A Seo Services Providing Company

Yahoo! Sponsors SEO Seminars

2007-02-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! Search Marketing Canada, is scheduled to sponsor SEO seminars, hosted by The Search Engine Academy Toronto and Montreal SEO Workshops, taking place in February and March, 2007.

Search Engine Academy Workshops are Certified Search Engine Optimization Training Courses, where you work hands-on with expert instructors, while you acquire genuine SEO knowledge. The 2, 3 and 5-Day Workshops are designed specifically for a) people with little or no previous experience in SEO and b) for current SEOs with experience but little or no formal training. Unlike at seminars where you sit and listen passively, at our workshops, students work in real time on actual websites. Students experience a combination of training mixed with live demonstrations and individual, and group, projects to build their search engine marketing skills with maximum information retention in the minimum amount of time. Everything is included in the Toronto Workshop so there is nothing extra to buy. Tuition includes 5-Days of hands-on instruction plus 3 months of membership to resources after class, plus the 6 Month Mentoring program.

Greg Mate, President of Search Engine Academy Montreal remarked, "At a launch party last week Yahoo ! Search Marketing Canada announced that they were sponsoring two SEO 101 Seminars for their major clients. We are obviously thrilled with the opportunity to work with Yahoo ! Canada and we look forward to providing their clients with search engine marketing guidance designed to grow their businesses."

The first two 3-hour seminars - a morning and afternoon session - held in Toronto on February 20th 2007, was quickly booked to capacity. The seminars focused on Why Canadian Business Need to Include Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Marketing or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) in the Marketing Mix, and some Basic SEO Tips.

Mr. Mate continued, "The timing is right, our next Certified Toronto (hands-on) SEO Workshops run from March 26-30, 2007 (2-Day Basic Essentials SEO Course Mar 26-27, 3-Day Advanced SEO Mastery Training Mar 28-30, and 5-Day Intensive SEO Workshop Mar 26-30) and in Montreal (also in English) from June 18-22, 2007.''

Barry Byers, President of Search Engine Academy Toronto and Greg Mate, President of Search Engine Academy Montreal, have been Professional Search Engine Optimizers and Internet Marketers for several years, and have assisted numerous businesses in gaining top Search Engine rankings and increased focused traffic in both Canada and the United States. Together they have designed and programmed effective websites as well as consulted on SEO and marketing on existing sites. Now you too can benefit from their years of hands on search engine marketing by attending their live Search Engine Optimization / Search Engine Marketing workshop training courses.

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! seeks to provide online products and services essential to users' lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

To learn more about the event Agenda, please visit: www.searchengineacademy.ca/workshop_agenda.htm

For more info on Yahoo ! Search Marketing Platform, please visit: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/.

A Quick Outline of Search Engine Optimisation

2007-01-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

A number of factors need to be considered when optimising a web site for the organic results of the search engines. The cumulative effect of optimising all parts of a website is greater than the sum of its parts optimised individually.

A number of factors need to be considered when optimising a web site for the organic results of the search engines. The cumulative effect of optimising all parts of a website is greater than the sum of its parts optimised individually.

Each factor overlaps with, or is related to, at least one other, and for maximum results the big picture needs to be captured by a search engine optimisation strategy.

This article outlines the elements an effective SEO strategy should cover.

Content
Body content should be relevant and not copied from anywhere else. The density of keywords and phrases should be approximately 5%. Related keywords and phrases can be used to boost relevancy.

Search engines like to see that a web site is serving current and valuable information. Frequently changing content and the addition of new pages will keep both search engines and users interested and can improve rankings.

Titles tags
Titles are the most important tag used by the search engines for determining the topic of a page. They should be relevant, concise, not use repetition and unique to every page. A call to action can encourage click through from the search engine results pages

Inbound links & PageRank
Due to the democratic nature of the major search engines, a web sites reputation is based on the number of relevant and trusted incoming links. The better the reputation, the higher a web site will usually rank. Reciprocal links carry little weight these days. Editorial citations have the most value as these are nearly always human edited.

Indexation
Generally speaking, the more pages a site has indexed, the better its chances are of ranking high. Certain infrastructure and content issues can hamper or even prevent the indexing of pages, and thus, have a negative impact on rankings.

HTML/XHTML & CSS
Weight of keywords, relevancy of a page and a site as a whole and its 'crawler-bility' (the ease at which a search engine can read a sites content) can be maximised by effective use of CSS, HTML and XHTML.

Meta tags
Whilst meta tags are no longer used by the major search engines for ranking, they must still be unique to every page and have certain limits placed on character length.

For the purpose of ranking, meta tags can actually be omitted altogether. However the description may be used as the snippet in the search engine results pages, so there is an opportunity to increase click through rate.

Keyword choices
The choice of keywords is essential to determining the relevancy of a page. Targeted keywords should be placed in the title tags and sprinkled evenly throughout the body copy, without making the text contrived or the keyword density too high.

Internal link structure
The internal linking structure is paramount to how a site is ranked. Search engines like to see a clear and logical hierarchical structure. This improves crawlability and can help maximise internal PageRank, which solidifies a web sites ranking position. Search engines also give more weight to links found within body content as these are usually human edited.

Spam
Any activity that falls outside the search engine guidelines is considered spam. The potential penalties range from negative impact on rankings to permanent de-listing.

Source: http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) And SEO

2006-12-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

Indexing has always been considered a highly targeted science. Enter a search query into Google search and the pages that are displayed are generally optimized towards that exact word or term. However, in their continual battle to server the most relevant but most natural pages with genuinely useful information Google has injected latent semantic indexing (LSI) into its algorithms.

What Is LSI?

LSI is a unique indexing method that potentially takes Google search one step closer to becoming human in its way of thinking. If we were to manually search through web pages to find information related to a given search term we would be likely to generate our own results based on the theme of the site, rather than whether a word exists or doesn't exist on the page.

Why Search Engines Might Adopt Latent Semantic Indexing

The extremely rigid form of "keyword indexing" also meant that black hat SEO techniques were easier to implement. Search engines could be manipulated into ranking a site highly by using set formula. Originally, cramming a page with a particular keyword or set of keywords meant a site would rank highly for that search term. The proceeding set of algorithms ensured that your link profile played more of an important part than your keyword density. Reciprocal linking soon followed once again making it possible to manipulate the search engine spiders by exchanging links with tens, hundreds, or thousands of websites.

Reciprocal linking was soon beaten as Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo and MSN gave less credence to a reciprocal link as they did to a one-way inbound link. Latent Semantic Indexing is another, particularly powerful, method to try and make their result pages appear more natural with natural pages filled with natural content.

