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Search Trends & News | Mr-SEO.com
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Local Search - an incredible opportunity
Image by dannysullivan via FlickrWhat is one of the best opportunities on the internet? With
all the noise about social networking such as Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon,
Facebook, Linked In, etc., etc., it seems nearly impossible to keep up let
alone see the opportunities which sometimes are standing right in front of us.
One such case is local search. Local search represents one of the biggest
opportunities that is just lying around, quietly waiting to be discovered by a
ton of companies that provide their services locally.
Our use of the internet has evolved from barely trusting to
buy anything on the internet, to accepting it as a good alternative to going to
the mall, to using it as a preferred method to buy just about anything –
nationally.
For every industry online there are a relatively limited
number of keywords which describe the item, service, or industry which are
utilized by the people searching for them. Now, for every keyword or search
term that a company may choose there are only 10 top ten spots on Google or any
other search engine. This friends, is limited real estate and as we all know
anytime you get in early you will win big down the road.
Just like our trust issue with making online purchases
evolved, so will the average consumer begin to wake up and realize the immense
power of the internet for finding local services and products. It is only a matter of time until this trend
builds to full blown recognition and acceptance, and those smart companies that
start early doing the right practices in Search Engine Optimization will get
the top spots.
Are you optimized for local search? The time is now.
Greg
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Thoughts on Buying and Selling Links
Google, or as it is sometimes unaffectionately known, “Big Brother”, wants the Web 2.0 model to thrive. On face value, it makes sense that it should. After all, Web 2.0 is built to reward topics of interest, and most people performing a search want the results to be in line with what their peers find interesting.
But in the tangled web of e-commerce and SEO, web 2.0 is a failure of epic proportions - and Google is keenly aware of it. Most business isn’t sexy, and if something isn’t sexy, it won’t generate links of its own accord. The well known SEO’s handshake each other for links everyday, but what few are willing to admit is that they can’t get the same results for their clients (assuming they have clients and their business isn’t limited to schmoozing about SEO). Once an SEO is working on behalf of someone else, the playing field is level and all bets are off. You want links? Better be prepared to give something in return.
Google would have us believe there are multiple (we’ve all heard everything from 70 to 100 plus) factors that influence rankings, but let’s not kid ourselves. Links are unquestionably the most important factor and dwarf anything and everything else. Without links, rankings won’t be going up anytime soon.
So with all the difficulty in obtaining links, is SEO still viable? Sure, but it’s getting to be more difficult as the Web 2.0 model sets in. Google doesn’t want businesses to be able to generate links on their own as was once possible and plausible. Organic rankings take away from the bread and butter of the monopoly that is Big Brother, and that bread and butter is paid advertising. That’s fantastic for entrenched businesses who already have organic rankings and can afford to spend a hefty sum on PPC each month, but it hurts new businesses trying to find a niche within their market.
In years past, content publication was easy because venues that have since been devalued were plentiful. Well written, informative content could hang around long enough to get the merit (or lack of merit) it deserved, no matter how esoteric the subject matter (i.e “business” subject matter). Today, the few overpopulated social networking venues are chocked full of link-baiting, hollow, over-hyped crap because that’s exactly what’s necessary to get attention. In this climate, even something as simple as what time of day an excerpt is published can mean the difference between success and failure. Titling alone is a heavy-handed joke that bludgeons us like a sledgehammer as authors are promising the world just to get an audience. It’s Short Attention Span Theatre at its finest.
So…we buy links. We buy knowing full well that the chances of our purchased links losing value are slim. As big as Big Brother is, reformulated AI and a dedicated team of web-spam “lookouts” can’t cover the internet in its entirety. They simply don’t have the manpower or resources to do so. Still, risqué behavior in link buying (or selling) can produce results counterproductive to the desired.
The biggest part of the problem is with sites who sell links, but to a lesser degree, it also lies with SEO’s who don’t understand what a valuable link looks like. Few worry about the number of links on the page, the relevancy of the links to both sites, and most importantly, the on-page placement (location) of the links. Those who do understand these principles on the selling end (HINT, HINT), should be able to command a higher monthly price for their offerings and should never be short of buyers, which will force those who don’t to figure out what they’re doing wrong and fix it if they want to continue to sell. Those who understand these principles on the buying end should insist on following them, even if doing so eats away a little more at profits.
It’s better to make a little less, play it safe and keep a client happy for the long run than to go for the easy fix and risk losing your clients altogether.
Alan
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New Mr-SEO.com
Hello,
A lot has happened behind the scenes here at Mr-Seo.com. You may have noticed that there has not been much input from us, and for that we apologize. What have we been up to? Well, for starters, Joe and Alan decided to turn the business over to someone new, and that person is me. My name is Greg Gaskill, and I have been working with Joe and Alan for some time now migrating everything over to my ownership and management.
What does this mean for you? First, the things that won’t change - the commitment to bring the truth to the market of what SEO & SEM are and what they are not! As you know, there is a tremendous amount of disinformation floating around the internet. The one size fits all, or get your site in the top ten for $100 crap advice screws things up for website owners, and makes the real job of doing quality, sustainable work harder because we have to undo a lot of widely publicized but incorrect beliefs in order to establish trust with our clients. The cornerstone of Mr-Seo has been truth, and that will not change.
Ok, so what is new? A new website to Web 2.0 standards. Our blog, Podcasts and Discussion Board are now all served by our host, rather than somewhere else. With one login, in one place you can access all of our resources.
