SEO Blog

Another Google Search Algorithm Change

Sarah Schwitters — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:30:32 +0000

I read this blog today posted by Jay Greene from CNET. Google has altered its algorithm again to help searchers find the most relevant results and the timeliest results.

Google alters algorithm to make results more fresh

Google altered its search algorithm today to bring in more timely topics, a move that affects about 35 percent of all searches.

The Web giant said it’s trying to surface the most relevant results to users, and with more and more real-time data popping up on the Net, Google changed its algorithm to find it.

“Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old,” Google Fellow Amit Singhal wrote in a blog post.

In June, Google completed its Caffeine Web indexing system that provided “50 percent fresher results,” the company said then. With that tool, Google altered the algorithm to better determine when to deliver those more up-to-date results.

So now, when users search, for example, “Occupy Oakland protests,” Google returns results that are news heavy, surfacing links to articles from newspapers that may be only minutes old. When it comes to recurring events, such as presidential elections or corporate earnings results, the new algorithm produces results that are most recent unless the search specifies otherwise.

“Different searches have different freshness needs,” Singhal wrote. “This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

This post was provided by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group. If you would like to improve your search rankings or need help understanding Google’s recent changes, contact digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

lodestar Sponsors Local School Walk-a-Thon

Sarah Schwitters — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:54:22 +0000

lodestar marketing group sponsored the Northshore Christian Academy (NCA) walk-a-thon held May 27, 2011. Each year NCA holds a walk-a-thon to raise funds to improve the school. Previous years funds have gone to build a library, gymnasium, covered sports court, soccer fields and to furnish each classroom with Promethean Boards. This year’s funds will go to furnish the new Middle School Pavilion opening in Fall 2011, with desks, computers and other necessities. The Walk-a-Thon raised over $80,000 this year.

“We are happy to support such as great cause,” said Sarah Schwitters, lodestar’s chief marketing officer. “The opening of the Middle School Pavilion will allow NCA to expand both its elementary and middle school programs and meet the needs of more families who have been on waiting lists for years.”

NCA has programs from birth through 8^th grade. For more information on NCA, visit them online at www.northshorechristianschools.org. To learn more about lodestar marketing group, visit www.lodestarmg.com.

The Dark World of Search Engine Manipulation

Sarah Schwitters — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:04:14 +0000

Another great article was published today that I felt compelled to share. This one is quite important. If vendors are promising you 1st spot rankings quickly on highly competitive words, you better find out how they plan to do it. When Google catches you breaking the rules, whether you meant to or not, your company can literally vanish from the search engine. With Google now controlling 2/3 of all searches, this could severely hinder your business!

That’s why lodestar marketing group employs proven and legitimate SEO practices. We don’t take short cuts. We don’t break the rules. We work to provide the search engines what they need to understand the content on the web site while still providing a web site that suppports your brand. Yes, it takes longer for the results. Yes, it is more work to do it right. But it is never worth the risk to cheat the system as you’ll see from the fate of JC Penney and Overstock.com.

If you want help with your search engine optimization and want to ensure you are doing it ethically while still getting great results, we want to hear from you. Contact us at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

The dark world of search engine manipulation

McClatchy Newspapers

Published Tuesday, Mar. 01, 2011

When it comes to directing people’s attention, there has never been anything as powerful as today’s vast online search engines, and when it comes to search engines, nobody can touch Google, whose sites handle an estimated 88 billion queries a month, roughly two-thirds the world total.

Users don’t have any idea how Google decides the order in which it presents search results, and that ranking is the most consequential thing Google does. That’s because search engines may look far and wide, but their users do not. If your company doesn’t show up at or near the top of Google’s results, it’s invisible.

A survey last May by the online advertising network Chitika found that the No. 1 search result drew over one-third of all traffic the results generated – twice as much as No. 2, three times the traffic of No. 3. Being on the first page of rankings was critical. Even No. 10, at the bottom of page 1, drew nearly two and a half times the traffic of No. 11, at the top of the second page.

So any retailer that wants to reach customers online cares intensely about its rankings, and is eager for ploys to ensure prominence. Hence the business of SEO – search engine optimization. SEO is focused on figuring out Google’s rankings and giving Google what it’s looking for. Which is what? Only Google knows, and its search methodology is about as widely shared as the formula for Coke.

