Hakia

Today’s search engines bring popular results via statistical ranking methods, but a popular website may not always be credible, and a credible website may not always be popular. As a result, searchers suffer in many ways ranging from wasted search time to using misleading information.

Twine

People use Twine to keep track of their interests. Twine is a new way for you to collect online content – videos, photos, articles, web pages, products – and bring it all together by topic, so you can have it in one place and share it with anyone you want.

Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.

Scoopler

Scoopler is a real-time search engine. Scoopler aggregates and organizes content being shared on the Internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. It does this by constantly indexing live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more.

TweetMeme

TweetMeme is a service, which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme is able to categorize these links into categories and subcategories, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what your interested in.

OneRiot

Increasingly, the web’s most interesting content is what our friends and other people are talking about, sharing and looking at right now. However, when people search for that content, traditional search engines struggle to surface these fresh, socially relevant results. That’s the hole – and it’s a big one – that OneRiot is filling.

SearchMe

SearchMe, the first multimedia search engine: Search for information, videos, music, images, news and more, and find the most relevant results displayed in a comprehensive blend of multimedia and non-multimedia web pages.

Cuil

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years, but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Kosmix

Kosmix is a guide to the Web. The website lets users explore the web by topic, presenting a dashboard of relevant videos, photos, news, commentary, opinion, communities and links to related topics. Kosmix’s categorization engine organizes the Internet into magazine-style topic pages, enabling people to navigate the web.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is a service that makes it easy to share with friends online. It offers a fun and interactive way to discover and discuss information among friends. It’s fast and easy to start a conversation around shared items, or to show that you like something a friend has shared.

Related posts:

1. Writing for Search Engines

Google’s co-founders want search to be real fast, really fast!  And one way they can influence the overall speed of the internet is to make sure faster web pages rank better than slower ones in the Google search results forcing webmasters to improve site speed or lose rankings!

Before we get too excited, keep in mind that there are over 200 ranking factors in the algorithm and each are weighted differently.  So, it is unclear how important this algorithm change might be…..however, we feel that when Google provides us a ‘hint’ to improving rankings, we should pay attention.

Here are some initial techniques & best practices to improve your Website Speed:

Compress Images & Text
Image compression is minimizing the size in bytes of a graphics file without degrading the quality of the image to an unacceptable level. The reduction in file size reduces the time required for images to be sent over the Internet or downloaded from Web page thus improving the performance of the site.  In image compression, a small loss in quality is usually not noticeable.

There is no “critical point” up to which compression works perfectly, but beyond which it becomes impossible.  Every image that has not gone through image compression should do so.  Here is a link to quite a few free online tools that allow you to compress images for free. http://www.dailyseoblog.com/2009/07/10-image-optimization-tools-to-help-reduce-image-file-sizes-page-load-time/

Limit Requests
Make as few requests as possible (consolidate JS & CSS) – Every time you call a .js file or a .css file from your web page you are making a request from the server.  Every time you have to wait for the server to respond and provide you will the information you requested.

Combine Script Calls
It would be must more efficient if we combined all of our calls for .js into one file and only called the server once for this information and it would also keep this extra load off of the server.  So the takeaway is to combine all of your .js files into one file include so that you only make 1 call to the server and speed up performance.  Same goes for .css files also.

Use Caching
Use Caching when possible for pages and images – Caching is the temporary storage of frequently accessed pages/images in higher speed media (typically SRAM or RAM) for more efficient retrieval. Web caching stores frequently used objects closer to the client through browser, proxy, or server caches. By storing “fresh” objects closer to your users, you avoid round trips to the origin server, reducing bandwidth consumption, server load, and most importantly, latency.

Caching is not just for static sites, even dynamic sites can benefit from caching. Graphics and multimedia typically don’t change as frequently as (X)HTML files. Graphics that seldom change like logos, headers, and navigation can be given longer expiration. Depending on the server type the setting are different but all servers have the ability to set up caching for the most frequent pages and images.

Cut Down Connections
Make as few connections to other domains as possible – Calling 3rd party domains from your pages can slow down your load time dramatically.  It is very hard to control the speed at which the information is being set back to you and can slow down your sites response rate.  Make as few calls to other sites as possible and make sure you want the speed at which they are delivering your information back to you.

Remove Bad Connections
Any time a connection hangs, does not respond or throws a 3xx error search engines see this as poor website design and could see this as a negative against your site.  Just like 400 or 300 errors that are not handled properly we need to make sure our connections are just as clean.

Related posts:

1. See Your Website With the Eyes of a Spider
2. The 60 Minute SEO Website Audit

1.) Increased SEO Awareness

SEO used to be something akin to voodoo; the only people who understood it were the ones doing it. But now it seems everyone knows about SEO. As more small business owners become aware of what SEO is and why you should be doing it, competition should increase and put a premium on smart decision-making when it comes to doing SEO in-house or hiring a consultant.

2.) Moving SEO In-House

In-House SEO has never been more popular than it is now, and that trend should continue into 2009. Companies big and small are recognizing the need for and value of having dedicated staff to recommend and implement SEO strategies.

