Overture tool now shows May results

PPC SEO No Comments
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The previous post contained a count for the word “seo” done a few hours ago, when January results were being shown. Now I see May 2007 counts:

Searches done in May 2007
Count Search Term
8585 seo
3105 seo sydney
2128 engine optimization search seo
1572 australia seo
930 seo services
745 analysis seo
701 design seo web
490 expert seo
469 company seo
464 seo software
450 consultant seo
430 firm seo
430 organic seo
399 seo tool
382 melbourne seo
379 australian seo
355 seo service
352 free seo tool
336 company seo uk
328 accessible design melbourne seo site web
317 professional seo
308 seo specialist
307 design seo site web
302 east north seo
296 audit seo
294 company seo services
289 accessible australia design seo site web
284 consulting seo
283 seo services uk
276 brisbane company seo
263 cost low melbourne seo
254 affordable design melbourne seo site web
250 brisbane seo services
250 melbourne organic seo
246 affordable melbourne seo
243 cumulus seo
241 affordable melbourne organic seo
238 affordable seo werribee
238 bay byron seo
237 design melbourne seo site web
235 affordable seo
231 budget melbourne seo
226 australia organic seo
219 affordable organic seo
210 brisbane seo
199 affordable australia organic seo
183 australia budget seo
183 cost low seo
183 optimization seo
179 affordable australia seo
178 affordable design seo site web
178 michigan seo
177 accessible design seo site web
175 organic seo werribee
171 budget seo
168 design seo site web werribee
162 affordable australia design seo site web
160 internet marketing seo
157 australia design seo site web
156 seo smart
154 marketing seo
150 affordable seo services
150 australia expert seo
148 seo werribee
137 company professional seo
135 business seo small
133 cheap seo
127 analysis audit seo site web
127 consultancy seo
121 company marketing seo
113 elite seo
111 dynamic seo
108 company design seo web
104 engine search seo
104 nashville seo web
100 dw23 seo
99 development seo site web
97 promotion seo
93 australia seo services
91 consultant seo sydney
91 seo training
90 expert michigan seo
85 company seo sydney
85 design seo sydney web
78 pakistan seo
75 adelaide seo
73 seo tip
71 hosting seo
69 new seo zealand
68 australia cost low seo
65 learn seo
59 positioning seo services
56 ask expert seo
56 optimisation seo
55 agency seo
54 seo suite
52 joomla seo
51 consultant online secure seo
49 link news.com seo www.free
48 sem seo

Overture keyword suggestion tool returns

PPC SEO No Comments
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SEOs everywhere can unslash their wrists. I thought I’d blog this as not many people seem to have noticed that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool (known as Keyword Assistant in Australia) has limped back to some semblance of normality. I say “limped back” because most searches I tried still show the search counts from January 2007, whereas they normally show the previous month’s figures.

This tool is widely used by SEOs and PPC bid managers to find search volumes or related search terms. It only counts searches done on Yahoo! properties, so the total search count across Google, Live Search and lesser engines is anyone’s guess. In Australia, Yahoo’s search share is about 15%, so multiplying the count by 6 is near enough of a guesstimate.

The second flaw with the tool is that it combines singular and plurals, which can make a difference in many cases when trying to establish which form is more popular. (Of course, one can run a short PPC campaign and look at the impression counts.)

The third flaw is that some phrases are rearranged in alphabetical order, e.g. “estate real sydney” — which is easy to spot, but “melbourne seo” isn’t right. When I last tested this in Google, “seo melbourne” received more impressions.

Here are (some of) the results for “seo” using the tool:

Searches done in January 2007

(The dingo ate the entries above… 🙁 )

The fourth flaw is that it combines Australian/British spellings with US spellings. So, in countries such as Australia, where US English spellings are used by the ignorant, one needs to cater for this in the SEO sense. Unfortunately, the tool would have you think that nobody in the UK or Australia searches for “jewellery” but they do search for “jewelry”.

A better tool is supposedly on the way but, in the meantime, use it while you can. Thanks, Yahoo! for the tool!

