Vol. 2, No. 11
November 2001




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Academy Newsletter

Editor
Terry Plank

Head Writer
Robin Nobles

Contributing Writer
Bill Gentry
Natalia Kim

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 Academy of Web Specialists
 NEWSLETTER

Search engine positioning, optimization and traffic generation is the focus of the Academy newsletter.

In This Month's Issue...


Top Tips from Some of the Best SEOs in the Business
...Learn from the Pro's in this Informative Article
By Robin R. Nobles

Have you ever wondered what types of strategies the top search engine optimizers use for their own sites or the sites of their clients?

In an industry like the search engine industry, where no one can possibly know everything, it’s important to learn from trusted experts in the field. So for this article, I interviewed some of the best SEOs in the business in an effort to share their winning strategies with you.

Important facts about these tips

Please remember that these tips aren’t necessarily the fundamental strategies that should always be used when working on a Web page, such as including your keyword phrase in your title tag or capitalizing on headline tags or link text. Instead, many of these tips are meant to be applied to the top of the basic strategies in an effort to give you an edge over the competition.

Also, these tips aren’t in any particular order of importance. The first tip in any category isn’t necessarily the most important, and the last tip certainly isn’t the least important.

I’ve identified each tip with the SEO who wrote it. Then, at the end of the article, in alphabetical order, I've highlighted the various SEOs who participated in this article, along with brief information about their qualifications.

Enjoy these tips from some of the best SEO’s in the business!

Basics

  • Stick to the basics of search engine optimization for your existing Web pages (i.e. optimized titles, header content, keyword density, the order your text is presented in the code, etc.) before you move into supplementary techniques like doorway pages, doorway domains, and the like. The odds are that if you have not mastered the basic skills to optimize your existing Web pages, you are not going to be able implement supplementary techniques successfully. (J.K. Bowman with Spider Food)

  • My advice to everyone is always to remember the basic, simple things that have not changed rather than get lost in details that may change on a regular basis. I find that even very advanced people sometimes need a reminder of the basics to see the forest from the trees. (Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch)

Content

  • Focus on building useful "research content." Remember that the Internet is constantly being used for all types of research. Take advantage of this and develop content that will appeal to the people who are doing the research. What is it that people want to know? People are looking for "how to" articles, "inspirational" articles, reference material, financial advice, technical advice, comparison charts, phone numbers, historical information, serial numbers, and the list goes on and on. Don't just do up a general page on a topic. Do a little research. Talk to some real people and see what it is that fascinates a specific group. Look for a newsgroup and see what they talk about. From your research, try checking a few keywords in WordTracker. From WordTracker, you can discover trends that people are using to conduct research. If you have a garden center online, perhaps you’ll want to build a content rich doorway page that offers detailed blue prints for building a birdhouse or an article on "How to attract hummingbirds to your garden," etc. If you have an online jewelry store, perhaps you’ll want to offer articles on how to determine the real value of a diamond or a tutorial on Victorian gemstones. (John Alexander with WorldSites.net)

  • Most people do not understand how to tune a page. Many indicate that pages can only have 300 words, or repeat keywords 3 times, or not use comments. All of these are incorrect. The content for each keyword takes on a unique profile, and each profile can change based upon other profiles. My top ranked page for "search engine optimization" exceeds 4000 words, and violates all conventional wisdom. So, focus on proper content that uses keywords appropriately in the title, description, keyword tag, headings, alt tags, comments, links, and across your displayed text. Do this well and you should rank well. (Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, LLC)

  • If your site makes heavy use of graphics and has no substantial real text content, this will severely impact your ability to get good search engine listings because there is nothing for the search engines to read when they index your Web site. You should consider redesigning some of your pages to include real text rather than graphical text. (Paul Bruemmer with Web Ignite)

  • Customize content for each page. Every URL is a potential entry point. Keep content in the header tags focused and terse. Simplicity is so important in search engine optimization. (Marshall Simmonds with About.com)

  • Use cgi-based date scripts to keep the site fresh. (Ginette Degner with SearchBrokers.com)

Directories

  • Proper submission to the major directories is critical. One of the most significant changes in search engine marketing in recent years has been the rise in popularity of human-reviewed directories and catalogs like LookSmart, Yahoo, andDirectory. Some search engines prominently display directory listings for many popular searches. MSN is a prime example. Some of the other major engines also list directory results prominently, or at least emphasize them in various ways. You can recognize directory listings since they are often called "Web Site" results rather than "Web Page" results. Once you submit to a directory, it's difficult to go back and correct mistakes later. Some of them like Yahoo and LookSmart charge you for the privilege of simply being reviewed for inclusion. Therefore, it's of utmost importance to get it right the first time. (Brent Winters with FirstPlace Software)

