class notes

9/23/09

Reports from several different software packages were used in the clinic to illustrate information that is useful for webmasters to obtain about a web site. More information about each of the packages can be found on their websites.

Netmechanic was run interactively to illustrate how the components on a web page could effect the load time of the page.
Optispider was used to catalog the characteristics of a site.
Web Position reports showed comparative rankings of a web site on a selected list of keyword phrases.
Another package from Axandra Software was planned to be presented, but was not due to time constraints. The report is available for viewing as a download. This report shows how various sites that rank on a particular keyword phrase can be compared to learn what elements of the pages might have contributed to the ranking that the pages obtained in the search.

6/10/09

Dick mentioned several sites in his presentation:

Keyword Research sites:

Example sites:

Download Google Toolbar

Keyword Density Analyzers:

Website Statistics:

8/14/08

Brian Armstrong mentioned several sites in his presentation. In keeping with our concept of making these links easily available to our participants. I list a few of the major links here:

12/5/07

During the class discussion, the topic of drop shipping products came up. Brian Nelson suggested three sites that businesses could use to arrange shipping for their products. The sites he suggested are: www.getloaded.com, www.directfreight.com, and www.internettruckstop.com. Brian also referred to an air freight site at www.forwardair.com.

There was no extended discussion of these sites the class, but they are worth a look for anyone who has significant shipping issues for their products.

Brian also brought up the use of video clips for selling product over the web. Searching Google for the phrase "40x60 party tent" will list his web posting on YouTube. As this is written, his listing was number four in the organic listings. After clicking on that link, a video will start and clicking on the link "About This Video" will display the text that is searchable for this listing

12/13/06

A new site that can be helpful for publishing information about your web site was introduced in the class. The site is a "Wiki" about websites and makes it easy to enter information about your site to tell the world more about what you want them to know. The site has its own robots that are searching the Internet independently to gather information about web sites, but the site allows you to set up a new site by directing that robot to crawl a site that you submit to create a brand new article.

I have created an article for my site (whose subject is "small business consulting") and subsequently edited it so that it reads differently from the information gathered by the robot. This process enables you to expand on the information that your web page title and description offer about your site (this is what the robot collects to create the article about your site.)

These wiki articles are now referenced in the information provided in a domain name search through the site whois.com, another handy source of information about web sites. Try this out by searching for your own domain name and see what information it provides about your site.

Another topic we have talked about recently in the class is the idea of purchasing existing domain names rather than brand new domain names in order to gain some advantage in dealing with the Google Sandbox. One place that you can shop for such names is in this catalog of domain names. Another extensive list is available through Netsol. Note that these links are offered as a convenience to our readers, not necessarily a reference!

12/6/06

Jeff Kaiser, one of our class members, shared some of his insights and perspectives on his business and how he is beginning to prepare for his next phase, moving into an internet business. Jeff has been in the sign and graphics business for 23 years and has run a successful business with up to 26 employees. In order to reduce his time away from home devoted to his business, and to improve his ability to manage his own time, he has concluded that he will use the information he is obtaining through our clinic to start an entirely new internet business. We wish him well in his new endeavor and will be following his progress over time. Jeff has promised to come back and report to us on what his experiences are and how he has applied the lessons he learned in our classes.

On Jay's advice, Jeff has acquired an existing domain name to start his new site. It is important that this name be checked out to determine that it has been indexed on the web and that it has not been blackballed. Two sites mentioned in the class help with this investigation. Information about a domain name can be discovered by entering the name in the search at Whois.sc, and earlier versions of the domain content can be seen archived on the Wayback Machine.

Jay discussed the importance of internal link structure to ranking, and mentioned that a new page on a site may take 3-6 months before the impact of internal links strengthens it enough to achieve the ranking that a well designed and executed page should earn. Patience is still a virtue!

Keyword density should now be targeted at 1.75%. This target has been lowered since August, so keep in contact to see the changes as search engines adjust what they consider optimal for this factor!

One of the class participants asked after the class how he could conveniently track his ranking performance on his site. We have covered such questions in the past, and I referred him to Digital Point Solutions, where he can establish an account at no charge and track his site performance. This website has a number of useful tools that we have used on different occasions.

3/8/2006

Hearing about the personal experience of a business owner who has used the techniques covered in our classes is very rewarding and informative. It puts the lessons we present in the clinic in a different and more meaningful light.