The Effects

The introduction of LSI has seen some dramatic changes in the search engine result pages already. Sites that had previously performed well because of an impressive link profile based on a single keyword have found their pages slip in the rankings. Other pages with a more diverse portfolio of inbound links are taking the lead with search terms for which they had not previously performed.

SEO is far from dead because of LSI, in fact if anything, it has probably increased the need for professional white-hat SEO on your website. The field of SEO, though, has almost certainly changed. Website content copywriting for Google's benefit is not merely made up of keyword density and keyword placement as it once was and link-building techniques will need to change to incorporate LSI algorithms but it can be done.

Writing Content For LSI

If optimizing solely for Google then a web page can, theoretically, be naturally written and naturally worded. When we write we instinctively include the appropriate keyword in our text. In order to avoid repetition (or keyword optimization, as it was once called) we would often alter some instances of these keywords for other words with the same or very similar meaning. We naturally include the plural or singular form of a keyword as well as different tenses and a number of different stems of that keyword. In the eyes of LSI algorithms this is all good news.

Looking At Your Link Profile

A link profile should no longer consist of thousands of links with the same anchor text (that of your primary keyword). There's no reason to panic if you already have this kind of profile. Instead you should look at relevant and similar terms and improve your link profile by gaining links using these as your anchor text.

What It Offers Web Searchers

From the point of view of web searchers, LSI offers some distinct advantages over its earlier form of indexing. For example, LSI recognizes that the word "engine" in "search engine optimization" is not related to searches for terms like "steam engine" or "locomotive engine" and is instead related to Internet marketing topics. In theory, LSI results give a much more accurate page of results as well as providing a broader range of pages still geared towards a particular topic.

Where Google Leads, Others Generally Follow

It is widely acknowledged that Google is the search engine at the forefront of latent semantic indexing. On the whole they try to generate results pages that are literally filled with genuine, useful results and LSI certainly provides another string in their bow. Yahoo and MSN, for now, seem more than happy to go along with keyword specific indexing although Yahoo are known to look at singular and plural keyword variations as well as keyword stemming when judging keyword density.

The Effect On Your Website

How it affects the individual Webmaster is dependent on how they go about promoting their site already. If the pages are filled with natural content including keywords and keyword alternatives, and the link profile is similarly diversified for a number of related keywords then the fact is it won't change very much. However, if all of your efforts have been concentrated, either on-page or off-page, with a single keyword then it's time to readdress the balance.

News Source: Entireweb

Tweaking SEO and SEM Strategies

2006-12-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

Online retail sales this holiday season will be a healthy improvement over last year, according to research cited in Part 1 of this three-part series on holiday shopping.

Whereas the consumer drives all traffic to online retail Web sites, the savvy e-tailer can create helpful site search processes in order to raise profits and maximize the consumer's experience.

Most large retailers have already locked down their Web sites as they prepare for a profitable ride. Nonetheless, e-tailers should keep an eye on their search strategies -- and change what is not working -- en route to seasonal sales.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) offer two strong cases in point. Although these initiatives can drive Web traffic all year long, experts recommend customized SEO and SEM tactics for optimum cyclic results during the holidays.

Tailoring SEO and SEM strategies concurrently is an important practice, according to a new survey from Web analytics firm WebSideStory that demonstrates how equally efficient these tactics actually are. As it turns out, paid search has only a slight edge -- 9 percent to be exact -- in conversion rates over organic search.

"There is a strong synergy between paid and organic search. The bottom line is that marketers need to optimize both to achieve maximum results," said Heather Lloyd-Martin, president and CEO of SuccessWorks, a search engine optimization firm.

With conversion rates 50 percent or higher than overall site conversion rates, both paid and organic search remain very important acquisition sources for online marketers, Lloyd-Martin said.

However, the goal is to use Web analytics best practices to understand how to truly optimize SEM campaigns and conversion rates.

With only a few weeks of holiday shopping -- and with those few weeks typically accounting for a large percentage of an e-tailer's revenues -- search initiatives must be effective or go bust.

The steps may be the same year round: Build a list of relevant keywords, write targeted titles and descriptions, and prepare an effective bid strategy . However, the proper approach to those activities can be dramatically different during the holidays.

Selecting Relevant Keywords
"You may want to expand your keyword selection list during the holidays. Think about what users are searching for as it relates to the holiday period," Pato Spagnoletto, director of Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Search Marketing, told the E-Commerce Times.

If you sell electronics, for example, then you may choose keywords like "DVD" or "Sony" most of the time. During the holiday season, though, you may want to expand the selection to include modifiers like "Christmas gift idea" or "electronics gift card."

Maintain keywords that are consistent with inventory availability -- there is no sense in optimizing or advertising your site for products that are sold out, only to frustrate site visitors.

"Leverage some of your SEM dollars to increase your visibility on the more expensive, higher volume, more generic types of keywords," Cam Balzer, vice president of Performics, told the E-Commerce Times. "Sometimes multichannel retailer budgets need to take into account branding dollars to increase visibility. That's a separate component of the campaign, apart from ROI (return on investment) driven keywords."

"Make previously searched-for items more visually prominent, comprehensively detailed, and accessible via fewer clicks to attract both humans and search engines," said Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik, who recommended analyzing and acting upon information from previous years' server logs. "Look deeper than the 'big' holidays to uncover oft-overlooked celebrations."

Write Targeted Titles and Descriptions
The same goes for titles and descriptions, which should include buzzwords such as "holiday" or "electronics for dad." The search term should be positioned prominently in both the title and the description, according to Spagnoletto, and you should also customize descriptions by category, such as gifts, clothing or home decor.

"Pricing should be used as part of the promotion whenever possible," Spagnoletto said. "Be sure to include information such as the end date of the promotion, free shipping and the last date for on-time holiday delivery. If you have multichannel options, be sure to list 'in-store pick-up.' The most important keywords should find themselves within the first 70 characters of the description."

If the term "Tiffany" doesn't show up in your title or description when a searcher is looking for diamonds, then you risk losing that searcher to a pure play or some other merchant that leveraged the term effectively. The idea is to keep changing what doesn't work and keep embellishing what does work for maximum conversions throughout the holiday season.

"Search, both natural search and paid search, can be very nimble during the holiday season, allowing you to make a lot of on-the-fly adjustments," Balzer said. "If you have got marketing budgets that aren't performing as well as you'd want in other vehicles, you can quickly shift those dollars into search and often get an immediate lift in visibility and performance from those dollars. That can happen in a matter of days."

Prepare an Effective Bid Strategy
SEO doesn't have to be expensive, but SEM can cost serious money.

Budget adequately for promotional periods, such as the holiday shopping season. That may mean increasing your overall spend or increasing your spend on specific keywords and phrases. It may also mean having one budget for early shoppers, another for last minute shoppers and yet another for post-season holiday bargain hunters.