  • Get listed with the human-powered directories of Yahoo, LookSmart and theDirectory. If this is all you do, you'll get plenty of traffic. All either get lots of visitors or "power" other sites that get plenty of visitors. In addition, getting listed with them helps crawler-based search engines locate your site and perhaps help it rank better, because of the link importance these sites provide to you. (Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Watch)

Diversify

  • It's important to experiment and diversify your optimization strategies. The algorithms of each engine change frequently to keep content fresh -- so should your techniques. It is important to abide by all the rules and regulations as set forth by the engines to avoid spamdexing. (Marshall Simmonds with About.com)

  • Search engine relationships are complex and change often (http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf). Being well ranked in several search engines takes a significant effort, all of which change how data is presented and generally without much warning. Too many sites put all of their eggs in one basket and a simple change or error at that one engine can shut your entire company down for months (Remember when AltaVista accidentally dropped 5,000,000 sites from their index in late 1999? Some firms had no sales for weeks). So be sure to focus on being well ranked across many search engines and directories instead of exceptionally well ranked in only one. Go became GoTo overnight. (Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, LLC)

Due Diligence

  • First comes content, then optimizing your pages for the search engines, checking your HTML code, etc. Next comes the submission of your pages to the search engines. Possibly resubmit your older content, depending on ranking and various other factors. (Introduce at least some minor changes before you do.) Follow the rules of the craft. Later, check your logs daily. Learn how to recognize search engine spiders to see if your submissions were successful. Check out all search engine generated hits to determine: (a) your ranking, and (b) what people are really searching for and finding you under – you may be in for a surprise or two on that score. (Ralph Tegtmeier, a.k.a. Fantomaster)

  • Read, read, read – learn the trade from scratch. Test out stuff – your mileage may vary immensely from the gurus' – every Web site is different, or, at least, should be. (Ralph Tegtmeier, a.k.a. Fantomaster)

Frames, JavaScript, and Dynamic Delivery Systems

  • Framesets need NOFRAMES content added to the FRAMESET section. Also, sites using frames, image maps, or JavaScript navigation do not get properly indexed by search engines because the frame containing links to other pages within the site gets overlooked. A remedy for this is to create a redundant set of text links in as many of the frameset component pages as is practical, such as at the bottom of your main content page. (Paul Bruemmer with Web Ignite)

  • Build crawler-friendly. Avoid using frames or dynamic delivery systems, and ensure that you have good internal linkage between your pages. (Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Watch)

  • Consider putting your JavaScript in external files. This also will streamline your source code and make your pages load faster and more search engine friendly. (Bill Gentry with The Selling Source)

Keywords

  • Know what you want to be found for. You should know the top two or three terms that are most important to your Web site and have incorporated them into a 25-word description that doesn't use marketing hype, which can then be submitted to human-powered directories. You should also know a list of the top 10 to 100 terms you'd like to be found for and ensure that you have pages within your Web site with good, solid content for these terms to please the crawlers. (Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch)

  • Most site owners do not understand how people search and find their sites. It is easy to select keywords that describe your products (articulated haulers), but you have to consider how those wanting your product and do not understand your jargon search (dump trucks). So, when selecting the keywords to be used in your content, tags, and elsewhere for any SEO project, it is vital to start with an optimal list of traffic generating keywords. It is often easy to be well ranked for terms that are never used in a search. (Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, LLC)

  • Don't make the mistake of picking the wrong keywords. Nothing is more disappointing than taking the time to achieve top rankings and then seeing no increase in traffic from all your efforts. Also, don't pick keywords that are too popular or broad like "games" or "entertainment." You'll not only get visitors that are far less likely to buy your product, but the amount of work needed to gain that ranking will not be worth the trouble. You'll then join the ranks of misinformed critics screaming "search engine optimization doesn't work - don't waste your time!" SE optimization works and works well, IF you take the time to do it right. (Brent Winters with FirstPlace Software)

  • Research your search phrases. If you can, also check your referrer logs or other traffic tracking program to help you. If you don't have referrer logs, install a traffic tracking program such as Web Trends Live on your site and let it gather stats for you for a couple of months before you decide on your search phrases. A program such as this or your referrer logs will tell you which search phrases are currently bringing you search engine traffic. You might want to use some of these for your optimization, since you already know that people find you using these. Then, check your rankings for the search phrases that you researched from WordTracker, or other search phrase research tools, as well as those from your traffic tracking program or referrer logs. I suggest this because you may find that you are already doing fairly well with some phrases and you may not want to mess with those. (Bill Gentry with The Selling Source)

  • Build focused pages around "real world" queries. Use phrases exactly how they are typed into a search engine, such as "How can I" and "Where can I." You will notice that sites with FAQ pages like this can end up garnering an awful lot of top placements and traffic. (Ginette Degner with SearchBrokers.com)