I was struck by several thoughts as Narmin made her presentation. The value of trying to think from the perspective of the prospect, the person using the search engine, when creating names for your products came through very clearly in her presentation. We have always talked about using keywords in captions and titles, but she stressed naming the products in terms that prospects might use to search for the products, and that made the point very concrete!

I also found it useful to hear about her persistence in staying with the plan to improve her site incrementally. She brought out the effort that goes into identifying a keyword phrase of importance, and working that into the site content effectively. She clearly understands that creating a powerful site is not an overnight process for most of us.

It was also interesting to hear first hand experience of being in the Google sandbox, and experiencing the reward of having done your work properly when the site comes out of the sandbox. Her site jumped from a ranking in the 60's to number 7 on one of her principal phrases, very suddenly after 14 months of lingering in the "might as well not be there" range of the rankings.

8/3/2005

Yahoo is making changes to its ranking algorithm at present, and your site may not appear at the same point in search results as you expect. To check on an alternative search server, using the Yahoo search, type "-asdf" in front of the search term you are experimenting with (leave a blank space between the "f" and the first word you are searching for). There is also some speculation that the new algorithm is changing the preferred keyword density ranking, but we have no confirmation of this as yet.

On all engines, freshness of the site is one of the more important variables for high ranking. Make sure that you add new content to your site to keep it fresh and interesting to your visitors (and the search engine spiders!) At the same time, too much new content can act to your detriment. Google, in particular, is suspicious of too much added content (or links) appearing too quickly and is likely to penalize your rankings. Add content on a regular and steady pace to avoid this problem.

CSS standards have been established that make style sheets a viable and attractive option for marketing

Two books recommended to me by a class member dealing with CSS are available from Amazon. See his comments on the August 8 posting about CSS.

professionals to use on their sites. Not only is more control available over formatting, but large savings in file size can be achieved by using style sheets instead of formatting content within the HTML code. The positioning capabilities provided within CSS also allow you to structure your html so as to have the more important content read first by the search engines, without altering the appearance of the page that is presented to the site visitor.

Database driven sites have potential problems being found by search engines because the database engine frequently generates url's containing special characters. A good discussion of how to avoid this problem has been found on another web site. A question was asked about where to find a list of the "forbidden" symbols, but I have not found a good source yet. Mail me if you have one!

The search engines are beginning to crawl pages with these symbols, so the situation is not as bad as it once was. However, url's containing these symbols may get placed in a "secondary" index, meaning that the pages will not rank as well as they might otherwise. Also, the search engine is discouraged from crawling pages containing these characters, with the result that fewer of your pages might get indexed. This is not what you want!

Google Site Map feature is a good way to assist Google in indexing all the pages on your site. This requires some preparation, but is well worth the effort to increase the number of pages that can be found in a Google search. You will have to create a Google login when you reach the setup page. A supplemental tool for creating the site map file can be found at johannesmueller. (Use of this site map tool is not expected to get you out of the Google sandbox any sooner!)

A great tool for checking backward links to your site is now available from uptimebot.com. When you see the results for a site you are interested in, remember that Google does not list links from pages with a page rank below "3". This will explain the lower number of back links that normally appear in the Google column of the report.

Another handy tool that was mentioned in this class was software to assist in cleaning up "dirty" html code. For more information, review the link to the tool description.

11/10/2004

MSN is launching its new search engine tomorrow! It may be previewed at this location.

Jay's teaching schedule in 2005 is expected to change to once a month, probably on the first Wednesday of each month. Our arrangements with UH SBDC have yet to be confirmed, and the schedule will be posted to the Internet Marketing Clinic page when it is set.

Based on some keyword ranking analysis that Jay obtained, it appears that Google has made some changes to its ranking algorithm that reflects a preference for about 800 words on a page, with a density of close to 2% for the keyword focus phrase. These tables may be reviewed in the attached Excel file.

Jay recommends participating in discussion groups as a means of maintaining contact with the community you are trying to serve, and a way to add value to your site from links that you can place in your postings. His preferred software for accessing these groups is from Forte Internet Software. Features of their products may be seen on their web site.

Internet Marketing Class Notes

Keyword Research sites:

Example sites:

Keyword Density Analyzers:

Website Statistics: