Firefox Extentions

I remember back in the day, when Explorer and Netscape ruled, and Firefox was called Mozilla....My how the times have changed! If you're a web developer, I'll bet a $1,000 you use Firefox. Am I right? The fact that FF is an open-source browser allows for some pretty cool extensions. My two favorite (and ones that I just couldn't live without, now that I'm so spoiled by FF) are Colorzilla and SEO Quake.

Colorzilla allows you to use an eyedropper for any web page, not only producing the RGB parameters, but the Web color code as well. So whenever you see a color you like, no more viewing the source code or capturing a picture!

SEO Quake has many tools such as showing Search Engine position and back-links not only for the sites you visit, but for your Search Engine Results as well (How cool!). but my favorite part is the option to "line-through" no-follow links. It's an easy way of checking to make sure reciprocal link partners are behaving themselves, and also a great tool for SEO in general.

Yahoo Mystery

For months, Pin Bottle ranked on the first page for Yahoo for the keyword: "Boston Website Design," yet we were nowhere to be found in Google. Suddenly, the complete opposite has taken place: First page Google, buried in Yahoo. Reading around the forums, it's safe to say that Yahoo has either updated their algorithm, applied site penalties similar to Google or both. There's just no other explanation! It's hard to get good information on Yahoo optimization simply because most people optimize for Google, and optimizing for all three search engines (Yahoo, Google and MSN) is just too ambitious. Most people just pick one and focus their efforts on the one they chose. But because Google continues to gain market share at a much larger rate than the other S.E.'s, Google is usually the top choice, and SEO's just cross their fingers for the other two and hope to rank well.

The assumption's been out there for a while that Google focuses on back-links, MSN focuses on on-page optimization, while Yahoo falls somewhere in between. But if this is true, answer me this riddle: Why does P.B. rank on the first page in Google and MSN yet is buried in Yahoo? This is why the old assumption may longer be true, and until more people figure it out and post the new info in forums, I'll be as clueless as the next guy as to how to optimize for Yahoo. But in reality, it doesn't make much of a difference, since we target Google anyway....

Did Google Read my Last Blog Post?

Thanksgiving is certainly a day to acknowledge what we're thankful for. The three most things I'm thankful for today are family, football and our new Google rank! Pin Bottle Boston Website Design has made it out of the sandbox, and jumped from #180 to #6! (If this isn't enough evidence to support the Sand Box theory, then I don't know what will). It's hard to get too excited, since listings can often fluctuate sometimes violently, but we're hoping we stay at least within the first ten results. Statistics show that 40% of searches click on the first result, while only 15% of users view second page results, so if you can't be #1, being on the first page isn't too bad. Now the big question.....Do we switch our homepage back to our main design page? It's tough to say. Our blog was getting more hits, so we made it our index page, but with a first page Google listing, it's safe to say that we'll receive some targeted traffic. I think what we'll do is ride it out a little while before we make the switch.

Here's to a little hard work, a lot of research, and some creativity! Hopefully, the Big G won't let me down....

Growing Tired

It's officially been 6 months, give or take a few days, and we're still nowhere to be found in Google for "Boston Website Design." I recently read how some penalties are so severe that it's sometimes advantageous to abandon a domain name altogether and start anew. MSN and Yahoo obviously don't impose such penalties, as it's easy to interpret their algorithms and rank well for each. But Google is just a pain in the you know what! Why do we continue to linger in the sandbox? Why do we continue to rank low for the same keywords we dominate in other search engines? Your guess is as good as mine, but whatever the case, it's virtually impossible to figure out. I have heard stories of some site owners ranking well after a much longer time in "Time-Out," but is it worth the wait? Should a webmaster continue to build links for a site that will never rank well? SEO can be quite time consuming, and it's frustrating when your efforts are met with poor results. I'm thinking of just keeping the domain name, letting the back-links age, while starting a new domain with 110% White-Hat SEO optimization on the side. Who knows which one will finally rank, but it can't hurt to double your chances....

The Age of LINKS

Patience is not always easy. Whether you're sitting in a traffic jam, saving for a house or waiting for your SEO efforts to pay off, time can sometimes last forever. With SEO, our efforts are rarely rewardly over a short-period of time. Not only does Google favor well-aged sites, but well-aged links as well. This is a sad but true fact that exists because of link spammer. In fact, most of Google's little rules and penalties are thanks to all the people out there trying to cheat the system. But back to links....

With the enormous ammount of blogs, forums and Wikis out there, links can be dropped just about anywhere. Google and other search engines are well aware of these methods, and therefore apply very little weight to new links. But after a good ammount of time, if the links aren't removed, the SE's start to assume that the links are genuine. How long does it take? It's anyone's guess, but the general idea is to be patient. If you've just gained a prominent link and aren't seeing any results quite yet, hang in there and eventually your links will become relevant.

Quick note: MSN has dropped Pinbottle from #1 to #2 for "Boston Website Design." I anticipated more of a significant drop, since Yahoo dropped us from #3 to #21 since our keyword density dropped with the changing of our homepage. This is interesting, since it's assumed that MSN cares more about on-page optimization than Yahoo, but these results show just the opposite.

"Index(ing)" Your Preffered URL

http://website.com
http://www.website.com
http://www.website.com/index.html

What do these three links have in common? They're all the same page! But not to search engines.....

Search engines see these three links as unique pages. Why? I have no idea. But it's true, and if you're not carefull, you could end up with some funky indexing.