  • Searching for the key phrase in Yahoo and noting the Yahoo Categories returned can suggest key themes and words useful to the site for optimization as well as showing the quantity and quality of the competition. (David Johnson and Annam Manthiram with Position Research)

  • I like to thoroughly explore all possibilities when researching keyword phrases. I like to think of keyword phrases as "fuel" for specific topics. After much study using a resource like WordTracker (one of my favourite tools), I like to identify several "high performance" keyword phrases. Then I try not to simply settle for the first ideas that come to mind for how that topic might be employed. I try to "think outside of the box." Learn to develop topical content with a unique spin on it, always keeping the visitors in mind. In a nutshell, understand your visitors’ demand for useful topics and then give them what it is they are seeking. Focus should not just be on how to get tons of general traffic to a page. Use page optimization strategies to create useful pages with content that is "in demand" by a target audience. When you start thinking this way, it has a wonderful compound effect on making actual sales or achieving your site objectives. Isn't this why you started a Web site in the first place? (John Alexander of WorldSites.net)

  • Check log files for user country location and most often used keywords in search engine search. This may demonstrate the need to offer the site in another language (or to provide a link to Alta Vista’s Babelfish or the Lycos equivalent) if there are a lot of hits from another country. Knowing the keywords used to arrive at the site helps to decide on variations and changes to the site theme. (David Johnson and Annam Manthiram with Position Research)

  • Did you know that the KEI Factor used in WordTracker is an excellent guideline to follow? According to WordTracker, an excellent keyword phrase has a KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) of 400+. Are you having trouble finding appropriate phrases with high KEI factors? Try using one single word (appropriate for your site) in the "comprehensive search" feature. I very often extract excellent phrases with a KEI level well into the thousands or even into the hundreds of thousands. Always ensure that the search phrases you select are solidly related to site content. (John Alexander of WorldSites.net)

Link Popularity

  • Submit to link popularity-based engines LAST after you have had a chance to build your inbound and outbound links up. (Ginette Degner with SearchBrokers.com)

  • Examine your internal link structure carefully. Even for large Web sites, to the extent that it is possible, you want every Web page linking to every other page. Complex linking structures will work to your disadvantage. (J.K. Bowman with Spider Food)

  • Build links. Search for the top terms you want to be found for. Review the sites that come up. Visit those sites and ask the non-competitive ones if they'll swap links with you. These sites are important because the search engines themselves are telling you they are important, by ranking them highly. That means links from them can help you in link analysis systems. It also means that if these sites get visitors, you may get visitors who follow links out of them. (Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Watch)

  • Link exchange with other like sites, and be sure to interlink your pages. (Rocky Rawstern)

  • Develop your inbound link popularity the old fashioned way, one link at a time. An investment of just 10 minutes per day to this with a personalized e-mail to Web site owners of similar and significant sites will produce immediate results. And you will never have to worry about the risk associated with link popularity programs. (J.K. Bowman with Spider Food)

  • Upgrade your site to an info hub by offering prime outgoing links - such as a search engine portal. This will help boost your site's ranking with the search engines. Contrary to popular opinion, linkage counts both ways, incoming and outgoing. Check out this free distributed search engine portal: http://searchenginebase.com/. The signup page is here: http://searchenginebase.com/sbfreeportal0.html. Link to lots of useful sites not directly competing with yours. Request reciprocal links. Create more domains and interlink them all. Avoid mere link farms - there's a ongoing witchhunt targeting those currently. Also, check your linkage regularly. (Ralph Tegtmeier, a.k.a. Fantomaster)

Make it a Game and Have Fun!

  • Make a game of it. I like to akin SEO to playing chess. It's a matter of thinking three steps ahead of your competition. For those who do this, the nip and tuck battle for the #1 spot can be quite fun. In fact, it's addictive! So, when you think about SEO, don't just think about it in terms how much money you might make. If you truly become interested in the art and competitive element of search engine optimization, you will be incredibly more successful. (J.K. Bowman with Spider Food)

Newsletters, Forums, and Lists

  • The best thing you can do to help your search engine efforts is to stay informed via newsletters and forums. Some of those will cost a great deal of money, and others will be free, but staying informed of search engine developments is important. (Brett Tabke with Webmaster World)

  • Participate in discussion forums. Promote on Usenet via your sig file if you can answer (or ask) questions in areas you are either proficient or at least interested in. Contribute to mailing lists. (Ralph Tegtmeier, a.k.a. Fantomaster)

Online Marketing

  • Generate lots of fresh, useful content. Keep your blatant marketing activities on economy drive (pardon the pun), and be subtle about your promotion. People will notice, and will favor, less dumb hysteria, moreess and honesty. Admit to mistakes if you make them (as you're bound to), but don't cringe and don't give the impression of acting self-deprecating for the heck of it. If you can, issue a newsletter of your own. Never mind if you only have yourself, your wife and your stepmother for subscribers – put it on site and submit it to the engines. They simply adore that sort of all-text stuff! (Ralph Tegtmeier, a.k.a. Fantomaster)

