Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-07-30T07:42:46+0100 2010-07-30T07:42:46+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/cybercriminals-seo-techniques-362/ After reading a McAfee report on The Web's Most Dangerous Search Terms, I got thinking about the SEO techniques which can and are being used by everyone from "solo operators to organized criminals", to fraudulently and illegally con the everyday searcher into clicking on a site. These online criminals' increasingly sophisticated efforts are said to be raking in as much as 7,300 a day according to one web security firm. Image from Net-Security.org A popular method used by cybercriminals is the inputting of popular keyword typos (such as Obbama), found through Google Trends, into their site's meta data, as these are uncompetitive and therefore easy to get a site indexed for, are searched for on a daily basis and mean their site can easily be mistaken by users as a trustworthy link. Once the link has been clicked the website (most likely a blog) will spread a malware virus onto the computer through a "video codec" file, or to other users through email or instant messenger. Another technique these cybercriminals use is the common desire by people to 'work from home', which lures many of them into a cyber trap. According to Hitwise the most popular and risky of these terms is "free work from home". In my opinion if you are ignorant enough to be searching for a 'free' job (presumably implying that you either don't have to put much effort into the interview process, or you work for free) then you may well deserve to be lured into a scam. Image taken from McAffee report The true depravity of the cybercriminals is revealed by those attempting to target global disasters terms (such as 'tsunami') to con potential charity givers into spreading a virus or donating to fund their crime. Back in 2005 'Google bombing', as it's known, was more effective, yet the search engines have retaliated in an attempt to lessen this type of crime. An obvious popular term at the moment is "World Cup" searched by millions of football hungry fans on a daily basis. This, and related terms, are being targeted by SEO criminals to push fake tickets and malware to unsuspecting punters. This is a particularly appropriate event to use for cybercriminals as many countries have less internet savvy populations, searching for updates on their football team. According to MacAfee the highest risk categories for search terms were 'Lyrics', 'Free' and 'Web'. All fairly popular terms that make up a number of keyword variants when combined with other words. The UK currently stands at 26th out of 27 listed countries most at risk from search cybercrime with the Czech Republic coming 1st. We (being non criminals) still don't understand a great deal about the way cybercriminals operate, particularly with the fast moving pace of the internet and changing SEO techniques. What we do know is that as much as virus protection software (such as McAffee) and search engines try and fight the battle against cybercriminals, popular culture will continue to drive more people thier way, seeking celebrity gossip, freebies and get rich quick schemes. McAfee points this out by stating "hackers are now motivated largely by profit, the biggest profits can be wrung from the largest pools of potential victims". Be aware when searching and always think before you click. For a guide to cybercriminals' exploitation of the World Cup visit Search Engine Watch. For more reports on Cybercrime and malicious sites visit Finjan. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-06-16 15:09:04 http://www.i-com.net/blog/cybercriminals-seo-techniques-362/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-enters-into-the-spirit-of-world-cup-2010-361/ It's great to see Google entering into the spirit of World Cup 2010 by making the traditional Google links at the bottom of the search listings more topical. Search for "World Cup" and you'll see this: Search Engine Optimisation 2010-06-08 13:01:18 http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-enters-into-the-spirit-of-world-cup-2010-361/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/41-of-web-users-are-stupid-359/ Today I've had confirmation that a large proportion of web users are stupid. I'm sure we all secretly thought this but here's my proof. Farleys Solicitors own www.farleys.com, they have done for over 10 years, as archive.org shows: web.archive.org/web/*/farleys.com. Farley's Fun Pub in Las Cruces, New Mexico has an auto-generated entry on Google Places (formerly Local Business Center). It looks like this: You can tell that it auto-generated because it says in the top left corner "Business Owner?" If it was a listing for a verified business, it is indicated here. You will see from the image that the URL is farleys.com. Rather than leading to an American steakhouse, this URL points to our client, the Lancashire full service solicitors' firm. Because of this mistake, I am not surprised to see queries with "las cruces" in our reporting. However, Google Analytics produces some surprising results. When the keywords are filtered to show only queries that feature "cruces" I found that the bounce rate is 58.78%. Of course this would be too high for a normal site, but when every single one of the 131 visitors during May that this referred to has come to the site expecting to find a restaurant and been presented with a legal site, I would expect this number to be far closer to 100%! This bounce rate means that 41.22% of visitors who came to the site clicked on to a further page before they left. The average time on site of 44 seconds also indicates that visitors read the landing page. The main lesson to be learnt from this is that if you have a business you need a website - Farleys New Mexico don't appear to have one - and if you have a website, get it on Google maps. In this case, not doing so has lost 131 potential diners in one month. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-06-07 10:53:35 http://www.i-com.net/blog/41-of-web-users-are-stupid-359/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-keywords-in-domain-names-is-a-stupid-ranking-factor-356/ So you have a brand. You sell red widgets, but really high end, luxury widgets with all the bells and whistles. You learned to make widgets by hand when you were 14 and you take great pride in your work - and people phone you from all over the country when they want a really special red widget. When you first set up in business, you chose the name your brand very carefully, so it's unique, memorable and evokes your brand values and history. This week you decided you wanted to make the move online. People are always asking whether you have a website so they can see pictures of your widgets and read information about how you make them. You've realised it would be a great way to capture traffic and would save you a bomb in printing brochures so you hire a web designer and a developer and they also bring someone called an 'SEO consultant' into the meeting to help you market your site online. Choosing a Domain Name - Your Brand or Your Primary Keyword?The first thing you have to do, they explain, is register a domain name. You want to use the name of your brand because it's how people know you - only your SEO consultant tells you that instead you should  buy the domain www.luxury-red-widgets.com because your brand name doesn't have any keywords and it may harm your ability to rank in Google.Can anyone tell me that this isn't an entirely ludicrous scenario?Yet, even today, with all the technology in place to understand websites, it is still possible to get a huge boost in the SERPs just by having a keyword rich domain name - something made even more ludicrous still by the fact that as more businesses go online, there's fewer and fewer decent keyword-rich domain names left. So, if you're lucky enough to own www.mobile-phones.com is it really right that you should have a decided advantage in ranking over a site called www.bobsfonestuff.com if Bob's business is just as legitimate, well-optimised and well-coded and his only mistake was buying a domain relating to his offline brand instead of buying www.mobile-phones.com?Take the SERP for 'lcd televisions', for instance. The first result  goes to a very generic looking blog site set up using a template linked to the faceless "Electrical-Deals.co.uk" shop - but set up on "http://discountlcdtv.co.uk/" - something which sets alarm bells ringing for me. Not a great result as I wouldn't trust a site which has one URL in its logo and another on my screen.Result #2 is an affiliate site full of ads. Despite saying it's a review site, I couldn't find any reviews - I gave up after being sent off site 3 times via an affiliate link masquerading as "more info."These are not what you'd consider great results - they're not even particularly well-optimised sites - so one can only assume that their domain names - which contain 'LCD' in them - are helping them rank for these big money terms.What I would expect to find when I type in "LCD Televisions" are some legitimate sites - Amazon is at #3, but I wouldn't bat an eyelid if it were at #1. Where's Sony? Panasonic? Toshiba? Where's Currys? Comet? Thankfully, Richer Sounds is in there at #10, below Pixmania, Kelkoo and Pricerunner - also established brands you'd expect to find - but brands lacking keywords in their domain names. All of these sites regularly rank very well for equally competitive keywords so I cannot imagine that our top 2 have done a better job of optimising for 'LCD televisions'.While I understand the logic of using the name of a specific page as an indication of subject - I mean why would you call a page about bird watching lcd-televisions.html - using the domain name itself as a factor in the algorithm is something that really needs to go. It's causing a lot of garbage to clog up the SERPs and it's also diluting the effect of having a really great, identifiable brand name - and it's penalising businesses for not being the first to have bought a domain name rather than rewarding them for building great websites. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-06-03 10:15:56 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-keywords-in-domain-names-is-a-stupid-ranking-factor-356/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/googles-new-look-a-step-too-far-351/ The old mantra "If it isnt broke, dont fix it" is an aphorism the folks at Google would do well to remember. Like any good business Google is always looking to improve its offering to its customers, but has Google gone too far? In 1997, Google set out two goals for their search engine: to provide a better quality of search to present search results in a clean and simple manner Their latest look incorporates several new features into their search results pages with the most prominent being a filter on the left hand side which enables users to choose what vertical they want to search, for example, Google News or Social Media; it also enables users to define a time period for the results. For example If you wanted to compare what was written before the first election debate to after you could specify web pages found in the first two weeks of April. Now these features are nothing new, but they had been contained in a side bar which was only accessible from a simple link until recently. With their universal inclusion and the addition of social, video, image and real-time results into search engine results pages it quickly becomes a case of information overload, which is an issue we are visiting all too often recently. The above example search result for Election 2010 is about as blended as its going to get because the election is a current talking point which makes it a good example of the potential for over-complicating the look and feel of a Google SERP. This particular search page includes feeds from news websites, Twitter and YouTube which pushes all but 3 organic results down the page which means that if youre not in the top 3, people probably wont see you and even if you are they may struggle to notice you amongst all the other potential links on the page. Compare the complexity of the new SERPs with the SERPs at competing search engines such as Bing.com: Google has to find some way to include the vast amount of information generated on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but if it continues to add more and more information to its results pages it runs the risk of obscuring their own USP: helping people find websites simply and without fuss. The easy answer to these problems is to add 'basic' search filter and to offer a way to simplify the interface, but whether Google implements this or something similar only time will tell. If they dont resolve these issues, Google could all too easily become what they set out to differentiate themselves from causing their users to abandon the overly-complicated Google results in favour of Googles competitors. Internet 2010-05-21 09:02:37 http://www.i-com.net/blog/googles-new-look-a-step-too-far-351/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/whats-new-in-google-342/ For those of you who are new to what was formerly called Google Local Business Centre, it is where businesses can register to appear as a Google Maps result. As the all-knowing, all-seeing Google says, one in five searches are local, therefore users that search for local information are more likely to find your business.You may also not be familiar with Place Pages, which Google released in September last year. Place Pages was a kind of directory listing in Google Maps, allowing you to click on a location and find out more information about a business. Google hoped it would encourage more business owners to claim their Maps listings.These two forces have now joined together to make Google Places.A Summary of what's new?Here are some of the main features of Google Places. You can get a comprehensive list here.Service Areas - If you travel to a lot of different locations to serve customers, Google Places now has a facility to set the location where you operate. Also if your business is based at home you can opt to keep the address private. Advertising with Tags - You can now pay $25 per month to advertise your business in select cities via tags. This can set your business apart from the competition. Tags provide business owners with an opportunity to showcase an aspect of their Place Page.QR code generator - U.S business owners can download a QR code that is unique to their business. By scanning the code with an Android-powered device or iPhone, customers will be directed straight to that business mobile Place page.Business photo shoots - Businesses in select cities will now be able to request a photo shoot of inside their business. This will be used to supplement the existing photos on your business page. Live updates - The business page now allows owners to make live updates in order to promote sales, events, or promotions.Mobile coupons - Many business owners have opted to add a printable coupon. Customers can also redeem coupons by simply using their mobile phone.Getting localisation right for your businessWith the new additions in Google Places, businesses can provide more information to potential customers. Making sure the information you are providing to users is correct and accurate could help you capture a sale ahead of one of your competitors. If you are a small business entering the online world, it can be easy to get lost amongst the 'big players', so targeting local keyword phrases and long tail keywords is the way to lay the foundations of your SEO campaign.This does not solely apply to organic search; it is also good practice for your Pay Per Click campaign. Generic keywords are generally very competitive and their click prices tend to be high - even when conversions usually come from more long-tail keywords. By targeting the local market, your ads become more effective.Localisation can build a strong foundation for an internet marketing campaign targeting offline business especially and once your business has established itself in the major search engines, you can broaden your SEO campaign to target more generic terms. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-04-26 09:31:56 http://www.i-com.net/blog/whats-new-in-google-342/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-copywriters-can-learn-from-poetry-1-poetic-form-337/ Well, apart from the usual stuff like a more acute awareness of the world around you and how to impress fellow intellectuals, there's a great deal both copywriters and SEO copywriters alike can learn from poetry.Poetic Form Traditionally poetic form requires poets to write to strict guidelines. Take the Villanelle for instance, one of the poetry's more challenging forms:Villanelle: A Villanelle is 19 lines long, and consists of 5 tercets (or 3 line stanzas) and a concluding quatrain (4 line stanzas). The first and third lines of the poem rhyme and are repeated throughout, alternating as the last line of each stanza and, finally, are used as the last two lines of the poem. In addition, the second line of every stanza must also rhyme. Got it? It's the poet's job to take this incredibly strict and complicated form and use it to create something beautiful, seemingly effortless. The most famous example of a Villanelle is probably the funeral favourite, Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. SEO Copy The copywriter is required to do a similar thing when writing meta descriptions, adhering to Google guidelines which enforce character limits of 156-158 characters, whilst at the same time squeezing in relevant keywords and making the whole thing read like a real sentence, rather than spammy and keyword-stuffed. In short, making it look effortless. Similarly, optimised website content requires relevant keywords to be inserted into the text in their complete form (for instance, SEO Manchester) to achieve the best results. This can often mean using punctuation imaginatively to separate the first half of the keyword from the second half, for example: "If you are in need of SEO, Manchester is the ideal place to start your search." "Online in Manchester: SEO, Blogging and Social Media" This is a technique often used in Villanelles to breathe new life into consistently repeated phrases.So What Can We Learn from Poetic Form? Poetic form can teach us new ways to get keywords into optimised content, by demonstrating interesting ways to punctuate sentences, retaining or altering the original meaning. Writing to strict poetic guidelines also helps copywriters practice the art of writing taut, self-contained, grammatically correct and well-optimised meta descriptions. If you're interested in finding out more about poetry and poetic form, the following websites are great: Poetry Archive Poem Hunter Copywriting 2010-04-19 11:43:58 http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-copywriters-can-learn-from-poetry-1-poetic-form-337/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/there-is-no-magic-seo-red-button-330/ Some readers may have seen our "announcement" this morning about a new "premium" SEO service called the "SEO Red Button" which purports to get you to the top of Google for a single keyword (in fact, to remove all other listings but yours for the keyword) with the push of a red button by our SEO team here at I-COM towers. Funny April Fools joke, ha ha, but it was a reaction to a much wider issue with both  the way some SEO companies market their services and with some misconceptions outside of the SEO industry as to how search engine optimisation works.In short, anyone who tells you that SEO is a quick-fix, that they can get you to the top of Google in a day/week/month for a specific keyword or set of keywords or that they can guarantee you a certain level of traffic for a certain term is lying. Big time. Like, they probably have a forked tongue and cloven hooves kind of lying.Likewise, if you think that applying a bit of search engine optimisation magic to your website will suddenly have visitors pouring in the second the changes go live, then you will be sorely let down.Here's why: Your SEO consultant, (if they are, indeed, applying some SEO to your site rather than running PPC ads to get you to the "top" for a specific keyword) will assess your site and identify any potential issues. They will look at whether Google is indexing the site properly and thoroughly. They will get an idea of how the information architecture of your site explains the relationship between your pages and the subject of each page. They will look at the structure of the page - does it have one H1, a decent title and meta description, are lists marked as lists, do images have appropriate alt text, etc. They will look at your content and determine if the right keywords are being targeted, used enough and whether the text gives the visitor the information they need and provides a good call to action. They will also look at your backlink profile and determine what type of link building you need. Once your SEO consultant has a list of potential issues they'll probably make a long-term plan based on your budget. The first steps in any SEO plan are always keyword research and competitor research. Depending on the size of your site and the complexity of your industry this could take a couple of hours or a couple of days. Once the research is done, the implementation begins - depending on the issues with the site (recoding things may take a while, tagging can be done fairly quicklY), the first stage is completing any remedial work, in particular fixing anything that may prevent search