Getinposition Search Engine Marketing Articles

Privacy Policies for Online B2C

2008-10-23T23:45:00Z

Does your site have a privacy policy? Many websites do. It’s generally understood that these online privacy policies should outline an online business' policy regarding the handling of personal information it collects from private individuals.

Legislation Regarding Website Privacy Policies
What you may not be aware of is the California Online Privacy Protection Act (“OPPA”). This statute regulates when a website is required to have a privacy policy, and, if so, what its format must be on the site, and what substantive content must be set out. Furthermore, OPPA is not limited to websites with stated California addresses.

OPPA Can Apply Everywhere
OPPA’s reach includes all applicable websites, not just those with a physical location in California. If your website is subject to OPPA, then there is a good chance that it will be visited by a California consumer. Just getting one email kicks OPPA into play.

Websites Subject to OPPA
OPPA is directed at commercial websites and online services that collect personally identifiable information through their site from California consumers. In essence, the statute is directed at business-to consumer (B2C) websites. OPPA defines a "consumer" as “any individual who seeks or acquires, by purchase or lease, any goods, services, money, or credit for personal, family, or household purposes.” OPPA applies to any person or entity that owns a commercial website or online service which collects and maintains personally identifiable information from California consumers.

Who’s Not Subject to OPPA
OPPA does not apply to any third party that operates, hosts, or manages, a website or online service on the owner's behalf or that processes information on the owner's behalf so long as it does not own the website. Nor did the legislation intend to include websites that deal only with other businesses i.e., a business-to-business (B2B) website.

Where to Find More Information
To get details of this statute, you can contact us at info@getinposition.com or search on the “California Online Privacy Protection Act” where you will find the BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE SECTION 22575-22579.

Martha Lee
Founder and CEO
Get In Position

John R. Bobay
Attorney at Law
Law Offices of John R. Bobay
_______________________________________________________________

This article is not intended as legal advice or as a substitute for it nor is it intended to create an attorney client relationship with John R. Bobay. The reader should consult an attorney of their own choice for receiving legal advice about any of the issues raised in this article.

]]>

Count on Your Keywords

2008-09-30T23:45:00Z

While content still matters (absolutely!), it doesn’t matter much if your online audience isn’t finding you. You want to get and stay ahead, and so does your competition. Standing out is harder than ever. If we’re all using the same technology, how can we differentiate ourselves? Smart engines. Smart keywords.
Search engines use equations, or algorithms, to deliver results. The sheer number of new websites over the last several years has forced search engines to use a more complex and sophisticated algorithmic process. For competing search engines, “survival of the fittest” is about meeting greater demands to crawl, index, and rank the ever-growing magnitude of websites in order to provide the user with continued relevant search results. Therefore, as a more complex set of engine rules evolves, so should your keywords.

Yes, there’s a little legwork up front. You need to bring a critical eye to your website and your online content. Defining smart keywords is a thoughtful process. It’s strategic, and part of a longer-term web strategy. Think of your keyword selection as not just the foundation of your web marketing, but as the rebar inside that supports the foundation and all that you build on top of it. Though it can take up to a year to get desired results for a new URL, the long-term gains are worth the effort. Think about it: Your prospective customers are searching online for you. You want to be standing where they’re looking.

Right keywords. Right audience.
To generate great keywords, you must understand your online audience. Clarify your target user and how they search for information about your business or services online, as well as offline. For starters, conduct your own searches to determine how and where your primary online competitors are getting visibility.

Of course, your content needs to be on target, too. Differentiate yourself from your competition and really deliver.

By identifying keywords that speak to your industry, product, or company information – and most importantly – to your revenue-generating target audience, you cast a more accurate net. One website that targets all these areas well is the California Avocado Commission.

The California Avocado Commission (CAC) brings an educational human element that addresses all of its markets including focus on their best measure of return on investment, the consumer. For example:

Interactivity: The site uses video to profile California avocado growers who strive to provide a quality product.
Education: Information on the health benefits of the product, mouth-watering images, and recipes further address the product’s desirability.
Community: The call to action for the web visitor is to download recipes and/or sign up for membership to receive recipes and other important product information.

If the goal of the CAC site is to increase consumption of California avocados (without actually selling them on the site), then it would be reasonable to measure the success of this goal by comparing increases in registration and recipe downloads to the increases in sales coming from the same geographical areas as the site visitors who complete these calls to action.

Right listings in the right places
Best search engine optimization (SEO) practices will help you get the right words in the right places. SEO has been, and still is, a customized effort to generate brand visibility, starting with identifying your most targeted terms. It takes a human to create appropriate language, and identify keywords that speak to your audience, their behavior, and needs. So think like a person first.

Second, be sure that the search engines support “listing someone like you” where you believe your audience is searching. This is significant, particularly if the terms you’ve selected are highly competitive. When you create titles, meta descriptions, and content related to your chosen keywords, you are doing so to
match what you want a search engine to grab for your listing with spot-on relevant content that your audience will hopefully click on. As such, you want to first check to see if the top search engine listings for your selected terms include either your direct competitors and or similar sites. If not, then try to assess if it’s because your competitors sites are just not well optimized (in which case, go for it!) or if it’s because the engines are giving priority listings to sites addressing a different audience. In the later case, continue researching before settling on your final optimized keyword list.