"There is no guideline as to how much more to spend on SEM marketing for the holidays. We suggest looking at it from an ROI perspective to determine how much you can afford to spend and how much that spend will yield in terms of sales," Spagnoletto said. "Your ROI may be a little better during the holiday shopping season because more people are shopping online."

Last-Minute Tweaking
Companies should consider optimizing their site pages for mobile phones, given the increased number of people who may be comparison shopping from the mall, Google's Lasnik noted. What's most important, however, is early planning, he added. It's a mistake to leave optimization and testing until the last minute.

"Actions have to be both timely and user-friendly. While the holidays may be temporal, planning for them should occur year long," he added, noting that spamming-type practices should be avoided and, if used, could result in your site being delisted from the major search engines. "Acting slow and steady wins the race," Lasnik said.

News Source:http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/must-read/54433.html

On Page Optimization

2006-09-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

Search engine spiders ‘feed’ on HTML. It is very important to give them the proper ‘diet’ to rank well on search engines. Using proper HTML markups makes the page fun to read for the visitors and easy to crawl for the spiders.

Caveat: overdoing may get you branded as SPAM.

These are the major on page factor one should be careful with while designing the web pages.

Meta Content

Page Title: Include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases here. Ideally, around 8 to 10 words or around 70 to 90 characters including spaces.

Meta Description Tag: Is reflective of the content on the page. I should ideally be between 20 to 25 words or 250 characters including spaces. Include the main keywords at the beginning of this tag.

Meta Keywords Tag: Contains the keyword phrases that are also used in the copy of the page, Title tag, Meta description, and other tags. It is advisable to add plurals and common misspelling.

Web page theme

Filename: use the main keyword/ key phrase. In case of key phrase use "-" as separator (e.g. "file-name" and not "filename")

H1, H2, H3 header text: Defines the Size of fonts. For SEO the order of importance is descending starting from 1. It is advisable to use style sheets (css to define the size, font and color of the H tags).

Bold Text/ Emphasis/ Strong/ Capitalized: These tags are used highlight portions of text which are more important.

Alt Tags: Keyword relevant Alt tags give name to the images. These tags are displayed if the browser cannot display images and also explain the image to the search engines.

Title Tags for Tables: This serves similar purpose for the table as title tag does for the page.

Internal Link Structure: Content relevant and evenly spread internal links help in optimization and ranking.

External Link Structure: Be careful with the external links. Link only to relevant websites. You do not want to send the spider away from your website unless it has seen enough.

Keyword density and spread

First text on Page: Having keyword as the first word on the page helps. If the first word cannot be the keyword, have it in the first sentence or the first paragraph.

Keyword Density: Maintain keyword density of 5- 8% on a webpage. Keyword density affects ranking on almost all major search engines.

Keyword Spread: One should take care to have keywords throughout the webpage. While some search engines give importance to the first and last paragraphs others read through the entire page.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of studying the search engines and their indexing algorithm in and changing or designing a web site to rank high on user searches. Rank is the relative position in the search engine results page for a keyword / key phrase search.

No fancy links, no doorway pages, no spamming techniques can achieve what clean, logical and spam free coding (HTML) can. Here is a quick checklist to drive the search engine spiders to your website.

Search engine optimization coding Checklist:

CSS: Using CSS as it simplifies site maintenance.

and

tags: A must. Place your keywords in the HTML header codes

and

tags.

Anchor text: Use keyword rich anchor text that best justifies your landing page.

Title Tag: Maximum 90 Characters.

Keyword tags: Maximum 25 words.

Browsing Menu: If you use java script menu include redundant set of text links.

Internal Linking: Ensure that you have good internal linkage and no dead pages.

Dynamic URLs: In case of dynamic URL’s use tools to convert dynamic links into static. The correct way to use newly created static pages is to place links to the dynamic pages on the static pages, effectively submitting the static pages to the major search engines manually.

Use HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org)

Other tags: & tags perform well than in the eyes of Spiders, without compromising website aesthetics.

Avoid placing links in images

Avoid Javascript, flash and frames

Avoid Dynamic URLs.

Source: http://www.rankuno.com/seo-articles/page-optimization.asp

Recent Changes at Google, Yahoo, and MSN

2006-08-11T08:46:00.000-07:00

There are many changes taking place in the top search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all adapting to the many transformations occuring within the search industry. Because of these changes, I thought I would take the time to give you an overview of what's taking place within the market and how it affects you as a webmaster. To begin, let's start with Google.

Back in 2003, Google would index and crawl the web about once a month and everything would change all in one shot. WebMasterWorld would actually name these updates with names like Brandy, Florida, and Bourbon.

Google has moved away from these monthly updates to an ever-changing process. You can now see daily changes within the SERPS with the biggest changes occuring during algorithm updates.

Late June and July of this year saw some major changes within the Google algorithm. If your site was hurt from this algorithm change, you should re-examine your site and be sure to follow the guidelines below:

1. Pursue a continuous linking campaign with other quality sites. This can be achieved through article syndication, exchanging RSS feeds, submitting to directories or syndicating a press release.
2. Create a Google sitemap to increase the coverage of your webpages.

3. Make sure your site has a clear navigation system. Every page should be reachable from at least one static link.

4. Avoid all deceptive or manipulative behavior. Don't get involved in linking schemes. Avoid all forms of cloaking and avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Besides the changes taking place within organic search results, there have also been recent changes within Google Adwords. In July of 2006, Google updated their landing page algorithm. These changes have harmed a number of online marketers. Many advertisers who had been paying five or ten cents a click are now required to bid at least 50 cents to a dolloar or more. There are also other advertisers who kept their bid prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th page positions when they used to buy first page positions.

Some advertisers have even been effectively shutdown.

However, keep in mind that not all advertisers have been affected. There are four main types of sites that have been hit the hardest. These include:

one page sales letter websites
squeeze pages
adsense sites (particularly those involved in Adsense arbitrage)
affiliate sites
The new landing page algorithm gives a quality score to every landing page. Fortunately for us, Google has left some clues as to how they are ranking these pages.

Below are 3 general guidelines that will help those who have been hurt by the recent updates.

1. Provide relevant and substantial content.
2. Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information related to the product or service in your ad.
3. Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site's content.
To stay in accordance with the new quality score guidelines, you may want to remove all Adsense ads from your landing pages, create or find more original content for your sites, ensure that your landing page has at least 500 words, and check to make sure that your ad relates perfectly with the content of your landing page.

Google is getting smarter everyday. Our job is not to trick the search engines but to deliver truly valuable information to our visitors. By doing this along with some basic on-page and off-page optimization techniques, you should perform very well in the search engines over the long-haul.

There have also been some recent changes at MSN.

