We Do Search Engine Optimization.

Google and Matt Cutts announced that site speed is now a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm, this means you need to refine your websites and remove all unnecessary code. Clean coding is good coding, and will make your websites easier to update, maintain, and upgrade in the future.

One thing to note: Page load time is a small factor and will not be given the weight that other factors have; relevance, topicality, reputation, value-add, backlinks, keyword usage are all much more important ranking signals. Google uses over 200 elements in their search engine ranking algorithm, and page speed will affect less than 1% of all current search results.

Here are some page speed optimization tips that will help you decrease website load time.

Coding Best Practices For Fast Websites

• Make Fewer HTTP Requests
• Use a Content Delivery Network
• Add an Expires Header
• Gzip Components
• Avoid Redirects
• Put Stylesheets at the Top
• Put Scripts at the Bottom
• Avoid CSS Expression
• Make JavaScript and CSS External
• Reduce DNS Lookups
• Minimize JavaScript
• Remove Duplicate Scripts
• Configure Entity Tags (ETags)
• Make AJAX Cacheable
• Remove External Third Party Scripts Such As: analytics, widgets, graphical icons, comments, social media (you can move th on your own server)

The insight behind these best practices is the fact that only 10-20% of the browser response time is spent getting the HTML document to the end user. Spend your time on the 80-90% that is hidden behind the page to make your pages noticeably faster. This is for optimizing the way servers and browsers handle that 80-90% of the user experience with advanced webpages.

For more information and further reading about site speed algorithm changes

Steve Souders’ 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites
More page load time information at seomofo
Improve the performance of your website with Google site speed
Intenseblog tips to optimize html pages for fast loading times.

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This ad was created in December 2009 in response to the Tiger Woods allegations. It eerily mimics the superbowl ad for the Google search engine.
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Facebook has become the second most popular website in the United States, passing Yahoo with 134 million unique visitors. Yahoo has been on an aggressive cost cutting plan, reducing services and features while Facebook continues to innovate, develop and improve their site.

What is most remarkable about Facebook’s dominance is the short time span this has happened in and it’s level of user engagement. The social networking site has nearly 3x the site visitor time as the other major internet properties.

Facebook is growing faster.

Back in the late 1990′s Amazon foresaw the growth of social networks and made a large investment in the purchase of PlanetAll.com in 1998. Amazon was correct in realizing “the only address book you’ll ever need” would be a website, however they were about 8 years too early.

Read more about Facebook becoming the #2 most visited website on the internet at Network World and Compete.

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Normally I don’t like to be negative or call out any services for bad practices, and try to give other search engine marketing firms the benefit of the doubt. When companies present misinformation and but I will list some warning signs of unsavory businesses.

Performing Search Engine Submissions
Submitting your website to search engines stopped being necessary 10 years ago. Any firm that promises to submit your site to 10,000 search engines is not only being untruthful – they will also be adding you to hundreds of mailing lists which will spam the life out of your inbox.

Guarantees top 10 placement
It is not possible to guarantee a specific listing, these guarantees are for long tail keywords with low traffic that will not generate sales volume.

Automated Process
Search engine optimization is a time consuming manual process. You must perform constant keyword research to identify new traffic trends and continuously update your website. There is no 100% automated system that will effortlessly bring in targeted visitors.

Multiple Search Engines
The only search engines you should expend energy on are listed in descending order: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask

Anonymous Unsolicited Contact
If you receive an email with no contact information promising the world for pennies, just ignore it.

When a company like www.websiteregistrationservices.com sends deceptive unsolicited letters through postal mail that rely on misinformation and fear to sell their services, someone must explain what they are doing and offer consumer protections.

Some ways to know if an offer is legitimate or not:

• does not send unsolicited mail
• provides real address, phone number and contact information
• does not mention ‘search engine submission’
• does not claim to have a special relationship with any search engine
• does not use fear to sell services
• does not pit you against your competitors: “our client is Company X and we know you have are in a price war with them. If you signup with us for extra money we will drop Company X as a client.”

websiteregistrationservices.com has 1 backlink from an untrusted source.

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I have ben to SES San Jose 3 times and had a great experience each time. The conferences had a lot of good information about search engine optimization and the networking with other SEO’s was priceless.

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The training resources were a great experience, however the SES conference series has been declining for about a year and it is uncertain if they will rebound.

Suggestions and New Ideas

Search Engine Strategies needs to get into pay for performance marketing, PPC, affiliate marketing and lead generation if they want to stay relevant. SEO is still a good strategy, but it is not the latest technique. Most people know basic SEO but lead generation and specialized local advertising is the next frontier.

Just use coupon code: SESF15 and login here

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SEO’s face a future of nearly insurmountable competition from huge established websites, and a decreased reliance on backlinks.

Search engine optimization professionals enjoy competitive advantages for ranking in the search engine results pages due to years of hands on experience, but experience, grit and force of will cannot always match giant budgets when corporations throw their hats into the SEO arena. There will always be opportunities for those grass roots marketers who do things faster and smarter, and future startups such as the Twitter.com in 5 years will contribute to disrupting the online marketplace, but the average company trying to make money with their web property will be up against daunting odds.