There’s more to it
Does this mean that all you have to do is get the right keywords in the right places, some good content, and voilà, you’ve got top search engine listings for all your optimized terms? Ten years ago I would have said yes. But I probably don’t need to tell you that today the answer is no. Link building, blogging, article generating, and social networking are all important examples of site-credibility boosters that help you get those merit-based top-rank positions for your optimized terms.

What I am saying is, choose your words wisely and chances are the rest of your marketing will be a smooth sail.

###

Martha Lee, Get in Position, CEO/Founder
A leader in the search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM) arena since 1999, Martha has more than 20 years of marketing experience in the software, online education, and e-commerce industries. In 2000, Martha founded the web-marketing firm, Get In Position (GIP).

Get In Position
Get In Position encompasses a team of experts who bring together the critical components necessary to build a profitable web presence.

Learn more about SEO and leveraging technology for success.
Get in Position’s SEO and SEM team offers training , consulting, and customized marketing services for improving your online visibility and credibility. For more information visit www.getinposition.com.

]]>

How NOT to Manage Your Content

2007-06-26T23:14:59Z

When you are in the search marketing industry you often hear the phrase "content is king." This basically means that it is content (web pages, pdf's, word processing documents, spreadsheets etc.) which form the basis of the world wide web. It is these documents which search engines retrieve, index and rank, and it is these documents which people search for on a daily basis. I recently read a story where a well known website was going to remove literally thousands of pages from their website because there were few visitors to the pages. Now, this may seem like a sound reason to remove old pages. But in terms of search, this can be an incredible loss to your website that can ultimately affect your bottom line. What would you do? You have thousands of pages of content – user submitted stories and the like – that are driving little to no traffic to your site. Do you delete these pages or keep them? This is a question many websites deal with on a daily basis. Now there are many reasons to remove content - from copyright issues to lack of traffic. But before you remove a bunch of pages, or even a single page, you must consider the impact to your website. Content may be king, but the crawler is its queen As I said above, content is king on the web, but in order for it to keep its throne, it needs a queen. The search engine crawler is the real reason that content is king. Without a crawler there would be no way for the search engine to automatically find and index new and existing web content. Once the crawler does its job and retrieves a website's pages it is up to the search engine to analyze, sort and rank those pages. But the other thing that modern search engines do is look at relationships between pages. They use the hyperlinks found on pages to determine those relationships. So if content is king, and crawlers are the queen, then hyperlinks are the princes and princesses of the web. Without hyperlinks there can be no relationships between pages and, therefore, no effective way to properly rank pages. This is what the founders of Google realized back when the popular engine was a university experiment called "Backrub". They understood that search engines were easy to manipulate because they had no way to determine the relative importance of a page merely by its content. That is how PageRank was born. PageRank looks at the links pointing to and from a page, and then weighs the importance of that page based on those link relationships. But what does this have to do with removing pages? A site's ranking is determined by many factors. One of the most important of these factors is link popularity (or as Google puts it – PageRank). Basically, the more links you have pointing to your site the better. But it isn't just links from other sites that are important. It is also how your site links to itself that is important. The more links from pages on your site to other pages on your site, the better. As you can then imagine, removing a bunch of pages also removes those links. And a lower link count generally means lower rankings. Now, a lot of people will tell you that internal link count is such a small factor that it isn't worth worrying about. And while this is partially true, there is also another good reason to keep old pages: External Link Count. Just because the value of an internal link may only be worth 1/10 (or 1/20 or 1/50, we don't know for sure) of the value of an external link one must also consider the value of that page to the rest of the web. In other words, other websites may feel that page is worth something and will link to it. So by removing 1000 pages from your site, you are not only losing 1000 pages of content and a couple thousand internal links, you could also be losing 10,000 or more external links! Going back to what I said earlier - if a site's value is determined by the number of links pointing to it, by removing those pages, they have effectively demoted themselves by killing all those links pointing to the pages which they've removed. But I need to remove that content! Understandably there are reasons to kill off a bunch of content - maybe it's products you don't sell any more, or maybe new copyright laws prohibit you from displaying it. Or maybe it's not not what your site is about. In any case, the worst thing you can do is simply remove those pages. Remember that they have a position online, and likely value assigned by the search engines. After all, even if you only get a few visitors a week to those pages, the fact is they have a value somewhere. So what you need to do is transfer that value to other pages on the site. The easiest way to do this is through a redirect. This is when you tell whoever is requesting the page that it no longer exists, but instead go to a new location. Redirects can take many forms - from server side redirects, to redirects on-the-page which refresh to a new location. The goal of using a redirect is to transfer some of the popularity those pages earned elsewhere on the site to minimize the impacts of removing them. For example, let's say that you did in fact remove 1000 pages that had 10,000 links pointing to them. If your site has 30,000 links overall, then you've just removed 1/3 of your link popularity. That means your rankings will drop. However, with a redirect you may be able to move the link popularity to a new page, so that instead of losing those 10,000 links you only lose a few (or few hundred). Ideally you should redirect to similar content, however if that is too time consuming, just do a blanket redirect to your home page. This is the best way to ensure that your site suffers minimally online due to such a major change.]]>

Google Universal Search & Personalization - The Future of Search?