They have changed the name of their search engine spiders. Before the changes, they were all called "msnbot,". Fortunately, they are now starting to group their spiders into separate categories.

The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products.
The MSN News bot is msnbot-news.
The MSN Image Search bot is msnbot-media.
The MSN search bot is still called msnbot.

It should now be much easier for webmasters to decipher what's really going on in their web logs. In addition, webmasters can also block specific bots if they need to, without blocking MSN Search.

Last, but not least, there is Yahoo. This company has experienced some very exciting changes within the past few months.

One of these is the launch of a new Yahoo Search Crawler. The new crawler is faster and more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, website owners should notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the Yahoo crawler.

Yahoo also released an index update in mid-July. You can read all about it at http://www.ysearchblog.com.

In addition, there are a number of other, smaller-based search engines who are leading the way in the future of search engine technology. One of the best examples I have seen is Eurekster.com. They have developed a social search engine powered by the wisdom of crowds.

Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory technology, which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user share their searches and sites with friends. For example, if you do a search on "internet marketing", you'll see sites related to "internet marketing" that your friends also found useful. These results are marked with an icon.

This personalization helps to increase relevancy in a way that no algorithm can match.

I expect to see many changes within Google, Yahoo, and MSN in upcoming years as they merge search engine technology with social search in order to make search results more relevant as well as personalized. One thing is clear, the future evolution of search is sure to be exciting to watch.

News Source: http://www.seo-news.com/

incuBeta wins global award

2006-07-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

Cape Town based online marketing company, incuBeta, has won an international award for the second time in 3 years from the world's leading affiliate marketing company, Commission Junction.
incuBeta Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Vinny Lingham was present at the awards ceremony in London last week to accept the award for Commission Junction's UK 2006 Award for Leadership in Innovation.

Commission Junction (owned by ValueClick) is a global leader in the online advertising channel of affiliate marketing.

Commission Junction, with offices in the US, UK, France, Germany and Sweden, develops sustainable relationships for advertisers and publishers through their performance-based solutions and host annual conferences dubbed "CJU" (Commission Junction University) for their affiliates.

incuBeta won the Commission Junction award for innovation in the US in 2004.

Alison Guise, UK Country Manager for Commission Junction said this is the first year we have held awards at Commission Junction University UK, and the high calibre of winners truly demonstrates the importance of internal ambassadors for affiliate marketing within companies.

The winners of the awards were selected from Commission Junction's massive base of advertisers and publishers, with the awards recognising excellence in three categories: outstanding individual personal contribution to affiliate marketing; exceptional performance in affiliate marketing; and lastly for innovation in affiliate marketing.

incuBeta is in its third year of operation and now employs over 40 technologists and search marketers. They have offices in Cape Town, London and Los Angeles and offer global online marketing solutions for an array of high profile global clients such as eBay, Hilton hotels and Thomson travel.

Furthermore, incuBeta are one of Google's biggest clients and one of Yahoo!'s biggest representatives outside of the North America.

"We are very excited to have been recognised for our work in the online marketing industry by Commission Junction UK," said Lingham.

"We have worked extremely hard to compete on an international level and have developed sophisticated proprietary software to maintain our competitive edge.

"Awards like this ensure that we gain even further global credibility for the services we offer and maintain our share of this billion dollar industry."

News Source: http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/companies/display_article.aspx?Nav=ns&lvl2=comp&ArticleID=1518-24_1973251

Google, Orion, SEO & You

2006-07-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Every now and then an event occurs that changes how the SEO community views the way websites are optimized and structures promotions.The purchase of the rights to the Orion Algorithm by Google and equally important, the interest that both Yahoo! and MSN took in the algorithm as they vied for ownership themselves, marks just such an event.

Bill Gates said to Forbes magazine about Orion:

"That we need to take the search way beyond how people think of it today. We believe that Orion will do that."

What Is The Orion Algorithm?

There is much confusion about the Orion algorithm and much secrecy around the specifics.Here's is the "What's Been Said" and "What It Means" breakdown:

What's Been Said:Ori Allon, the developer of this technology described Orion in this way:

"The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go to the Web site--although you still have that option if you wish."

He cited an example of the keyword phrase "American Revolution." The search would not only provide extracts with the phrase, but also additional information on topics such as American history, George Washington and the Declaration of Independence. Source: CNET News, April 10, 2006

What It Means:Most on the web take this to mean the results from Google will be displayed similar to those at Ask.com where you will be able to get a sample of the site and some of it's quality content without having to visit the actual site.The part that most caught my attention however is where he cited the example and noted the additional phrases that would be considered and the impact having this technology will have on the way queries are dealt with.

From this standpoint, the Orion Algorithm, in its essence, is a whole new way to score the value of websites that appear on the Internet.Rather than determining the value of a website based on the specific query being entered into the search box, Orion may dig deeper and query related phrases as well.Now, this may not be an entirely new concept, directories have been providing a "Related Categories" option for ages however the addition of this function to standard search engines and what this may well mean for the methods required to rank sites on them is extremely significant.

What Is Relevant?

One of the main hurdles that SEO's will face in reaction to this new function is determining exactly how the additional relevant phrases are determined.There are a few possible sources the come to mind:

Directories (least likely) – The directories are already using "Related Categories".It is possible that the engines will choose the simplest possible means of determining relevancy and opt to use sub-categories of a directory listing and to use the "Related Categories" as the supplemental keyword sources.

Alternatively they could simply run the search itself on their directories and reference the categories that come up and run supplemental searches for those categories.

The main drawback to this approach is that many popular keywords would not be cross-reference accurately.For example, a search for "seo" would result in a supplemental search set of "promotion", "web design and development", Internet marketing" along with a variety of other phrases.While these phrases are related by industry a visitor searching for "seo" may well not be interested in "web design and development".

Thesaurus (unlikely) – It may be that the engines choose to reference a thesaurus for related phrases however this doesn't work for many keyword phrases.Single word phrases would be doable however multiple keyword phrases would be far more difficult and acronyms (such as "seo") would find no related words in the more common thesauruses.

Search Behavior (highly likely) – The most likely source of the relevancy data is also the most difficult to predict and this is search behavior patterns.While I have had some disagreements with members on a couple SEO forums over whether the search engines can in fact know your search patterns, the conclusion is that they indeed can under many circumstances. Search engines will be able to compile enough data based on the users they are documenting to assess overall search behavior (and here you thought all those great tools the engines come out with were just them spending their money altruistically).

If Google "knows" that after someone enters "seo" as a query they follow that up with "seo service", this is likely to then be used as a supplemental search.Similarly, if they also know that these same searchers tend to also search shortly before or after for another common phrase, say "w3c compliance" then this too is likely to be used as a supplemental search.

