Rankings, Competitors and Analytics in One !!

Search Engine rankings may not be as meaningful as they once were, however they still do hold some value, and if they are combined with things like competitive data and web analytics, search engine rankings can be quite useful. We have had our share of demos of search engine ranking software over the years, but the latest one from SEO Rank Monitor deserves a second look.

Before we get into the details, there is a full 30 day trial available, which allows you test drive 10 domains and 2500 keywords - Data is collected daily.

The setup is quite standard, like most ranking tools, you add your domains and keywords (with their appropriate groupings) and select your search engines (in this case 30 to choose from). Next you add your competitor's domains, which is not revolutionary, but very useful nonetheless.

Finally, you have the option of connecting your Google Analytics account so you can tie together rankings and visits. This will help you decipher whether a rank 5 for one keyword provides more visits vs. a rank 8 for a separate keyword.


The way the dashboard is setup is quite unique. It provides a week by week comparison allowing you to see rankings at a very high level, for example: Total keywords ranked in positions 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 one week vs. another week.

Source: Rankings, Competitors and Analytics in One

Thoughts on Google Instant !!

Google’s web search (and web search infrastructure) team tries to do several things well:
- We want the most comprehensive index of the web. We explore ways to crawl the web deeper, faster, and better, from increasing our index size or indexing speed to crawling web forms to discovering links in JavaScript.
- We try to return relevant, useful results. Hundreds of people work on lots of improvements to our ranking algorithms.
- We try to return your search results really fast.
- We try to improve our search user interface (UI).

The first three things aren’t highly visible. Average users might not notice changes like Caffeine (improved indexing) or a better algorithm to detect hacked sites–although we have seen effects like users searching more when we deploy a fresher index. A bunch of people at Google have come up with amazing ways to make your search results faster. We’ve shared many of those insights to help make the web faster as a whole.

A key insight behind Google Instant is that if we want to get people answers and solve their problems faster, we can help with that by improving our UI to help you formulate queries more quickly (and then doing a bunch of hard work under the hood to answer that query too). Google typically returns search results in milliseconds, but it takes several seconds for you to type a query. In other words, the limiting factor on a typical search is you. :) With predictive search and instant results, you can often get the answer you want much faster.

Source: Thoughts on Google Instant

Latest SEO Trends in 2010 !!

Online market is growing rapidly and it will continue to grow in much more better way in 2010. As all of us know, there is a huge contribution of search engines mainly of Google in online marketing. Websites which tops in Google ranking will undoubtedly get huge volume of visitors to the websites than the other sources. Only way to top the search engines is Search Engine Optimization.

It is likely to be a question in SEO expert's mind that it is reliable to continue with current SEO strategy in order to rule the search rankings or there will be some dramatic changes in Google's algorithm for improved search engine results. In fact, the Google has already began to show some variation in ranking with some hard to solve formulas for SEO masters.

Some of the notable variation in Google search results in 2010 will be:

* Geo location of any search query:

Google search engine algorithms may pay more attention geo location of any search query. That means search results in Google.com may vary in USA and UK for same keyword. The percentage of variation in results may vary upon competition of querying keyword. Means higher the competition, higher the variation.
* Great role of Social Media and Social Networking:

Social media and social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter will also have some noticeable impact on search engine results in 2010. It does already have some talk to include twits from the twitter in search engine results. So it's time to include social media optimization as one of the search engine optimisation strategies for SEO companies.
* Back-links from Low PR and Irrelevant websites:

Yes. This point is directly pointing to directory submissions, link farms and reciprocal link exchanges. Google is very smart and getting more and more smart and hard with spammers. Continuous back-links from low PR and irrelevant websites may really hurt your rankings. It's also useless to use two-way (reciprocal) or three-way link exchanges in an order to improve rankings. Google is having the number of heads with PhDs and for them it is not hard to find two-way or three-way links.
* Google will no more equal to Search Engine:

Yes. After dominating nearly a decade, Google is now facing very tough competition in search engine market with rivals like Yahoo and Bing. Even though Yahoo is not as much effective as Bing because Bing is really giving some very good and relevant results in compare to Yahoo. In 2010, Google will definitely have to face some great challenges from Bing. In addition, if Yahoo/Bing partnership will come into reality than it would be biggest search engine revolution in the decade.
* Some other small but important factors:

Page load time, bounce rate, domain age would remain some other factor which may gain some importance in search engine results of Google. Google has already announced that page load time would be a factor in search engine result pages, to give user improved and fast loading websites in search results.

Search engine market is developing quickly. So you can expect some exciting and new trends to emerge for search engine optimisation SEO industry in 2010. It's been time to change your online marketing strategies as New Year begins with some more stirring market trends and techniques. It is advisable to left those SEO services company which are using old-age SEO strategies in order to give higher search engine rankings. Get some advice from expert SEO consultancy in an order to step forward in highly competitive market. Finally, it's time to get smarter with new trends and technology in 2010.

Read more: SEO Trends

Google Web Accelerator !!

Google Web Accelerator was a web accelerator produced by Google. It used client software installed on the user's computer, as well as data caching on Google's servers, to speed up page load times by means of data compression, prefetching of content, and sharing cached data between users. The beta, released on May 4, 2005, works with Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ and Internet Explorer 5.5+ on Windows 2000 SP3+, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines. Google no longer provides downloads or support for Google Web Accelerator.

It was discovered that Google Web Accelerator had a tendency to prevent YouTube videos from playing, with the message in the YouTube video player, "We're sorry, this video is no longer available." By turning off Google Web Accelerator, the user was able to play YouTube videos again without a problem.

Google Web Accelerator sends requests for web pages, except for secure web pages (HTTPS), to Google, which logs these requests. Some web pages may embed personal information in these page requests.

Google receives and temporarily caches cookie data that your computer sends with webpage requests in order to improve performance.

In order to speed up delivery of content, Google Web Accelerator may retrieve webpage content that the user did not request, and store it in the Google Web Accelerator cache.

Google Web Accelerator is no longer available or supported from Google as of January 20, 2008. As of September 2008[update] the Google Web Accelerator is not compatible with Firefox 3.0. As of August 2010, Google Web Accelerator is still available for download from other websites.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Accelerator

Search Engine Optimization Tips !!

Some SEO Tips are following:-

1) Domain & File Names:-
Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page.

2) Keyword Phrases:-

a. Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
b. Add keyword synonyms to your content.
c. Put the keyword phrases
d. Insert the keyword phrases in a tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
e. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.

3) Keyword Density:-
Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.

4) Bad Techniques:

Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very informative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website.

5) Title & Meta Description Tag:-

Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content="Description phrase" or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title.

6) Meta Keywords Tag:
The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn't ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway.This tag should be different for each page.