2007-05-24T00:16:57Z

Recently, Google made some big announcements that will affect every Google user on the planet eventually, and placed Google firmly in the lead in terms of search. One has to do with search "personalization" while the other is referred to as "Universal Search". Both will have interesting implications in the world of search but will also lead to a bunch of questions. For example, in terms of personalization, why didn't Yahoo, MSN or AOL do this first? They all have large user bases and, in fact have had larger user bases than Google up until a few years ago yet they failed to act for whatever reason. Aside from that though there are many Google related questions as well. Universal Search – a Definition Let's start by defining what universal search is. The short answer is – having all results on one screen. That means if you search for "Charlie Sheen" you will not only see regular web results, such as his IMDB profile, or his top fan sites but you may also see direct links to image results, video results and even applicable local and news results all on one screen. No more having to switch between "images", "video", and "news" tabs and performing another search. The writing has been on the wall for this for months, if not years. Google has been experimenting with the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for quite a while. Just a few months ago we saw them add a section to the page for more generic terms. For example, if there was a term that had multiple potential results they would insert a section in the middle of the page with results for that alternate term. And of course there have been "onebox" results showing up in Google's search results for some time. These are the small boxes that occupy the top of the screen when perhaps a map or news headline is more applicable. But universal search takes this concept a step further by assuming all content could appear on the SERP and not just news, maps or more traditional search results. In reality this is something that should have happened a long time ago but for various reasons it did not. And it will be interesting to see how the average Google user reacts. My feeling is that right now most users won't even see the new navigation bar that universal search generates. Mostly because it is a light colored bar that appears just below the search box but above the spot where users generally begin scanning search results. But my feeling is, this is just version 1.0 of universal search. As time goes on we'll begin to see those extra links replaced by actual results. Instead of seeing "images" "news" "video" links above the SERP we'll actually see top news, images and videos as they pertain to that search. And that leads to the next major upgrade to Google: Personalization How does personalization work? There are a variety of ways this will work depending on how comfortable you are with allowing Google access to your browsing habits. If you give them more complete access you will get much more personalized results, however if you limit them to cookies, then the personalization will be less complete. So let's look at those 2 scenarios: Let's say you are a Google fan and have a Gmail account or Google account and have allowed Google to keep track of your online history. Google will use your web surfing habits along with their other proprietary algorithms to help them determine on the fly what search results you should see when you perform a search on Google. For example, I am a Linux fan. I've been using it exclusively for quite a few years now, so when I search for “software” Google should be smart enough to know that my history has been to visit Linux software sites and should then therefore filter out any Windows or Mac OS based software sites. As an aside this brings up another interesting question. I don't click on Google Ads. In fact, I'm so used to them I block them out of my periphery entirely. Does that mean that I will start seeing less and less ads in my searches? Would I stop receiving ads altogether? As you give Google less and less access to your online habits, your results should be less and less personalized. If you only allow them access to your cookies and not your entire browse history then your search results will only be as personalized as Google can pull together from previous searches you've used Google for. But still, that's a pretty impressive database they can pull from to help personalize your search experience. What does the future hold for personalization? The whole reason for writing this article was because an idea struck me. In order for search personalization to evolve over time (as it must to remain useful) it must be able to change. Not only should it learn that when I search during the day it's primarily for work and when I search in the evening its for non-work related items, but it also needs to better understand my intent. Further, as my search habits change (both because I age and because I become more online savvy) Google's personalization algorithms should adapt to realize this. So that makes me wonder – will Google's personalization algorithms grow with me? In fact will I ultimately have a set of Google algo's so tuned to me that they are in fact my own? One would think that they'd have to be. If that's the case then perhaps a computer can learn, to an extent, because it can begin to understand my habits. Regardless of whether the algorithm can rebuild itself as I change (essentially learning), or not, it does have to change. Otherwise Google's search can never be truly personalized. Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

Is SEO Baked Into Your Website?

2007-05-09T18:13:47Z

Search engine optimization or SEO, is becoming a more common and (hopefully) more commonly understood phrase. For more about what SEO is, see our article on SEO, SEP, or SEM Specialists - Who am I talking to? What is not so commonly understood is, when SEO gets factored into the building of a new web site or the revamp of your old one.]]> Why is it important to include SEO right from the start? First let me say that there are two primary elements to SEO; one is technical and the other crosses into the marketing realm via link building (including search engine and directory submissions). For purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on the technical aspects of optimizing a web site. The Technical Side of SEO When planning for a new web site or a revamp, a site owner generally will think about the design, someone to develop the site, and creating new content. What often gets overlooked in the initial planning phase are three things:

Is the site that I’m building going to be search engine friendly?
Do I know who my online competitors are and what my targeted audience is searching for?
Will my site be user friendly?