What is known is that Google puts great weight not just on traffic flows, but on how well regarded a particular site is, and tries to measure that regard by calculating the number, and to some extent, the quality of other sites that link to it. Google likes to think it is reflecting some prevailing judgment of a site’s value.

But that judgment can be counterfeited. One extraordinary instance, uncovered recently by The New York Times, involved JC Penney, the venerable Main Street retailer. Apparently, for months Penney was the top-ranked site if you searched for terms as disparate as “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “area rugs,” “dresses,” and “table cloths.” Penney even pulled more traffic for “Samsonite carry on luggage” than Samsonite’s own site.

How come? Penney’s success was traced to an SEO consultant who had, essentially, contracted with more than 2,000 web pages that had no discernible purpose apart from linking to sites like Penney’s – for pay. Penney’s fortunes rose thanks to this virtual ballot-stuffing.

In a second case, The Wall Street Journal reported that retailer Overstock.com had been caught offering discounts to college students and faculty for linking to Overstock from various search terms, among them “gift baskets” and “bunk beds.” Overstock’s rankings soared because the links came from sites with the “.edu” suffix reserved for schools. Google apparently assigns great weight to .edu sites, since they rarely link to commercial entities and their endorsements are thought to be especially credible.

Google’s response in both instances was terrible and swift. It took undisclosed measures that, in Penney’s case, led to its average position for 59 search terms plummeting from 1.3 to 52 within two weeks. Overstock had been at or near the top for dozens of keywords, but within days had plummeted to the fifth or six page of results, the functional equivalent of vanishing.

The tales are disturbing on several counts.

-First, the vulnerability of the rankings to manipulation. With 300 million domain names to police, Google is preposterously outgunned.

-Second, the quiet, unchallengeable ferocity of the response. You don’t have to support fraud to agree with the Times reader who posted: “Was anyone else spooked by Google virtually eliminating a company from existence by removing it entirely from search results?”

-Third, the non-transparency of the whole search business. What could be more opaque? The retailers’ actions certainly seem wrong, but says who? If the principles guiding search shape public awareness in sweeping ways, shouldn’t we know what they are? Besides, Google itself routinely features its own spinoffs – Google Product Search, Google News and YouTube – high up on its results. Is that OK? Why do I get three “Google Maps” links on page 1 when I type in “driving directions?”

Now Google is incorporating recommendations from your social media “friends” to personalize the search results you get. Who authorized Google to help itself to that information? And precisely how will your so-called friends’ opinions alter the rankings you see?

Google is an extraordinary company, and its credo of “do no harm” is impressive. But it’s difficult to think of another private, profit-seeking entity that has ever exercised such vast power over what the world thinks about and pays attention to. That’s a profoundly public function, and with it comes an obligation of accountability that Google has so far bungled.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. He wrote this column for The Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132; website: www.edwardwasserman.com.

This blog was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group. If you would like help with your digital marketing, please contact us at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

Major Change to Google Search Engine Algorithm

Sarah Schwitters — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:03:19 +0000

The New York Times recently published this article on the most recent change to Google’s algorithm, which impacts which web sites appear in the organic search. The article says that although Google makes more than 500 changes a year, this change will definitely be noticed.

The change was done in a continued effort to weed out sites known as content farms which produce articles and content that is not particularly useful to a searcher. They hope to help legitimate, high quality web sites regain their organic rankings which have been on the decline due to these content farms.

We hope you find this article useful. If you would like help navigating the ever-changing search engine landscape, and improving your organic search rankings, please contact lodestar at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

Seeking to Weed Out Drivel, Google Adjusts Search Engine

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Published: February 25, 2011

In a tacit admission that Web publishers are flooding its search engine with low-quality pages, Google has revised its methods to improve the usefulness of its results.

Google said the change would raise the rankings of high-quality Web sites and reduce those of lesser sites, affecting 12 percent of search queries.

Sites known as content farms, which churn out sometimes mindless articles based on what people are searching for, have recently worked their way to the top of search results, frustrating some Google users. High rankings in search results are crucial because they allow Web sites to get more traffic and bring in more business, either through sales of goods and services or through advertising.

“I haven’t seen as much negative attention on Google’s results as I have in the last month or two — it’s been fairly unprecedented,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land and an industry expert.