Most web owners want the second example to show up as their main address. This is the easiest one to remember, and is the standard "home page" url. In order to avoid search engines from indexing your home page as one, two, or even three different url's, 301 re-directs are key. For a quick tutorial, visit http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm
The first re-direct you need to create is
http://www.website.com/index.html to http://www.website.com
The second, redirect you'll need to create is http://www.website.com to http://www.website.com

Learning how to do 301 redirects is a little complicated, but it is ABSOLUTELY necessary if you want the search engines to index your website correctly, and therefore worth the effort.

Keywords in a URL

SEO is not an exact science. Professional SEO's don't have any special ways of cracking algorithms. The only way anyone can learn about the latest algorithms is by research and trial and error. Trial and error results are based on personal practices, research can be done by anyone, for any site. Many believe that using keywords in your URL will help your site's ranking, but how much does it actually help? Today, we'll examine two examples.

It should be noted that the following is only a small sample of the big picture. Back-link quality, age and link-building patterns are a major factor that have not been researched, as well as quality of out-bound links and trust history (Trust history is generally based on whether the search engines have ever picked up on any black-hat-like techniques, and as a result, imposed any penalties as a result. Even if these behaviors have come to a halt, penalties may still be in place). On-page optimization is also a factor, but it's assumed that back-links are Google's preffered source of data.

Test Keyword: Boston Website Design

Example 1:
URL: Bostonwebsitedesigns.com
Google Rank: 48
BACKLINK COUNT:
Google: 23
Yahoo: 225
MSN: 1,798
Domain Age: 4 years, 1 month
Keyword Density: 14.15%

Example 2:
URL: boston-web-site-design.com
Google Rank: 119
BACKLINK COUNT:
Google: 3
Yahoo: 93
MSN: 362
Domain Age: 4 years 3 months old
Keyword Density: 5.75%

This is certainly not enough data to form a definitive conclusion on the "Keyword URL" discussion, but it does prove one thing: Using a keyword in your URL does NOT guarantee a high listing. There are simply too many other factors involved.

Thinking Outside the Box

Search MSN for "Boston Website Design" and you'll find Pin Bottle at number one. Search "Website Design" and we're not in the top 100. What's the point you ask? Although MSN seems to be the easiest search engine to top, some keywords are just WAY too competitive.

One website called cherryoneweb.com is an interesting study. They are a Chicago company that ranks well for both keywords. Obviously they've optimized for the word Boston, and probably have optimized for several other cities, but they're based in Chicago!

Consider this scenario:
You can't crack MSN's first page for the keyword "computer parts" but rank well for "Chicago computer parts."
Chances are, your traffic from MSN is very small, but if you optimized for additional cities, naturally your small ammount of traffic would increase. Sure, this would mean additional work, but if you could increase your sales 100 times over, wouldn't it be worth it?

Adsense scammers, (other-wise known as "Black Hatters" use a similar method to make money. They create as many sites as they possible can, optimize for niche keywords, and make money by dominating these unique keywords through spamming. This almost automatically get's them banned from Google, but by saturating more forgiving S.E.'s like MSN using these techniques, their strategy becomes successful.

Now I'm certainly not suggesting you head over to the "Dark Side," but the point is, if you rank well for 100 low-competitive keywords as opposed to one big one, you may end up with the same ammount of traffic!

Yahoo Algorithm Insights and Proxydrop

After changing our homepage, Yahoo dropped us from #3 to #10. There has been some shifting taking place in Yahoo recently with regards to back-links being updated, but so it's possible it's just a coincidence. But we ranked consistenty at #3, until the site was re-indexed. I know this because I check the position and cache everyday, and the shift didn't take place until we were re-indexed. There are two major changes between the old home page and the new one: The new page has around 1,000 words as opposed to 300, and the density for Boston Website Design changed from 3.86% to 1.79%. The new homepage is largely written in CSS layout while the previous was written in tables (I'm still not sold on the idea that there are SEO benefits to CSS layout), but the general on-page optimization is relatively the same (headers, title, etc.). There are rumors that Google has a much lower density threshold than Yahoo, and especially MSN, so we're hoping that although our Yahoo and MSN ranking may drop, Google will favor our new home page that delivers a large ammount of unique content that doesn't focus so much on keyword density.

Recently I stumpbled upon a website called proxydrop.com. It's a site that will load any other site for viewing within their site. This is an interesting concept if the user ever wanted to visit a site without leaving any tracks. Hopefully though, it still records IP addresses for on-line predators who try to view inapropriate websites and reports them to the proper authorities, because it would be a shame if proxydrop was providing a safe avenue for these types of activities.

Thoughts and Expression

Not much news on the SEO front. We've built around 430 back-links but it will take some time for them to age. How will Google rate the links? It's anyones guess, but the majority of them are directly related to our keyword, "Boston Website Design," so it they should count for something.

Checked out Microsoft Expressions the other day. It's still in beta but it's free to try, so I gave it a whirl. I've used Dreamweaver before, and but for some reason, it never stuck. Maybe it was because I was just so used to Evrsoft's 1st Page (2000), but I never made the switch. I can honestly say though after trying Expressions that I was thoroughly impressed. the WYSIWYG editor was pretty much what you'd expect, but the editor portion was nicely done. Side panels allow you to easily insert attributes to tags with a single click, regardless of what code you're working with. I've never used Front Page, so I'm not sure what the differences are, and I only fiddled around with Expressions for about a half hour, but I'm seriously thinking of making the switch from my beloved (and ancient) 1st Page.