7) Author & Robots Tags:-
The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a 1 position for your company's name.

8) Quality Content:-
Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind

9) Quantity Content:
The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.

10) Changing Content:-
You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed.

11) Avoid Dynamic URLs:-
Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the "?" that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.

12) Frames:-
Many search engines can't follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames.

13) Site Map:-
A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need.

14) Site Themes:-
All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.

15) Site Design:-
You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.

These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.

Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.

16) Robots.txt File:-
While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don't get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.

Google 200 Ranking Factors-Algorithm Parameters !!

Domain: 13 factors

1. Domain age;
2. Length of domain registration;
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous;
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk);
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info);
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP);
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain;
10. Domain IP;
11. Domain IP neighbors;
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)
13. Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools

Server-side: 2 factors

1. Server geographical location;
2. Server reliability / uptime

Architecture: 8 factors

1. URL structure;
2. HTML structure;
3. Semantic structure;
4. Use of external CSS / JS files;
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation, JavaScript, etc);
6. Use of canonical URLs;
7. “Correct” HTML code (?);
8. Cookies usage;

Content: 14 factors

1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness;
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML);
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text);
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example);
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational, navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images (?)
12. Malicious content (possibly added by hackers);
13. Rampant mis-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word screeds without punctuation;
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases.

Internal Cross Linking: 5 factors

1. # of internal links to page;
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text;
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc);
4. # of links using “nofollow” attribute; (?)
5. Internal link density,

Website factors: 7 factors

1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency;
3. Overall site size (number of pages);
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap;
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more important), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar);
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)

Page-specific factors: 9 factors

1. Page meta Robots tags;
2. Page age;
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits);
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level; (?)
6. Page load time (many factors in here);
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page);
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has);
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site);

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 13 factors

1. Keywords in the title of a page;
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title;
3. Keywords in Alt tags;
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text);
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links (?);
6. Keywords in bold and italic text (?);
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text;
8. Keywords in body text;
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site;
10. Keywords in filenames;
11. Keywords in URL;
12. No “Randomness on purpose” (placing “keyword” in the domain, “keyword” in the filename, “keyword” starting the first word of the title, “keyword” in the first word of the first line of the description and keyword tag…)
13. The use (abuse) of keywords utilized in HTML comment tags

Outbound links: 8 factors

1. Number of outbound links (per domain);
2. Number of outbound links (per page);
3. Quality of pages the site links in;
4. Links to bad neighborhoods;
5. Relevancy of outbound links;
6. Links to 404 and other error pages.
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

Backlink profile: 21 factors

1. Relevancy of sites linking in;
2. Relevancy of pages linking in;
3. Quality of sites linking in;
4. Quality of web page linking in;
5. Backlinks within network of sites;
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar backlink sources);
7. Link profile diversity:
1. Anchor text diversity;
2. Different IP addresses of linking sites,
3. Geographical diversity,
4. Different TLDs,
5. Topical diversity,
6. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc);
7. Diversity of link placements
8. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
9. Backlinks from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from flagged sites)
10. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile);
11. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink profile);
12. Backlinks trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
13. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz;
14. Backlink profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc);
15. Backlinks from social bookmarking sites.

Each Separate Backlink: 6 factors

1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. Authority of a domain linking in
3. Authority of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)
6. Title attribute of a link (?)

Visitor Profile and Behavior: 6 factors

1. Number of visits;
2. Visitors’ demographics;
3. Bounce rate;
4. Visitors’ browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other listings)

Penalties, Filters and Manipulation: 12 factors

1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing;
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag;
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam);
5. Cloaking;
6. Hidden Text;
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner (?)
11. Past hackers’ attacks records
12. 301 flags: double re-directs/re-direct loops, or re-directs ending in 404 error

More Factors (6):

1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools;
2. Domain presence in Google News;
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search;
4. Use of the domain in Google AdWords;
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics;
6. Business name / brand name external mentions.

Source : http://www.dosurfin.com/200-algorithm-parameters-of-google-just-guess/

Some Advanced and important SEO Techniques !!

Ideally, There is no single definition of advanced SEO. There are a few of attempts to describe what it might mean or consist of and what not but there is no entity or authority that could define such a broad term like advanced SEO.
I can’t define advanced SEO either. What I can do though is to collect 30+ advanced SEO tactics, techniques and resources.

These methods are no doubt advanced in the sense that they are new and progressive, sometimes more difficult than basic SEO or require special tools and expertise. Some of the tactics are no short term tactics, they’re probably strategies.

Also I’ll attempt to debunk the wide spread notion that just a few tactics out there are somehow advanced SEO by virtue of their sheer complexity, difficulty in implementing or tediousness.

Most notably I refer to the controversial practices of so called PageRank sculpting and IP delivery. While both are highly contested to be valuable at all or “advanced SEO” most SEO methods below are not controversial. They have an undeniably positive impact on your SEO efforts. Some will contest whether they are advanced or even SEO but they don’t hurt your site or business like the two above often do or at least might when badly executed.

Web Design and Development

* Landing page optimization for organic search results
* ROI oriented usability testing (Split A/B Testing etc.)
* Streamlining information architecture towards a predefined sales funnel
* Enforcing security considerations to prevent crackers from compromising your system and hijacking your site’s authority
* Implementing dynamic scalability for large sites by self replicating processes
* Siloing content on important keyword optimized pages (instead of PageRank sculpting)

Web Analytics

* Identifying the target audience by age, income, education, computer skills, region and understanding it
* Conversion attribution to find out how many stages were involved in making a person finally appear on site or buy
* Twitter analytics to follow your true fans and connectors who spread the word and realistic Twitter traffic numbers
* Monitoring long tail keyword combinations and frequency for early acknowledgment of trends
* Time based and historic keyword research to identify potentials for recurring traffic spikes

Content Creation

* Creating videos, ebooks, infographics and other rich media for SEO purposes
* Semantic SEO trying to understand user intent and serving the appropriate content
* Business blogging beyond solely SEO copywriting keyword rich content for search engines
* Writing of “magnetic Web content“, with “killer headlines” and irresistible hooks
* Defining an SEO code of ethics for your company and anticipating upcoming industry standards
* Allowing and managing and user generated conent with crowdsourcing, tagging/folksonomy
* Predictive SEO in order to be the first to offer supplies for demands that don’t exist yet

Link Development:-

* On topic widget bait for long term recurring results (not just link bait)
* Creating both funny and engaging quizzes. Example: SEO expert quiz
* Preparing and implementing contests to actively empower audiences as brand evangelists
* Establishing reputable awards or annual best of collections. Examples: Web 2.0 awards, Semmys
* “Pulling a Calacanis” that is stirring controversy to gain attention and make adversaries and supporters to link to you