The Algorithm is a capitalist and is heavily reliant (currently) on back links.

Current Ranking Signals

• 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
• 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
• 20% Anchor Text of External Links
• 15% On-Page Keyword Usage
• 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data
• 6% Social Graph Metrics
• 5% Registration and Hosting Data

Search engine algorithms change yearly, and have improved markedly since the 1990′s. Search engines have gotten so much more efficient at discarding low quality websites that most spammers have switched to ethical white hat online marketing tactics. In the near future, the distribution of ranking importance will change to favor larger, established, trusted brand name websites.

Future Ranking Signals

• 25% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
• 24% Traffic and Click-Through Data
• 20% Social Graph Metrics
• 12% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
• 10% Anchor Text of External Links
• 7% On-Page Keyword Usage
• 2% Registration and Hosting Data

These ranking variables involved are getting more difficult for small companies, and small operators will have a larger challenge creating search relevance. It’s more difficult to create a successful viral marketing campaign to get mentioned on heavily read blogs for improving your social graph metrics. Brokering text links with carefully crafted anchor text will not only be more difficult but less effective.

Moving a website from nothing to top ten rankings for highly competitive phrases will less of a reality – If Ford.com can spend 1 million dollars on a social media marketing campaign, there is no way a smaller car operator can match them.

Google claims to be a champion of democracy, but their future search engine may send 75% of all query traffic to big brands.

This post was inspired by Stuntdubl.

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I had a previous post titled “Google On Open Systems: 90% Open 10% Cartel” that was based on this post however Google completely changed my opinion (and much of the world’s) with their response to China.

Google has been operating in China since 2006 and censoring their search engine for the Chinese government. In December Google.cn gmail accounts were hacked by government affiliated organizations targeting free speech activists.

This quote is particularly relevant to this international issue “Do you want to be right or do you want to be effective?” I support Google for standing up for its ethics, but withdrawing from China may not be an effective long term strategy.

Below is an excerpt from their corporate blog:

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

They are serious about operating in a world of open systems, free speech, and doing business in a non evil manner and this is encouraging to all entrepreneurs and individuals who are trying to fight the good fight.

Google is also trying to help their local Chinese workers be safe from government retribution and protect them from the consequences of the decision to open their search engine.

We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today.

Read the full post on blogspot.

http://www.susiewee.com/blog/2010/01/13/the-impact-of-googles-bold-move/

Also see reactions from around the blogosphere.

Update

This is a great post by web2asia and some of his points are summarized below:

Google should have stuck to their do no evil policy from the beginning, not now after 4 years of China engagements when things start to turn sour on a business level. If the findings of Googles research on the hacker attacks against Google and 30+ other foreign companies are true and were indeed initiated by the Chinese government it is not a matter that you have a corporate lawyer brazenly announce overnight on a company blog, but a political incident that should be dealt with by the State Department.

If there is one thing I’ve learned during my 4 years in China is that you don’t win in China/or in dealing with Chinese if you threaten them. You can only win if you outsmart them (just like they will try to outsmart you). By outsmart I mean that you give them an option to “save face”, a path that will lead to consensus and allow all parties to win somehow or walk away from the table without having the feeling that they’ve lost or been disrespected.

W what Google did with their unannounced blog post (and the implied ultimatum/threat) does not leave any option for the Chinese Government to save face, and paves the way for a government mandated shut down of Google.cn .

This is very unwise, unless it is indeed the goal of Google to close its doors and permanently exit the Chinese market. One unintended consequence of this action is that by going rogue Google may drag other companies into the unwelcome abyss of the Chinese government’s wrath.

I cannot imagine that anyone with experience in Chinese business culture would have issued such a statement and this will likely have a chilling effect on US Chinese political relationships.

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If you are old enough to remember the Pepsi Challenge this new search engine comparison tool will bring back old memories.

You can do a blind search and get results from Google, Yahoo and Bing all on one page.

The results may surprise you, as people are conditioned to think that Google always returns the most relevant results.

The results of my tests

The percentage of time I chose a particular search engine for the most relevant results:

1. Google 60%
2. Bing 40%
3. Yahoo 0%

Google has the lead but should be very worried as Microsoft Bing is coming up fast. Bing’s results could replace Google and most people would never know the difference. Google’s present advantage is their innovation and communication with advertisers and webmasters. Also their impressive tools suite including Analytics, Adwords, Webmaster Tools, Groups and Trends.

Take the blind search for a test drive yourself and see which search engine performs best for you.

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Google AdWords Uses Quality Score to Determine How Much You Pay Per Click

The Google PPC system does not simply work on the basic algorithm of the higher your bid per click, the higher your position. Ads are positioned using a dynamic bidding system which does millions of calculations per day to adjust results in a real time auction system.

Quality Score is a biased bidding system, which rewards advertisers for higher numbers of ad clicks. The more clicks your ad garners, the lower price you will have to pay relative to your competitors.

How to improve your quality score

1. increase your click through rate (CTR)
2. focus on keyword relevancy
3. improve landing page quality – relevant, transparent and directly related to your keyword bids increase page load time

Even increasing your CTR by 0.01% a can be enough to bump your aggregate keyword quality score up and reduce your overall costs dramatically.

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