engines from finding, understanding and indexing your entire site. Then anything which may achieve some "quick wins" will take place, probably reworking meta tags and H1 headings to bring better keyword focus to your pages. Copywriting will get underway, starting with top level pages of your site. Link building may also commence at this point and is an ongoing and continuous process which is punctuated by regular assessment of your analytics stats to see what's working. Once changes have taken place on your site, your SEO consultant may submit an XML sitemap to Google, acquire a couple of links or use a tool to ping the major search engines to indicate to them that changes have happened and they should come back. That doesn't mean they will visit immediately. Your site may be crawled straight away, or it could take 6 weeks - depending on the last time your site was crawled and how "important" search engines feel your site is in relation to other sites. If your site is low on authority, good search engine optimisation will improve this over time.Once your site has been crawled - and search engines may only crawl a few pages at a time - changes may take a day to appear in the index or as much as 6-8 weeks. Even then it may take even longer before your listings begin to change - because it's all relative to what your competitors are doing as well.  You  may change your site entirely, but if your competitors do the same, and get some very high quality backlinks, you may not move in the search results.The role of your SEO consultant is to improve the quality of your traffic and the number of conversions you receive for your site,  but they have no control over what Google does - how regularly the site is crawled, where it ranks or how quickly your rankings improve once SEO work begins. In fact, your SEO consultant can only tell you which search terms receive the most searches - not how many searches they receive. What they can do, however, is grow the number of relevant keyword phrases sending traffic to the most relevant page of your website which in turn should send more conversions over time.In short, there is no such thing as an SEO red button that your consultant can push and start sending you stacks of traffic from Google. A good SEO consultant knows how to improve your site for the long term however and will help you grow your business. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-04-01 12:01:25 http://www.i-com.net/blog/there-is-no-magic-seo-red-button-330/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/7-tips-for-judging-the-quality-of-your-backlinks-329/ In my first post on link building I mentioned in some detail how you can find your online competitor's back-links using a free, simple tool from Yahoo! Now it's all well and good having a list of competitor back-links, but how do you know which ones are good quality back links and have been given some value by Google? The truth is that no one has an exact metric that can tell us which back-links to competitors are the most important or have the most value to Google. What we do have is an experience that comes from many years of link building and some basic tips that can make finding the right types of links much easier. Below are some of the questions you should be asking yourself when you have found possible back links: Is the page on which you are looking for a back link "on-topic" and related to your own web site? Look for websites relevant to what your site offers but have a different focus, i.e. submit to a gardening site if you sell garden tools. Is the page you wish to get a back link from already in Google or the other search engines? Copy the url for the web page you wish to get a back link from into Google and (hopefully) a listing will appear for it. If there isn't a listing there may be a (serious) reason for the web page not being indexed. There's no point having a link on a web page that isn't even in Google. When was the web page you are getting a back link from last cached in Google? When you are building backlinks you need to know if the page you are looking at is still getting cached. If a page is no longer getting cached then a link there is pretty much useless. Lets not waste our link building efforts on an old dead page. You can find the cache date of a web page by copying the web page url into Google and clicking on the cached link in the listing. This will tell you when Google last cached the page in it's index (database). If it was recent (within the last month) that's good; however if it's over six month, this suggests that Google has little or no interest in this particluar web page and the web isn't updated very regularly (if at all). Does the web page have any Google Page Rank? Google PageRank is a numeric value from 1-10 that represents how important a page is on the web. You can find out a web page's PageRank by adding the Google Toolbar to your browser. While not as important as a few years ago, PageRank is still useful for determining if new web sites are linking to a specific web page. Are there any unsuitable back links on the page from which you want to source a backlink? Try and steer away from pages and sites with "off-topic" back links for prescription drugs, adult themes etc.  