3.) SEO Consultants and Firms Booked Up

Many of us who don’t work in-house have never been busier than we are now. Because of trend number one above, small business owners are hunting far and wide for SEO help. Purely anecdotal evidence, but something that many fellow SEO friends are experiencing. There’s big demand and a lot of SEOs will be booked up.

4.) It’s Google’s World

Google has dominated the SEO landscape for years, and their lead over Yahoo and Live Search is only getting bigger. There are several companies that try to track market share, and their numbers differ. But they all agree that between 60-70% of searches happen at Google. That doesn’t mean you should put all your SEO eggs in Google’s basket, but it does mean if you’re not being found on Google, you’re not being found.

5.) SEO Tools and Automation

Hoping to take advantage of the growing interest in SEO, and the difficulty in finding the right consultant, more companies and individuals are creating online tools that automate portions of an SEO analysis. While some of these tools offer helpful data at a basic level, what matters most is how you use the data they provide.

6.) SEO Scams

The downside of increased interest in SEO is that many small business owners will continue to spend money making unethical scam artists rich. $99/month for 500 directory links? $200 for search engine submission services? Don’t do it. Read what several search industry leaders had to say about SEO scams, and make sure this is one trend you avoid in 2009.

Related posts:

1. What Makes SEO Careers Recession-Proof?
2. Writing SEO Articles To Advertise Your Business

• The SEO market is an established market. If you remember the previous recession from the beginning of the century, when the IT industry was among the most heavily stricken, you might be skeptical a bit that now it won’t be the same story. No, it is not the same now. SEO is not a new service anymore and the SEO market itself is more established than it was a couple of years ago. This is what makes the present recession different from the previous one – the difference is fundamental and it can’t be neglected.

• SEO is one of the last expenses companies cut. SEO has already become a necessity for companies of any size. Unlike hardware, cars, not to mention entertainment and even business trips, SEO expenses are usually not that big but they help a company to stay aboard. That is why when a company decides to make cuts in the budget, SEO expenses are usually not among the things that get the largest cut (or any cut at all).

• SEO has great ROI. The Return On Investment (ROI) for money spent on SEO is much higher than the ROI for other types of investments. SEO brings companies money and this is what makes it such a great investment. Stop SEO and the money stops coming as well.

• Many clients start aggressive SEO campaigns in an attempt to get better results fast. During a recession SEO is even more important. That is why many clients decide that an aggressive SEO campaign will help them get more clients and as a result these clients double their pre-recession budgets.

• SEO is cheaper than PPC. SEO is just one of the many ways for a site to get traffic. However, it is also one of the most effective ways to drive tons of traffic. For instance, if you consider PPC, the cost advantages of SEO are obvious. PPC is very expensive and as a rule, ranking high in organic search results even for competitive keywords is cheaper than PPC.

• Cheaper than traditional promotion methods. Traditional promotion methods (i.e. offline marketing) are still an option but their costs are higher even than PPC and the other forms of online promotion. Besides many companies have given offline marketing completely and have turned to SEO as their major way to promote their business and attract new clients.

• SEO is an recurring expense. Many businesses build their business model around memberships and other forms of recurring payments. For you memberships and other types of recurring payments are presold campaigns – i.e. more or less you know that if the client is happy with a campaign you did for him, he or she will return. Acquiring recurring clients is very beneficial because you have less expenses in comparison to acquiring clients one by one.

The outlook for SEO careers during times of recession is pretty positive. As we already mentioned, it is possible to experience drops in volumes or some of your clients to go the bankruptcy road but as a whole SEO offers more stability than many other careers. If you manage to take advantage of the above mentioned recession-proof specifics of SEO and you are a real professional, you won’t have the pleasure to feel the recession in all its bitterness.

Related posts:

1. 6 SEO Trends for 2009
2. 10 Ways to Get Free Traffic

It may be a surprise to some SEO professionals but according to a study by SEOmoz, the single most important factor to page-specific search engine rankings, is optimized anchor text from external links. The search engine spiders are not only looking for text, but also are interested in the keywords you utilize in your anchor text for links.

Unfortunately, while creating the anchor text can be quite simple, the process of creating external content is time consuming. One of the best ways to optimize is to create and publish articles, press releases, and blogs. This gives you the ability to control the content and the actual links that link back to your site. Basically, you are calling attention to a link and set of words that you want the engines to consider when ranking.

Imagine that the search spiders are swimming in a sea of text with nothing on the horizon. Now imagine that the sea was suddenly filled with boatloads of keywords. Clearly it would be a lot easier to find the keywords if they were in standing out in their anchored boats.

Many SEO professionals have noted countless positive results from the fruits of their anchor-optimized labor. Some interesting results have been ranking well for a page without even mentioning the keyword in the body of the page, and some have mentioned that pages even get good rank for keywords on sites that even have yet to launch.

