Maryland Internet Advertising

11/28/2009

Are YellowPages History Now?

Filed under: Maryland Internet Advertising — Tags: , — localgoogleguru @ 2:39 am

Yellowpages – History?
Phonebooks: A serious case of pulp friction
by Tania Deluzuriaga, New York Times News Service

 

They’re the original search engines, leftover from the days of rotary

phones and answering machines. Once valued reference books kept in a

certain drawer or cabinet for easy and frequent access, the massive

telephone directories landing on doorsteps and in apartment foyers

across the city in recent weeks seemed bound for more ignoble destinations.

Days after hundreds of thousands of the 2,000-page, 4-pound tomes were

delivered, they began showing up in recycling bins and trash dumpsters.

 

From Beacon Hill to Jamaica Plain, they moldered on porches and driveways,

lay strewn across sidewalks, and sat in large, untouched piles in condo and

apartment buildings.

 

In an era when consumers are increasingly conscious of the waste they

generate, arrival of the phone books was greeted with an annoyed sigh or

worse.

 

“All that’s waste,” grumbled Gerri Cummings, 70, eyeing the waist-high

pile of phone books orphaned in the foyer of her South Boston apartment 

building.

 

Yellow Book delivered stacks of its yellow pages directories, enough for each

of the residents of Cummings’ 96-unit building for the elderly and disabled.

A few days later, Verizon did the same.

“All my phone numbers are in my phone,” Cummings said, waving a silver

cellphone that she keeps in her pocket.

A few blocks away, 33-year-old Jason Muth vented his disgust in his blog.

 

“Each time I’m greeted by piles of bound paper at my doorstep, I think the

same exact thing: what a waste,” he wrote. “The energy to distribute and

manufacture these, the raw materials used to print these, and our time to

dispose of them properly.”

 

When Verizon delivered its directories a couple days later, Muth’s disgust

turned to anger. Of the 10 directories delivered to his address this month,

not one made it inside, he said.

“What industry is indiscriminately allowed to throw their product on your

front step and leave you to deal with it?” he fumed in a phone interview.

“It’s environmentally wrong; it’s morally wrong.”

 

Representatives from Verizon and Yellow Book declined to speak to a

reporter about their products or distribution practices. In a written

statement, a Verizon spokesman said the company has regionalized its

directory and made it smaller and more user-friendly. Yellow Book, which

distributed 883,000 copies of its directory in the Boston area last year,

said that 87 percent of adults use a print phone directory at least once

a year.

“We get complaints from people when they don’t get their phone book,”

said Stephanie Hobbs, a spokeswoman for the Yellow Pages Association,

the industry’s trade organization.

 

For those who don’t want it, there is little recourse. Unlike services that let

consumers sign up for no-call lists to stop cold-calling advertisers, it’s not so

easy to avoid getting the phone book. Some directory companies have phone

numbers that residents can call to stop phone book deliveries to their homes,

but the numbers can be hard to locate. And governments say they are

constrained in imposing blanket restrictions.

“It’s a First Amendment issue,” said Sharon Gillett, commissioner of the state

Department of Telecommunications and Cable. “How are they different from

free newspapers or political fliers?”

 

Despite competition from the Internet, the phone directory market continues

to slowly grow, with a value this year of about billion, according to the

Yellow Pages Association.

 

While services like Google and 411 are providing heightened competition, people

still turn to their yellow pages when they are ready to buy, Hobbs said, citing a

third-party study that found American adults consulted phone books 13.4 billion

times last year.

 

But even some advertisers in the books say they’re questioning the practice.

“I keep contemplating whether I should give it up; it costs me a fortune,” said

Scott Ruth, a Marlborough plumber who ran an ad for his business in the Boston

Yellow Book.

 

Though business has been good, Ruth said, he has all the work he can handle,

and he is not sure that spending “several thousand dollars” a year on

advertising in the phone book is worth it.

 

“I haven’t picked one up in I don’t know how long,” he said.

 
Moral of this story? If your company is not on the first page of search results in Google, you are for all practical purposes: Invisible

David Bruce Jr

Frederick Web Promotions

11/12/2009

Press Release Submission List

Press Releases For Link Building

Conventional Advertising thinks press releases are for editors to reuse or republish in their print publication.

That’s fine, what Press Releases mean for Google rankings is quite another story.

