that done, Rank Magic will do it for free. (Partly because that's all it's worth to you.)

 

The next questionable approach is a fax that looks very legalese and quotes an extensive excerpt from the United States Legal Code, Title 15. The scary headline says FINAL NOTICE OF DOMAIN EXTENSION and the fax will show your domain name prominently, but with a different extension. I've received several, including one listing RANKMAGIC.US for instance.

 

What they're offering is to allow you to reserve another version of your domain to prevent some other company taking that domain and causing confusion among your customers. If you think that might be a problem, go ahead and register other domains -- with .net, .org, .us, .biz, .tv or whatever other top level domain extensions you want. Typical cost is $25/year apiece, but  if you call the toll free number on this fax, they'll try to sell it to you for a 10-year term or a 5-year term. If you ask for the 1-year rate, they quote $35.

 

I plan to toss all of these right into the circular file.

Usability and SEO. Which comes First?

September 11, 2007 ::: Eric Enge wrote recently on the Search Engine Watch web site about the strong relationship between usability and SEO. He wrote, "First, you have to start with the knowledge that the business of the search engines is enhanced by having the most relevant results in their index (the ones that do in fact answer the user's question quickly), and this means that usability matters to them. Therefore it is in their strategic interest to develop an understanding of a site's usability." Of course, it's clear that if the search engines have an "understanding" of a web site's usability, that will be factored into their ranking algorithm.

 

The bottom line: usability comes first. SEO comes second. At Rank Magic, our advice to clients is to NEVER let SEO considerations compromise the usability of your web site or the effective marketing message it conveys. Even if you achieve wonderful search engine rankings, if you've hurt the usability of your web site, you're conversion rate will drop as your web site turns visitors off and they go elsewhere.

10 Truths About Obtaining Better Google Rankings

September 6, 2007 ::: Kevin Gallagher is the managing director of Umbrella a custom website design company in the Scottish Borders. He's written a good article for Site Pro News on ten "truths" you should know about getting better rankings in Google (and the other search engines as well, for that matter).

 

Here are the topics of the ten truths. Read the full article for the details.

 

Are You Running Vulnerable Software?

September 3, 2007 ::: Subscribers to the Windows Secrets Newsletter were asked to scan their computers using the Software Inspector, a service of Secunia.com. The scan reveals versions of Windows and builds of applications that have security flaws for which a vendor patch is available.

 

This resulted in a list of applications are the most likely to be installed but unpatched on users' PCs. In the following list, number 1 represents the unpatched application that was found on the greatest number of readers' machines, with higher numbers representing fewer machines:

 

1. Adobe Flash Player 9.x 2. Sun Java JRE 1.6.x/6.x 3. Macromedia Flash Player 6.x 4. Macromedia Flash Player 8.x 5. Macromedia Flash Player 7.x 6. Apple QuickTime 7.x 7. Macromedia Flash Player 5.x 8. Mozilla Firefox 2.0.x 9. Macromedia Flash Player 4.x 10. Adobe Reader 7.x

What's in YOUR computer?

All of these applications are media players, browser plug-ins that play media files, or a browser itself (i.e., Firefox). All of these programs can be attacked across the Internet — for example, if you play an infected Flash video you find on a Web site or that you received via e-mail. Consequently, using an older version of these program poses a real security risk. Run the Software Inspector and clean up whatever it warns you about.