Agree To Disagree:Implementation

Now that we have a better idea of what the Orion Algorithm is and how it works the big question is, what will it's implementation mean to search engine users and to how websites get ranked on those engines.At this time there appears to be two main schools of thought:

1.What I believe, and

2.Everything else that's been published

I'll be the first to admit that my interpretation of how the Orion algorithm will affect search engine results is either not shared by other SEO's (at least those who have a published opinion on the topic) or has not been thought up by them.That said, my take on the Orion Algorithm did not initially include their predicted affect whereas I now believe that it is likely both implementations will be tested if not brought into full effect within the next 12-18 months (this may seem like a long time but if you want to develop a strategy to react to it this is about the lead-time you may well need).So … what are these two possible outcomes?

Where we all agree:the addition of key parts of web content in the results.This is how the algorithm is explained to function by its developer and is thus the obvious conclusion to most in regards to how it will be implemented.

Everyone else:related information displayed separately.From what I have read, the majority of people believe that the related phrases will be displayed separate from the original query (though rightfully no one seems to be predicting exactly where or how).Essentially this will give searchers the ability to view information on related topics quickly and easily.

This is certain to be included in some capacity and we have already seen similar functions added to the Google results for specific queries though not to any capacity reliable enough to be launched across all Google search results.

And then there's my opinion: integration in standard search results.To me it seems short-sighted to believe that Google will leave a technology that allows them to drawn information and relevancy on multiple related phrases to just displaying multiple options on a results page.With the processing power they have at their disposal why would they not reference a site against its ability to rank for these other phrases and base the final results on that?Let's a take a quick peek at the pros and cons of such a move:

Cons first:Processing power.That about covers the downside and I'm sure we're all aware of the fact that if this ever becomes an issue they have more than enough capital and technical know-how to get around it.

Pros:Imagine a world where running a search for a query took into consideration whether a site ranked for multiple related phrases.What do you suppose the impact on the results would be if only those sites that had content related to a number of areas of a topic ranked highly?The answer: a much more relevant set of results.

Conclusion

Fortunately, while there may be some disagreement in regards to how this new algorithm will be integrated into the search engine results pages the resulting actions required are the same.Whether the new functions will be added in the form on additional links and information on the results pages or whether they will be taken into consideration when ranking the site for the initial query, sites that rank well for a multitude of related phrases will fare better than those that rank for just one of the phrases.

The action required then on the part of SEO's and website owners is to provide quality unique content on all the possible areas that may be considered relevant to the main keyword target.Once this is accomplished then these areas need to be promoted in order to insure that they rank well.

The resulting web will be one that rewards websites with a large amount of quality content on the highest number of topics related to a specific issue.If one considers the end goal of any of the major search engines, to provide the most relevant results possible, this new technology is sure help promote these types of results and insure that the searcher is receiving results that are likely to provide the information they're looking for.

And let's also consider this:should you choose to be an "early adopter" and begin making changes to your site, adding new content, optimizing it and getting it ranking well, what will the results be?Even if Orion isn't implemented for another decade your website will gain stickiness and rank for more related keywords bringing you more targeted traffic and keeping it on your site.Could this possibly be a bad thing?

News Source: http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1494/

Does SEO Marketing Really Boost Sales?

2006-07-23T01:02:00.000-07:00

Breaking the mystique behind what the SEO specialists really do, by using a simple case study, from a business development company based in Ireland. they wanted to let their prospects know they were the best sales and marketing company in Ireland - so they got to number 1 in Google, for over 34,000,000 listings. This tells how they did it, in 7 simple steps

For one month 3R sales and marketing http://www.3r.ie has dominated the Google listings. If you type "sales marketing Ireland", they are number one of 34,800,000.

They are also on the second page of 92,000,000 results for the term "business development Ireland."

They help small and medium business, who really want to develop their business to the next level, achieve their dreams with expert advice around sales and marketing.

It was against this backdrop, that they wanted to achieve a top ranking with their SEO marketing. What is phenomenal, is that they did it all in house.

So how did they do it? Tthey followed these 7 simple steps. These principles can be applied by anyone.

1. They ensured that the desired search terms are used in context with meaningful content. This esesentially described how their clients can benefit from boosting their revenues and profits, with specialist business development. The content further described how focusing on improving a companies sales and marketing capability, is crucial to ist success.

2. they published an extensive collection of sales and marketing focused articles, which they had authored - to the top article directories. The success of this was multiplied by the fact that many people really liked the articles, and indeed put them on their own websites with the 3R links in place.

3. They regularly submit their website to all of the key directories, with new and fresh content, which still tells the story of their commitment to sales and marketing excellence.

4. they focused on the Irish location, and made sure that everybody knew they were an Irish company, that understands Irish business development challenges. This indeed helped with their global sales as well.

5. Members of their company Blog regularly, with links to their font page, giving valuable insights into how they help their clients.

6. They issue press releases, which add immense value to the journalists. By linkinking to an interesting angle, with well written stories, they make journalists life easier.

7. They maximise the use of accessibility guidelines, to provide descriptive "alt" text with their graphics. Too many companies just try to load the alt tags with key words.

This story, truly confirms that content is King. By following these simple yet totally ethicla guidelines, it is anticipated that the reader should be able to propel their rankings, and actually boost sales.

News Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/sales/marketing/prweb413713.htm

Getting the Most From Your Search Engine Traffic

2006-07-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to drive traffic to your site. Many people don't know why, but they aren't achieving this goal.

The key is staying current and evolving with the times.

Way back in the good old days, SEO was a lot easier and we saw results quickly. What do I mean "we saw results"? We ran a ranking report and we were able to see what words held what positions in the various engines. And admit it now, when you received your ranking reports, you promptly pulled up Google or Yahoo and did a search, waiting with baited breath to see your results right there in the top 20. Ahhh, the good old days.

Now, you get a ranking report and you don't see all those wonderful rankings you have seen in the past. Competition is fierce and even though your site deserves to be on top, it may take a while to work its way up there. So, what do you do? You call your SEO Firm, you complain, you work on a strategy to get the results you want.

The missing piece here is called Analytics.

A well-optimized site will bring traffic from many engines, for various keywords that are related to your site. Those keywords may not be on your "approved keyword list" - however they are words people are looking for and they are driving traffic to your site.

Many people don't give credit to their SEO company for these words - however they are mistaken. The fact that your site was properly optimized and content was added is what made the site get noticed by the engines, so the optimization is directly responsible for these "bonus" keywords that are driving traffic to your site.

Because most people don't understand this, and they don't give credit to their SEO Firm, many SEO Firms don't bother looking at or sharing Analytics information with their clients. They simply care about rankings for the keyword list.

At EcomBuffet we understand the value of Analytics information and as a result have added these "bonus" keywords to our ranking reports to show our clients how they are being found.