Persuading users that it has the best results is crucial for Google, whose reputation and status as the front door to the Web depend on them. Though there were many search engines before Google, it became the dominant player because its technology produced better results for users. If people begin to doubt the quality of its results, Google risks losing them to competitors.

While so-called content farms can provide useful information, many of their articles are of questionable value but achieve high rankings in searches. For example, an eHow articleon making friends in college includes tips like “consider joining a sorority or fraternity” and “remember to have a good time, smile and laugh.”

Google makes about 500 changes a year to the algorithm, or formula, that runs its search engine, most of them minor. Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow who worked on the latest change, said in an interview that users were likely to quickly notice this one, which was announced late Thursday.

“We haven’t done a change where we have impacted low-quality sites at this level in years,” Mr. Singhal said. “It’s a clear evolution of the algorithm as the Web is evolving, the content on the Web is evolving, the user expectation is evolving.”

Google still dominates the Web search market, with a 66 percent share in the United States and a larger one in many other countries, according to comScore, a Web analytics company. But it faces ambitious competitors, most notably Microsoft’s Bing.

Hitwise, an analytics firm, measures how happy users are with their searches by looking at how many are successful, meaning the user stays at the first site they click on. At Bing, 82 percent of searches are deemed successful. At Google, the figure is 66 percent.

“This change is about more than just cleaning up content farms,” said Chris Copeland, chief executive of GroupM Search, a search marketing firm that is part of the advertising company WPP Group. “Google has a relevancy problem, and they are trying to do something about it.”

Google made the change after technology bloggers, industry analysts and everyday users complained that its search results had useless pages. The response may help Google’s reputation, Mr. Sullivan said.

“The change may not necessarily improve the results — hopefully it will — but it will definitely improve the perception of Google,” he said.

The new algorithm change does not address the full scope of techniques that sites use to manipulate Google. It is a constant cat-and-mouse game — as soon as Google makes a change, Web developers figure out a way around it.

When Google’s search engine was first introduced, in 1998, its primary advantage was that it considered the number of times other sites linked to a certain page, weighing those links as though they were endorsements. But as people quickly learned how to manipulate those links, Google’s search began focusing more heavily on other factors, too. Google haspunished e-commerce sites, including J. C. Penney, for inflating its rankings by paying for links from unrelated sites.

“Our algorithm clearly gets attacked by these techniques every day,” Mr. Singhal said. “However, with the amount of information that we have, we are pretty far ahead in the game.”

Though Google’s announcement did not explicitly mention content farms, and the company declined to say which sites were appearing lower in results, Matt Cutts, who leads Google’s spam-fighting team, has spoken in recent weeks about content farms and said Google was working on ways to deal with them.

“There are some content farms that I think it would be fair to call spam, in the sense that the quality is so low-quality that people complain,” Mr. Cutts said in a recent interview.

Sites that are frequently given the “content farm” label include Yahoo’s Associated Content, AOL’s Seed and Demand Media’s eHow and Answerbag. Demand Media, for example, uses software to track what people are searching for on Google and other sites, generates headlines based on those searches and pays small amounts to freelancers to write the articles.

Criticism of these sites has been on Google’s radar, and the company said it had worked on addressing these problems for more than a year. This winter, Demand Media went public, and its shares jumped 33 percent on its first day of trading; it is now worth $1.9 billion. Around that time, technology bloggers began writing posts like one that complained that a Google search for new dishwashers had produced useless results.

Of course, the quality of a particular site is subjective. To determine quality, Google does things like track “boomerang” searches, when people click on a link and promptly click back to the results, and ask people to compare search results.

Demand Media, which relies on traffic from Google for its livelihood, said in a blog post on Friday that it applauded the changes and that it was too early to determine the long-term effect on Demand’s sites. This week, Richard Rosenblatt, Demand’s chief executive, said it was working to bring in readers from sites other than Google, and introduced a site that discusses Demand’s quality controls. The company’s stock opened sharply lower Friday but closed 1.6 percent higher at $22.96.

Some consultants who help Web sites to improve their search rankings said sites like Demand’s might not feel the brunt of the change. They said Google’s real target was the hundreds of no-profile companies that post duplicate copies of the same text on hundreds of Web sites.

And many of the sites will figure out a new way to climb back up Google’s rankings, said Mr. Copeland of GroupM Search.

“This is a group of people who will analyze this change, come back with a new strategy on Tuesday and be ranking by Thursday,” he said. “It’s kind of like what happens when drug dealers get busted. They don’t find new jobs. They switch corners.”