Making Sure your Site is Searchable A good SEO expert will first and foremost test your site to see that it is functional in a way that it can be properly crawled and indexed by the search engines. For example, if we were to visualize a web site as a car that you want to drive on the great cyber highway, then before leaving on a major road trip, you have got to make sure the car not only runs but that it can make it to your destination. This should be part of your thought process when you set out to build or revamp your web site. Your site must function to make the long trip. That is, intuitive navigation with site map and logical internal links, no duplicate content sites, all URLs properly redirected, and all the pages on your site visible to the crawlers (minus any you may wish not to be crawled) .These finer details of maping the trip for the long haul is the job of an SEO expert to at least understand and communicate to you if not implement for you. The SEO person should make sure that if, for example, the site is dynamically driven, the engines can still read all the pages and index them in order to give the site the credibility of the robust presence it deserves. To learn how to optimize for dynamic sites, please see our article on SEO and Dynamic Websites - how do they fit together? Another example of searchability is, if a web site owner has more than one site and there is duplicated content on any of your other urls, then the engines may either 1) only give credit to one site or worse, 2) not give credit to any. In this case, only one URL should house the site content and the other URLs should 301 redirect to that main site. This is a benefit to the user as well as the engines. Optimize for your audience during the early design stage The most common association with SEO is adding key words to your web site so you can get found for those terms when a user types them into a search engine. To be more precise, here is where the SEO expert will come up with a selection of terms to place in your title, meta tags, headings, links and content. The SEO specialist will research your online competition and target audience to determine this best selection of key phrases. What many site owners do not realize is that this selection of key words not only represents the thesis of your site and the pages within, but also that their value to the site is only as great as how they are integrated into the overall design, and development of your site. For example, if much of your site is designed using images and java script menus, the searchable value of any keywords you place behind those images or in these menus is greatly diminished. Therefore, a good SEO expert who is involved in the early design stage can identify the most effective use of these key phrases and give you the opportunity to make an educated decision of how to proceed with your site revamp early on. Needless to say, this can save you a lot of money and time, rather than thinking about SEO after the site has been built. USER experience? Isn’t SEO about SEARCH ENGINES? Probably one of the greatest misnomers of SEO is that it is ONLY about search. In reality, it is the job of the SEO expert to optimize for usability as well as for search. Why? Because generating brand visibility and high ranking positions for good terms is only valuable if the user experience, once they have clicked on the site, is valuable. For example, if the navigation of your site is non-intuitve, confusing, or requires hitting the ‘back button’ to retrace your steps, your visitor won’t stay and won’t come back, no matter how good your keyword ranking is. Again, factoring SEO in the early stages when you are mapping out the architecture, drafting initial designs and considering what platform your site will be built on, encourages better team work for better results. Most good SEO experts understand how all of these components must effectively work in tandem to generate the results you, the site owner, are looking for. Conclusion Because your goal is to do business online, the same goal must apply to every team member who is building and marketing your site. It’s not an option to ‘tack on’ search engine optimization as something separate from the development, design, architecture and navigation. SEO is an essential component, most effective when it is baked in to your site right from the start. Martha Lee Founder and CEO Get In Position

Optimizing for Google - What Other Opportunities Exist?

2007-03-29T19:29:12Z

As a search engine marketer, one of the most common phrases we hear when we ask “what do you want your online campaign to look like?” is “I want to be number 1 in Google.” And sometimes this is possible. Quite easy in fact. But most times it is not a realistic goal. At least not in the traditional SEO sense. So if you are one of these sites that has hundreds (or thousands or millions) of competitors online, just what can you do to achieve top spot in Google? In this article I look at alternatives to #1 organic or sponsored rankings in Google. Some ideas you've heard of but others you may not have. Back Door 1 – Google Local Google Local is just as it sounds – a search engine for local results. We've all probably used it before, we just may not have noticed. Whether you are looking for an address, directions or a local product on Google chances are you have seen it. From a business perspective, Google Local is a win-win. Simply go to local.google.com and add your site for free. You will need to prove you are the business owner through a series of validations, but once that is done you control what is displayed and how. Not only that but if you have lots of localized listings such as apartment rentals and the like you can get more than one listing added. (By the way if this is the case, be sure to contact us. We have helped other businesses get multiple listings in Google local and we can help you). Do you want to see Local in action at the top of the SERPs? Try this: Type in “San Francisco Pizza” in the regular search box on Google. You should see 3 local listings along with a map. Notice how they are at the very top of the page, pushing the top organic down so that only the top 2 or 3 organic listings are visible. Back Door 2 – Google Base Google Base is a relatively unknown product, and one that doesn't show up as often in the local results. But don't let that fool you. Google is known for taking a beta product (like Base) and slowly but surely adding its results to the main listings. But what is Google Base? Well it is a large open database. Essentially you create a feed of your data and submit it to Google and Google integrates your feed listings into Base. Now we're not just talking products here. You can submit anything. From products and services, to job listings, real estate listings, and even blog posts. It's that flexible. While Google Base has over 80 predefined attributes, it allows its users to submit custom attributes. That means no matter how many fields you have in your database, or what they are for, you can create a feed and submit it to Google Base. There's also another important aspect of Base and that is Back Door #3. Back Door 3 – Froogle Froogle is Google's e-commerce platform. It is where products can be listed and compared. Many vendors already take advantage of Froogle, and more and more users are turning to Froogle for product information, price comparisons and more. So much so, in fact, that we are starting to see Froogle results creep into more and more organic results. And guess where they show up? Why above the organic results of course. I recently got an older Sony laptop but I needed a battery for it. So I went to the main Google search and typed in “sony vaio replacement battery” (no quotes) and Froogle results showed up immediately below the sponsored results but above organic results. And they occupy slightly more space than 1 organic listing. This means that the site that has worked so long and hard to achieve the #4 organic ranking just disappeared below the fold because Google decided to stick Froogle product search results in. Imagine how many pages and links it takes to rank for “sony vaio replacement battery” organically. And when you look at the top Froogle listing you will find that it has no PageRank – an important Google ranking factor. Back Door 4 – Google Groups This one still has a ways to go in its development cycle. But Google Groups will turn out to be yet another source of results that Google will stick in the top of the page above organic results. Google Groups is just as the name implies – a way for people to share information about their interests. It started as Usenet - a bunch of user forums, which Google incorporated into their search results, but has evolved into a way for people to build portals to share information. Similar to a blog, Groups is fast becoming a way to reach even more people using a free Google service. And while you do see Groups discussions showing up in obscure search results (for example, if you are having computer problems and trying to find a solution) we feel that more and more Groups listings will creep into the main organic results. Pulling it all together As you can see there are at least 3 viable alternatives that you can take advantage of now to help achieve top Google placement. And the nice thing is, these don't rely as heavily on the quality of your site, nor how much content you have, nor the number of links you have. In fact you will see that most of the sites using services like Froogle are very un-optimized and have terribly dynamic URLs which, in the SEO world, normally means zero organic rankings. So if you've been banging your head against the wall, wondering how to achieve top rankings in Google consider this: You don't necessarily need top rankings in Google, you just need good placement in other Google services. And for those services there are less restrictions and requirements. Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