Popularity through Social Media

* Proactive online reputation building, instead of just reactive firemen like management
* Social CRM for all relevant groups (beyond “customers”). Example: Influencers
* Creating and spreading viral memes through various media independently of your own presence there
* Creating communities both inside and outside your own websites. Example: Dell Idea storm
* Disseminating social media press releases and cultivating blogger relations

Expanding into New Markets

* Embracing Twitter plus other Microblogging for business purposes
* International multilingual SEO on one site or creating parallel sites
* Geo-location based local SEO and IP delivery for international businesses
* Mobile search optimization with appropriate CSS formats for different use cases
* Introducing “real life” SEO with links you can scan with your mobile

Advantages of internet Marketing

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience. Therefore, businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly. The strategy and overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns depend on business goals and cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively. Nearly all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers can use a variety of methods: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, or pay per action. Therefore, marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience. The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, visit a website, and perform a targeted action. Such measurement cannot be achieved through billboard advertising, where an individual will at best be interested, then decide to obtain more information at a later time..

Because exposure, response, and overall efficiency of Internet media are easier to track than traditional off-line media—through the use of web analytics for instance—Internet marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers. Marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing (i.e., how the Internet affects in-store sales) rather than siloing each advertising medium. The effects of multichannel marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns.

Google algorithm update Vince favors Big Brands !!

Recently there was a rumor on the Internet that there has been a change in Google algorithm which seems to be helping big brands for ranking on major keywords. Matt Cutts, the Head of Search Quality group in Google, confirmed in the following video that the rumor was indeed true, and Google ranking algorithm update named ‘Vince‘ is responsible for the sudden boost in rankings for big companies for major keywords.


Recently there was a rumor on the Internet that there has been a change in Google algorithm which seems to be helping big brands for ranking on major keywords. Matt Cutts, the Head of Search Quality group in Google, confirmed in the following video that the rumor was indeed true, and Google ranking algorithm update named ‘Vince‘ is responsible for the sudden boost in rankings for big companies for major keywords.

As we know, this is not a major Google update, but just one of the over 300 changes which Google carries out a year to enhance the quality of their search results. He further explains that this change does not favor any specific brands, but rather gives a boost in rankings based on relevant criteria such as trust, authority, PageRank or reputation.

Some Interesting Thoughts on Google Instant

The blogosphere is absorbing today’s announcement of Google Instant. I wanted to give some context and some thoughts.

Google’s web search (and web search infrastructure) team tries to do several things well:
- We want the most comprehensive index of the web. We explore ways to crawl the web deeper, faster, and better, from increasing our index size or indexing speed to crawling web forms to discovering links in JavaScript.
- We try to return relevant, useful results. Hundreds of people work on lots of improvements to our ranking algorithms.
- We try to return your search results really fast.
- We try to improve our search user interface (UI).

The first three things aren’t highly visible. Average users might not notice changes like Caffeine (improved indexing) or a better algorithm to detect hacked sites–although we have seen effects like users searching more when we deploy a fresher index. A bunch of people at Google have come up with amazing ways to make your search results faster. We’ve shared many of those insights to help make the web faster as a whole.

A key insight behind Google Instant is that if we want to get people answers and solve their problems faster, we can help with that by improving our UI to help you formulate queries more quickly (and then doing a bunch of hard work under the hood to answer that query too). Google typically returns search results in milliseconds, but it takes several seconds for you to type a query. In other words, the limiting factor on a typical search is you. :) With predictive search and instant results, you can often get the answer you want much faster.

Sources: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

International SEO Market

Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.

In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007. As of 2006, Google had an 85-90% market share in Germany. While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany As of June 2008, the marketshare of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise. That market share is achieved in a number of countries.

As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable markets where this is the case are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the Czech Republic where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.

Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.

SEO New Trends !!

The past year has been one of major transition in the search engine industry. Changes to the landscape have been enormous with mergers, acquisitions, and the easing of several formerly big-players out of the sector or, in the case of AltaVista, Lycos and LookSmart, into the minor leagues. We’ve seen new technologies and revenue models being tested by search firms, along with fresh promises of personalized ad-delivery through contextual placement. While there is no end in sight for changes in this evolving medium, this is a good time to examine the impact of such upheaval on the state of website marketing and search engine placement.

The biggest recent shift in the industry is the steady erosion of Google’s dominance over the past eight months. In mid-July, the SEO community started to notice subtle changes in Google’s ranking algorithm. At that time, Google had an absolute lock on the search engine world with some form of involvement in over 76% of all searches conducted globally. By the time Google released its infamous "Florida Update" in mid-November, Google’s lock-hold was slipping. At that time, Google was the main listings provider for a host of Internet properties including the gigantic search-portal Yahoo!.

That changed recently when Yahoo discontinued their relationship with Google in place of their in-house database, Inktomi. With the loss of distribution through Yahoo!, Google now fuels approximately 48% of all search traffic, with the bulk of the remainder split between Yahoo and MSN, both of which are currently fed by Inktomi. (Please note: Yahoo will be moving away from Inktomi in mid-April in favour of their own paid-inclusion database.) While Google continues to enjoy a higher viewership than any other search tool, it has lost a great deal of distribution power since being dumped by Yahoo!. The bottom line here is that there are now three major search engines as opposed to just one and SEO strategies need to change to meet the new environment. Last year, clients were strictly concerned with Google rankings, knowing full well that good Google rankings were a sure-fire ticket into Yahoo. SEO-Reaction: This year, SEOs will need to concentrate on a mixture of strong-keyword enriched copy in order to please Inktomi, along with a well thought-out link-building campaign to please Google. The re-emergence of Yahoo and MSN as serious players in the search industry is beneficial to advertisers and webmasters as competition and the corresponding increase in consumer choices tend to produce better products and services in the long run.

Bigger, Better, Undercut&ldots;

The validity of the truism about competition driving innovation and producing better products and innovations is demonstrated by the number of new services and innovations introduced over the past twelve months. Search is becoming far more technical and, in many ways, far more specific. Localization and personalization are two of the new common buzzwords in Internet marketing. Localized search results promise increased relevance to the searcher by delivering search results from sources within a reasonable traveling distance such as a postal/zip-code or telephone area-code. Personalized search results promise listings based on specific interests or behaviours of the individual searcher, or the computer used to conduct the search.