  • Search engine optimization is only one aspect of a well-rounded promotion campaign. That campaign should slowly broaden into more traditional avenues. Search engines aren't the formula for long term site success – it's up to your site to produce repeat visitors. (Brett Tabke with Webmaster World)

  • Make sure your top scoring pages include a call to action. This is not difficult or time consuming but it can make a real difference in getting results. You can easily provide a visitor with some sort of reason to take action now. If it is done well, you can even have customers place a order from a doorway or gateway information page. Every business is different of course, but if you don't believe it, give it some thought and try it. At the very least, experiment with placing your toll free phone number (if applicable) on your top ranking pages. I have a number of clients that do a really great business with a toll free number displayed prominently on their top ranking pages. One of the easiest ways to prompt action is to purposely leave an important piece of information off of your site. At first this does not sound too professional, but really think about it. If they are impressed with your site content, obviously the depth of your content has gained you some respect and credibility with the reader.... so just leave one vital bit of information out. This may start more phone calls and e-mail responses than you expect but it's one of the easiest ways to trigger response. You see, from those e-mails and phone calls, you can now enter further dialogue with the visitor and this will often result in the visitor becoming a customer. (John Alexander with WorldSites.net)

Pay Engines

  • your wallet. If you have the money, paid placement and paid inclusion programs can be a fast, easy way to get good listings or better representation. But even if you have money, don't forget to do all the basic things that can help you get plenty of traffic for free. (Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Watch)

Relevancy

  • There are countless tips for optimizing your page's content so that it will be more "relevant" to a given search. Each engine ranks pages differently, so most tips are not universal. However, there is one tip that overrides them all: Create pages that emulate the "statistics" of pages that already rank at or near the top of the search results. These statistics include: (a) Frequency of the keywords on the page. Tip: This does not mean more keywords are better. (b) Total words on the page. Tip: Mimic the approximate number of words of a top ranking page on your own page. (c) Weight of the keywords on the page. (i.e., frequency divided by the total words) Tip: Too high a weight is just as bad as too low a weight. (d) Area or location of the keywords on the page. (i.e., title, heading, etc.) Tip: A keyword is given more relevance by an engine when the keyword appears in the engine's "preferred" areas. (e) Prominence. Tip: Generally, the closer to the front of the area you can place the keyword, the better. (f) Proximity. Tip: The closer that the words of a phrase appear together, the better. (g) Off-page criteria. (i.e., link popularity, click-through popularity, etc.) Tip: Even when you've done everything else right, don't forget the off-page factors! (Brent Winters with FirstPlace Software)

  • For best positioning, text and body copy should be placed as close to the top of the page as practical. If images must be at the top of the page, use the ALT tag to emphasize the page’s theme. Turning the page into a single frame extending below the bottom of the monitor and hiding the scroll bar by making it the same color as the background may only partially work since some engines may consider the hidden control to be a form of spamming. For best positioning, content should be placed at the top of a page. However, for splash pages or pages without any content, content can be added at the very bottom and the scroll bar can be hidden to prevent a visitor from reading the optimized content. (David Johnson and Annam Manthiram with Position Research)

  • Keep the graphics low and the content high. All engines do two things: index text and follow links. Give the spiders the opportunity to do just that. Keep the content as high on the page as possible and give relevant links to quality content either on or off-site. The HTML title should be focused and accurately represent the content of the page. (Marshall Simmonds with About.com)

  • If you run a regional business where most of your business is local, it's critical that you include your full company address on every page of your site. Otherwise people could search for "Ford dealer in Chicago" and you'd not appear if your company address is buried only on your contact page. Also take advantage of "proximity" by putting the word Chicago as close to the phrase Ford dealer as possible. Lastly, make sure the address is in text form since search engines can't read your address out of a graphical logo on your page. (Brent Winters with FirstPlace Software)

Simplicity

  • Keep things simple. Write good content and titles, and use text links either as your main navigation or in conjunction with graphic buttons, image maps or flash menus. It's okay to use Flash animation on your site, but if you use it on your index page, be sure to integrate it with content so the search engines can index your home page. Also consider making your Flash animations smaller where possible, such as banner size. They are much easier to integrate into a page with content. Flash does not have to dominate the page to be effective or add pizzazz to your site. (Bill Gentry with The Selling Source)

  • Did I mention keeping things simple? General optimization will get you good results without a lot of extra time or effort. (Bill Gentry with The Selling Source)

Site Maps

  • Web Ignite recommends the creation of a site map page that includes plain text links to as many pages within your site as possible. This will increase the ability of search engines to spider your site and can result in more of your pages being listed. A plain text link to the site map should appear on all pages. (Paul Bruemmer with Web Ignite)

Software Programs

  • Consider getting SE Optimizer. It's a snappy little tool to help you with your optimization efforts and helps remind you of all those things you ought to try to do every time you optimize a page. (I am not an affiliate of SE Optimizer or AWCS trying to sell you this program. I just really like it and think it belongs in every optimizer’s tool box.) (Bill Gentry with The Selling Source)

Spamming

  • AltaVista has been vocal lately with the statistic that approximately 95% of all submissions are spam. Therefore, take the time and effort to learn what search engines consider spam and do everything in your power to avoid these violations. It will save much grief if optimization and submission are done properly the first time. (Marshall Simmonds with About.com)

Stylesheets

  • Consider using a stylesheet to redefine html tags and define custom classes. Also make this an external .css file and link to it in the head. Doing so will streamline your source code and make future site-wide style changes much easier. Also, consider using layers instead of tables to further streamline your source code. Streamlining your source code will make it more search engine friendly and your pages will also load faster. (Bill Gentry with The Selling Source)

  • Use linked Cascading Style Sheets creatively. Using CSS, you can custom define how your HTML tags display text and links, which is a powerful optimization advantage. (J.K. Bowman with Spider Food)

Tags

  • Properly done TITLE and META tags at the top of the homepage HEAD section are crucial to your SEO efforts. When applicable, all frameset component pages should contain those tags as well. Properly done ALT text tags are suggested for images. (Paul Bruemmer with Web Ignite)

  • Take one minute, at least, and eyeball every page in your site when you make it, in order to write a descriptive 7-15 word HTML title. Think newspaper headlines! You want to grab the readers’ attention when they see this title in search engine results and convince them to click through, though you don't want to be misleading. Look at the page, think of the top 1 or 2 terms you'd like it to be found for, then incorporate those words into a title. Don't worry if you go longer than 15 words or shorter than 7. Those aren't limits; just guidelines from my experience on making your titles attractive to readers. What about meta tags? Use the first sentence or two on your page for your meta description tag's content, and in the meta keywords tag, list any important keywords you think the page should be found for and which ALSO appear in the HTML copy of that page. (Danny Sullivan with Search Engine Watch)

  • You need to create titles and descriptions that are focused on getting that click, not just on keyword density. The more clicks you can get, I guarantee you the more popular your site will be. (Ginette Degner with SearchBrokers.com)

Technology

  • Technology is moving quickly. Search engines are slow followers of any technology wave. As a result, being first to implement a new technology is usually harmful to a search engine optimization effort. So be sure not to be a pioneer if your business depends upon search engines for leads. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. (Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, LLC)

Themes

  • Before you touch one line of code, make sure that you have diligently defined your Web site. You should be able to say, "My Web site is about _____ ______ ______" without any hesitation. You will be able to optimize for many keyword phrases, but this single one, two or three keyword phrase theme should resonate on every page. (J.K. Bowman with Spider-Food)

  • Use lots of text on each page [over one hundred words], specific to one extremely narrow theme. (Rocky Rawstern)

  • The primary technique for good positioning is rich, robust visible text. A theme page is much better than a doorway page, since it emphasizes relevant body copy. (David Johnson and Annam Manthiram with Position Research)

  • Create a themed mini-library that pays off in big numbers of targeted traffic! Using WordTracker, find an appropriately related "hot topic" for your Web site. What I like to do is to build a little group of information rich, top ranking pages and fashion them into a little mini-library (6 to 20 pages), all with slightly different variations of that hot topic. They are all linked together with a separate topical index page. The key to success is to first research the best keyword phrases (high KEI values), then build quality content (the stuff that folks love to learn about). Only use topics that appropriately apply to the overall theme of the site. Each content-rich "library page" should also employ creative text links into different parts of your main pages. You want lots of horizontal "click throughs" to your entire site. Make sure each optimized page within your themed library is for a DIFFERENT or slightly different phrase. Also ensure your library pages are not just slapped together from a template. Each library page should have a unique layout and differing content to avoid penalization with anti-spam filters. The result is a flood of targeted traffic to the "library" which can then move throughout your entire Web site. (John Alexander with WorldSites.net)

Tracking

  • As you learn more about search engine marketing, you'll discover it is not an exact science. Some of your pages will rank well the first time out, and some will not. In addition, your rankings will fluctuate, calling for tweaks in design from time to time. Therefore, as with any marketing strategy, you need a method to measure your progress. In this case, you need a convenient way to report your rankings for each keyword and engine you're targeting, and to track the number of visitors to your Web site, along with where they came from. WebPosition Gold helps you manage and automate both these essential tasks. (Brent Winters with FirstPlace Software)