Affiliates affected by AdWords policy change

Affiliate Marketing PPC No Comments
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Many affiliate marketers use Google AdWords to get traffic to their pages. Some indulge in arbitrage, where a cheap PPC click brings traffic that might click an AdSense ad on the landing page that delivers a greater payout per click.

A recent post in the Inside AdWords blog brings bad news to some affiliates and others who fall in these categories. They will be awarded low Quality Scores if they have:

  • Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information.
  • Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads.
  • Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer.

It would be interesting to know if such sites can be determined algorithmically. How can a human determine that a site has a “sole purpose” and no more?

Google is getting serious about quality and this should silence some sceptics who say that Google doesn’t mind who clicks an ad on any site — The following types of sites will no longer quality for cheap clicks:

  • eBook sites that show frequent ads
  • “Get rich quick” sites
  • Comparison shopping sites
  • Travel aggregators
  • Affiliates that don’t comply with Google affiliate guidelines.

I don’t know what is meant by a “frequent ad” — do they show ads frequently? Where? Again, this list is bound to include some advertisers who don’t see themselves as dodgy.

NetRegistry Dumps MSN/Live Search

Search Engines SEO No Comments
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NetRegistry’s latest newsletter had an intriguing headline, “NetRegistry Ditches Microsoft Search”, which sounds as important as the EU fining the software giant. It is quite a non-event, but worthy of some discussion.

NetRegistry offers a URL submission service called GoLive, which included submission to Google, Yahoo and MSN (Live). It will no longer submit to Live Search because it found that submissions take about 42 days to take effect, whereas Google takes 14 days and Yahoo takes 22 days.

Submitting a URL only to search engines is harmless but not necessary, as long as you can get a link from some other web site that is already known to the search engines, because the target website will be discovered through that link. Perhaps if you have no link friends, a submission service might help. When I was at Melbourne IT, I introduced products that included both directory and search engine submissions because some small business sites have no link providers and they could be waiting for a long time to get that first link.

Getting back to Microsoft Live Search, a lot of SEOs have been saying for a while that MSN Search (now Live Search) is both a poor search experience and it is harder to get listed there, or to be crawled fully. I have no clue what’s happening in Redmond, but 2-3 years ago they had a focus group called Search Champs. I wasn’t invited, but some well-known and capable search marketers were, and they had a great time listening to and sharing their views during their many on-site meetups. Who knows if any of their input was used, because I haven’t met anyone who thinks highly of Live Search as it stands today.

I am monitoring many tens of third-party sites for a research project (not much SEO work done) and I can confirm that Google picks up new sites within hours, not days, while Yahoo takes about two weeks. Ranking success for some of the noncompetitive Google sites came within a week and in most cases within a month, although very competitive sites will need off-page link love that could take longer. Yahoo ranking success came within two weeks for the noncompetitive sites. Barely one or two sites have ranked below 100 in Live Search after six weeks. Competitive sites take much longer, as they do in the other two search engines.

Will Live Search ever be a major player, disregarding the users whose home page is still set to MSN/ninemsn? I would like to think so, as competition is great for users.

Indian SEO Companies

SEO 4 Comments
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An unfortunate spat has unfolded between NYC-based SEO company MrSEO and Pandia, on account of this article: On outsourcing search engine optimization to India. Pandia is sponsored by eBrandz, as mentioned in the article, a point that seems to have provoked this unusual, generalised commentary on Indian SEO.

Writes Alan:

“If you want paraphrased, stolen content; spammy, outdated linkbuilding methods or cookie cutter solutions to your site’s unique problems, you’re probably better off with an SEO firm from India.”

I agree with Alan only up to a point and I would not generalise so strongly. In any country, including mine, there are many individuals who claim to be SEOs. Most of them appear to believe their own marketing collateral. I recently helped a travel website who had paid an Australian company for “SEO work” that included incorporating licensed content from Lonely Planet. Perfectly legal, perfectly rendered — and a perfect duplicate of the original text. Guess what? The travel site ranks nowhere for its desired keyphrases — no thanks to the so-called SEO who should have pointed out the fundamental flaw in that tactic.