A number of links on sites with these other types of links is not too bad but if you are actively seeking large amounts of this type of back link (250+) Google may see this as counterproductive. How many links are on the web page? Google and the other search engines generally frown upon too many links on a single web page - any more than one hundred is generally not good and should your link be at the bottom and more than the one hundredth it may get ignored by the search engines. You can find out how many links there are on a web page by counting them or using the Chris Pederick web developer plugin with the FireFox, Flock or Seamonkey browser. Do any existing links on the web page contain text and if so are they showing suitable text? Google first gets an understanding of the web page that is being linked to from the text in the link to the specific web page. For example if the text link says "PPI Claims" Google assumes that the web page that is being linked to is about PPI Claims - if this is not the case Google will give little or no value to this particular link. So, as you can see, there's a lot not only to finding a back link that is suitable for your site but ensuring that the quality of the site and web page that your back link is going to be on. There's no doubt link building can be a very time-consuming process but inevitably it can be a successful strategy for improving your website rankings. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-03-30 12:37:25 http://www.i-com.net/blog/7-tips-for-judging-the-quality-of-your-backlinks-329/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/multilingual-website-design-and-seo-328/ In its simplest form, having content available on a page, in different languages, opens your website up to more traffic and to reach a larger audience. If you are reading this you may already have a website that needs to cater for different languages.Google reports that a survey revealed, 'users feel that having information in their own language was more important than a low price.' This may explain why Google is currently so focused on providing localised search results. A multi-regional or multilingual website is one that explicitly targets users in various regions. For companies that want to reach a global audience  by supplying content in multiple languages, it is important to get the infrastructure of your website correct so Google understands which pages to serve for which search engine results pages. The list below addresses the most important things to do when preparing a website to support content in other languages:Information Architecture of a Multi-lingual SiteGetting the information architecture of a website right is vital to users finding the information they require. It can become a tricky business for a multilingual website. As well as planning for users who are accessing the content from different regions and in different languages, the site design must take into account users who may land on a page geotargeted to the "wrong" location. In this case it must be clear to these users how to find the content in the right language, using internal links (or little flags) in order to direct them to the right place.ResearchGoogle warns webmasters that there might be administrative or legal issues when creating content in a different language or for a different country. Be warned that what you write in one language may have implications if written in another - and that different countries regulate businesses in different ways, so make sure you're operating within the laws of each country you target.GeotargetingGoogle looks at the following factors when considering the region of a website: Is the domain a ccTLD (Country-Code Top Level Domain) or gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain)? Country-level domains are  probably the best way to target different countries. Sub-domains are a good alternative, as are country-specific directories on your website. Google does not read locational Meta tags to determine where you are. They are generally not reliable enough. If your site contains a local address or phone number, links to other local websites and Google's Local Business Centre, Google may use these to help determine the country of origin. Google will also look at server location from the IP address, but does not rely on this alone as many businesses host their websites in different countries. URLsIt makes sense to consider using a URL structure that makes it easy to segment parts of the website for geotargeting. Google outlines the pros and cons of different URL structures on their Webmaster Central Blog.A webmaster should avoid using auto redirects based on IP targeting or browser settings as it may send the user away, especially if the content that is in their language is not clearly identifiable on the page. From the point of view of a search engine crawling the website, the crawler may not be able to view all versions. Duplicate ContentThis is not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. For SEO purposes, there is no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs it would make sense to choose a preferred version and to redirect via the rel="canonical" tag.Same SEO Rules ApplyApply all of the same SEO rules to your content for different languages that youve learned for your original content. There is no secret rule here and just because the language is different doesnt mean that the search engine or crawler is different. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-03-29 14:29:34 http://www.i-com.net/blog/multilingual-website-design-and-seo-328/