An early example of a search tool designed to deliver personalized Eurekstersearch results is Eurekster. Eurekster bases it’s results on two major factors. The first is the user’s personal behaviour. The second is the behaviour of friends and others belonging to a social or work grouping. The basic idea is that groups share common interests. Weighing a search-query by those interests may produce better, more personalized search results. SEO-Reaction: In order to adapt to these two innovations, website marketers and SEOs will need to add highly specific elements to a client’s website such as geo-specific metatags and text, and corporate identifying information such as full street addresses and telephone numbers. Website marketers will also need to add features to websites making them more useful to individual searchers such as newsletters, local-promotions and blogs to make their site relevant to specific users in order to present a level of personalized attention that will keep viewers coming back, or at least keep the client’s website in the minds of search engine users.

The big three are using these and other features to try to undercut each other’s level of service offerings, including blogging, news aggregators, email and instant-messaging, and a whole host of tool-bars. It is only a matter of time until someone introduces a new technology or search tool that "re-invents" the way we relate to information retrieval. Both IBM and MSN are developing deep-crawling spiders that will certainly expand the scope of search. IBM is developing the Webfountain tool and MSN is slated to release its new search tool based on the coming Longhorn operating system. These tools will include Excel sheets, Word docs, emails, and other documents found on a hard drive that a user has viewed, in search results for that specific user.

Evolution or Bust
Over the past three years, search engine marketing has become the fastest growing advertising medium in the world. New SEO firms are emerging and established SEO firms, like StepForth are growing rapidly. Website owners and webmasters are advised to shop around before choosing an Internet marketing provider. Check out several SEO websites and compare service offerings. Ask serious questions and don’t be afraid to challenge an SEO’s knowledge of the environment. With change comes confusion and we are noting a number of new firms playing on that confusion in order to see short-term gains. A new company in our area will take $200 from clients in order to add their URL to an automated submitter.

As difficult as it may be to believe, there are still millions who fall for that old, "better living through automation" argument. Another pitfall to watch out for is hiring a company that is not prepared to evolve their services to meet new technical innovations. As the search world changes, good, honest SEOs are prepared to adapt and tell their clients exactly how that evolution will take place and why.

Source: http://www.zeromillion.com/webmarketing/search-engines-and-seo.html

How to do videos promotion online ?

These are some methods of online videos promotion:-

1. Submit to social video bookmarking sites. Digg.com, Video Bomb, Flurl, StumbleVideo – all these sites have the potential to send a lot of viewers if enough people vote for your video.

2. Email video blogs and websites to tell them about your video. Email blogs which post interesting online videos. Use Google and Delicious to find such blogs.

3. Email blogs that talk about your videos topic. If your video is about an Apple Mac then email Apple Mac blogs, if your video is about making pizza then email recipe blogs.

4. Submit to regular social bookmarking sites Don’t forget the regular social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Reddit, BlinkList etc. These sites will link to videos and if enough people vote for it you can get a lot of visitors.

5. Submit your video (or a teaser video) to the busiest video sharing sites YouTube is busier, but so is Daily Motion, MetaCafe, and many others. Check out a huge list of video sharing sites here. If it’s a teaser video or you want people to visit your website write your website in the description and also show it within the video.

6. Post your video in relevant discussion boards and forums. Read their rules first and don’t spam. Make sure what you post is relevant to the forum and choose the busiest forums to post in.

7. Tag and describe your videos It is important to put the keywords that describe your video in the associated tags and description so search engines know what your video is about.

8. Read the SEO guide for video The video search engine Blinkx published a guide on optimizing your video for search engine traffic.

9. Send out a press release If your video is especially news worthy you may want to send out an online Press Release.

10. Make videos regularly and create your own website and MySpace A one-off video may get popular but if you make videos regularly and place them on your own website AND MySpace you can build up a large following.

11. Enter competitions There are plenty of video competitions out there so look around and enter any you can for more exposure. For example the Network2 contest, BrioBox contest, Acceptable.tv etc.

12. Get help from your friends Get your friends to help by adding you to their MySpace, bookmarking your video on social bookmarking sites, adding your video as a favorite on YouTube, posting about your video on their site etc.

13. Choose the right thumbnail When ever you decide to watch a video it is heavily influenced by the thumbnail (the little picture of the video clip) that you see first. If you can choose the thumbnail do so and make it sharp, clear, eye catching and relevant to your video.

14. A catchy title A catchy title is just as important as a catchy thumbnail to encourage people to click that link to watch your video.

15. File Sharing This is often forgotten but if you are giving away your video for free why not distribute a copy for free over file sharing networks. Depending on the niche of your video this can work well. Don’t forget to include the name of your website in your video.

Social Media Optimization

SMO-Social Media Optimization is the method of social media activity with the interest of attracting unique visitors to website content. SMO is one of two online methods of website optimization; the other method is search engine optimization or SEO.

There are two main categories of SMO methods:-

(a) Social media features added to the content itself, including: RSS feeds, social news and sharing buttons, user rating and polling tools, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos

(b) Promotional activities in social media aside from the content being promoted, including: blogging, commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and posting status updates on social networking profiles.

Ideally, Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.

Social Media Optimisation (SMO), is not limited to marketing and brand building. These days smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (ie. product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more). Additionally, Social Media Optimization is oftentimes implemented to foster a community of the associated site, allowing for a healthy business to consumer relationship.

SEO As a Marketing Strategy

SEO-(Search Engine Optimization) is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals. Ideally a successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic, achieved through optimization techniques and not paid advertising, to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.

SEO may generate a return on investment ROI. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. (Some trading sites such as eBay can be a special case for this, it will announce how and when the ranking algorithm will change a few months before changing the algorithm). Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.

It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic. A top-ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org has suggested, "Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines. Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.

Why SEO Is Like a Seed

Why SEO Is Like a Seed

What is Google Latest Caffeine update !!

Google has lately announced that they will, in the near future, implement a new architecture, which is called Google Caffeine. This move by Google will almost directly affect many online businesses, simply because most websites will see a change in rankings.

So what is Google Caffeine anyway? It is not an update, but a whole new architecture, which Google has created in order to make search results more relevant and quicker. No one knows what the real algorithm is, but by reading many different peoples opinions on it as well as doing my own research, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. If you own a spammy website (or a bad quality website) with loads of junky inbound links, your website might not even be included in the index.

2. If you have a thin website, you will lose out big. Caffeine gives extra weight to content on-site.

3. If you have an authoritative website, you should be happy because you will most likely see an increase in rankings.

4. Google Caffeine just kicked the real-time result integration up one notch, which means that if you own a website which constantly generates new content, you will benefit from the new algorithm.

5. The new algorithms almost always benefits websites which have more sound on-site SEO.

6. You should get more content writers for your websites because more content is what the new algorithm seems to favor.

7. If you are operating your website to make a quick buck, Google Caffeine will surely disappoint you.

8. Snake oil SEO salesman are in for a huge trouble, because their techniques will be far more ineffective.

9. Contrary to popular belief, I think that good quality inbound links will still be hugely beneficial.

10. There will be a huge gap between websites which utilize cheap SEO techniques and the ones which utilize better quality SEO methods.