We also now offer our Complete Website SEO Evaluation Report - with a Better Than Free Special Offer. This report covers a ton of key areas which are critical to getting top ten listing in Google and other search engines. We give you the good, the bad, and the dirt on your competition, all in one in-depth report. The best part is that when you buy this report for $495, we give you $600 of our services free. We figured it was a great way to help companies find out what they needed to be doing, and then offer a great deal to have us do all the work - everybody wins.
We put in place a News Brief - Surviving Online, SEO and SEM trends. This News Brief is just that, brief - for the simple reason, we all are busy and really don’t pay that much attention to newsletters anyway. Why not just send you the stuff that is important, and forget the hype?
We put in place a simple questionnaire at registration for any of our services so we can better understand who you - our visitors are, and what you would like us to address on our website or in our News Brief. In addition, we will be emailing a questionnaire, and would really appreciate your taking a moment to help us understand who you are, and what you would like to get from us. Also feel free to post ideas and suggestions on our Blog, or Discussion Board. We strongly believe in supporting you, our audience and customers.
We are now monitoring and posting often to the Discussion Board and Blog. After all, these are only valuable if they are used regularly, so it is our commitment to you to maintain them with active participation.
In the near future, we will add some E-courses for SEO and SEM which you can opt-in to on our website, and in an email in which we will announce it to you. The purpose of these mini courses, will be to bring awareness to various applications of SEO and SEM in addressing various business issues. We hope you find these courses helpful.
Finally, I would like you all to know that I stand committed to deliver quality services in a fair and ethical manner. It is my commitment to work with each customer to ensure that they receive the best we have to give them. We will be up-front about what we can, and can not deliver, what we can, and can not control, and in some cases we may need to advise potential clients that we can not help them. There is far too many con artists out there promising the world, and under-delivering, and I refuse to be one of them.
Best wishes to all for now,
Greg
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Interview with Joe Whyte on Social Bookmarking
I talk with Joe Whyte about social bookmarking. Joe gives some great insight into the world of social marketing. Check out this sample below.
[audio:http://www.mr-seo.com/audio/Whyte-preview.mp3]
Check out Joe’s white paper on “The Ultimate Blogging Survival Guide!”
The podcast goes up on Friday. Subscribe to iTunes or download the episode via our podcast page.
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Business Branding Podcast - Interview with Kevin B. Levi
I talk with Kevin B. Levi of Smallbusinessdranding.com
We talk about business branding and the right way to do it. Kevin gives some great insights into business branding. Take a listen to the sample below. You can download the full podcast on our podcasting page or iTunes
[audio:http://www.mr-seo.com/audio/Kevin-pre.mp3]
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Is Google stealing your money?
A post on SEO chat has raised an interesting question http://forums.seochat.com/google-adwords-more-39/is-google-picking-your-adsense-pocket-93093.html#post360421
People have reported seeing their CPC skyrocket since Google introduced its new adwords algo. Someone reported an increase as much as 5 times more. This quote is interesting….
The question I have: We also run Adsense. Adwords CPC is now more than
double and sometime five times more costly. Does it not seem reasonable
that Adsense publishers, if the percentage split remained the same,
should be experiencing a major increase in revenue? We have not seen an
increase in Adsense revenue… have you? Is Google pocketing the
increased revenue way beyond the split that was in play just before the
huge increase in Adwords CPC? Google… where is my money? Why aren’t
you sharing?
Is Google looking to do this to offset the Pay-per-click fraud money they have been paying out?
Seems some adsense is generating half the revenue it use to. While adwords billing has doubled. Seems this may make people turn to Yahoo.
What do you think?
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ASK launches blog and RSS search
ASk has launched a blog and RSS search engine http://www.ask.com/?tool=bls#subject:bls|pg:1
The results of course have the binocular feature. You can also subscribe to the feed right from the results page. You can even add the feed to bloglines, digg and other similar networks from the results pages as well.
Take a look at it. I like it better than Google’s. What do you think?
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Google will now judge your landing pages
Google has announced that they will use your landing page as a way to judge your adsense quality score. They are going to judge the content and layout of your landing pages.
Google stated:
“Incorporating landing page assessment into the Quality Score will help us improve the overall advertising experience for users, advertisers and partners by increasing the quality of the sites we present in our ad results.”
To learn more visit their blog http://adwords.blogspot.com/2005/12/new-addition-to-quality-score.html
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Top adsense payouts
I came across this article http://www.freealerts.org/adsense-expensive-keyword/dumbest_adsense_mistake.php
Which talks about the highest pay outs for adsense. Here is the top phrase “selling structured settlements” - pays out $64.81 per click. The problem is the click rate is low.
The best keywords are ones that pay well and get high click through’s. For example: “insurance” pays over $17 per click. The average clicks per day is 49,893.5, according to this article. Might be a good way to make some cash. The problem there is flooding the engines will crappy content to make that money. Google had created a huge money hungry monster. That monster is killing search engine results.
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Track PPC fraud for free
PPC fraud is a big issue these days. You can lose money when some forces clicks on your ads. It could be someone trying to make money off your ads or from a competitor(S) trying to deplete your funds. A service by Vericlix offers a free way to catch PPC fraud http://www.vericlix.com/
Their reports show:
So check them out and stop click fraud before it starts!
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