Google’s algorithm , which is to say the computer program that powers the decision  making process to pick who gets to come in at #1 in Google Ranking, used to be X

I’ll explain what X is, but for the immediate purpose of this short post, we’ll address a change to the algorithm caused by elections.

It takes Googlebot roughly 6 weeks to circumnavigate the globe (index the entire internet, every country, every language): that’s a baseline, one more 6 week pass and now Googlebot has something to measure, ie. here is X and here’s the increase or decrease in traffic, visitors, buzz about X, interest in X.

So that means, from the perspective of someone wishing to improve their company website’s ranking, it takes 12 weeks to see a change in Google ranking

Free Paid
Count URL Login Required Google Page Rank Alexa Traffic Rank Free Submission HTML Anchor Tags Images Accepted Approval Time Paid Submission HTML Anchor Tags Images Accepted Approval Time Pricing Paid Features
1 pressreleasepoint.com 288272 1 Day 1 Day Front Page, Other Sites
2 pressabout.com 157471 1 Day One business day approval
3 free-press-release-center.info 187059 1 To 7 Days 2.99 Top spot for 7 days
4 pr9.net 129396
5 prlog.org 34969 1 Day Automatic PDF version generation
6 pressreleaseforum.com 272461 1 Day
7 express-press-release.com 86255 1-3 days Few hours 29 Published within few hours
8 postafreepressrelease.com 1452330 1 Day
9 pressexposure.com 281459 1 To 2 Days
10 speedypr.com 1188498 1 Day
11 sbwire.com 223562 7-14 Days One Day $39.95, $19.95 One business day approval
12 seenation.com 647266 1 Day
13 myfreepr.com 427649 1 To 7 Days
14 exactrelease.com 491041 1 To 2 Days
15 sanepr.com 129647 1 Day
16 prwindow.com 871995 1 Day
17 mediasyndicate.com 419015 1 To 2 Days $15, $20 Highest priority
18 webnewswire.com 1352897
19 businessportal24.com 72616 1 Day
20 press.xtvworld.com 209013 1 To 7 Days
21 thepublish.com 1215758
22 newsblaster.com 1244874 1 Day
23 usprwire.com 496685 $75, $350 Posted to ClickPress, USPRwire, UKPRwire
24 i-newswire.com 69752 1 To 7 Days 25 Top spot on release date
25 pressmethod.com 189511 $5, $15, $29 Same day distribution
26 1888pressrelease.com 46440 1 Day $10, $25, $50 Attach files, 5 Images.
27 clickpress.com 109722 $75, $350 Posted to ClickPress, USPRwire and UKPRwire
28 prnuke.com 526822 1 To 7 Days
29 24-7pressrelease.com 53383 1 Day $49, $89, $349 Next day distribution.
30 pressreleasemonkey.com 1516649 25 Advanced html editor, images.
31 pressreleasespider.com 273261 1 To 7 Days
32 malebits.com 230856 1 Day $1, $4.99 / Month, $14.99 / Month 1 url , 10 active urls, Unlimited publishing, unlimited urls
33 clicnews.com 393798 30 Days
34 pressreleasecirculation.com 992313 1 Day
35 pr2work.com 1799048 1 To 7 Days
36 prfocus.com 987388 1 To 7 Days
37 epicpr.com 2707780 30 Days 10 Expedited Release Review & Approval
38 press-network.com 13569892 1 Day $69, $149 Edit, complete rewrite
39 pressbox.com 930365 1 To 7 Days
40 freepressreleases.co.uk 122166 1 To 7 Days �30, �90, �180 Submission to 30 press release sites.
41 bignews.biz 679139 1 Day
42 ideamarketers.com 26704 1 Day $5,$15, $36, $91
43 pr-usa.net 75052 1 Day
44 newsalbum.com 490012 1 Day
45 pr-gb.com 215253 1 Day �400, �1000/month Home page. Private category
46 caymanmama.com 262127 49.95 Immediate release
47 digg.com 166 1 Day
48 base.google.com 4 1 Day
49 prfriend.com 1610997 1 To 7 Days
50 theopenpress.com 115074 1 Day $10, $50 Stars, Same day service
51 newsreleaser.com 1143815 1 Day
52 press-library.com 1030256
53 live-pr.com/en 116044 1 Day
54 prarticle.com 754172 1 Day
55 information-online.com 227868 1 Day
56 prunderground.com 382859 1 To 7 Days 24.99 Next Day Distribution, Media Attachments
57 openpr.com 57079 1 Day
58 prbuzz.com 181110 1 Day 99 Releasing your press release to a large number of search engines and online news sites