Web Design

  • Remember, designers usually produce what you asked for, regardless of what you wanted. They take the shortest, best-known technology path to minimize their cost. And 95% of the designers do not have a clue how to properly design a page for a search engine. And if they do, that is the very least important design consideration. Design seldom involves promotion. So be sure to involve a promotion specialist during the design to keep the designers from taking shortcuts that are harmful to your eventual promotion efforts. Build it in, don't add it on. (Bruce Clay with Bruce Clay, LLC)

  • Design the Web site with the search engines in mind. Use text links especially if you have image maps or frames, etc. (Ginette Degner with SearchBrokers.com)

A special thanks to the following Search Engine Optimizers who were willing to share their tips for this article (listed in alphabetical order):

  • John Alexander is a Professional SEO and Educator who operates an independent Internet consulting business in affiliation with WorldSites.Net and has taught search engine optimization strategies to hundreds of consultants from more than 70 different countries.
  • J.K. Bowman is the Editor of Spider-Food.net, one of the largest tutorial resources on the Web for search engine optimization and Web site promotion techniques. He currently lives in Mississippi, where he also provides consultancy and positioning services.
  • Paul J. Bruemmer is CEO of Web-Ignite Corporation, a search engine traffic agency. Founded in 1995, Web-Ignite provides search engine traffic for Fortune 1000 dot-coms and for B2B and e-commerce sites.
  • Bruce Clay is an Internet Business Consultant and the owner of Bruce Clay, LLC. Since 1995, Bruce Clay, LLC has been one of the leading search engine optimization "free advice" sites. Offering step-by-step methodologies and interactive tools on all aspects of search engine optimization, bruceclay.com ranks in the top two percent of all Web sites visited.
  • Ginette Degner operates Service Brokers, a Web Optimization and Marketing Strategies firm providing expert search engine placement and consultation services since 1993.
  • Bill Gentry is Manager of Search Engine Optimization Services for The Selling Source, an online marketing company that offers a wide array of online marketing solutions to a diverse clientele.
  • David Johnson and Annam Manthiram are Search Engine Research Specialists with Position Research, a search engine optimization firm that considers "research" an integral part of optimizing Web sites.
  • Rocky Rawstern is a Senior Search Engine Analyst with a prominent search engine optimization company on the West coast.
  • Marshall Simmonds is the Director of Search for About, Inc., a division of parent company PRIMEDIA Inc. Marshall is responsible for maximizing search engine exposure for About's 700 topic sites which cover 1,000,000 articles. He also oversees search engine strategies for Primedia's online properties, such as Americanbaby.com and Seventeen.com.
  • Danny Sullivan, Editor of Search Engine Watch, is often considered the Internet's "search engine guru." He has been helping Webmasters, marketers and everyday Web users understand how search engines work for half a decade.
  • Brett Tabke of PHD Software Systems is also the owner of Webmaster World Forums and Search Engine World, extremely popular informational sites designed "by Webmasters for Webmasters."
  • Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com Ltd. (UK) and fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), a company specializing in Webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services. He has been a Web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html.
  • Brent Winters is the President of FirstPlace Software, Inc. and author of the highly popular MarketPosition Newsletter. FirstPlace Software develops and markets, WebPosition Gold, the first software product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings.

Next month, we’ll look at what the experts feel are the top mistakes made when optimizing pages.


**Robin Nobles is Director of Training for the Academy of Web Specialists. Robin has taught well over a thousand students in her online and onsite search engine positioning courses during the past several years. Her latest book, Web Site Analysis and Reporting, can be ordered through Amazon.com. Visit the Academy's training site to learn more about their search engine ranking courses and products.

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Spanish and Search Engines
by Natalia Kim

Yes, of course, this article could be titled "Spanish Search Engines," but it really has a lot to do with the language AND with the search engines.

As a web site promoter with a lot of Spanish positioning (I live in Barcelona, Spain), I can only subscribe to the belief that it is complicated. Okay, sometimes it might be easier than with English, if the competition isn't as tough, but the truth is that when it comes to optimizing for languages with special letters or a lot of accents (like the characters are not only in Spanish but also in other "common" major languages like French, German and Swedish, just to mention a few).

My assistants and I have done a lot of research in order to get some definite "rules" to follow for the big search engines but, honestly, the results are so erratic that we simply don't dare to follow but one single rule: Use the three versions. Now, you ask yourself, "Three versions of what???" We do it like this:

If there is a word such as "asociación" (association in Spanish), we use three versions of it in the <head> section of the code:

    asociacion (NO accent)
    asociación ("normal" accent)
    asociaci&oacute;n (the accent written in pure HTML code)

However, we use "normal" text in the title, as most of the search engines show it correctly that way.

Then, with the text in the body of the page, we try to include it once without accent (for example, in the headline), and then with proper code in the rest of the visual part of the document.

