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Welcome to the ineedhits Search Engine Marketing blog, where we share the latest search engine and online marketing news, releases, industry trends and great DIY tips and advice.

We encourage you to get involved in our blog community - so share your opinions and experiences by leaving comments on our posts.

If you're looking for help with promoting your website - check out our range of affordable search engine marketing services.

Thursday, March 29

Is Microsoft Selling Its Search Soul or Improving Experience?

I was reading a Search Engine Roundtable post this morning about MSN UK pre-populating its search box with "The Apprentice BBC", and it got me thinking - what ends will search engines go to, to generate revenue.

The battle for search engine supremacy is more than just having the most web pages indexed or carrying the most search traffic. Let's face it - search engines are a business. As a marketing manager myself, I understanding the pressures to generate revenue and profit, but when they start selling space in the search box - I believe the line of trust has been crossed.

Anyway, I decided to check the mis-use for myself and found that MSN UK was now displaying "Euro 2008 results" in its search box. Then it dawned on me that they might actually be displaying popular searches rather than sponsored keywords. So Danny, if you haven't heard back from Microsoft or the BBC, I think you'll find it's MSN doing some UI testing rather than revenue generation.

I hope I am right in giving MSN the benefit of the doubt on this, and let's just hope that the holy grail - "The Search Box" remains advertising free! The question remains whether pre-populating the search box with popular searches is a good user experience - but that's a whole other post altogether ;)

Tuesday, March 27

Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO - The Optimization Debate

There are right and wrong ways to conduct your SEO campaigns - good vs evil if you will! The terms 'black hat' and 'white hat' are thrown around with good measure in search marketing circles and you may have come across many references to them. But, do you know what each term encompasses, and what it means for your business? Read on and I'll explain...

Black Hat

Black Hat is the term for SEO practices that are unethical, underhanded and in direct violation of search engine guidelines. The Wikipedia reference for black hat defines it as "a person who uses their knowledge of vulnerabilities and exploits for private gain". Undertaking any Black Hat tactics generally results in some form of search engine penalization, including a drop in rank, fall in indexing or even exclusion. The following are some common black hat tricks.

Keyword Stuffing - As its name suggests, keyword stuffing involves packing keywords into either meta tags or website copy. Search engine algorithms can discern high levels of repetitive keywords or phrases and are unlikely to index such content.

Invisible Text - Placing lists of keywords or phrases on a page in the same color as the background, rendering them 'invisible' to the naked eye, violates many search engine guidelines and is inadvisable should you want to keep you website indexed!

Doorway Pages - These pages are built for search engine spiders, as opposed to visitors, and it's unlikely you'll ever actually see one! A doorway page is optimized soley for indexing. Users may click on a link to a doorway page (designed for crawlers) however, are quickly redirected to another page (designed for visitors).

Cloaking - Similar to doorway pages this technique involves showing one version of a webpage to a visitors, and offering another one for indexing by search engine spiders. A side script directs the crawler to index the page optimized only for search engines.

Scraping - This involves copying content (generally using some form of software) from other high ranking sites and passing it off as your own in an attempt to gain higher rankings yourself!

White Hat

As a general rule White Hat SEO is designed with humans, not search engines spiders, in mind. These practices are ethical and involve no attempts to deceive or trick search engines into getting higher ranking. Simply, the content that the search engines index is the content the users see when they visit the site!

To make sure you're following best practice check out the following guidelines:

Finally, here's a cool little diagram I found on silverdisc that sums up the fundamental differences between the 2 hats!

	Black Hat	White Hat
Content and Links	Search Engines	Humans
Visibility to Humans	Hidden	Visible
Quality of Work	Hidden	Visible
Search Engines	Enemies	Nothing / Friends
Domains/Brands	Disposable	Cherished, Primary Domain
Site & Relevance	Apparently Improved	Actually Improved
Results	Yes, "Short" Term	Yes, "Long" Term
Ethical Techniques	No	Yes
Legal	No?	Yes?

Over time, the benefits of White Hat SEO are far greater than the short term perks of unethical Black Hat techniques. Play nice and you'll reap the rewards!