"Yeah, you point out how great you are and the "bonus" keywords - but how does that really help us - the client" is something we heard when we started sharing this information.

It's true, it is a feather in our cap - it makes us feel good that we have created more exposure for our clients - but it's more than that. The information we share tells them what words people are using to find them - it gives them insight into how their prospective clients think and search. That information can then be used to improve and really target your marketing efforts.

In addition to the value of the "bonus" keywords - the other thing we do is look at the other information in your web stats. We can figure out what pages people are spending time on, what pages people are leaving quickly, we can see what interest's people and what drives people away. Having someone prepare that information for you and deliver it to you in any easy to comprehend manner is invaluable. That information becomes your blueprint for web site improvement, which means increased conversions, which means more sales, which means more money, which means you are one happy camper!

Imagine, rather than guessing at what to tweak on your site to improve results you can take our analysis and suggested changes and use that as a guide to improving your traffic and conversions. Then you monitor the response to your tweaks to ensure your traffic and conversions are growing because the competition isn't sitting idle and what worked yesterday doesn't necessarily work tomorrow.

Web stats or Analytics isn't new - it's been around forever. However most people don't know how to interpret their stats, they often don't have time to gather the data and SEO Firms typically do not tie this information into a SEO campaign.

Our focus is on results. We can deliver the traffic and use Analytics; to get that traffic to take the action you want - whether it is more sales, more people opting in to your site, or calling you. Whatever "results" means to you - we can deliver them.

Case Study: One of our sites has:

Top rankings for the phrases "phoenix homes" (generic phrase) and "historical homes in phoenix" (specific phrase)
Analytics tells us:

phoenix homes" brings traffic but has only a 0.82% conversion rate.
historical homes in phoenix" brings less traffic but has a 6.67% conversion rate.
The Lesson Learned:

Add up the traffic from all your "minor" specific phrases -- all with high conversions and compare it to the major traffic and low conversions from your generic phrases - you can learn where to focus your attention -- on the phrases that convert! (Note: We wouldn't even know about the specific phrase without Analytics)
We can add content for the phrase that converts higher, and drive more traffic from that phrase. We can also use that information to guide us in creating marketing material.

News Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/articles/2006/0720_rc1.html

How Much Money Can a Blog Earn?

2006-05-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

“If my blog has ((insert daily number of impressions or page views of your blog here)) how much should it be earning?”

This is one of the more common questions I get asked by bloggers just starting out with making money from their blogs.

On one level it’s a valid question to ask - after all if you’re going to put time and energy into building something it’d be great to know up front what rewards might be awaiting you.

On another level - it’s an almost impossible question to answer because there are so many factors to take into consideration.

As I look across the blogs that I am involved with (around 100 in number if you count b5media’s 80+ blogs) there is a massive variation in the earnings that blogs are pulling in. It is very difficult to make sense of it as it not just a matter of traffic levels.

For example - As I write this I’m looking at the earnings for January of three blogs that I have some involvement with (I don’t get into what specific blogs earn so don’t ask) and here’s what I see:

Blog A: For the month this blog had a total of around 20,000 page views from about half that number of visitors (ie they viewed 2 pages each. The Total earnings of this blog (all from contextual advertising) was $790.91 (USD).

Blog B: This blog had just over 40,000 page views over the month, this time from about 13,000 visitors. It’s total earnings from contextual advertising (same amount of ad units per pages as the other) was $99.08 (USD). it also earned around $35 from an affiliate program.

Blog C: Our last example is a blog that had around 160,000 page views over the month from around 80,000 visitors. It earned $515.12 from contextual ads and somewhere in the vicinity of $2,500 from affiliate programs.

Factors to Contribute to a Blog’s Earnings…

It’s pretty obvious from those figures that there is no ‘normal’ earnings based upon traffic alone. Many factors are obviously at play. Let me unpack a few:

1. Traffic Levels: While the above examples show that traffic is not the only factor at play in determining the earning capacity of a blog - it is a significant one. Whether you’re earning money from your blog directly or indirectly you are almost always going to increase your earning potential by increasing your readership.

2. Source of Traffic: Of course all not all traffic is equal when it comes to earning an income online. As I mentioned in this earlier post, blog traffic largely comes from a three sources - Loyal Readers (including RSS), Search Engines and Referral Traffic (from other sites).

Each type of traffic will have a different impact upon your earning potential depending upon your earning strategies. Lets look at each in turn:

Loyal Readers - loyal readers are a wonderful thing to have on a blog because they can add a sense of community and participation. In terms of income generation they are often good if you’re attempting to earn income from your blog via indirect methods. In my experience of picking up consulting and speaking work and even in developing products for sale - most the the opportunities have only come from established relationships that I’ve managed to build with readers.

Loyal Readers have also been known to respond to affiliate programs as a result of the trust and relationship that you might have built up with them over time. The longer term and more loyal your reader is the more weight your recommendation is likely to carry. Of course you won’t keep readers loyal for long if your recommendations are not on the money so be careful with that.

On the downside - loyal readers are generally not good for advertising in most forms. When a reader sees your blog every day Ad-blindness tends to kick in pretty quickly unless you’re pretty creative with your ads they often go unseen.

RSS readers are particularly difficult to monetize with ads on your blog as so many of them rarely see your blog if you publish full feeds rather than excerpts.

Search Engine Readers - readers coming to your blog after searching for a keyword you have used are a very different type of reader to the ‘loyal variety’ when it comes to what they respond to. Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that visitors from SE’s quite often only stay on sites fleetingly. The typical SE users is in search of specific information and if they find it quickly they might stay for a little while but if they don’t they are likely to click on link to something else that might be a better source of information or hit their back button to return to the search engine.

This makes them almost the opposite of loyal readers in terms of indirect income earning methods. It’s very difficult to build your profile if people are one off 10 second readers (unless you’re good at making them come back).

When it comes to more direct income earning methods SE traffic is traditionally more responsive as they tend to be more aware of your ads (if they are well placed and designed) and they are actively looking for information and things to click on that might give them the info they are searching for. This is especially true for contextual advertising like AdSense which can show ads on your site that are triggered not only by what your content is about but on what people came to your blog searching for in Google (or so some people believe).

In terms of affiliate links - SE traffic is less likely to click them as a result of your profile but could be open to them more just because they are there. They can be hit and miss depending upon your topic

Referral Traffic - It is difficult to make generalizations about this category of traffic because it depends a lot on the type of site that is linking to you and the way in which they do it.

For example the last two times I’ve been linked to from Slashdot brought incredibly different results in terms of the money earned from the traffic. On one occasion there was barely any discernible difference in my AdSense earnings despite having 10 times the traffic I normally would get in a day. On the next link up earnings increased proportionally with the increase in traffic (it was and probably still is my best earning day ever). I can only really put this down to the difference in tone of the linking post at Slashdot and the type of post that I’d written (which in the later case probably triggered more relevant ads).

In general, traffic from larger sites like Digg and Slashdot don’t convert too well with advertising and affiliate programs. There is an opportunity however for capturing these first time readers and converting them into loyal ones which as we’ve said above is good for indirect income earning down the track.

4. Income Stream:The actual method you use to monetize your blog impacts the amount you might earn. This is pretty obvious so I won’t go on about it too much but it’s worth saying here as it’s a definite factor in mix when looking at other factors.

5. Topic: In the three blogs that I mention above I would say the major difference in their earning capacity was their topic.

Blog A has a pretty specialized topic that not many would be too interested in (hence it’s lower traffic). On the other side of things it has well paying ads in YPN on a per click basis and triggers ads that are very relevant to the topic. As a result despite it’s low traffic it earns quite well.
Blog B has a very popular topic but there are very few advertisers interested in buying ads with those keywords in contextual ad systems. As a result it’s Click Through Rate (CTR) is very low and click values are low also. It’s also yet to generate enough traffic to make much from impression based ads (although there is potential here - it’s a reasonably newish blog). As a result while it has more traffic than Blog A it’s earning considerably less.
Blog C is again on a popular topic which doesn’t convert brilliantly in contextual ads in terms of CTR and ad value. It does have a reasonable reputation in it’s niche and affiliate recommendations are responded to well by readers (and they have a good value per sale also which doesn’t hurt).
Why Topic Matters

Contextual Ads - Different topics and keywords within topics will trigger different ads in contextual ad programs and as a result will earn different levels ‘per click’ (I write about finding high paying ads in AdSense here).
Affiliate Programs - Similarly, different topics will open up different levels of earnings when it comes to affiliate programs. For example a blog about books that uses the Amazon program is only ever likely to make small commissions per sale as the average book might only be worth $20 and the commission with Amazon is generally in the 5-8% range. On the other hand I know of publishers in the financial website game who use affiliate programs that can pay out at $100 per sale.
Indirect Methods - Obviously different opportunities (with different income earning potential) arise for bloggers with a profile in different niches. For example a blogger known for his movie review blog might not have much demand for consulting work but could find a way to syndicate his blog to magazines or newspapers. A blogger with a good profile in the PR industry might not get picked up as a writer in magazines but could land himself a well paying job or some consulting work.
6. Age of Blog: - a good wine matures with age - as do many profitable blogs (and most profitable businesses for that matter). There are many reasons why this is the case and while some blogs do seem to rise from nowhere to dominate the blogosphere - most do not. Here’s a few reasons why blogs tend to get better with age:

Quantity of content - I find myself saying this to new bloggers repeatedly but don’t expect to get a lot of traffic to your blog until you have a substantial level of content in your archives. Of course quality of content is vital, but at least at some level numbers of posts do count and unless you’re going sell your soul and to get into splogging quantities of content take time. I’ve written more on this here and here (series).
Search Engine Optimization - While some SEO experts claim they can have you at the top of Search Engines quickly (and some can), sustaining high rankings through legitimate (white hat) methods means building a site over time. Climbing the rankings in SE’s is the result of many things including good content (lots of it) that gets links from others - both things that take time.
Reputation - Building an online profile and presence takes time n the same way that it takes time in real life. People look for consistency in your blogging overtime and will want to see that you not only talk the talk but walk the walk. As you do this you’ll find your readership grows.
Network - Connected with a good reputation comes networking opportunities. Two years ago if I had wanted to start a new blogging project with someone else I would have had little chance of convincing anyone to join me - but since that time I’ve worked hard at my relationships with fellow bloggers (and other online and offline contacts) to the point now where my problem is becoming too many opportunities to collaborate.
Web Smarts - I shudder when I look back at my first blogging efforts and how naive, ill-informed and poorly run they were. I have a long way to go when it comes to learning about the web, blogs, design, writing etc - but over time my own skills and knowledge in these areas have grown. You can read all the books, blogs and articles you want on blogging (and I’d encourage you to do so) - but so much of what you can learn about blogging for money has to come from on the job experience - which again only comes with time.

7. Time Invested: Lastly I’ll add that the time a blogger is willing and able to invest into their blog is a factor worth considering. I’m fortunate enough to have been able to work myself into a position where I can blog full time. This didn’t just happen overnight (I attempted to describe the process here) but as I was able to put more time into it the rewards increased. This is a bit of a catch 22 situation of course (the more you earn the more time you can put in and the more time you put in the more you can earn) but it’s a principle I’ve discovered that is worth adding into the mix.

So How Much Can a Blog Earn?

I’ve been avoiding the question for over 2000 words now and I’m not about to put a definitive answer on it except to say that every blog is different and the evidence that I’ve seen from interacting with thousands of bloggers and their blogs over the past year is that bloggers are earning anything between nothing at all and millions of dollars. The upper end of the spectrum is of course rare and those earning very little are in the majority, but bloggers earning decent income is becoming increasingly common. Here’s a couple of recent ProBlogger polls that might illustrate how the spectrum is spread in their earnings of AdSense and Chitika.

I’ll finish with this:

Probably the best way to find out what you can earn from a particular blog is to start that blog and test the waters.

Give yourself a time limit of a few months to get a feel for the topic and see how it goes. While it’s important to realize that a few months is not really enough - it is enough to get an understanding for whether it’s a topic you feel you can sustain, what the click values and CTR might be in contextual ads and even to get a feel for what type of readers you’ll attract. If the signs are good - invest more time into it - if they are not, consider trying something else.

That’s my 2 (or 2000) cents worth on the topic of how much blogs can earn. What’s yours?

Source: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/23/how-much-money-can-a-blog-earn/

Sphere Searches the Blogosphere

2006-05-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been frustrated by blog searches that show more blog spam than the kinds of real gems you know are out there among all the dross? The folks behind Sphere, a blog search engine so new it's still in closed beta, think they have the answer.

Traditional Internet search has come a long way since 1997. Unfortunately, many people will tell you that the same thing is not true when you're trying to search for relevant blog entries. Sure, there's great content out there, as you would expect from any medium that encourages enthusiasts to communicate about their favorite topics...but there's also a lot of garbage, and some very self-centered blogging (which can be entertaining, but might not be what you're looking for). Add in the spam blogs cluttering up the blogosphere (which I wrote about here http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Spamming-the-Blogosphere-the-Spread-of-Splogs/), and it's very easy to feel like you're adrift in a sea of flotsam and jetsam, looking for a decent raft.

