Website Marketing Resource

Jagger, Google Analytics, and the Future of Search & SEO
 by: Glenn Murray

Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

Jagger

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they’re not considered ‘black-hat’), they don’t really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

Choosing a decent RSS reader to browse and read your favourite RSS feeds was not a straight forward task. I tried and tested many different windows desktop readers but I ended up uninstalling them for one reason or another. Then I found Bloglines and I am pleased to say I have not yet been disappointed with it.

The reason I need a decent RSS reader is that I spend a lot of time reading feeds. I run an RSS resource website http://www.newsniche.com/ which means I have to keep up to date with all things RSS. Naturally I have come across many RSS readers but have found them always to be lacking in one thing or another. In my research I came across Bloglines which is a web based reader.

It’s a shame Bloglines does not have an affiliate program as I would love to promote it, purely because it is such a great tool. Unfortunately for me but fortunately for you this tool is free and everybody loves free internet tools. The main reason I am writing this is because I feel I need to give something back to Bloglines and I also want you to benefit from such a great RSS reader.

I recently invested quite some time into generating search engine friendly URLs for several of my websites to increase my ranking and to have more pages indexed. I can highly recommend to look into this if your own website does not have se-friendly URLs. Especially Google (the most important search engine nowadays) can be very picky in regards to URLs that are not se-friendly.

Example (the 2 URLs below bring you to exactly the same page):

http://www.beefkabobs.com/ShowCategory.php?CategoryID=13 -> this URL is not se-friendly and search engines will eventually ignore any page behind it or rank it much lower in search results. Visitors will have difficulties to remember this URL. These kind of URLs often come from dynamic database driven websites. Each page is dynamically created when requested. Look at the forums URL this moment, too. It is dynamically created and not very friendly to search engines or the visitor. You get the idea.

http://www.beefkabobs.com/kabob-recipe-category-13.html -> this URL is se-friendly and search engines will spider the page behind it easily. It is keyword enriched to increase search engine ranking. Overall - this URL is easy to be spidered and easy to remember by a visitor.

Some years ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I visited Amazon.com for the first time. My friend was someone whose judgement I trusted - and I had also heard good things about Amazon from other friends and colleagues.

I was certainly impressed with what I saw when I got to the site, it was well laid out, information was clear, prices were good and there was a great range to choose from. But I didn’t buy anything - not on that visit. Later on I went back to the site and I am now a regular customer.

So what’s the moral of the story? I went to one of the best websites on the planet, I was already interested and I had plenty of first hand recommendations from people who I knew and trusted - but I didn’t buy anything. Why not?

Simple - it’s perfectly normal behaviour that’s why, in fact had I bought anything on that first visit I would have been flying in the face of conventional behaviour - on the internet or in the real world.

7 Steps to Easily Increase More Sales - Step 3
 by: Tina Valiedi

You’ll find plenty of advice on techniques and methods to

use for increasing sales. But which ones do you believe?

Which ones do you try? How do you know their methods will

produce the same results?

Many web site owners make the big mistake of trying the

“latest” and the “greatest”, thinking that they will see

the advertised results or at least a high percentage of it.

They may see an increase or just as likely see a reduction

in their current figures.

When you test and track you can be sure you’ll know the

answers to the questions just asked. In Step 2 we discussed

how to set up the split test and what to track. Now we’ll

look at the different things to test and track.

Step 3 - What To Test For Better Conversion

There are many elements contained in your web site sales

copy that can be tested…an overabundance at times! You

can even test different groups of elements. It is usually

"Todd" was keen to compete in one of the most notoriously difficult categories ? work-at-home. He was smart, earnest, hard-working and keen to make affiliate marketing more than just a part-time endeavor. He had dreams of living on the beach in Mexico and surfing between sessions at the computer.

He had put together a sweet little landing site. He had 20 keyword groups running about 10,000 unique visitors a month. He was spending $5,000 per month on pay per click on sales of $6,000. He was collecting email addresses at a rate of 100/day through an opt-in form. He had placed his Google tracking data on the confirmation page of his subscription form. He had great data he collected daily over the past 4 months. He had calculated his visitor value based on commissions divided by clicks and was bidding accordingly. He was a dream client.

Could I help him?

I was drooling over this one. In this case I was 100% sure I could at least double his profits, and likely triple or quadruple. Why was I so sure?

1) He was tracking sign-ups, not conversions

2) He was selling 22 different items off of one landing page

Search Engines have become the soul of the Internet. They provide a means of aggregating, correlating, indexing and categorizing the vast amounts of content in the wild world of Internet. They have gotten complex over the years with better algorithms to serve the folks who want to find something, really find something. They have become extremely adept at finding out duplicates and hidden texts, detecting and punishing the search engine spammers. Every webmaster should take utmost care on what gets to be listed in the search engine. Things that were employed earlier to spam the search engine to get high ranking will come back to haunt you if you don’t do the garbage disposal. In this article we will employ one tool that makes the SEO or webmaster’s task much simpler. this article provides you with some SEO tips on how to use the saturation tool.

On Wednesday, the first day of June, I received the following email from Corey;

Dear Leeuna,

Once I’m finished typing this e-mail, I’m crawling off to bed to sleep… I’m exhausted. (It’s about 4:30 a.m. and while I don’t normally drink coffee, I’m sucking back my third cup since midnight, and it’s not helping anymore…)

Last week was CRAZY.

He went on to say that he had just publically released, for the first time ever.. the newest edition of his famous Internet wealth-generating system… and had invited 250 people to help him prove to the world that it really works.

Apparently 250 wasn’t nearly enough to meet the demand because his office had been absolutely SLAMMED with e-mails and phone calls — more than they could keep up with.

So rather than make me wait for them to catch up, … If I could get back to him that day, he would just ship me his new system via Federal Express, completely at his own risk….

The following morning at 10:40, Corey was pronounced dead at California Speedway in Fontana! Dead at age 34 along with his friend, Benjamin Miles Keaton who lost control of the 2005 Porsche Carrera GT they were racing..

Creating a simple links page to exchange links for the purpose of higher search engine ranking is a bad idea. Now you’re probably saying to yourself why else would I make a links page? The answer is simple. You want to offer your visitors good quality content. Following this line of logic will help you go a lot farther in rankings and traffic than just throwing a links page together.

You see, search engines, especially Google, are trying their best to only rank sites that have quality content in a specific area. When you throw together a links page that has 150 links ranging from household goods to zoos in Australia on a single page, you have just created a worthless page to a search engine because you just created a worthless page to a web visitor. No one is going to take the time to sort through all those links in the slight chance that there could be something of value to them.

Build Your Website to Be Seen
 by: Phillipe Wu

In terms of e-commerce, websites are built for the sole purpose to be seen and to be able to do successful Internet marketing of products manufactured. Fine link building strategy is where you should start first. When you are building links to increase your website popularity, whom do you link to? The question of where to link to increase ranking can be confusing. Logical thinking is needed to achieve link popularity in a natural way. Yes, indeed, Google page rank should come first and foremost. Page rank is part of the algorithm of Google’s ranking in the search engine results. Other search engines use link popularity in their algorithm to evaluate your website as well. But page rank is only one of the 100 plus criteria Google uses to evaluate your web pages. Use the idea of page rank as a “tool” to help make decisions, there’s no need to live and die by the results. Link popularity itself is merely one-way to improve your ranking.