David Segal contributed reporting.

This blog was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group. If you would like help with your search engine optimization or search engine marketing programs, please contact us at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

SEO and Website Redesign

Carolyn Berger — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:47:21 +0000

Thinking about redesigning your out-of-date website? While you may be focusing on aesthetics and content, you don’t want to make the mistake of overlooking the importance of SEO, and possibly loosing the existing search traffic of your old site. When lodestar helps to redesign a website, we place SEO as a top priority. We make sure every aspect of the new website has SEO best practices in place, to ensure your efforts of website redesign pay off with an increase in search traffic. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when redesigning your website:

1. Try to avoid changing URLs. If you must, such as if you are switching to a different content management system, then try to redirect the old URLs to the matching ones on the new site. If this seems like too big of a task, then you should at least focus on the top pages, such as the homepage, top entry pages, and most popular pages. Make this a priority. You want to make sure the redirects are in place before the search engine spiders revisit your site.

2. Be careful with content changes. If your old website was already optimized for SEO, changing the content drastically may decrease rankings on your important keywords. However, if you did not have SEO in place in your old website, now is the perfect time to get SEO best practices into place and ensure your website will draw in more targeted traffic.

3. Create and submit an XML sitemap. It can take a few months for search engines to follow a redirect to a new webpage and rank it. To speed up this process, you should create an XML sitemap and then submit it to search engines to be indexed. You want to make sure your new site is indexed as quickly as possible so that visitors will be able to find it.

These are just a few tips to keep in mind when undergoing a website design. It may seem overwhelming to get all the important SEO best practices in place, but the effort will be worth it. Let lodestar help you with your website redesign and guarantee that every aspect of your new site has SEO in place.

This article was posted by Carolyn Berger, Director of Marketing and Operations at lodestar marketing group. If you need help with your search engine marketing, please contact lodestar at sarah@lodestarmg.com.

12 Simple Ways to Generate More Blog Traffic

Carolyn Berger — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:02:51 +0000

I came across this article by Jessica Swanson about generating more blog traffic. If you take the time to write a great blog, you want to make sure people are going to read it! Check out this article for some tips.

Imagine that you’ve taken the giant leap to start a blog to bring more brand awareness and exposure to your small business.

You’ve taken all the necessary steps to build your blog platform and now comes the day when you make your very first blog post. You spend hours crafting a post that is educational, inspirational and positions you as an expert in your field. You are as proud of this post as if it truly were your own flesh and blood. And, most of all you can’t wait to share it with the world.

So, you hit “publish” and wait for your readers to react to your nuggets of wisdom. However, the waiting is an endless ordeal.

Why aren’t you generating any comments? Why aren’t people emailing you thrilled that you have shared your expertise with them?

It’s called “lack of traffic” and if there’s no traffic to your blog, no one will ever see it.

So, how can you begin enticing readers to visit your blog? Here are twelve quick ways to generate a flow of non-stop blog traffic:

1. Create Great Content

Obviously, this goes without saying. But, your content needs to educate, entertain, inspire or offer a solution to your readers’ problems. You want to try to accomplish at least one of these tasks with every blog post.

2. Keep Your Posts Short

We are living in an age where short attention spans are the norm. Keep your posts under 500 words so that you don’t lose your ADD readers.

3. Get Your Blog Indexed in Technorati

This is the big daddy of all blog catalogs. Make sure that you go through the very simple process of submitting your blog RSS feed to Technorati.

4. Submit Your Blog Feed to Other Top Blog Catalogs

Blog catalogs and RSS feed catalogs are where readers go to find blogs to read. You want to make sure that your blog is there. To make the process even easier, you can use a service such as SubmitINMe to manually post to the catalogs for you.

5. Entice Your Readers to Subscribe to Your Blog

Offer your readers a free goodie (such as a downloadable ebook, whitepaper, audio class, etc.) if they subscribe to your blog.

6. Let Your Social Networks Know About New Posts

Whenever you post to your blog, Tweet it out to your followers, update your LinkedIn status and let your Facebook friends and fans know about it. If it’s a good post, they will pass it on to their community as well.

7. Get Involved in the Blog Community

Blogging is a social activity. Read other blogs, comment on other blogs and refer to other blogs within your own blog posts.

