Custom Web Design

SEO Highlights and Year End Summary 2007

Every year I like to write and article about the latest and greatest on page SEO techniques. One reason is because people are really not interested in reading a year old blog post and also because things do change. Not as much as they used to change. Since the advent of Google, the big changes have tapered off, but now it is the little changes which differentiate the professionals from the know it all’s.

I think one of the biggest changes I have seen is a grey hat technique which was never widely used because it really was a coding trick, but is now definately a black hat trick today.  That change is having separate stylesheets per page and then naming the stylesheet after the key words on the page. For example,  if you wrote a page about “crystal chandeliers”, you would also create a unique stylesheet for that page and name it crystalchandeliers.css.  As I said before, I never really saw it widely used, but it was the latest and greatest technique created by SEO experts in the field to figure out a way to beat the system. 

The fundamental techniques have really not changed in 2007 and I don’t see them changing in 2008. They remain as follows:

1. Proper Keyword Research
2. Title Tags
3. Unique Content
4. Alt tags
5. Site Map

On a secondary level to the main fundamental techniques, you see additional techniques which shouldn’t get you in any trouble:

1. Using your keyword in the name of the URL
2. Meta Keywords
3. Meta Description
4. Table Atributes
5. HREG Tags
6. Keywords used in naming the image files on the page
7. Bold tags around keywords

What 2007 did see was the establishment of the blog as a must have item on every website. Not only for SEO but also as a tool for users. It will be interesting to see what 2008 brings. Offsite SEO will most likely see the importance of online social networking as an SEO Tool, but how it plays out is still up in the air. Stay Tuned….

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MSN and Yahoo - Search Engine Consolidation

As many people have read this past week, MSN has made a bid for Yahoo. Not to be out bid, Google has joined the fray with their own bid for Yahoo. Which is a better deal for the consumer and how will it affect the marketing of websites on the internet?

My first thought on the merger was that the sale of Yahoo would be a great monetary boost to Microsoft. This would be done through the consolidation of their competing PPC services and unique searches as well as other operational areas. That being said…..the biggest obstacle would be the integration of cultures and how to continue to manage competing websites.

Yahoo’s user culture and corporate culture are very different from MSN, and more importantly, anything Yahoo would do in the future would be second to Microsoft’s primary business. This can’t be good for Yahoo users, the Yahoo corporate culture and the search engine industry.

Having said all that, how could this merger affect the marketing of websites on the internet. Well, I think that overall, it has the potential to attack Google right where it hurts, their bread and butter of search engine traffic. The biggest obstacle SEM and SEO experts have had in the past in regard to putting effort forward to rank well in either Yahoo or Google or to focus efforts on their PPC programs has been traffic. Without the traffic, the efforts don’t justify the returns. By combining the search results and PPC programs, there can be a justification of putting forward the effort.

I have always felt and many people would disagree with me, that MSN has the best search engine of the big three. The reason is very simple. It is the newest engine and as a result integrates many of the additional models that exist on the internet. For example, Google heavily favors websites with backlinks. This has been the basis of their model from the beginning and this focus has allowed them to flourish.

Yahoo on the other hand launched their own search engine in 2004 and were able to build a better search engine by not only focusing on backlinks, but also by giving credit to well designed websites. A year later, MSN launched their own search which not only integrated the value of backlinks and the value of properly built websites, but also gave credit to web activity through blogs and other forms of online activity. This is not to say that over time Google has not continued to improve their search results, but because the core of their search is based on backlinks, this continues to drive search results today and has hurt their overall search results in my opinion.

So, if this merger happens and I think that is still a big IF, and Microsoft is able to integrate Yahoo in a way where they can consolidate some areas while at the same time keeping Yahoo independent, this can be a big win and they can create a better platform to compete against Google. Otherwise, Google will continue to be the dominant player in the search industry, and SEO and SEM professionals will continue to focus their efforts on Google with Yahoo and MSN being an after thought.

Clearly this is a bold play by Steve Balmer, but he and Bill Gates have done it before with Explorer. The question remains whether Steve can accomplish this without Bill now that he has partially retired.

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The Internet Waits For “NO ONE”

I recently became ill and it took me out of the office for almost 3 weeks. During this time, my work piled up as it does in any job, but coming back to the office got me thinking about how the internet has changed the schedules of those of us working in the internet.

Before I got addicted to the internet, I worked a relatively normal schedule. That included your basic 8-6 job, some nights and an occasional weekend. Now I find myself working 24/7.  My day time is filled with talking to clients, drumming up business, managing small fires here and there etc…. I know that this sounds like the trials and tribulations of any small business, but what I find interesting is that  when I had my first business, even with all the work, there were some built in “down time”.  These downtimes were built around cultural norms. For Example, the Christmas holiday season, summer holidays, national holidays and even at night between 9pm and 9am.

The internet knows no cultural boundaries. If I am celebrating a holiday, someone somewhere else is working. If I am working late, someone is just starting to work somewhere else.  In the internet economy, your business is open all day and every day of the year. More importantly, it is open whether you are working or not working. Now this all seems quite wonderful for those who want to create their own business and their own hours, but the reality is that the marketplace is no longer just your city / town/ state or country, but the whole world. In addition, the workforce available to meet those needs are not just people located in your town, but people all over the world.

What does this all mean? Well, what it means is that to succeed on the internet, you have to specialize and focus. Someone once said that the internet “created a distribution channel to allow niche marketers to create viable businesses.” What I now believe is that the only way for small business to succeed on the internet is to focus on a niche market.

Competition on the internet is very competitive and yet I believe that it will continue to grow at 20%-40% per year for the next 10 years. For those looking to get involved in the internet, now more than ever is the time to establish your presence on the internet.  Whereas the cost to succeed on the internet was relatively inexpensive 5 years ago, it is now 10 times more expensive to achieve the same results and will be 10 times more expensive to those who wait another 5 years.

So my advice is act now, make mistakes, try new things and know that any efforts you put in now will benefit you 5 to 10 years in the future. Good Luck.

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