This is the HTML code for some of the commonly used special letters in Spanish:

    ñ - &ntilde;
    á - &aacute;
    é - &eacute;
    í - &iacute;
    ó - &oacute;
    ú - &uacute;
    à - &agrave;
    è - &egrave;
    ò - &ograve;
    ¿ - &iquest;
    ¡ - &iexcl;

Many of the big search engines and directories have their Spanish versions up and ready, and others are getting prepared. After all, the Spanish community is, upon writing this, the fastest growing one.

The most popular other search engines to keep in mind for Spanish positioning are:

    YUPI - Mexican portal and directory. 100% Spanish. (Does not accept pages with adult content.) http://www.yupi.com/. Add URL: http://www.yupimsn.com/agregar_sitio/.

    YA - One of the newer Spanish portals. It's a directory plus uses robot based on Fast technology. Easy to surf. To submit, chose the category first, then "Añadir página" (Add page). http://www.ya.com/

    TERRA - Telefonica's Internet venture. Portal with search engine that supports RealNames (Internet Keywords). To submit, chose the category here (http://www.terra.com/) and then, once there, in the upper right corner you'll read an option "Darse de alta" to add your URL. Their formula is very similar to Yahoo's. Spanish and Portuguese are admitted, as well as local Spanish dialects like Catalan, Basque, etc.

    ERESMAS - Another portal offered by an alternative telephone company, Retevisión. The directory is on one side channels, on the other Google driven. http://www.eresmas.com/

    OZU - One of the most popular and among the first "real" directories. Surf to the category you want to be included in and fill out the form. Keep in mind, however, that the e-mail address will be listed and visible to anyone in the results. http://www.ozu.es/

    BIWE - Spanish directory. Make your choice of category, then "añade tu web" to add your URL. Only one URL per web site. Does not accept special characters in the title or description. http://www.biwe.es/
    More information: http://www.biwe.es/servlet/BsvlGeneraPeticionURL?
    CAT1IDENT=0&CONTEXTO=ANADE_TU_WEB

    TELEPOLIS - One of the older and best known search engines. Easy to use and easy to submit. http://www.telepolis.com/ Add URL: http://www.telepolis.com/cgi-bin/t30/!ANADIRWEBC

Well, I could obviously go on and on and on, but you can find more ideas for Spanish promotion here: http://www.spanishwebmasters.com/buscadores.html

As I said, try to use the 3-version method, either on separate pages or on the single one.

Happy hits!


**Natalia Kim has used the Internet as a vital tool since 1993 for her PR agency, PromoPress, based in Barcelona, Spain. Ms. Kim added web positioning as yet another way to launch events or personalities that she handles and also offers it as a stand-alone service for Internet-based companies. Her URL is: http://promopress.com/. Contact her at natalia.

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Online Ranking Tools: WebRank
by Bill Gentry, Academy Product Reviewer

There are several software programs out there that will check your rankings, and do an excellent job of it. However, those programs can take up processing power and large amounts of hard disk space, especially if you are checking large numbers of search phrases, have quite a few clients or both.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an online service to generate ranking reports that didn’t use your computer’s processing resources and hard drive space? There is now…

Introducing WebRank by Kowabunga Technologies. Launched November 1, 2001, WebRank is a new online ranking service that is an alternative to traditional software such as WebPosition Gold and Top Dog.

WebRank offers a useful set of tools including:

  • Administration/Summary Report
  • Nine Default Reports and Custom Reports
  • Weekly, Monthly or On Demand Reports
  • Page Watch Tool
  • Domain Research Tool
  • Keyword Suggestion Tool
  • Email Reports and Alerts

Let’s take a more detailed look at these features.

Administration/Summary Report
The administration page also contains a summary of all of the domains you have designated for monitoring, keywords you have selected, custom reports you have created and more. It’s very nicely laid out and easy to get an overall picture of your rankings. There are links to all of your reports, snapshots, or zooms, of specific rankings, raw logs, your account and profile information and more.

Default and Custom Reports
WebRank gives you nine default reports: three each based on keywords, domains and search engines. Each report gives you a slightly different look at your rankings. This is especially helpful as you add more keywords and domains, and is definitely an interesting and unique feature that both its online and offline competitors don’t offer.

In addition to the nine default reports, WebRank also allows you to create an unlimited number of custom reports so that you can get a broad view of everything, or focus in on specific data or domains. Again, the reports are well laid out and very easy to read. The multiple report views allow you to compare rankings from multiple domains in a variety of ways for better analysis.

Report Frequency
When you set up your account, it is set up for weekly or monthly reporting. When I set up my account during the beta test phase, there was no way for me to specify which I preferred. My account was set up with weekly reporting. It’s my guess that WebRank will allow you to choose your reporting frequency during account creation once the beta test is complete and their billing software is added. Currently, you must call the WebRank office to change your reporting frequency, but Todd Farmer of WebRank has said that this functionality will be built into the billing system at a later date. Nevertheless, at this time, you can run reports on demand. You’ll get a status report letting you know how many reports are in the queue before yours will run, and an e-mail notifying you when your report is finished.