SEO outsourcing is not the sole monopoly of India and if I examined, say, Egyptian or Russian SEO sites I am sure I could find something to criticise.

You can find bad SEOs in any country and the problem is exacerbated by the nature of the beast — there is no generally accepted measure of “good SEO” and there is relatively little authoritative training material. If you are going to the Webmasterworld conference in December, you might hear a thousand, overlapping opinions on what good SEO means. Incidentally, I am speaking about SEO101, sharing the podium with Bruce Clay and Bill Slawski.

Although there are many Indian English writers with impeccable writing skills, they are not in the SEO writing business. I know just one excellent India-based writer who is in the content writing game and there seem to be quite a few at Chilli Breeze, but the latter don’t come cheap. SEOs in general tend to have a web developer or web design background and have “picked up” SEO along the way.

I have outsourced some content writing and linking work to a few Indian SEO companies including eBrandz in Mumbai, whose offices I have visited. I know exactly what I need to be done, so I get quality work. Some of these companies manage the SEO and PPC work for major European and US companies and I can only assume that their clients are happy. Some of them work for US and Australian SEO companies, so many customers never know where some of the SEO work is done.

I believe that some US SEOs are pricing themselves out of the market — some “experts” charge US$500/hour — great if you can get it, but this could be driving some customers to seek cheaper options offshore. In my hands-on SEO days I picked up a lot of US and UK customers because Australian SEO pricing is in-between Indian and US/UK pricing and the time difference and language differences aren’t too severe.

Let’s see how this topic unfolds.

Does client-side JavaScript act like a 301?

SEO No Comments
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Before you shoot me for saying that, take a look at the following SERPs for apcug.org (I am on its board but not involved with the decision that moved it to apcug.net two years ago) and check the total page count in the index:

Compare with the results for apcug.net

The Google and Live results show the same count for .net and .org, which is unlikely. Yahoo’s results are quite different and more likely to be accurate.

The webmaster of the day had placed a client-side JS “location.replace” statement in index.htm of the .org, but that should be invisible to the spiders, right? There is no meta refresh in the page or a 301 via other means. The .org page returns a 200 header response, as it should.

Why are G and L showing the same indexed page counts for .org and .net?
Please comment.

Dynamic URLs – Yahoo!

Search Engines SEO No Comments
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Yahoo! Site Explorer has added a feature that enables you to specify your URLs in a more search-engine friendly manner.  If the site has been submitted to Yahoo and authenticated, you will notice a new button called Dynamic URLs.

Dynamic URLs

If my URLs looked like this:  http://example.com/store?prod=1&sid=23yadh56, I could use this tool to strip out the “sid” (session ID), which is a good thing. I could also rewrite some URLs such as http://example.com/blog?src=rssfeed to read http://example.com/blog?src=yhoo_srch.

It is a good option, but would I use it?  If Yahoo! were the only search engine, then yes, but since there are three big SEs out there and any number of lesser engines, I’d rather use mod_rewrite at the Apache level to fix all my URLs. Read more about Dynamic URLs at the Yahoo! site.

SearchCamp Chennai Unconference

PPC Search Engines SEO 1 Comment
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I stumbled upon this event (http://searchcamp.in) by accident and then found that two of my friends – Milind Mody of eBrandz and Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm are among the people organising an exciting event in Chennai (aka Madras) on October 6 and 7. I note other well-known names who will also help to make it a success.

Billed as an unconference, it is a low-priced (Rs 500) opportunity to connect with SEO and PPC exponents and experts. Check out the website. I cannot be there but wish them all the best.

Comment: They seem to use the term “SEM” to mean PPC and other paid click solutions such as CPA, but then that is what the main ad networks want people to believe. For those of us from traditional marketing backgrounds or expert watering holes such as Webmasterworld, SEM = SEO, PPC, blogs, press releases, articles etc – anything that helps your marketing through a search engine.

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