Does Google Caffeine cause major problems for SEO specialists? I do not think so. What Caffeine does however is to make sure that people looking for a quick fix to get the top rankings fail miserably.

SEO takes time and patience. Think of it as an investment in your business. If your website develops authority, you will get a much higher ranking (over time) in Caffeine which your less-savvy competition will not be able to overcome.

Effective ways to get more web traffic

Seven Effective ways to get more web traffic

Content Rich Website Pages

Content is still the king and it will be. To get more visitors for your website, to get an increased web traffic, you need to have the content which will appeal to the online mob. Providing information in all possible forms like text, images, video and conversation can bring in the best of all.

SEO – Search engine optimization

Once you have the content rich website, you need to apply some search engine optimization techniques for your individual pages which can then stand top in popular search engines. Top Rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN can bring in more and more visitors. The visitors driving through the search engines to the top ranked websites are the mostly the true and genuine net users who are in need of some genuine information. On page SEO consists of implementing some page related factors like a good title, description and popular keyword implementation within your content. To get popular keywords you require a thorough keyword research with respective to existing competition of those keywords.

SEO Tips

Article marketing

Article marketing has been a popular source of website promotion for couple of years now. It has been observed and experienced that the proper and ethical article marketing can bring excellent traffic to your website. To get increased web traffic you can register with article publishing websites, which allow you to post brief articles on various subjects. Taking up the subjects related to your website offerings, you can post various articles and include a back link to you website. The method if done properly and within limits avoiding too main links [the link spamming] can give you good web traffic.

Forum participation and posting

We can increase our web traffic by participating in website relevant forums and posting some interesting posts.Forums are another popular information sources on the web. Websites have provided exclusive spaces for people to discuss on various subjects. The forums are the joints on the net where people share their information, ask their queries on anything and everything they wish to know about. Making a proper use of this forums can also bring web traffic to your website. Registering through these forums associated with subjects you have on your website can be beneficial. Putting a website URL along with your posting or reply can help you get an increased web traffic.

Social Networking

There are many social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, Hi5 etc. This is the most popular media in today’s Internet world. Social networking website provide users to share their profiles, interests, videos, images and even converse. Making use of such website can boost your web traffic. You need to promote your website through informative discussions and groups, but avoiding spamming of links. Link spamming can hamper your website promotions and popularity.

Social Bookmarking

This is a simple but effective method of sharing your interests, online. The links that you liked and have Bookmarks can be publicized through these websites thus letting other web users know about new websites, new web pages which can be of their interests too. So more the people like your link, more it gets popular. The bookmark sharing should go natural way than manually emphasizing your website links.

Blog posting and promotions

Another option is to have a blogs of your own. Blogs can represent you and your thoughts in more informal way. You can spend time keying in your thoughts and views on the subjects that you like. You can have anything from poems to pictures, from videos to discussions. Using this media can also help you in getting an increased web traffic for your website.

Quality Link Building

Building up back links through the above various online methods can improve hit counts for your website. The only thing to remember here is not to overdo it in any media as overdoing doesn’t pay! So to get increased web traffic for your website, start with any of these methods and see the results for yourself!

Steps for Search Engine Optimization

These are the recommended steps for SEO:

Domain name selection- URL selection
competition Analysis
Keyword Research
File Naming Conventions
Title Attributes for Navigation
Meta Descriptions- Page Title, Desc, Keywords
Image Alt Attributes
Heading Tags
Crosslinking, interlinking
Keyword Density
Keyword Proximity
Keyword Order
Content Organization
Content Consistency and updation
Search Engines submissions
Off-Page optimization
Link building
Directory submissions for one way backlinks
web promotion through social media,blog, article etc
Tracking and monitoring of web traffic

SEO Glossary

These are some important and popular SEO Terms or Glossary are:

Search Terms
The words or phrases used by people when performing searches in search engines. Also called keywords, query terms or query.

Ad Pimp
A website that has too many ads on it in an obvious attempt to monetize the site.

Ad Rank
Google AdWords multiplies Quality Score (QS) and the maximum CPC (Max CPC) to reach an Ad Rank for each ad.

Added Value Affiliates
Provide a value-added service to visitors in addition to affiliate links and affiliate content.
AdSense Arbitrage
The process of buying traffic with pay-per-click programs, sending traffic to highly optimized Adsense pages and collecting the difference.

AdSense Link Clicking Bots
Automated programs that try to spoof random IP addresses to click through AdWords displayed on a site.

Adwords
Google’s - Cost Per Click (CPC) based advertising system.

Affiliate Sniper
People who save money on purchases by switching your affiliate ID with their own.

Agent Name
An agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page.

Aggregator
Software that lets you automatically download content to your computer

AIDA
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action: A term used to describe a formula to increase conversions.

Algorithm
A mathematical formula used to determine the value of a page when compared against others.

AlltheWeb
Second Tier search engine.

ALT Text
The text that appears when you put your mouse on top of an image or a picture.

AltaVista
Used to be the #1 search engine until Google came along.

Anchor Text
Also known as Link Text, the clickable text of a hyperlink.

AOL
America On-Line - Great for novice users, uses Google as part of it's search results.

API
Application Programming Interface.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Ask
Trying to be considered as one of the "Top Dogs" along with Yahoo and MSN, following Google.
ASP
Dual meanings: Microsoft Active Server Pages (filename.asp) or Application Service Provider (e.g. a provider of web based applications)
Astroturfing
The practice of faking, pushing or help to mold a “grass roots” movement.
ATF (Above the Fold)
This is the part of the user's screen that is always displayed.

Audioblog
An audio web log in MP3 format and available for download to an MP3 player or a computer.

Authority Site
A site that has many In-Bound links coming to it, and very little outbound links.

Back link
A text link to your website from another website.

Banned
A term that means a site has been removed from a search engine's index.
Banner Blindness
The act of web visitors to ignoring advertisements on the site whether it is a graphic or text ad.

BAP (Blog and Ping)
A method (ab)used to get the search engines to quickly index your blog's content.

Black Hat SEO
A term referring to the practice of “unethical” SEO. These techniques are used to gain an advantage over your competition.

Blind Traffic
This is traffic that is extremely low quality often by low relevance pages.

Blog
A "Web Log" that is updated frequently and is usually the opinion of one person. Also joking stands for Better Listing on Google.

Blogged
Term referring to have bookmarked a blog in your browser.

Blogola
The emerging practice of giving free stuff (from tote bags to travel junkets) to bloggers, in return for a sympathetic review.