There are some important things to remember before your embark on an anchor text optimization campaign:

1. Make sure you are linking to relevant content
2. Make sure you are linking from a diverse set of sites
3. Perform an extensive keyword research…you might find easy ways to win under utilized keywords
4. Utilize Page Rank when determining where you want to link to…this is usually a good start when considering anchor text
5. It does not hurt to brand your anchor text…research has shown that anchors with the brand within them, tend to rank better and make the content more accessible when hovering over the link.
6. Don’t forget to use the title attribute when entering anchor text
7. If you post an article, try to “spin” the article with new anchor text

As with any search engine optimization, balance is key. A good start would be to focus on 2-3 links per page that link back to your site. We are confident that if you add proper anchor text optimization into the SEO mix, you can expect great results. Anchors Away!

No related posts.

Web world being a specialized field it is always advisable to make outsourcing a part of the business growth plan so that some qualified agency can handle the SEO, social media optimization, pay per click campaign and ensure maximum benefits. In fact the first step towards success of search engine marketing methodology for any small business involves picking the most suitable SEO outsourcing firm and the things to be kept in mind for the same include;

Plan In Advance:

It is essential to have a complete search marketing plan prepared in advance to ensure every aspect of search marketing whether it is search engine optimization, social media optimization or pay per click campaign can be exploited and which part is to be outsourced can be decided. The areas which can be best handled by outsourcing include aspects like SEO, paid advertising and pay per click. Such an arrangement is cost effective as well.

Know What You Want:

It is important to be sure of what one wants by outsourcing search engine optimization or social media optimization for search marketing needs. The way out is to do some research about the way the outsource SEO strategy is going to help one’s business and then move ahead with the process.

Picking An Outsourcing Firm:

An outsourcing vendor should be picked after getting all required cross references, work done in past regarding pay per click, SEO, etc. quoted and checked thoroughly. A well directed search over internet should be done to cross check the capabilities of potential vendor.

Define The Goals:

To ensure that the outsourcing SEO firm involved in deploying search engine optimization, social media optimization or pay per click campaigns understands what one is looking for in terms of outsourcing search marketing it is important for the small businesses to clearly state the objectives and goals. More importantly the financials involved should always be clearly spelled out to avoid any confusion.

Picking the right outsourcing partner is the most crucial step and it should be a vendor with extensive SEO experience and one which can work with close relationship in realization of the business goals.

No related posts.

So SEO White Hats has decided to give people that read this blog an idea of what goes on behind the scenes at professional SEO companies when they examine and optimize your website.

Optimization:

* Examine Site Navigation&architecture;
* Examine URL paths&structure
* Rewriting Dynamic URL’s

“Use HTTP redirects appropriately (301, 302) instead of JavaScript or Meta Refreshes.”

* Canonicalization of URL’s
* Page file Names / Image File Names
* Robots.txt File
* Create/Optimize HTML Sitemap – http://sitemaps.org/
* Create/Optimize XML Sitemap that references the robots.txt file
* Create /Optimize Urllist.txt&.ror files
* Check for Broken Links&HTML/CSS Validation Check

“Embrace an HTML Standard.”

* Submit Site & Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
* 404 Header Check & Optimization

SEO Optimization:

* Keyword Research, Assignment & Prioritizing
* Meta Data – Title Tags, Description, Keywords, Robots, Others

“Make sure you use descriptive text in your HTML title tag, header tags and URL anchor text.”

* CSS Optimization
* Prioritize Headings – H1/H2/H3
* Keyword Prominence & Placement – 1st & Last
* Image Alt Attributes & Optimization
* Updated Contact Information
* Internal Linking, No-following & PR Sculpting
* Similar Content & Keyword Cannibalization Check

(Just to Name a Few…)

No related posts.

Related posts:

1. Real World Advantages of Internet Marketing
2. 4 Ecommerce Facebook Marketing Tips
3. Internet Marketing 101

An SEO conference is usually a good place for learning new SEO techniques and strategies and about the industry in general. Some people contend; however, that these very same techniques, strategies and general information can easily be found in several good SEO books, blogs, eBooks and magazines on the topic. Almost all industries have their own conferences and they are usually a great source of information and motivation that you just can’t find on SEO blogs, books or eBooks and the people in that industry completely look forward to them year after year.

One reason that people don’t enjoy SEO conferences as much other types of conferences is that the format is not usually discussion friendly. When dealing with an information-heavy topic such as SEO, it is easy to talk over people’s heads and when given certain time constraints it can be difficult to discuss complex topics in the way that they deserve to be dealt with what you get. There is a lot to learn and most SEO conferences just aren’t designed as they should be, to house a large number of people and to relate a lot of technical information in the time allotted.

Another reason and perhaps the biggest reason of all that SEO conferences are not always as great as they could be is that these people don’t want to give away all of the secrets they use to get top search engine rankings because that would automatically create more competition for them. They may give you an outline to “see the big picture and that is about all. Naturally, people are curious and want to know more so it is easy for the so-called gurus to sell you their latest eBook telling all about how to get incredible SEO results for yourself or your clients.

One way to assure yourself that you won’t be disappointed is to lower your expectations. You might try some gratitude and be thankful that you have the opportunity to mix and mingle with people in your line of work. This alone may be worth the conference fee you paid and you may find more insight into SEO by talking with the experts in the crowd than by listening to some on the stage. Spending time with other professionals with a shared interest has many benefits such as learning new techniques and making connections in the business world that just might pay off later.

No related posts.