59 prleap.com 43848 1 Day $49, $99, $149 Social Media, Media Attachments
60 pressmediawire.com 168189 Within 12 hrs $59.95, $39.95, $19.95 Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.
61 fastpitchnetworking.com 47071 1 Day $50, $95 Direct Distribution to 50,000 Fast Pitch! members
62 pr.com 17821 1 Day $199/yr, $499/yr Full Company Profile, Business Directory, Product Directory , Service Directory
Free Paid
Count URL Login Required Google Page Rank Alexa Traffic Rank Free Submission HTML Anchor Tags Images Accepted Approval Time Paid Submission HTML Anchor Tags Images Accepted Approval Time Pricing Paid Features
1 pressreleasepoint.com 288272 1 Day 1 Day Front Page, Other Sites
2 pressabout.com 157471 1 Day One business day approval
3 free-press-release-center.info 187059 1 To 7 Days 2.99 Top spot for 7 days
4 pr9.net 129396
5 prlog.org 34969 1 Day Automatic PDF version generation
6 pressreleaseforum.com 272461 1 Day
7 express-press-release.com 86255 1-3 days Few hours 29 Published within few hours
8 postafreepressrelease.com 1452330 1 Day
9 pressexposure.com 281459 1 To 2 Days
10 speedypr.com 1188498 1 Day
11 sbwire.com 223562 7-14 Days One Day $39.95, $19.95 One business day approval
12 seenation.com 647266 1 Day
13 myfreepr.com 427649 1 To 7 Days
14 exactrelease.com 491041 1 To 2 Days
15 sanepr.com 129647 1 Day
16 prwindow.com 871995 1 Day
17 mediasyndicate.com 419015 1 To 2 Days $15, $20 Highest priority
18 webnewswire.com 1352897
19 businessportal24.com 72616 1 Day
20 press.xtvworld.com 209013 1 To 7 Days
21 thepublish.com 1215758
22 newsblaster.com 1244874 1 Day
23 usprwire.com 496685 $75, $350 Posted to ClickPress, USPRwire, UKPRwire
24 i-newswire.com 69752 1 To 7 Days 25 Top spot on release date
25 pressmethod.com 189511 $5, $15, $29 Same day distribution
26 1888pressrelease.com 46440 1 Day $10, $25, $50 Attach files, 5 Images.
27 clickpress.com 109722 $75, $350 Posted to ClickPress, USPRwire and UKPRwire
28 prnuke.com 526822 1 To 7 Days
29 24-7pressrelease.com 53383 1 Day $49, $89, $349 Next day distribution.
30 pressreleasemonkey.com 1516649 25 Advanced html editor, images.
31 pressreleasespider.com 273261 1 To 7 Days
32 malebits.com 230856 1 Day $1, $4.99 / Month, $14.99 / Month 1 url , 10 active urls, Unlimited publishing, unlimited urls
33 clicnews.com 393798 30 Days
34 pressreleasecirculation.com 992313 1 Day
35 pr2work.com 1799048 1 To 7 Days
36 prfocus.com 987388 1 To 7 Days
37 epicpr.com 2707780 30 Days 10 Expedited Release Review & Approval
38 press-network.com 13569892 1 Day $69, $149 Edit, complete rewrite
39 pressbox.com 930365 1 To 7 Days
40 freepressreleases.co.uk 122166 1 To 7 Days �30, �90, �180 Submission to 30 press release sites.
41 bignews.biz 679139 1 Day
42 ideamarketers.com 26704 1 Day $5,$15, $36, $91
43 pr-usa.net 75052 1 Day
44 newsalbum.com 490012 1 Day
45 pr-gb.com 215253 1 Day �400, �1000/month Home page. Private category
46 caymanmama.com 262127 49.95 Immediate release
47 digg.com 166 1 Day
48 base.google.com 4 1 Day
49 prfriend.com 1610997 1 To 7 Days
50 theopenpress.com 115074 1 Day $10, $50 Stars, Same day service
51 newsreleaser.com 1143815 1 Day
52 press-library.com 1030256
53 live-pr.com/en 116044 1 Day
54 prarticle.com 754172 1 Day
55 information-online.com 227868 1 Day
56 prunderground.com 382859 1 To 7 Days 24.99 Next Day Distribution, Media Attachments
57 openpr.com 57079 1 Day
58 prbuzz.com 181110 1 Day 99 Releasing your press release to a large number of search engines and online news sites
59 prleap.com 43848 1 Day $49, $99, $149 Social Media, Media Attachments
60 pressmediawire.com 168189 Within 12 hrs $59.95, $39.95, $19.95 Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.
61 fastpitchnetworking.com 47071 1 Day $50, $95 Direct Distribution to 50,000 Fast Pitch! members
62 pr.com 17821 1 Day $199/yr, $499/yr Full Company Profile, Business Directory, Product Directory , Service Directory

Maryland Internet Advertising by Frederick Web Promotions on Yahoo

Maryland Internet Advertising on Bing

Frederick Web Promotions 6688 Canada Goose Ct, Frederick Maryland 21703

09/26/2009

Want to Rank In Bing? Get a WordPress.com blog

Bing Likes WordPress.com blogs

I’ve been preaching this mantra: you want your company website to perform in search engines? Get an external blog to support your main company website.

If you want to rank in Microsoft’s Bing, do yourself a favor and get a WordPress.com blog like this one:

Search Bing (or MSN) for this keyword phrase:

maryland internet advertising

MSN returns 18,000,000 websites that all purport to be on this subject.

Look who is number one:

You want your site to rank in Bing, get wordpress.com

You want your site to rank in Bing, get wordpress.com

Want results like that for YOUR company website?
Local Google Advertising

09/10/2009

What is meant by “Organic Search Results”?

Organic?

It almost sounds edible doesn’t it?

The definition of Organic Search Results is the search term results returned by a search engine that are derived from what they search engine itself thinks is important as opposed to returning paid listings or advertisements.

You type a keyword into a search engine and the search engine tells you what it thinks is the most important website regarding that search term. Search terms are what the search engine industry calls “keywords”.

Google claims that their users click (organic) search results more often than advertisements.Wikipedia’s definition of search engine optimization uses the term “Algorithmic” as a synonym for “Organic”.  What is an algorithm?

Why algorithms are necessary: an informal definition

While there is no generally accepted formal definition of “algorithm“, an informal definition could be “an algorithm is a process that performs some sequence of operations.” For some people, a program is only an algorithm if it stops eventually. For others, a program is only an algorithm if it stops before a given number of calculation steps.

For our purposes an algorithm is a mathematical process that stops when it decidesdefinitively which website gets to be Numero UNO and who is second string, third string, also ran, and filed away under ‘deep six’.
Wikipedia goes on to say this: “As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.”
So optimizing a site means taking an existing site, it might be a pretty site, might be an interesting site, may or may not have state of the art graphics… but it’s nowhere to be found in the first page of Google results.
Why is that?
Because the ‘artist’ who crafted the site didn’t know the first thing about keywords nor did they take into account which part of the page the “bot” is going to “parse”
What organic search engine optimization does is to *optimize* the page so Google will think more highly of that page.

… I’ll bet my last paycheck the web designer thinks they’re supposed to write the code for human consumption…

Wrong.

You want the site to be found I take it?I mean the whole purpose of the site is to get someone to buy something… and is that going to happen if the fancy site is buried deep in the search results on say “results 71 through 80″
You either write the code to please GoogleBot or you’re writing it as a hobby. If the desired result is to put MONEY in the CASH REGISTER, you’ re wanting to write code that pleases Google FIRST, pleasing humans comes second.Argue with me if you want… My sites make money, their sites look pretty.

Which one do you want?What can one do to get your site to rank higher than your competitors site?… that’s the $12,000 question.

RELEVANCE – that’s what Google Wants

Ranking – that’s what YOU want.

Google is bigger than you are… you want something from Google?I thought so… give Google What IT wants and Google can make you rich.
Anything that can be abused… will be (can’t remember where I heard that first, wish I could claim it as my own quote). Everybody thinks the job of an SEO guy is to trick Google.  So many people in marketing are under the foolish notion that our job is to ‘get away with’ getting at the top of Google without having to pay to get at the top.Every business person on the planet wants their product to outsell everybody else’s product.
They don’t’ give a rats a** about any body else but themselves.What’s in it for them? is their axiom.They’ve got the cart before the horse!Think about this carefully: What does Google Want?