Blook
A book that is serialized on a blog site. Chapters are published one by one as blog posts.
Bot
Short for robot. Often used to refer to a search engine spider.
Browser
Software application used to browse the internet - Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are the 2 most popular browsers.
BTF (Below the Fold)
This is the part of the user's screen that is hidden unless the user scrolls down on the page.

C Class IP
This is the third block of numbers found in an IP Address.
Cache
A copy of web pages stored within a search engine's database.

CAPTCHA
Stands for : Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Catablog
A blog that describes products for sale.

Click Arbitrage
Purchasing PPC ads and hoping that traffic leaves with a click on your ads.
Click Distance
The minimum number of clicks it takes a visitor to get from one page to another.
Click Flipping
The process of identifying and maximizing, multiple profit pathways, using PPC traffic and converting that traffic with Cost Per Action offers.
Click Pirates
Peuple who click on ads, knowingly and proudly, stealing from advertisers, as they encourage others to join with them in this quest.

Click Poison
The process of using blatant phrases such as "Cool New Idea" and "Click here for Travel Tips" to get a site buried on sites such as digg and netscape.
Click Through
The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's destination.
Clickprint
Derived from the amount of time a user spends on a Web site and the number of pages viewed, a clickprint is a unique online fingerprint that can help a vendor identify return visitors, curb fraud, and collect personal information for "customer service." aka invasive marketing
Cloaking
A technique that shows keyword stuffed apges to a search engine, but a real page to a human user.

Clustering
In search engine search results pages, clustering is limiting each represented website to one or two listings.
Collabulary
A collaborative vocabulary for tagging Web content. Like the folksonomies used on social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, collabularies are generated by a community. But unlike folksonomies, they're automatically vetted for consistency, extracting the wisdom of the crowds from the cacophony.

Content Networks
A nicer way to say Link Farm.
Content Repurposing
A nicer way to say scraping a site for content.
Contextual Link Inventory (CLI)
Text links that are shown depending on the content that appears around them.
Conversion Optimization
Transforms your site into a selling tool - your site logically leads visitors through the sales cycle and closes sale.
Conversion Rate
The number of visitors to a website that end up performing a specific action that leads to a conversion. This could be a product purchase, newsletter sign up or anything where information is submitted.

Converting Search Phrase
A phrase that converts traffic into money.
Cookie
Information stored on a user's computer by a website.
Copy
Text found on a web page.
Cost per Thousand
The cost for each thousand impressions of your ad.
CPA - (Cost Per Action)
The price paid for each visitor's actions from a paid search.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount it will cost each time a user selects your phrase or keyword.
Crawler
A bot from a search engine that reads the text found on a website in order to determine what the website is about.
Cross Linking
Having multiple websites linking to each other.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
Used to define the look and navigation of a website.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
The value associated to the amount of times a paid ad is viewed.
Cybrarian
A person who finds, collects, and manages information available on the Internet.
Dangling Link
This term is applied to a web page with no links to any other pages. Also known as an Orphan Page.

Dead Link
A hyperlink pointing to a non-existent URL.
Deep Crawl
Once a month, Googlebot will crawl all of the links it has listed in it's database on your site. This is known as the Deep Crawl.
Deep Link
A link on a website that is not reachable from the home page.

Delisting
When a site gets removed from the search index of a search engine.
Deliverable
In a contract, these are the expected results of the services provided.
diggbait
Purposely creating content to get traffic from digg.com
Directory
Usually human edited, a directory contains sites that are sorted by categories.
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
A declaration that protects digital works found online.

DMOZ
Also known as the Open Directory Project.
DNO
Domain Network Optimizers
DNS (Domain Name System)
A protocol that lets computers recognize each other through an IP Address, whereas the human sees a website URL.
Dooced
Fired for negative blogging about the company you work for.
Doorway Page
A web page designed to draw in Internet traffic from search engines, and then direct this traffic to another website.
Dynamic Site
A site that uses a database to store it's content and is delivered based on the variable passed to the page.
EPC (Earnings Per Click)
How much profit is made from each click from a paid ad.
EPV (Earnings Per Visitor)
The cost it takes to make profit from a site's total number of visitors.
Error 404
When a hyperlink is pointing to a location on the web that doesn't exist, it is called a 404 error.
Everflux
A term associated with the constant updating of Google's algorithm between the major updates.

External Link
A link that points to another website.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Question)
Commonly found on websites, FAQs answer questions that many users generally have about a product or service.
FFA (Free For All)
A site where anyone can list their link. Don't waste any time submitting your site to these places.
Filter Words
Words such as is, am, were, was, the, for, do, ETC, that search engines deem irrelevant for indexing purposes. Also known as Stop words.
Flog
A fake blog, a website pretending to be a blog but actually the creation of public relations firms, the mainstream media, or professional political operatives.

Folksonomy
The construction of open-ended organization systems that allow multiple internet users to sort web sites and their elements.
Frankenbuild
Pirated software cobbled together from beta versions and early releases.
Fresh Crawl
Utilizes FreshBot to review already indexed pages and any pages where the content has been updated.
FreshBot
A sister to GoogleBot, this spider crawls highly ranked sites on a very frequent basis.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
Technology that allows file transfers from a local machine to a remote host.
Geo Targeting
A very tactful way to employ cloaking.
GFNR
Google First Name Rank.

Google
Currently, the world's #1 search engine.
Google AdWords
Google's PPC program.
Google Bombing
A technique where using the same text anchor links, many people link to a certain page, usually of irrelevant content.
GoogleBot
The spider that performs a deep crawl of your site.
Googlebowling
To nudge a competitor from the serps.
Googlephobia
The fear of Google taking over everything.
Googlewashing
When your content is copied and inserted into someone else's site without permission or credit.
GOOGOL
This is the term that inspired the creators of Google to use this name - it means: 10100 = 1 followed by 100 zeros

Heading Tag
Tag that designates headlines in the text of a site.
Hidden Text
Text that can't be seen normally in a browser.

Hit
A single access request made to the server.
Hoax Marketing
The creation of false stories to drive traffic to a site.
htaccess
.htaccess is an Apache file that allows server configuration instructions.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language - the basics for all web coding.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
It is a generic, stateless, protocol which can be used for many tasks.
HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure)
It is a generic, stateless, protocol which can be used for many tasks, but has security features enabled to protect sensitive data.
Hub
A site that has many outbound links, and few sites linking back.

IBL (In-Bound Link)
A link residing on another site that points to your site.
ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association)
The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an international, non-profit organization of internet leaders working to make the internet safer for children, while respecting the rights of content providers.
IM (Instant Messaging)
As the name implies, this protocol allows for extremely fast communication over the Internet
Index
A term used to describe the database that holds all the web pages crawled by the search engine for each website.