New Product Launch: Yahoo! Search Submit Basic Paid Inclusion

ineedhits are proud to announce the release of Yahoo! Search Submit Basic, the latest revolution in paid inclusion. The program ensures your URLs are included in the Yahoo! search network (organic results) for a full 12 months and provides some great benefits over standard search engine submission.

Yahoo! Search Submit Basic Includes:

Rapid inclusion in the Yahoo! search index
7 Day listing updates (refreshes)
Detailed click and rank reporting
Comprehensive 12 month inclusion
Inclusion in Yahoo! powered portals such as AltaVista and alltheweb
Reach over 85% of unique US internet users
No Click Fee's

One of the post popular features for webmasters is the weekly refresh cycle, which ensures your content is kept fresh in Yahoo! search results. This also means easy tracking of your optimization efforts, as optimized code is reflected in search results on a weekly basis.

At only $49 for 12 months inclusion, this program is set to become the standard in Yahoo! search marketing. Order Search Submit Basic today and kick start your Yahoo! search engine traffic.

Google Bomb Creates Anti Microsoft Sentiment Online

Rumors are starting that a new breed of Google bomb is brewing and one of its first iterations has lead to an Anti Microsoft image being displayed as the top result on Google Maps.

Yelp.com, a review site that delivers content to Google Maps, was the soapbox that SarahB, a prolific Yelp user chose to share her sentiments. Attached to her review was an anti-Windows image, which just happened to be the top organic result for Microsoft in Google maps. At the time of posting, the image has since been removed.

While SarahB probably had no intentions of her image's impact being so high profile, it does highlight a system loophole that more malicious netizens could exploit.

At this stage there are no restrictions on who can upload an image for a particular business review on Yelp (not sure about other review sites). But imagine if a competitor uploaded some negative media about your business - even after the images were reported and removed, the damage might have already be done.

I am a strong supporter of consumer generated media and the social web, but as with all things, some level of control is required. While web 2.0 purists believe the community should self regulate, it begs the question - Do Yelp or Google have some responsibility in the results they display?

Why not share your opinion via our comments area.

Labels: Google

Google Advertisers 'Pay-Per-Action'

Pay-per-click search engine marketing is great - allowing website owners to drive traffic to their website, with the ability to define keywords, regions, websites, timezones and even times of day to target their audience. But, what happens if this still isn't enough for your website, if you feel you are wasting money on clicks that don't convert? Google have introduced pay-per-action and the premise is pretty simple!

"Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model that allows you to pay only for completed actions that you define, such as a lead, a sale,or a pageview, after a user has clicked on your ad on a publisher's site. You'll define an action, set up conversion tracking, and create ads that publishers in the Google content network can then choose to place in new ad units on their site."

The following points are covered by Rob Kniaz, Product Manager for Pay-Per-Action, and highlight the details of this new product.

Ad Placement - ads are only shown on the Google Content Network

Ad Formats - text ads, image ads and Google's new text link ads

Pricing - you define the amount you'd like to pay for each 'action' (based on what that action is worth to your business)

Tracking - Google Analytics enables you to add conversion tracking in order to verify when an 'action' has been completed on your website

Beta Test Requirements - In order to apply for pay-per-action Beta testing you need to comply with the following requirements:

U.S advertisers only

You must have conversion tracking (or be able to implement conversion tracking code) on your website

Apply for Google Pay-Per-Action

The start of a pay-per-action style pricing model is very exciting for website owners as it asks the question "What is a sale worth to you?". No doubt there will be building speculation and commentary about pay-per-action and it's ramifications on search engine marketing. I, for one, look forward to seeing how Google do in Beta, and beg anyone who participates in testing to keep us posted... Should be interesting!!

Labels: Google

Monday, March 26

New Google Tools to Enhance Your Website or Blog

Google Labs are at it again, this time offering website owners and bloggers some new tools for adding content and functionality to their sites. Utilizing the Google AJAX search API, the new service allows you to add content from Google's range of search services (blogs, news, video etc) direct to your website.

Matt Cutts gave a heads up via his blog post Google Flair: Google Blog Bar, but the wizard based services go beyond just blog and news headlines. (Not all of them are new, but worth a mention nonetheless).