Page Watch Tool
This tool essentially reports rankings only for pages that you specify. While you might not optimize every page on a site, such as contact forms, this tool is especially useful to track those pages that you have optimized, or perhaps to track rankings on your affiliate pages that you have optimized. The pages that you are watching show up on the administration/summary page with links to more detailed ranking information. This tool is in addition to the default and custom reports, and is just one more way to review your ranking information.

Domain Research Tool
This is one of the best features in WebRank. This tool will search for similar domains based on the keywords you have entered into the system. After the report has generated, WebRank will have a list of domains for you to look at and add to your reports. You can also add domains manually. When you add a domain, you can specify that the domain is a competitor’s domain, an industry domain, an affiliate domain, or a prospective affiliate domain.

This tool allows you to keep tabs on your competitors and make adjustments to your pages when they jump ahead of you. With the industry domains, you are able to compare your domain with your industry’s best-known and most popular web sites. Assigning domains as affiliates allows you to keep an eye on the rankings of members of your affiliate program. Finally, you can see how well a domain that has applied to your affiliate program ranks and if it is worth accepting into your affiliate program.

Keyword Suggestion Tool
The keyword suggestion tool takes the keywords you manually input and runs a report to give you more keyword suggestions. In my opinion, this is probably the least useful tool that WebRank offers. Savvy search engine optimization experts already know what keywords they are targeting and have done keyword research with far superior tools such as WordTracker and referrer logs. Still it is a nice little addition that you can use to see if there are any keywords that you are ranking for and haven’t previously considered.

E-mail Reports and Alerts
WebRank will e-mail your reports to you if you wish. You can have an unlimited number of reports e-mailed to you. These reports can be the nine default reports or the custom reports you designed. While not a great feature, the value lies in the fact that you can forward these reports to your clients.

You are allowed to set up an unlimited number of e-mail rules, such as when a page increases or decreases in rank, or shows up in a specific ranking range for the first time. When the conditions you specify are met, you receive an e-mail notifying you of the change. This is a handy little feature for those times when you don’t have the time to check the full report, or don’t want to check your report unless there has been a change since the last one.

Pricing
Todd reported that WebRank is priced aggressively. I concur. The Basic Membership monthly reporting option is $9.95 per month and for weekly reporting it is $29.95 per month. You can also pay annually and save $19.45 on the monthly option and $89.90 on the weekly option. At this price, he says that you will have the ability to add plenty of keywords and domains, and send plenty of custom reports and alerts via e-mail. Other factors that will influence pricing are reporting frequency, the number of keywords, domains, custom reports, e-mail reports and alerts.

The Good and Bad
The best feature I found in WebRank was the domain search tool. Letting WebRank find competitor sites for you is definitely a time saver. The one minor complaint I have with the domain search tool is that it returns a lot of not-so-useful sites, such as Yahoo!, eBay, etc. However it’s a minor inconvenience to delete them.

As I mentioned previously, the least useful tool is the keyword search tool. An experienced optimizer already knows what keywords are targeted and uses more comprehensive keyword research resources such as WordTracker and WordSpot.

Unfortunately, there currently is no way to export the reports into a spreadsheet or html editor for e-mailing a clean and easy to read report to clients or for posting on the web for them. However, I did suggest this to Mr. Farmer. He liked the idea and has added it to the upgrade list.

Lastly, the e-mail reports and alerts are sent in plain text with no option to have them sent as html. In present form, they aren’t really something that I would want to send to clients without major modification in html editing, spreadsheet or word processing software.

Final Look
Overall, there is little not to like about WebRank. The reports are easy to read and present ranking information in a variety of ways for analysis. Virtually every feature is useful and fairly easy to use. WebRank is attractively priced and offers a lot for the money. In the future, WebRank plans to offer Partner Accounts for search engine optimization firms so that they can manage reporting for a number of clients from a single administration page, rather than having to set up separate accounts for each client. Finally, they are offering a free trial period to coincide with the launch date. I enthusiastically recommend that you take advantage of the free trial and see what WebRank has to offer for yourself. I think you will be pleased with what you find.

Thanks to Todd Farmer of WebRank for allowing me full access to WebRank at no cost, and for answering all my questions fully and quickly.

Next month I’ll be taking a look at Zeus, The Internet Marketing Robot by Cyber-Robotics.com, which is a tool to help you find web sites suitable for reciprocal linking and to build your reciprocal link directory. If you have a suggestion for a future review, e-mail me at billg.

Everyone have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.


***About Bill Gentry: Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with The Selling Source [http://www.thesellingsource.com] since February 2000. Earning a Bachelor's of Science in Geology and a Master's of Business Administration in addition to his employment as an Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist for 10 years contributed to his attention to detail. E-mail: billg

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