Indexing Assistance
An even more advanced form of cloaking.
Information Architecture
The gathering, organizing, and presenting information to serve a purpose.
Informational Query
A query about a topic where the user expects to be provided with information on the topic.
Internal Link
A link that points to another page within the same site. Most commonly used for navigation.
Internet
An interconnected system of networks that connects computers around the world via the TCP/IP protocol.
Internet Traffic Optimizer (ITO)
A broader term for a person who optimizes not only for search engines but to get traffic from other sources such as blogs, RSS feeds and articles.
Interstitials
Loads a commercial in the background of a Web page. When the user exits the page, the user gets served a full-page, between-page advertisement in Flash, an animated gif or other rich media.
Invisible Web
Web Pages that are not reachable by search engines.

IP (Internet Protocol)
This protocol allows for machines to communicate to each other via the Internet.
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address)
how data finds its way back and forth from your computer to the internet.
IP Spoofing
A method of reporting an IP address other than your own when connecting to the internet.
js (JavaScript)
A scripting language that provides browser functionality.
Keyword Density
A ratio of the number of occurrences of a keyword or "keyword phrase" to the total number of words on a page.
Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)
The KEI compares the number of searches for a keyword with the number of search results to pinpoint which keywords should be the most effective for your campaign.
Keyword Phrase
A group of words that form a search query.
Keyword Stuffing
Using a keyword or "keyword phrase" excessively in a web page, perhaps in the text content or meta tags.
Klog
The term used when weblogs are used in knowledge management use cases.
KW (Key Words)
Used to define the terms a user might enter into a search engine to find information on their query.
Landing Page
Usually used in conjunction with a PPC campaign, they are call-to-action pages that prompt the user to engage the site.
Link
Also known as a hyperlink, it is the "clickable" area of text or image that allows for navigation on the Internet. Also the name of the main character og the Legend of Zelda video games.
Link Bait (Linkbaiting)
The process of getting users to link to your site.
Link Farm
A site that features links in no particular order which are totally unrelated to each other.
Link Maximization
The method of getting popular sites in your industry to link to your website.
Link Partner
A website who is willing to put a link to your site from their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.
Link Popularity
How many sites link to your website.
Link Text
The clickable part of a hyperlink. Also known as Anchor Text or Anchor Link.
Linkerati
People who are the target of linkbait - bloggers, forum users, social taggers, etc.
Listings
The results that a search engine returns for a particular search term.
Mashups
Commonly thought of as a way of merging two different items, or scraping more than one source.

Meta Description Tag
Hold the description of the content found on the page.


Meta Keywords Tag
Holds the keywords that are found on the page.
Meta Search Engine
A search engine that relies on the meta data found in meta tags to determine relevancy.
Meta Tag Masking
An old trick that uses CGI codes to hide the Meta tags from browsers while allowing search engines to actually see the Meta tags.
Meta Tags
Header tags that provide information about the content of a site.
Metadata
META Tags or what are officially referred to as Metadata Elements, are found within the section of your web pages.

Metajacking
The use of copyrighted names and slogans in META tags.
MFA (Made For AdSense)
A term that describes websites that are created entirely for the purpose of gaming Google Adsense to make money.
MFD
Made For Digg - Similar to MFA (Made for AdSense) sites, these sites try to get traffic from digg by having entire sites full of funny images or postings.
Microchunk
To split up a product or service sold traditionally as a package, offering each piece to buyers a la carte.

MicroFormats
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging). - taken from (http://microformats.org/about/)
Mirror Sites
A mirror site is a site that exacltly duplicates another site.
Mobisode
TV shows shot exclusively for mobile phones.
MoBlog
Short for "My Mobile Blog", a service from Blogger that when you send an email to go@blogger.com from your cellphone, it automatically creates a new blog.
Mociology
The study of how people adapt and use wireless technologies.
Most Wanted Response (MWR)
This is what you want your customer to do on your site.
Mowser
Short for Mobile Browser.
MP3
Stands for “MPEG Third Layer.” A standard for storing and transmitting music in digital format across the Internet.
MSN (MicroSoft Network)
Microsoft's search engine.
Narrowcasting
Creating a program aimed at a small and specific niche or group of people.
Natural Listing
A listing that appears below the sponsored ads, also known as Organic Listings.
Navigational Query
A query that normally has only one satisfactory result.
NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
Usually required as part of a contract to protect the company engaging in services.
Necroing
The act of posting to old threads to bring them back up. Also known as "bumping".
Niche
A specialized segment of a market that is usually geared towards one specific purpose.
Niche Aggregators
Another way of saying Spam site.
NOFOLLOW
An attribute used in a hyperlink to instruct search engines not to follow the link. (And pass PageRank)
Off-Page Factors
Factors that alter search engine positions that occur externally from other website's. By having many links from other sites pointing to yours is an example of Off-Page Factors.
On-Page Factors
Factors that determine search engine positions that occur internally within a page of a website. This can include site copy, page titles, and navigational structure of the site.
OOP (Over Optimization Penalty)
A theory that applies if one targets only 1 keyword or phrase, and the search engines view the linking efforts to be spam.
OpenRank (Open Source PageRank)
A suggestion to make a web-wide ranking system as opposed to Google's Pagerank.
Opt-In
When a user willing joins a subscription to a newsletter or some other service.
Organic Listing
The natural results returned by a search engine.
Orphan Page
A page that has a link to it, but has no links to any other sites.
Outbound Link
A link from your site to any other site.
Page View
Anytime a user looks at any page on a website through their browser.
PageMatch
A cost-per-click advertising program that serves your site's ad on a page that contains related content.
PageRank Drain
When a page has no outbound links, it causes pagerank drain because it cannot pass any value to another web page.
Paid Inclusion
A submission service where you pay a fee to a search engine and the search engine guarantees that your website will be included in its index. Paid inclusion programs will also ensure that your website is indexed very fast and crawled on regular basis. It can also be used as a term to include fee based directory submission.
Pay-Per-Click Management
Strategy, Planning and Placement of targeted keywords in the paid search results.
PFI (Pay For Inclusion)
A system in which a site pays to get a guaranteed listing.
PFP (Pay For Performance)
A system in which payment for services is only made when a conversion takes place.
Podcasting
A Podcast is just an audio file that is syndicated via an RSS feed, that is downloaded and listened to with a computer or a portable device such as an iPod.
Podcatching
The process of subscribing to podcasts.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
A technique where placements are determined by how much id bid on a particular keyword or phrase. Can become very expensive.
PR (Google's PageRank)
Google's unique system of how it tries to predict the value of a pages rank.
Pro Blogging
A person who makes a living by blogging.
Query
An inquiry that is entered into a search engine in order to get results.
Rank - Ranking
The actual position of a website on a search engine results page for a certain search term or phrase.
Reciprocal Link
When two sites link to each other.
Redirects
Either server side or scripting language that tells the search engine to go to another URL automatically.
Referral Spam
Sending multiple requests to a website spoofing the header to make it look like real traffic is being sent to another site.
Referrer
A referrer is the URL of the page that the visitor came from when he entered a website.
Relevance Rank (RR)
A system in which the search engine tries to determine the theme of a site that a link is coming from
Relevancy
Term used to describe how close the content of a page is in relation to the keyword phrase used to search.
Results Page
When a user conducts a search, the page that is displayed, is called the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, which stands for "search engine results page."
RFP (Request for Proposal)
Used to send out to multiple companies in order to get a list of services to be delivered and at what cost.
Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
Applications such as Ajax and Flash that provide a better user experience by delivering content in an on-demand web environment.
Robot
Often used to refer to a search engine spider.
ROC (Return on Customer)
The value each customer brings.
ROI (Return on Investment)
The cost it takes to in order to see success on your marketing investment.
RSS Feed (Rich Site Summary or Rich Site Syndication)
RSS feeds use an XML document to publish information.
Scope Creep
When the contracted amount of work to be completed changes because of client changes or technology advances.
SE (Search Engine)
A web based information retrieval program.
Search Engine
Best described as a database of websites users can search using search terms. Every search engine has its own algorithm which defines how the results are displayed.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The practice of getting a website found on the internet
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The act of altering code to a website to have optimum relevance to a search engine spider.
Search Friendly Optimization (SFO)
As the term implies, this is the process of making a website search engine friendly.
Search Query
The text entered into the search box on a search engine.
SEOlebirty
Famous people in the world of search.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The results that are displayed after making a query into a search box.