For the less techy people out there (like me), the simple wizard makes embedding the service of choice in your website or blog a breeze. It's as simple as:

Visit: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/wizards.html
Pick the service you want from:
- Google Map Search
- Video Bar
- Video Search
- News Bar (Horizontal and Vertical)
- Blog Bar (Horizontal and Vertical)
- Book Bar
Choose your preferred options in a few simple questions.
Copy and paste the code presented into your website or blog

VOILA!!! You have your own

So if you're looking to make your website or blog a bit more interactive and content rich, this is a great way to tap into the power of Google's search services and give your visitors another reason to keep coming back.

Labels: Google

Tuesday, March 20

How To Change Domains: Without Losing Search Engine Ranking

The greatest worry when moving a domain is the adverse affect it will have on website ranking. Launching a new site and facing branding, SEO, traffic and conversion challenges, is scary. It takes time and an enormous amount of effort and planning. However, moving an established site may be even scarier! As Mike Grehan, from ClickZ Experts, states:

"Think about it. You've been online for a long time and built a great reputation for yourself. Search engine crawlers and end users love you. Both are frequent visitors to your site. What's more, other Web site owners think you truly are the real deal and bless you with link love in abundance.

Then, word comes from above (that's corporate, not heaven, by the way) that you're being acquired, merging, rebranding, or whatever. Now you, as Webmaster, are gifted with a new domain to move to...

What if it all goes horrendously wrong, and you drop of search engine heaven straight into search engine hell?"

No matter the size of your site, or whether you've ever achieved top search engine ranking, moving domains could simply reverse all the good work you've put into your online marketing. Not so, Mike assures us, as a simple redirect could be the answer to all your problems!

There are several methods of redirecting your site:

permanent - Returns a permanent redirect status (301) indicating that the resource has moved permanently.

temporary - Returns a temporary redirect status (302). This is the Google default.

seeother - Returns a "See Other" status (303) indicating that the resource has been replaced.

gone - Returns a "Gone" status (410) indicating that the resource has been permanently removed.

Although, only the (301) permanent redirect is recommended by Google. Google Webmaster Help provides advice on implementing redirects, as well as advising you check out which websites link to yours, in order to inform them of your domain name change.

By following Google's redirect guidelines and creating a sitemap, you can minimize the impact of a URL change. Mike also recommends an interim pay-per-click campaign as a great way to start driving traffic volumes to your new domain. It is highly recommended that, as with any 'back-end' changes to your website, you get a professional's advice - or even better, get a professional to do the job and assure yourself peace of mind!

Google Combats Click Fraud Fears

Over the past year Google has been busy working on a report designed to convince us that they are on top of click fraud. For those of you who may not know about this, let me explain.

Firstly users place their ads on Google's advertising platform, Adwords. Each time somebody clicks on that ad it costs them money. The concern is that maybe your competition, or a robotic "clicker" may be costing you money. They do this by continually clicking on your ads in an attempt to use up your budget and stop your ads from showing. As someone that manages ppc campaigns I have noticed that this is a major concern for people who are considering pay-per-click advertising.

In order to ease some of this fear Google released a report that shows us how they try to combat click fraud. Google uses both proactive and reactive techniques to detect invalid clicks.

Step 1 - Google uses technology to filter out the majority of invalid clicks before they even reach your account.

Step 2 - the clicks that make it through the filter are then analyzed offline and refunded to your account, if found to be invalid (of course).

Step 3 - In rare cases, Google investigates inquiries from customers who believe they have been victims of click fraud. Below is a breakdown of invalid clicks versus valid clicks.

Google ensures us that less than 10% of total clicks are "invalid" and out of that only 0.02% (the blue section) is actually charged to anyone's account. Is this reassuring? Well I think that it helps to have all of the information available to make an informed decision. It is in Google's best interests to make us feel a little safer after all. On the whole, the benefits of pay-per-click advertising far outweigh any possible problems such as click fraud - but it always pays to be vigilant.

Labels: Google

Google Update Webmaster Tools to Show Backlink Text

Google have been busy enhancing their suite of webmaster tools in recent times, with the most recent being an updated backlink count measurement for webmasters. Google have now enhanced their backlink reporting even further by providing webmasters with a full list of anchor text other websites use when linking to their website.

Previous to this update, webmaster tools only showed a list of the most common words used in anchor text linking to your site. The enhancement of this feature now shows complete anchor text phrases of sites that link to you, not just individual words. According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google have aimed to reduce the total amount of phrases by aggregating data regardless of punctuation and capitalization. For example:

Term 1: "search engine marketing, ineedhits"
Term 2: "Search Engine, marketing, ineedhits"
Term 3: "search Engine Marketing: ineedhits"

Would all be aggregated into one phrase of:

"search engine marketing ineedhits"

For those that have a webmaster tools account, you can access this information by logging into webmaster tools and selecting Statistics > Page Analysis. For those who don't have an account, sign up now and experience the tools for yourself.

Labels: Google

Monday, March 19

Comcast Threatens Google with Microsoft Negotiations

Comcast, the second largest ISP and top cable provider in the US, is airing its dissatisfaction with Google by entering into search and advertising negotiations with Microsoft.

The company's current search and advertising contract with Google is due to expire at the end of this year, and the ISP/Cable provider is looking to find a more lucrative deal. Comcast made US$70 million in shared advertising revenue via the Google contract, but wants to see a 30% increase in this figure before signing a new contract.

With 15 million visitors per month, Comcast.com is a major source of search traffic for any potential search engine ally, and accordingly believes that US$100 million is a suitable asking price.

The real question is whether Microsoft or any of the other rumored search engine candidates (Yahoo!, AOL) will answer the call and be a suitable replacement for Google. Considering Google's size and strength, these deal discussions by Comcast could simply be a negotiation tactic to "force" Google's best offer.

When you consider that Google already has the lion-share of search, and search habits die hard, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google call Comcast's bluff. I guess we'll see who has the upper hand in the coming months.

Ask.com's Anti Google Ad Campaign Backfires

Ask.com recently launched a new advertising campaign designed to bridge the gap between itself and the likes of Google in the search engine market. Unfortunately, all it's done is generate negative publicity for the former butler powered search engine.

The campaign, which was rolled out across London, looks like a guerilla marketing effort aimed at fighting online information monopolies. The billboard and tube ads direct to potential "Movement" fighters to the http://www.information-revolution.org/ website where their manifesto is shared. An except from the homepage reads:

"...if this keeps up, who knows what could happen? One company could eventually be your only source of access to information on the Web! Controlling your mind would only be a step away! Then they'll have you. All too easy..."

Ask.com remains fairly understated in the whole campaign with no branding on the billboards and only minor logo placement on the website. While the campaign might have been considered quite innovative, it appears the underhanded tactics have caused quite a backlash online.

The straw that broke the campaigns back was the fact that Ask.com used its search results to push the campaign. When a searcher entered "Google" in the Ask.com search box, the following ad was displayed:

Searchers are always weary when a search engine uses the Holy Grail (organic search results area) to self promote. Just ask Google who used its "Onebox" area a few months ago to promote its own services. After users cried foul, Google was quick to remove the self promotion.

While the online buzz about the campaign has been nothing but scathing, it could be a case of any publicity is good publicity. And based on the execution of the campaign, it looks like Ask.com was definitely targeting a younger market, which might actually buy into this faux "Movement" tact.

New Google Acquisitions - Trendalyzer & AdScape Media

Google has announced the acquisition of Trendalyzer software from Gapminder and in-game advertising company AdScape Media via the Google Blog. These latest purchases do provide some insights into where the search giant is focusing some of it's attention.

Trendalyzer Software, acquired from Gapminder, turns figures and stats into bright interactive visuals. So where does this fit into Google's direction? According to the Google blog post (Official Google Blog: A world in motion):

"Like Google, Gapminder strives to make information more useful, and Trendalyzer will improve any function or application in which data might be better visualized."

Google is more of a library than a data/information manipulator. So my guess is that Trendalyzer will be used either for bolstering up their range of business related online applications (e.g. Google Spreadsheets) or to improve the UI of their services (i.e. Google Analytics or AdWords reporting).