This isn't to say that there aren't search engines dedicated to blogs out there. Technorati, Feedster, and Icerocket are three of the best known websites that offer blog search. A lot of the current blog search companies rely on tags and RSS feeds, and will do a straight sort by date, with most recent entries first. While this works to some degree, it doesn't work as well as you might think -- and if you can remember back to what web search was like back in 1997, you'll understand why. Tag-based searches are easy to overwhelm with spam. Also, just because an entry is the most recent doesn't mean it's the one that answers best to what the searcher is looking for. As with those pre-Google search engines, one of the biggest issues in blog search is relevance, but there are some interesting additional wrinkles that are almost unique to blog search.

In traditional Internet search, a lot of users are just looking for an answer to a question. With blog search, a user might be looking for a new blog to start reading regularly. Being able to say that a particular blog is relevant and authoritative -- which may have a slightly different meaning in the blogosphere than it does in traditional Internet search -- matters a great deal.

The newness of content becomes a special issue as well; it makes the blogosphere very volatile, and more challenging to keep track of, in its way, than news. And do I need to mention that the amount of linking that goes on with blogs can overwhelm traditional search engines? (In fact, that's a tactic that some SEOs have used to raise the PageRank for their websites, but a discussion of that is beyond the scope of this article).

Sphere Enters Blogosphere

So what is a searcher to do if they're looking for a way to find the gems among the literally tens of millions of blogs out there? This is where Sphere (http://www.sphere.com/) enters the picture. Founded in April 2005, Sphere has been indexing the blogosphere since January 2003. Still operating as a closed beta, Sphere has impressed the search mavens who have tried it out, including Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo!.

It's not too surprising, given the company's background. Sphere supposedly started in the best shoestring tradition, with less than $200,000. But Sphere's chief officers and advisers are veterans of other Internet start-ups. One of their advisers, Toni Schneider, founded Oddpost and is now working at Yahoo!. In fact, Oddpost was going to bring it out themselves until they were bought by Yahoo!. Another adviser, Matt Mullenwegg, is associated with WordPress.

Tony Conrad is Sphere's CEO. If his name sounds familiar, it may be because he was a venture capitalist himself who has funded companies such as Oddpost. The other two people co-founding Sphere were also involved in the Waypath blog search engine.

Judging from the interest Sphere is exciting in venture capital companies, Conrad may have a winner on his hands. John Batelle noted in his search blog that KP partners Will Hearst and Kevin Compton have thrown angel money at the young company. Other names you might recognize that are backing the company include Doug MacKenzie (Radar Partners), Phil Black (Blacksmith Capital), David Mahoney, Vince Vanelli and Mike Winton.

There has been some speculation as to how Sphere will spend this money. If the company is going to be really successful, it needs to be able to scale, which means it needs a lot more machines. That's one way it could spend its angel money. It could also use a lot more distribution, of the sort it could gain from a deal with a major search engine -- and Yahoo! seems like the obvious choice, since one of its advisers is already working there. Indeed, Sphere could end up being bought by Yahoo! eventually. But enough about the company's background; it's time to explain why so many people are so excited about Sphere.

How it Works

Sphere's algorithm examines three factors that are very important to sorting blogs and delivering the best results to searchers. The first of these factors is the link structure. Sphere dives in and tries to decipher the complicated issue of who is linking to what. That might seem somewhat straightforward with a traditional search engine, but it's not so obvious with blogs.

You see, because the blog community is so interactive, you often have "conversation starters" and those who simply follow along, linking to the discussion or commenting on it. By analyzing the link structures, Sphere gains some idea of which blogs are acting as authorities.

The second factor is the meta data, or information about the blog itself aside from its content. How frequently does the blog writer post? How long is a typical post? How many links does the average post get? These and other factors are considered part of the meta data, and are tracked by Sphere's algorithm.

The third factor is what Tony Conrad and the other co-founders clearly consider to be the biggest point that differentiates Sphere from the other blog search engines on the Internet. It's called content semantic analysis, and Sphere co-founder Steve Nieker maintains that "it's the hard part, and most important ingredient of the secret sauce." This is important because spam blogs (of the sort that just say "porn" repeatedly, for instance) will go to the bottom of the search results, while the most relevant blogs will come to the top.

Om Malik noted something in his blog entry about Sphere that seems related to this content semantic analysis. The algorithm apparently includes a pronoun checker. If a blog tends to use "I" a lot, then it's probably more personal and less focused on the kinds of topics that the searcher is looking for. That seems intuitively correct to me. I'd expect to be most interested in the personal blogs of people I already know, and when I want to find those I wouldn't use a search engine.

Sphere in Action

So what is it like to use Sphere to search for blogs? It boasts a very clean interface, judging from the screen shots I've seen. You can sort entries by relevance or time, of course. Results include a title and a paragraph from the blog post. You can click on the link to the post, or you can also click on a red "profile" link. This gives you a pop-up window that shows you the title of the blog, its link, the average number of posts per week, average words per post, and average links per posts, as well as its recent links to other blogs. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people doing a blog search are looking not only for information, but a new blog to read, and this kind of data can help them decide.

If you're looking for results by date, you can use a drop-down menu to check the last four months, last week (default), last day, last 12 hours, or last hour. How's that for up-to-the-minute? You can also choose to see blogs written in languages other than English.

One of Sphere's algorithms takes consistency of blogging on a particular topic over time into consideration. You can see the fruits of that algorithm in the "featured blogs" box that shows up to the right of your search results. Below that box you'll see another one for "related media," which displays links to news stories, books, podcasts, and photos related to your search terms.
If you know how to use Boolean operators, you can use them with Sphere. You can also limit your search in several other specific ways. You can tell Sphere to search only the titles of blog posts. You can also tell it to search only a specific blog (great if you remember a particularly excellent or humorous entry in a blog that you want to share with someone...but which entry was it?!). Or you can tell it to search only a particular website, which would work well if you know your target is on a site with multiple blogs.

I can easily see at least one way for Sphere to monetize itself with the "related media" box, though I'd rather see it use more conventional search-related ads than corrupt that box. It's a cool feature, and a good bet that someone looking for a blog on a particular topic might be interested in news and other items related to it as well. I don't consider myself a heavy blog reader, but I'm looking forward to seeing Sphere when it comes out of closed beta mode.

Source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Sphere-Searches-the-Blogosphere/

Search Engine Optimization

2006-05-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization:

A web based Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Service providing company based in Delhi, India Offering Economical and Ethical custom build Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Online Marketing to its client worldwide. We offers Guaranteed top placements across all major Search Engines.

Our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services begins with a thorough analysis of your website & targeted keywords. Your website reflects your desire to harness the power and potential of the internet, Whether you are selling exotic chili sauce or mutual funds, the first task is to bring people to your website. We can help you to win the trust of an audience that is just a click away from your competitors website.