SFO
Search Friendly Optimization.
Sitemap (Site Map)
A page that lists all of the critical navigation points of a website.
Slurp
The name of Yahoo's Search Engine Spider.
Smishing
Phishing via text message. Smishers bombard cell phones with SMS versions of standard phishing solicitations, directing victims to Web sites that install spyware on their computers.
Snippet
The text displayed from a search query.
Social Media Poisoning
A technique where unscrupulous marketers will try to sabotage a competitor's web site by engaging in social media communications and link seeding/spamming tactics that they hope will spark a rash of bad publicity, and maybe even trigger some sort of rankings and/or reputational search penalty against their competitor.

SPAM
Unwanted email or irrelevant content delivered. (or as some say, Site Placed Above Mine)
Spam Cannon
A term used in conjunction with sites that use email sign-ups for spamming purposes - the latimes.com is an example.
Spamming
The act of delivering unwanted messages to the masses.
Spamouflage
The method or result of concealing or disguising search engine spam to make it appear to be legitimate.
Spider
The software that crawls your site to try and determine the content it finds.
Spiderbaiting
A technique that makes a search engine spider find your site.
Splash Page
A page displayed for viewing before reaching the main page.
Stemming
The main part of a word to which affixes are added.
Stickiness
How influential your site is in keeping a visitor on your page.
Stop Word
A stop word is a "common word" which is ignored in a query because the word makes no contribution to the relevancy of the query.
Stop Word
Stop words are very common words such as ‘a, the, and & that’ and are filtered out of your search query. Search engines do this in order to try to serve the best results for a user query.
Strategic Linking
A thought out approach to getting websites to link to your site.
Submission
The process of submitting URL(s) to search engines or directories.

SWOT
A methodic way of identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and of examining the Opportunities and Threats you face.
Syntax
The proper use of language when coding a website.
Tag Soup
Tag soup is HTML code written without regard for the rules of HTML structure and semantics.
The Deep Web
The content in databases that rarely shows up in Web searches. It is estimated that there are 500 billion Web pages that could potentially be hidden.
Theme
What the site's main topic is about.
Thin Affiliates
Doorways that send visitors to affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user.
Title Tag
It should be used to describe the web page using targeted keywords using no more that 60 characters, including spaces.
TLD (Top Level Domain)
Most commonly thought of as a ".com", also includes ".org" and ".edu"
TOM (Tactical Online Marketing)
The process of informing the customer of your services from various sources.
TOS (Terms of Service)
Usually found in a contract, also known as the contracts "deliverables".

Tracking URL
Usually used in PPC campaigns, it is a URL that has special code added to it so that results can be monitored.
Traffic
The number of visitors a website receives over a given period. Usually reported on a monthly basis.
Transactional Query
A query where the user expects to conduct a transaction.
Trusted Feed
A form of paid inclusion which uses bulk a XML feed to directly send website content to search engines for indexing. The feed can be optimized so that your website can take advantage better rankings and therefore more traffic
TrustRank
A method of using a combination of limited human site review in conjunction with a search engines algorithm.
Typosquatting
Relies on typographical errors by users to serve up websites that look like Google to launch viruses and trojans to unsuspecting users.

Unique Visitor
When a user visits a website, his/her IP address is logged so if he/she returns later on that day, the visit won’t be counted as a unique visit but as a page impression.

Universal Search
Launched on May 16, 2007, this is Google's attempt to deliver the best result from the web. This can include video, images, news, podcasts or any other form of digital content.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Commonly referred to as the domain name, this is how humans navigate through the Internet, whereas computers use IP addresses.
User Agent
A User agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page. (Another term for Agent Name)
USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Sometimes mistakenly defined as Unique Selling Point. The Unique Selling Proposition concept was first developed by Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Agency. Basically, it's what sets you apart from your competition.
VEO
Visitor Enhanced Optimization
VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)
VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number.
Web Saturation
How many pages of your site are indexed by the search engines collectively.
Webneck
Slang term for a person who spends most of their time on the internet, most of their friends are netpals, and they are uncomfortable if they can't get online.
White Hat SEO
A term that refers to ethical practice of SEO methodologies that adhere to search engine Terms of Service.
White Paper
A White Paper is your statement about how a problem should be solved.

Whois Data
Registration data such as the company name, address and telephone number when registering a domain name.
Whore Trains
A list of people on MySpace that you add yourself to and keep reposting the list so that you can get a lot of people requesting to be your friends.
Wi-Fi (certification mark)
Used to certify the interoperability of wireless computer networking devices.
WikiSoldiers
Users who enjoy the process of building and defending wikipedia.
Wilf
What was I looking for?
WWW (World Wide Web)
Another term to describe the Internet.
XML (Extensible Markup Language (filename.xml))
A scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document.

Yahoo!
The #2 Search Engine in the world.

Zeitgeist (Google Zeitgesit)
A service provided that shows snippets of the emerging and declining trends of what people are searching for through the Google search engine.