Link Building - It's all about Quality. Or is it?

2007-02-23T22:23:23Z

Lately it seems as if all you hear about is link building: link building this, or link building that. You need links from .edu and .gov sites. You need relevant links. You need high quality links. Quality is more important than quantity. If you regularly tune into any website that watches search engines, or deals with search engine optimization then you know that much of the talk these days is link building. And one of my favorite topics is the whole discussion over link quality versus link quantity. Many people believe that link building is most effective when you build a select few high quality links, while others hold to the belief that more links is better. So the question becomes – which belief is correct? Do we really need “quality” links to have a successful link building campaign? Well if you are following my logic here then you'll realize that you don't in fact need just a handful of quality links. That's because you (and everyone else outside of Google, Yahoo and MSN) don't know what that means. So do what I do – just go for volume. Now I'm not saying you should go out and buy some automated program that will submit your link to thousands of blogs or forums. I am saying keep with the tried and true manual link building methods. I am also saying don't dismiss a site as a potential link just because it doesn't meet with your own quality standards. After all, who's to say that your quality standards are even remotely close to Google's (or Yahoo's or MSN's)? Just because a site has a low PageRank (according to Google's Toolbar) or a low link count (according to Yahoo's Site Explorer) doesn't mean it is a low quality site. There a many many more factors aside from PageRank and inbound link count which are used to measure quality. So if not link count or PageRank what then? As I said above, there are way too many factors impacting a site's perceived quality – from the age of the domain to the number of reachable pages it has, to the depth of those pages, to the optimization on them and so on, and so on. At my last count engines like Google had over 150 factors which they use to determine a page's rank. That means they use 150+ factors to determine that a page should rank #1 for “widgets.” It is many of these same factors which the engines also use to determine if a link is valuable. Now, obviously there is no way for us to process that amount of information in a reasonable and timely manner to determine if a link is “quality” is there? So why bother? I'm not saying throw quality out the window, but I'm saying don't rely solely on this mysterious “quality” factor. Instead, look at some real, tangible evidence that we can use to determine if this site might be good. For example, look at the site's PageRank. Granted this isn't a 100% reliable method but it does give us an idea – a snapshot at some point in time – as to how Google perceives the site. Also look at other links found on the site. Are they doing well in the engines? Finally look at the page in question – you may have decided that the site is quality but the page you want a link on already has more than 100 outbound links. To me this indicates that this isn't a quality link because ultimately your site will receive little, if any, link popularity transference from the site. That's not to say that you shouldn't submit to the site, just that you shouldn't stop with this one site. In fact, I'd suggest that if you can find 20 or 30 similar sites to get links from, then those 20 or 30 “so-so” links will be worth as much (or more) than one of those mysterious “quality” links. What then – don't submit to quality sites? Do submit? What? I'm so confused! My feeling is that if you are confused after what I said here (and believe me, it wouldn't surprise me – link building is as much art as science) then do what I do – go with your gut. If you've come across a site (or group of sites) and your gut tells you “ya go for it – these are good links” then do it. After all, no one knows your business better than you. Therefore there are few people who may be able to tell if a link is a good fit for your site. If you think the link is good then make the submission. If not, then move on. If you are unsure then save it somewhere (bookmark it, save in a spreadsheet) and come back to it in a month or two to see if your feelings have changed. So what's better – quality or quantity? In the end I feel it's better to submit more link requests than less, and it's better to have more links than less. After all, the worst thing that will happen (unless you are severely spamming the engines and get yourself banned) is that the engine will find your link and say “sorry not related” and discount it. I've never ever heard of a site getting penalized for links. Because if that was the case, then do you know where I'd be? Submitting all our competition to sites to get them banned . :) Seriously, though. Don't be afraid to submit to many sites. Unless your gut tells you not to, go ahead and make the submission. It's not going to harm you and, in fact it may even help. Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