08/31/2009

Building Links Through DoFollow Forum Signatures

Building Links Through DoFollow Forum Signatures
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 1:01pm

I haven’t written a link building post in a while, because for the most part, I was off investigating other things. And getting way too complex. When I realized it’s the things I think are simple and run-of-the-mill that people really are looking to learn about. So as people ask me questions, I note them and try to write a post. I used to hate questions. Taking someone from “What’s a signature?” to viewing browser source in one sitting may be hard, but hopefully, it’s not impossible. Now I realize these questions are the master key to the type of traffic I want at this blog. So off we go.

Forums are basically where “social networks” started.

I talk to a lot of people who want to get traffic to their site. And they usually think I can tell them how in 10-15 minutes. So I try. Rarely do people listen. And out of those that listen, very few actually use what I tell them. I am not sure why this happens. Maybe they are lazy. Maybe they think, “How can something like that help me?”. But one guy I talked to I told to use forum signatures to build links. That was about all. I thought it was simple enough to get someone started. I told him to sign up for forums, add a signature file, forget about it and just converse. Put in your two cents where ever you can add something to the conversation. I did not list specific forums.

I told him that and I was thinking, yet another person not taking my advice. But I was wrong. A few weeks later, he came back to me and we checked the site. He has a micro business and is outranking local corporations here in Kansas City. He is doing this with a site built from templates. He doesn’t even know HTML. And what he used to do it, local business directories and forums. It blew my mind. One, for getting through to someone in 10 minutes. Two, for the results.

And since most people understand forums, I think it may be the best place for the average non-tech person to build links to his site, especially if you have the gift of gab. They have been around since they were called bulletin boards and some still are. You can find multiple forums on just about any topic you want.

How Forums Work to Boost Your Site’s Position in the Search Engines

There are many ways to get links to your site and links are votes. That is about the simplest way to think of them. Think of them as another site voting for your site to rank higher than other sites for a specific keyword. He who has the most votes, all else being the same, will rank the highest. It is not that simple and not the whole story, but if you are new to this, it is a good place to start.

Most other ways of getting links will get you one link from one site. You comment on a blog that uses dofollow and you get one link back from that post. You submit an article to an article directory and you get one link, most of the time. Run down the list of link building methods and it takes a lot of work to get one link. With forums, once you create a signature, that signature will now be under every post you add to a forum thread.

Detecting if the Forum Will Pass Rank to Your Site

Remember that the links to your site count as “votes”. Well, in the early days of blogs, getting a link to your site was as easy as commenting on any random blog you happen to find. It was not long before spammers caught onto this.

To prevent spam, the “nofollow” tag was created. A normal link in html looks like this: <a href=”http://www.website.com“>This is your link text</a> and a “nofollow” link looks like this: <a href=”http://www.website.com” rel=”nofollow”>This is your link text</a> . That rel=”nofollow” does a lot. What it does is tell the search engines that happen to spider that page this link is not a vote for your site. In other words, the link is worthless for your rank in search engines like Google.

There are some people that say this link still counts as a vote with a lesser value, but if you are new to this, we will stick to this rule: if there is a rel=”nofollow” around your link, it is worthless for building your rank in the search engine results. If it is a high traffic forum, people may click on your link but it is not helping you anywhere else. It’s value is limited to those clickthroughs.

Okay, let’s see if a forum is passing rank. Browse to a thread in the forum of your choice and make sure there are some signature showing. To detect if a forum is using nofollow tags, first right click in the middle of your browser’s window. On a Mac, this would be Control and your normal mouse click. After doing that, a menu should pop up for you. Now depending on your browser, you should see something like “View Page Source” or just “View Source”. Click that.

Now that you are looking at a bunch of html code, the easiest way to determine if a forum is dofollow is just search the whole page for “nofollow”. Ctrl+F usually brings up a search menu on most browsers and you can do this with source code. So push Control and F at the same time, type “nofollow” and hit enter. If nothing comes up, you are at a dofollow forum.