8. Comment Back

When your readers make comments on your blog, make sure that you comment back to them. You want to encourage a natural back and forth dialogue between you and your readers.

9. Participate in a Blog Carnival

A blog carnival is a blog event that it is dedicated to a particular topic and is published either weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of an article that contains links to other blog posts on that particular topic. Blog carnivals can be a wonderful way to produce awareness around your blog. Read the rules and regulations of the blog carnival and get involved.

10. Offer to Write a Blog Post for a High-Traffic Blog

Research various blogs within your particular industry. Read the blogs, comment on the blogs and interact with the blogger. Once you’ve established a relationship, send them an email politely letting them know that you would be willing to be a guest blogger for them at any time in the future. Include a link to your own blog so that they can check out the quality of your work.

11. Use Your Blog Posts in Your Ezine

Instead of writing a brand new article for your weekly ezine, send out the first few paragraphs of one of your past blog posts. Then include a link for the reader to continue reading the post on your blog.

12. Include Your Blog URL in Your Email Signature

Develop an email signature that you use whenever you send an email. Of course, your email signature should include a link to your blog.

Once you implement these twelve strategies, you’ll certainly notice a spike in traffic and begin generating comments and interaction from hundreds (even thousands) of readers in your particular industry.

Busting SEO Myths

Sarah Schwitters — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:15:31 +0000

I read this article by Vanessa Fox today and it provides some nice reminders on SEO. We all tend to get hung up on these details and sometimes forget the big picture. Enjoy!

You know it’s important for your business’s website to show up in a search engine’s results, since that’s where your customers are looking for what you have to offer. But how do you make that happen? Well, search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for getting your business noticed by the right people on the Web.

Whether you take on improving your SEO yourself or hire an agency, it’s easy to get caught up in misinformation. Here are some of the biggest SEO myths out there:

Myth 1: SEO is spam and is ruining the Internet
Because some people think SEO is about “tricking” search engines and readers, many associate it with unsolicited e-mail for erectile dysfunction medicine, blog commenters who proclaim “Great blog!” and then link to their make-money-now.info site, or those annoying websites that scrape content from other sites and then fill the pages with ads. Even Fox News called SEO a job that would “leave you alone and friendless.”

In my book, “Marketing in the Age of Google,” I lament that SEO is often associated with BuyCheapViagraWhileYouPlayPokerOnlineandFileaMesotheliomaClassActionLawsuit.info rather than customer engagement, usability, product strategy and sales.

In reality, SEO is understanding how to operate your business in an online environment. Think of search as a customer acquisition component.

Myth 2: SEO is all about PageRank
PageRank was one of the early ways Google calculated what was valuable and important on the Web. (Bing has a different way of calculating link value, called static rank.) At a high level, links from one site to another are like votes that all search engines can use to learn what sites are the most popular and useful.

The Google Toolbar includes a PageRank number (1-10). This is a rough approximation of the actual number used internally to rank websites, but it’s not the actual number used and isn’t granular enough to provide meaningful data.

In addition, the toolbar version is updated only every few months (the number used internally is updated continually). And as PageRank is only one of hundreds of signals, a site with a low PageRank will outrank a site with a high PageRank any time the content is more relevant for a particular search query.

Many site owners obsess over this number, rejoicing when it goes up and despairing when it goes down. It’s tempting to use a single number to monitor your SEO efforts, but a much better gauge is how much traffic your website receives over time from searches relevant to your business.

Myth 3: You must focus on keyword density
I came across an SEO report the other day that scored pages based on “keyword density.” The idea here is that if 12 percent of the text on a page is the word “duck,” it’s more likely to rank well for duck-related searches than if the word “duck” is only mentioned once. This is where “keyword stuffing” comes from, which is pages that repeat the same word over and over in every possible combination.

The reality is that keyword density doesn’t really matter. Search engines do a lot of work to figure out what a page is about versus just noticing a word that is mentioned in passing. They look at such things as how other sites describe the page when linking to it and how the page is titled. It’s the same stuff readers use to figure out what a page is about. Use words that your readers would use.

Myth 4: Since links are important, trading links helps you rank better
You’ve probably seen the e-mails. People write to you and say they’ve added a link to your site from theirs — and won’t you provide a link back? It will help boost both sites in search engines! Only, it won’t. In fact, it could get your site banned. Search engines value links that are natural, not those that are intended to manipulate their algorithms. Build a site that people want to link to, make people aware of it, and let the links come naturally.