2007 Predictions - the rise of new media optimization, the peak of pay-for-review, SMO takes a back seat, link baiting tackled by engines

2007-01-04T00:41:38Z

Well, it is that time of year again. The time of year when I boldly make my predictions for the coming year. I have to tell you that over the past few years that I've done this I've been pretty successful. Granted some of my predictions may be considered “safe” by a few, but all in all I'd say my success rate has been in the high 70% to low 80% range. So keeping that in mind, let's get right to it, shall we? Prediction one – Social Media Optimization (SMO) begins to lose favor with online marketers. I already know what a lot of your might be saying (aside from those who are saying what is SMO?). You are saying “SMO is relatively new, how can it already be dying?” And to be honest, I wouldn't say it is dying, just changing form. As with all methods for improving online positioning, this one is growing up. Early this year we saw the rise of sites like Digg and Reddit. Sure they've been around a while, but it wasn't until 2006 that the SEM community embraced them as a legitimate form of online marketing. Similarly, MySpace, which has also been around for a while, was also a target for online marketers. And, as one would expect, these sites began to fight back. We are just hearing now how Digg is banning some domains from participating, while it appears that users are reacting against MySpace because of it's apparent commercial shift. And this is why I think the current tactics will change – Digg will lose favor among online marketers – mostly because it's algorithms have made it harder to appropriately position a page for an adequate return, but also because we'll see more and more “big” names in the industry get banned by Digg. And because some of these names are influencers, we will begin to see others in the industry fall in line, causing a boycott of Digg. But all is not lost – there are other sites such as Reddit which doesn't appear to have targeted online marketers (yet). As for MySpace, I do think it will continue to evolve but I think it will become more of a professional site – much like LinkedIn wanted to be. Sure there will still be those who use MySpace for fun and entertainment, and as a way to keep in touch with friends and family, but I don't see the commercialization of MySpace ending any time soon. Prediction #2 – Link Baiting tackled by engines This may be another term that some people say “huh?” when they read it. Link baiting is a method used to increase the number of links to a site in an what may be percieved as an unnatural way. While linkbaiting itself is not an unnatural form of link building – because at its very essence it is natural link building – it is still a method used to artificially increase the number of incoming links. Personally I don't think link baiting is bad – people have been doing it for years even before it was called link baiting. It is really just what happens when you write a really good piece of web content – people want to link to it. But now that it is called link baiting, more people are paying attention. And this is why this makes my list of predictions – because I think the engines are going to try and figure out a way to discount the effects of link building on rankings. While I don't know how they will do it (I'll leave that up to all the PhDs at the various engines to figure out) I do expect that some time in the latter ½ of 2007 there will be an attempt to tackle this issue. And here is why: Already we are seeing SEM Firms offering link baiting as a service. And many of these are very good at it. But I think as time goes on we'll find the editorial value of these pieces of link bait begin to fall. People will be writing trash simply for the purposes of link baiting. Since the engines don't want their indexed filled with useless content, they will begin to consider ways to reduce it, much like they tackled link farms, sitewide linking and other tactics SEMs have used to influence rankings. Prediction 3: The rise of New Media Optimization First, let me say that I've called this “New Media Optimization” because I just don't know what else to call it. By new media I mean things like YouTube and Google Video. And to a lesser extent Flikr, Picasaweb and others. Now I know video and picture sharing sites are nothing new. They've been around for a few years now. But the question has always been – how does an SEM take advantage of these sites? After all, you can't link back to a site from a picture hosted on Flickr. And even if you could, the engines aren't yet smart enough to understand what the picture is about. Similarly, aside from a URL embedded in a video description, there is no way to “optimize” a video to improve a websites search engine rankings. But I think marketers are soon going to realize that these sites offer something new. Something that can be done in addition to more traditional online marketing techniques. Take YouTube as an example. A local computer technician can not rank highly on the search engines for competitive phrases because they are competing against much larger sites like Dell's technical support website, and Microsoft's support website. But, he can use YouTube to illustrate his abilities via a short instructional video. He can use YouTube and other video sharing sites to further his reputation online without doing a lick of optimization. Similarly, he could use sites like Flickr and create a slideshow showing how to replace RAM in your computer (for example) or how to install a new video card. All these sites are going to emerge as opportunities in the coming years for online marketers. Prediction #4 – The rise of Pay for Review sites This is a new type of website, just introduced this year. With these services, you pay bloggers and other online content creators to write a review of your product or service, and then post that review on their website. Obviously there are many reasons to do this. First, you get a good review from a reputable source in the industry, and second you get a link (or even a few links) back to your site from that review. From an SEO perspective this is an ideal situation – you will get multiple links back to your site on pages which talk about your products or services. Over time, these pages earn more link popularity on their own which then transfers back to your site. That is why I see these pay for review sites popping up all over the place in 2007. Much like we saw an influx of video sharing sites because of the success of YouTube, we'll see variations on the pay-per-post theme. Who will win this new online battle is hard to say at this point – mostly because right now there is only a handful of players – but I bet that by the end of 2007 everyone will be talking about pay-per-post. Conclusion So there you have it – my (somewhat safe) predictions for 2007. Overall I see 2007 continue where 2006 left off – people looking for other avenues to improve their online presence. Because it is getting so hard nowadays to position either organically or via PPC on a search engines, people will be looking to these alternatives. Those who are ready to take advantage of emerging opportunities will be the most successful while everyone else plays catchup. Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