If your search does turn up a “nofollow”, check it to see if it is around one of the signature links. People nofollow links on their site for various reasons and some other links on the page may be nofollow. To make that a bit easier, go back to the real page, copying one of the signature links, search for that on the html source (the page we got by right clicking) and determine if the signature link itself has a nofollow tag.

And there are Firefox extensions that make this easier. But if you are not using Firefox and are not used to addons, showing you how to use them would have made this post a lot longer and involved, so I skipped that process.

And most forums I have run into are dofollow, so the manual process of right clicking and viewing the source may be overkill, but it helps to know before you invest in creating a profile there and fleshing it out.

Creating Your Forum Signature

This will be a general tutorial and some forums are set up differently then others, so you may have to do some looking around to edit your forum profile.

Usually on a bar, across the top of a forum, you will see various links like Forum Jump, FAQ, Search, Tools. There should also be a “Sign Up” or “Register” link. Obviously, this is where you sign up. Do that first. Most are basic forms and most will send an email to the email address you used to sign up. You will have to click on this link before your forum membership is activated.

Once you have determined that the forum will follow signature links, you have signed up and you have activated your account, it is now time to add your signature and flesh out your profile. Look around on that top bar for something that says “Edit Signature”, “Edit Profile”, “Control Panel” or something similar. While you are in there, you might as well fill out your whole profile, because it will get some traffic from other forum users especially if you are active and on most forums, every post you make will also link back to your forum profile.

In your signature, put your links or your links and a small blurb. Some forums limit the amount of links and text and a whole bunch of links there looks a bit spammy, so use good judgement when creating your signature. And here are the basics of your link:

<a href=”http://www.thesiteyouarelinkingtoo.com” Title=”This pops up when you mouse over the link and should have important keywords, if allowed by forum”>This is your anchor text and should have important keywords</a>

Finding Forums

Before the critical mass of blogs, if you searched for a very specific question on just about any topic, forums showed on the first page of results at Google. Now, chances are that blogs have taken that place in search engine results. But forums are out there and some still outrank the blogs.

Should you find forums related to your niche? Yes. That will give your most valuable backlinks because the content on both the forum and the site you are linking to in your forum signature are related. But if you find that this limits the amount of forums you can be active on, branch out to other forums and use them also. For example, if you only found 3 or 4 forums on “window and door repairs”, make sure you are active at those forums.

But if you have more time, go to unrelated forums and add your signature. And if you do, you might as well find ones on topics you like and can gab about for days. Most webmaster forums are full of members with signatures that have nothing to do with being a webmaster. The members still talk about webmaster things. But their signature point to unrelated sites.

One of the easiest ways to find forums is to use a keyword related to your niche and add forum to the end of it. Then search Google for that phrase, i.e “webmaster forum”. Basic and simple.

Another way is to use a forum search site. These sites search only forums. Just enter niche related terms and these search engines will search a bunch of forums at once and give you specific forum threads as results. Here are a couple:

Some DoFollow Forum Lists

I was going to build my own and still might, but there is a lot of forums out there and it is rare to run into one that does not give you a dofollow link. So instead I will lead you to other blogs. Use this list if you are lazy. These forums have already been checked for dofollow links.

How Not to Spam

Just don’t. That’s about it. The beauty of your signature at a forum is that you can forget about it. Do so. And start conversing. It may take a while. It’s like driving. At first, you stress out, thinking Step 1, Step2, Step3. But eventually, you’re a natural.

Don’t look for opportunities to get links. Just about any forum you land on will have hundreds of active threads. Browse them until something strikes you. Answer questions. Ask questions. Post tips. And mainly watch the other forum members. Learn from them.

08/29/2009

Company Facebook Page Creation a Testimonial

Filed under: Maryland Internet Advertising — Tags: , — localgoogleguru @ 11:26 pm

David Bruce Jr of Frederick Web Promotions interviews Malcolm Carter of Commercial Buildings Maintenance Inc about the company Facebook presence I gave them and it’s exposure.

Why Get a Company Facebook Page?
Because it shows up in Google Search Results as a high Google PageRank incoming link to YOUR company, product, service or brand.

Google SEO and Domain Authority

Google SEO and Domain Authority
By Tom Greaves

To understand how to best optimize your site for Google you need to understand how the web’s link graph works and how Google places value on a particular site. One of the most common SEO techniques is to build vast amounts of links back to a particular page in order to boost its popularity and rank it higher on Google’s index.

