What is going on with Live Search?
As you probably all know, Microsoft has been heavily focusing efforts on its new search engine,
Live Search. Although results have been steadily improving, Live still has ways to go. What used to be an advantage of Live, which is fast indexing of new sites, is now becoming a longer feat. Google, with the aid of Sitemaps submission in XML format, is indexing sites in as fast as 48 hours. I am talking complete indexing, every single page!
Returning to Live.com, we sometimes see sites that are either irrelevant to the search terms or that have extremely little information. These sites grossly outrank much larger competitors with not only more content but many more backlinks. If you have the Pagerank toolbar installed, you will see pages ranking very high on Live with a PR0.
Keyword density and frequency seem to favor a heavy hand on Live. We are seeing a site with a keyword count of 10 in 7 lines of text and #6 for a single fairly competitive keyword.
What does this mean for search engine optimization? Well, for now do not worry about having targeted keywords showing heavily in your copy. Backlinks are not that important if Live is your target search engine. I am writing this post now and of course this information could be obsolete tomorrow. I can't imagine Live sitting on the current algorithm without making some substantial changes.
ODP is down
If any of you has been trying to submit a site to DMOZ sometimes between October and November, you may have gotten a "Service is unavailable" message. AOL is trying to fix the issue but as you can probably gather, there was a (likely) catastrophic event. Due to the amount of scripts running in the directory, as well the massive amount of data, this is not an easy feat. Please be patient and keep checking.
SEO Services and Your Web Site
Prospective customers call us for an obvious reason: they want to increase internet exposure through our SEO services. At times, we get to run an analysis of web sites that are poorly designed and definitely not user friendly. I am not necessarily talking about poor code, but a general lack of content, call to action and a inefficient navigation structure.
Why am I saying this? Because, not matter if you get to be on page one in Google search results, you still need to capture the reader's interest and make sure he stays on you site.
First, content. Please take the time to write content. There is no excuse for not having useful information on any site. Even for someone who, for example, is a photographer or artist, there is an opportunity to describe who you are, your technique, what the art is about etc. I am bringing this example up because one may argue that if you are selling visual art, how can you possibly have a lot of content? Search engines look for content as one of the ways to determine a site's relevancy. Images can't be read by search engines. A good search engine optimization company will point these factors out and not just take your money.
Second, a call to action. All the effective SEO in the world will not do any good if you can't solicit a strong customer motivation to use your service or product. Explain why it should be you and not a competitor; you do not have to use pushy sales tactics, but there is nothing wrong in offering incentives, such as quantity discounts, guarantees or anything else that prompts a prospect to say: "Yes, I like this company and I will give them my business".
Third, a poor looking site says a lot about your company. It is a store front and an ugly store front does not entice people to come in and stay. Beauty has always attracted people and a good design will open the door to the opportunity of more and longer visits. Once the visitor is in, make it easy for him to stay and see everything. Navigation and links should be laid out in an easy to find manner.
Yes, I really have not talked SEO services. Search engine optimization is only a part of a comprehensive strategy to accomplish one task: to attract and retain customers.
SEO Services Shouldn't Be Hurting Your Site
Because of the high exposure of our site in the SEO industry, we are literally bombarded with exchange schemes. Many SEO companies are under the very wrong impression that any link to their site will increase their ranks. Here is how it goes:
You are contacted by a webmaster who says he posted a link to you site from www.zzz.com. He is asking if you could link to his site, www.yyy.com. Here is the problem: what he is doing is a 3-way link exchange, which is basically playing with fire. On the surface, it looks like a good strategy because you get an incoming non reciprocal link and so does he. The major flaws are the following:
-The site he is putting your link on is basically a dump full of outgoing links, basically a link farm. If it does have a PR now, it is very likely that as Google and other engines catch up, it will be penalized or banned.
-Once you are found out as part of the 3 way link, you may be banned or penalized as well.
If anyone with half a brain out there thinks that the very smart people at the major search engines are not able to find out this obviously bad SEO practice, well, it is definitely time to change careers. Sorry about the harsh words, but we are so fed up with the incompetent SEOs who not only push this scheme with their own sites, but they use it with their clients. It is bad for the search engine relevancy results and the SEO industry in general.