SEO 101 for Online Business Owners

2006-12-05T00:01:20Z

By now, most web site owners appreciate that optimizing for search engine visibility can have a real impact on both their site traffic and online profits. Still today, a large percentage of websites are found through search engines. Web Designers and SEO Marketers may have different opinions on how to best design and promote websites. One thing about SEO that is sure, it's not the quick and easy solution it once was a few years ago. Nonetheless, by understanding the evolution from "old to new" SEO rules, you can position your site for the search engine visibility you're seeking. Engine Algorithms Search Engine ranking algorithms are usually secret mathematical formulas. These engines test for many different factors before indexing and ranking a web site. Though algorithms (or rules) can and do change, there are some things that remain fairly constant. Here is a sampling of important things to consider when optimizing your site: * Age of site * Length of time domain has been registered * Age of content * Regularity with which new content is added * Age of link and reputation of linking site * Uniqueness of content * Related terms used in content (the terms the search engine associates as being related to the main content of the page) * Key word driven internal links identifying primary source of search information * External links, the anchor text in those external links, and in the sites/pages containing those links * Depth of document in site * Use of 301 to redirect moved pages * Hosting uptime * Whether the site serves different content to different categories of users (cloaking) * Broken outgoing links not rectified promptly By comparing how the Internet and SEO have changed over the years, you can identify how and where you need to roll up your sleeves just a bit more in order to get found by the engines. Here is a sample of some of the things that have changed: Keywords Then: Add all applicable Keywords to your Meta Tags. Now: Research keyword phrases that best define your business, products and services - study competitor sites and use key word tools (e.g. Word Tracker or KeywordDiscovery) to find further key word niches with fewer competitors. Choose a handful (at the most) of the best niche keywords and use them in your site links as well as your titles and meta descriptions. Competition Then: In 2000, a few hundred to the lower tens of thousands of competitors was normal for the number of websites that would show up for a search on a "competitive keyword phrase" Now: Today, several hundreds of thousands to several million is the standard number of web sites that appear in a search result for a given competitive keyword phrase. One way to learn who your primary internet competitors are, is to do a search for your products/services and see who is listed in the top 10-30 positions. Links Then: The more incoming links a web site had, the higher it ranked. Now: Links to your site still help to determine your search engine ranking but the quality and click-through-rate of links to your site have gained in importance. Build quality external links to your site via engine/directory submissions, affiliates, and high quality web sites within your own theme area (good: DMOZ (Open Directory); bad: link farms and "less popular" sites). Add links to your site on a regular ongoing basis and pace these conservatively (i.e. 1-2 a week not 400 a day!). Dynamic Database-driven Web Sites Then: CMS driven web sites were not search engine friendly and they often did not get indexed at all. Now: Today, though search engines can generally crawl and index database-driven sites, the presence of query strings in the URLs of the pages can still block the likelihood of engines indexing all of the pages on a CMS site. And because of this limitation, dynamic sites still face a visibility disadvantage that simple HTML sites enjoy. The good news however, is that there are tools available to rewrite the URL strings so that your database-driven website can be fully search-engine friendly. Local Then: Most searches were done with the major Search Engines. Now: There are now many local search engines, directories and databases that are used for searches, e.g. Google Local and Yahoo Local. If your business is local in nature then you should register with local search engines, databases, and directories. In Summary In the earlier days of the internet, many website owners assumed they would receive plenty of targeted traffic as soon as their site was built and online. In the early days of the web you actually could "build a site and they would come", just by implementing targeted keyword phrases in titles, meta tags and site content then submitting to the main search engines. This was largely due to the lack of web sites around at the time and search algorithms were simpler - thus top positions were that much easier to secure. With the enormous online growth over the last few years, just getting indexed has become more complex, particularly if you are using a brand new URL address. Researching your target audience, competitors, keyword selection and building good links is now more important than ever. Think of your site as a shop and a search engine as a shopping mall. Your shop is not visible in the mall without a sign, and well distributed marketing information to inform your online market where you are and how you can meet their needs. Best Practices: Here are some best practices that are relevant still today: 1. Build clean, standards-compliant websites that load fast, have rich content, and are regularly updated 2. Follow basic conventions like short descriptive titles, easy navigation, no disabling of browser buttons, no keyword stuffing or other unethical SEO methods 3. Build links naturally; do not manipulate (buy/sell) links, and do not use outward links to less reputable sites 4. Use original content 5. No technical errors 6. No duplicate pages Martha Lee Founder and CEO Get In Position Alex Kahl Owner Kahl Consultants]]>