Google’s world famous patent PageRank was designed originally to work out the popularity of a particular page on the web. It would take into account where the link was coming from and how relevant it was to the target page. A link from a popular trusted page would be worth a lot more than a link from a page hardly visible on the web.

Google has evolved in the last few years and is now making rank calculations based on a domain level as well as on a page level. Google will now assess how many domains point to your domain, how much authority these domains have and how relevant they are to your content.

So when we are building links back to our sites we need to think about the type of domains pointing to us as
well as the type of pages. For instance a link from a deep page of an authority site may well be worth more than a link from the home page of a less recognized site.

Also whilst thinking about the authority of our domain we need to think about where external links point to on our pages. A common mistake many newbie SEO’s make is by building all their links to their home page leaving their deeper pages to drop out of the index, however Google will specifically look to see where links are pointing to. Google may consider all pages without links to be of no interest and therefore not worth adding to the index. Sites with good amounts of links popularity to deeper pages will always rank better on Google.

When practicing any SEO technique be sure to think about trust, authority and popularity from the perspective of your domain as a whole rather than a particular page. Do you ever wonder why authority sites seem to be able to rank new pages quickly? This is because they have huge amounts of domain authority; Google trusts them fully and therefore fully trusts every piece of content that comes from those domains. It’s simple really build domain authority and rank higher on Google quicker.

If you would like to learn SEO techniques please visit the SEOwizz SEO blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Greaves

08/17/2009

MySpace making a comeback? Really?

Filed under: Maryland Internet Advertising — Tags: , , , — localgoogleguru @ 4:20 pm

If social networking were the prom then Facebook would be the king, and Twitter the queen. Or actually they would probably be rival queens. However you want to view it, one thing is for certain — MySpace is the candidate that no one is talking about, but might just get the bouquet of flowers and tiara at the end.

You might be thinking that I’m crazy; hasn’t MySpace been out of the limelight for quite awhile? If you’re talking about professional social media coverage, then yes MySpace has taken a backseat to big brother Facebook and the up-and-comer Twitter. The numbers don’t lie though, and we have to acknowledge that MySpace is still very much relevant. Actually, in terms of unique visitors it’s 2.5x more relevant than Twitter (MySpace – 59m vs. Twitter – 23m).

As professionals I believe many times we feel alienated by MySpace. It seems to be the least productive in terms of networking for a business. The profiles are notorious for being tacky, and highly obtrusive. Finally, and most importantly I believe that MySpace’s focus on music hinders many visitor’s focus. They look to be expanding at least, as it’s been stated they’ll be involved with video games.

It’s a bit early to tell what MySpace’s direct future is. With their clean up efforts, and video game direction it will be interesting to see if they can salvage their image with professionals.

What says you? Are you a MySpace user, and if so have you noticed many of their clean up changes? Is it too late for you, and either Facebook or Twitter owns your soul?

Johnny V from WebProWorld

08/09/2009

Yellowbook poor advertising ROI claim

I didn’t write this post, I haven’t had the experience this small business owner had because I’ve not paid Yellowbook the $250 a month he says he paid but I thought his retelling of his story was noteworthy so I’m republishing a snippet of his post here:

 

There are all kinds of different ways to advertise your business and keep the name out there without spending a fortune, there are also plenty of advertising area’s that seem inexpensive and for good reason, lack of results.

 In a little over a years time I have written about numerous forms of advertising on my site, in addition to the many local area business’s that I review as well. Advertising is by far my favorite thing to do, I love starting ad campaigns from the ground up, and figuring the potential cost and profit of doing such ad campaigns. My palms sweat just thinking about putting a special on a Clear Channel Billboard from Mikey B, no really they do.

Anyway, before this post gets way out of hand the main reason for this article is to take a moment and review the experiences I have had with YellowBook.com and our advertising with them over the last few months. 

When we first opened Extreme Tan and Smoothies we had a paid advertisement in the actual Yellow Book that was delivered to all of the local homes in the area, this was about five years ago and let’s just say that ad campaign was hardly worth it. A few months ago while we were in the height of our season and aggressively advertising we had a YellowBook.com representative come into the office pushing advertising in the online version of Yellow Book.com

My initial answer was of course absolutely not, especially after my first experience with them and how they have continued billing that is a major pain in the ass to get them to stop. After talking with the representative he assured me that the deal we signed would allow us to break out of it and cancel at any time, this sparked my interest because I rarely ever sign contracts.