Myth 5: Ranking No. 1 is the goal of SEO
Focusing on ranking No. 1 can cause you to lose sight of why you’re trying to rank in the first place. You don’t want to miss the bigger picture:

- Many site owners make the mistake of tracking rankings for what they think people are searching for, without doing the research to make sure those are really the words people are using. For example, are your customers searching “real estate” or “buying a house”? This will affect your SEO strategy.

- What does your search result look like? Searchers evaluate results in clusters of three or four, not merely the first listing. If another listing in the cluster has a more compelling title and description, yours might be skipped over.

- How do searchers behave once they reach your site? Do they abandon it right away or do they stay on the site and buy things?

Monitor your Web analytics to find out what queries bring searchers to your site, if those searches are boosting your Web traffic, and what searchers do after they reach your site. If your search-to-sale conversion rates are going up, then you’re doing things right.

This article was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Officer at lodestar marketing group. If you need help with your search engine marketing, please contact Sarah at sarah@lodestarmg.com.

Google Training Video – How to SEO Web Pages

Sarah Schwitters — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:59:04 +0000

I watched this video and agree that these are really the SEO basics that are needed to properly SEO your web pages. Yes, it is very time consuming. It takes a lot of thought and effort to ensure you are choosing the right words that people are searching on. It takes a lot of in-depth research to understand the competition and make sure you are outranking them properly. And, it takes some good copywriting to make sure your titles and descriptions are compelling so when you do rank, people click through to your web site.

This video explains SEO very simply and provides some useful tips for getting it right.

Watch the 18 minute video now.

This video was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Officer at lodestar marketing group. If you need help with your SEO efforts, please contact lodestar marketing group at sarah@lodestarmg.com

Why you Should Submit to Directories

Carolyn Berger — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:51:04 +0000

Every online business wants to increase visibility and get noticed by the search engines. That is why submitting to directories should be an important step in your SEO efforts. Submitting to directories does several things. First it helps your website get indexed quicker, since search engines regularly crawl legitimate directories and index new links. Second, it can help increase your position in the search engines, as the more quality links your site has the higher your rank will be. Third, if you are listed on highly popular directories, you are likely to increase traffic to your site.

There are several types of directories, both general and specific to a certain subject. Chances are that no matter what your website is about, there will be a directory specific to it. To find directories, just type your main keywords into Google followed by “directory”. If you have a newsletter, submit it to directories. If you have articles, submit them to directories. If you have an affiliate program, submit it to directories. The more submissions you make, the more links you will have back to your website, which will help your site get noticed and move up in rankings.

Need help submitting your web site? Contact Lodestar Marketing Group for more information.

The Yahoo! Bing Transition

Carolyn Berger — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:14:33 +0000

Many companies rely solely on Google for their SEO and PPC campaigns due to the fact that Google dominates in generating the most search traffic. However, with the recent merger between Yahoo! and Bing, you need to start focusing on the new Microsoft-Yahoo! Search Alliance (the new name of the partnership), as it may now account for close to 30% of search traffic (according to comScore).

There will be several implications of this new partnership in both SEO and PPC. Once the transition is complete, it will be Bing search on Yahoo’s domain. Therefore, your rankings with Bing will now become your rankings on Yahoo!. If you currently rank well in Yahoo! and not so well in Bing, it would be wise to take quick action to optimize your keywords by Bing standards so that your campaign does not suffer.

For PPC, your campaign will also be affected. Once the transition is complete, all advertisers will need to use Microsoft adCenter to manage their ads. You will need to either integrate your Yahoo! account into your existing Microsoft adCenter, or create a new account. AdCenter treats ad copy length and keyword mapping differently than Yahoo!, so if you have a Yahoo! account then you will need to make changes. Both ad copy title length and description length have fewer characters, so if you don’t make changes soon, the ads may read incorrectly once the transition occurs. In addition, while Yahoo! maps keywords with variations, Bing does not. So you will now need to add plural forms and common misspellings of words into your campaign. Do note that you will not be able to target your ads to solely Bing or Yahoo! once the transition is complete.

If you take a few steps now to adjust your campaigns, you will find that once the Yahoo! and Bing transition takes place, you will be up and ready to start capturing more traffic and take advantage of this new powerhouse.