AdScape Media are an in-game advertising company out of California. There's no kudos for realizing that where there's an opportunity to advertise, Google's looking at it. Considering Microsoft already have the inside advantage on Xbox advertising, it was only a matter of time before Google tapped into the in-game advertising market.

Labels: Google

Friday, March 16

ineedhits Search Engine Submission Sale

It's their annual 25% Off - Submit4Less search engine submission sale. Here's a great chance for businesses to increase website exposure and traffic using leading search engine submission services and save 25%.

Perth, Western Australia, 16 March 2007: ineedhits (www.ineedhits.com), a leading search engine marketing company for over 10 years, is offering website owners and online marketers a chance to save 25% on their advanced submission services. Savings are available on the entire Easy Submit and Premium Submit range.

Easy Submit offers website owners and marketers submission to over three hundred global search engines and directories. Advanced automated technology saves users valuable time and is a great source of additional search engine exposure and traffic.

Premium Submit is a premier service for business owners needing expert manual submission to the top search engines. Trained SEO specialists hand submit each website to seventeen of the most popular search engines including Google, Yahoo! and MSN, meeting the highest submission standards.

To take advantage of these excellent search engine submission offers use the sale coupon MSUBMIT4LESS07 in your cart. Don't miss out on these great discounts.

Further Information:
Jackie Shervington
Chief Executive Officer
Phone: +61 8 9333 8222

About ineedhits.com (www.ineedhits.com), a pioneer in search engine marketing, services over 500,000 customers and subscribers. Founded in 1996, ineedhits has provided search engine optimization and submission services to small and medium-sized businesses for over ten years. With over 90% of ineedhits' customers located in the United States, the company itself is based in Perth, Western Australia and employs 30 staff. Partners include Yahoo!, whatUseek, ExactSeek, Kanoodle and Net Applications. ineedhits has received numerous awards including the Deloitte Touche Fast 50 (2003 & 2004) and BRW Fast 100 (2002 & 2003).

Tuesday, March 13

New: Personalize Your Google Local Business Listing

Google has released some fancy new features for their Google Business Listings in an effort to really tap into the small to medium business market. Whether you're an existing customer or looking to set up a new listing, the enhancements will be welcomed by all.

The new features include:

Photo Upload
You can now upload up to 10 images in association with your listing. These will appear alongside your company information. Pictures are a fantastic way to display your products or services, so make the most of this functionality with professional looking images that will reflect well on your business.

Categories
Target your audience within specific business categories. You can choose up to 5 categories, in order to display your listing for relevant searches and receive the most qualified traffic possible.

Custom Attributes
Attributes are additional details you can include in your Google listing. For example, you can state which areas or regions your business services, whether you provide free estimates, outline your prices or create an attribute to tell you customers more about what you do.

Edit locations
Google now allows you to correct incorrect map locations with a drag and drop marker. If Google Maps does not display your business address correctly, you can edit the location of the marker to show your correct business address!

Analytics
Google are now providing a sample of click data for your listing, just so you can see how many people are checking out your business on Google Maps.

Creating, and updating, a Google business listing can have some fantastic SEO benefits for any business with a website, whilst also allowing small or offline firms to build an online presence for their company.

Global Internet Audience Grows By 10%

comScore Networks have released new internet usage figures for January 2007, with a 12 month comparison. According to comScore "Worldwide Internet Audience has Grown 10 Percent in the Last Year".

A staggering 747 million people worldwide, aged 15 and over, used the internet in January 2007, a 10 percent increase over January 2006. India, Russia and China had the highest audience increase of 33, 21 and 20 percent respectively. China now holds the gong for the second largest online audience worldwide, with 86.8 million users in January 2007, following the U.S. which had a 2 percent increase to 153.5 million.

Bob Ivins, managing director, comScore Europe, states

"The importance of the worldwide Internet population continues to grow. Internet users outside the U.S. now account for 80 percent of the world's online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year."

Online businesses willing to tackle these emerging new markets, and a global audience, can experience phenomenal returns and growth. That said, I think many smaller businesses are weary of treading unknown foreign waters as they may stand to lose more than they gain! It will be interesting to see how many companies capitalize on this growing international market, and exactly how they do it.