We decided to buy the top spot on all searches in the specific counties that we wanted the ad to appear when people plugged in a search on Yellow Book.com, I figured it would have to return some excellent results with a placement like that. Our spots continued to run through out the entire tanning season as well as the entire limousine season, we have yet to have any customer mention those ad spots for either business.

Now I will say that one of the hardest things to track when it comes to advertising is advertising placed in the Yellow Pages or any place that doesn’t offer some sort of redemption, like a coupon to make tracking easier. The spots ran for enough time that had the advertisement made that much of an impact we would have heard about it, this ad campaign was very much like the ad campaign we ran five years ago.

In addition to the poor return on investment from advertising with Yellow Book and Yellow Book.com over the years…

Original Post at http://www.extremejohn.com/out-with-yellowbook-com/

08/07/2009

Don’t forget Yahoo for SEO

Want YOUR company to rank #1 in Yahoo?

Google isn’t the only show in town… the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo means you’d better be looking at your companies place in Yahoo!

Go to yahoo and type in Maryland Search Engine Optimization, take a peek at who is #1 and #2

Maryland SEO in Yahoo 08-07-2009

Now that you’re duly impressed… If you want me to show you how I did that, get a Yahoo buzz account and buzz my articles below:

“The US Post Office says it’s volume is down by roughly a third… it seems there is lot less print/ junk mail being sent, I’m of the opinion that as advertisers, we are spending less on print ads because they just aren’t working; if print worked …”

You were the first to buzz this up! (Undo)

- 39 hours ago

You commented on this! – 42 hours ago

“We are a Frederick, Maryland Based Commercial Cleaning firm serving primarily office buildings large and small and major restaurant chains in 6 states in the North East and Mid Atlantic Region. Out typical clients are commercial buildings, schools, …”

You commented on this! – Aug 3, 2009

“There are health benefits for all residents from regularly cleaning the Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning (HVAC) System. ”

You were the first to buzz this up! (Undo)

- Aug 3, 2009

You commented on this! – Aug 2, 2009

“tweeted in May about mold in her Chicago apartment, and Horizon Group Management answered with a $50,000 defamation lawsuit. News of the suit sped around the Internet Monday after a Chicago blogger caught wind of the complaint. This company needs …”

You commented on this! – Jul 31, 2009

“Eye glasses prescription, contact lens fittings, Professional Services include: eye exams, contact lens fittings, treatment of most eye infections, laser vision correction co-management TLC affiliate Vision Insurance Accepted in Frederick Nita …”

You were the first to buzz this up! (Undo)

- Jul 31, 2009

You commented on this! – Jul 30, 2009

“Airwiz Dryer Duct Cleaning for Mid Maryland, Western Maryland and Northern Virginia Call 301 871-2250 now to schedule a dryer duct inspection. Call Toll Free 1 866 4AIRWIZ ( 1 866 424-7949 ) In Virginia Call 703 297-8200 === ”

You were the first to buzz this up! (Undo)

- Jul 30, 2009

You commented on this! – Jul 28, 2009

“And I didn’t know this either: Even if you recycle, Even if you recycle a lot, even if you dig the landfill up and reuse (bio fuel? methane collection) you are still going to have crap left over. ”

You were the first to buzz this up! (Undo)

- Jul 28, 2009

You commented on this! – Jul 26, 2009

“Discovery Channel “Destroyed in Seconds” Camo4×4s got a call from the Discovery Channel, it seems a producer for the hit show “Destroyed in Seconds” wanted a talented videographer that specializes in Outdoorsman Videography Destroyed in Seconds is …”

===

Besides adding your company blog to an http://my.yahoo.com page the best way to get your company website listed in Yahoo is to get a Yahoo account and Buzz your links.

Step One- get a yahoo email account http://mail.yahoo.com

Step Two- once logged in, create a My Yahoo page http://my.yahoo.com

Step Three – get a yahoo buzz account http://buzz.yahoo.com

Step Four – get a flickr account http://flickr.com

and add anchor text to your Flickr Profile.

Which leads us to “what is anchor text?” which we’ll cover in the next post!

How to Dominate Google Rankings

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