Much Ado about Link Baiting

2006-11-28T20:00:36Z

There is a fairly new term being bounced around the web. This new term has a few people mystified, if they have even heard of it at all. So I thought I would introduce you to the term (if you are not already familiar with it) and provide a description of what it is so that you too can understand the often misunderstood field of link baiting. News hook is one where you report on industry news. But it is not just a rehashing of someone else’s post. It should be unique – either a scoop that no one else has caught, or it could even be a summary of various viewpoints. A news hook could also be comprised of a story you have proved to be false. Contrary hooks are when you contradict what someone else says. It should be someone prominent in the industry and it should be controversial. Political statements are often used as contrary hooks. All to often a politician says something that others disagree with. That disagreement becomes the hook. Attack hooks take the contrary hooks a step further, by launching personal attacks on people taking the debunking of theories to the next level. For example, rather than merely disagreeing with something the politician says, the attack hook goes further, criticizing the politicians personal belief system, or how they live their life outside of the public spotlight. Finally, A Resource hook is more of an informational page. It is one that aggregates a bunch of information and distills it for visitors. A good resource hook would be the Wikipedia, however individual pages can also be resource hooks. So you know what a hook is. What is next? Well, if you have decided how you are going to capture the link, you now need to write the content to do so. Because that is what link baiting is all about – writing content to encourage links back to your site. Really, link baiting takes the concept of blogging to the next level. Rather than merely writing content for the sake of writing, you are now writing your content with the express purpose of capturing links. Now think about that for a second. You are writing content for links. How is that going to work? Well, if you have decided on your angle – the type of hook you will use – you next need to write the content BUT it needs to be compelling enough for someone else on the web to sit up, take notice and say “that's worth me linking to.” And that is sometimes the hard part – crafting an article or blog post to be so compelling that others will notice it and link to it. Think about it. There is so much content being generated on the web on a daily basis, how is one supposed to make their content stand out among the rest? Making your link bait stand out among the crowd It may not be as difficult as you think. Sure it is one thing to write a link worthy piece, but it is an entirely different animal to get it found. Take this article, for example, how did you come across it? Well there could be many avenues through which your article gets found, but right now some of the best ways to capture links is to use services such as Netscape, Digg and Reddit. These are sites which allow visitors to post their own content. Other users then vote on the content. The more votes you receive, the higher up your page will rank in their system. But more importantly, the more votes you receive, the more reads you receive. That alone should result in more links. Keep in mind, however, that this article is over simplifying the process. While what I've said is true – that you can figure out a topic and a hook, and then write it and submit it to Digg, in reality this is where the hard part begins. That is because sites like Digg get thousands of submissions per day. So yes, it can be difficult to get noticed here. How to get noticed in Digg and the others There are many ways sites get noticed (and ultimately linked to) but it all starts with your submission's title. It has to be eye catching. It has to be something that makes someone who is merely scanning the recent listings stop and say to themselves “I need to read that.” That is because most Digg (and other aggregation sites) are scanners. They scan through the most recent posts and only read what interests them. Knowing that, here's what I've found works: Lists – many times you will see things like “top 5 (insert term here)...” or “10 things (insert person's name here) can do better” and so on. People like to read lists and reviews. Current news – often, the most visited posts are those that convey the most recent news. That means news that is not found somewhere else on the web. This goes back to the news hook – it has to be timely and relevant, but it also has to be first. Contrary posts – also highly read and rated. This usually ties in to current news, but also takes advantage of lists (for example “top 10 things George Bush can do to end the war in Iraq.” Such a post as this takes advantage of all three of these types of things that work. First, it has a list, second, it takes advantage of current news and third, it is contrary in that is contradicts what some people believe. But if you can't get Dugg, what next? While getting “Dugg” (the term used when your listing gets high rankings in Digg) is the ideal situation, in that it can bring you many links quickly, these should not be your only avenue. You can still use blog submission services such as Google Blog Search, Yahoo, Technorati and others. These services will also index your new content quickly, however they do not offer a ratings system like Digg and others do. Just the same, however, others will find your articles this way and could link to them if they are compelling enough. So there you have it – a quick run down on link baiting: From what it is, to how to do it. Keep in mind this is only an introduction to link baiting. Usually link baiting takes practice, however if you think you can do it, why not give it a shot? Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

SEO and Dynamic Websites - how do they fit together?

2006-11-06T20:41:35Z

We often receive many questions about dynamic websites. Some site owners want to know how to prepare their dynamic website for search engines. In this article we answer this question. Because, lets face it, sometimes the technology behind websites can be daunting. It can be difficult at best to understand how your site works. That's why we wrote this article – to help you understand at least one small part of your site, and how it can (and does) impact your site's overall search engine marketing performance. Just what is a dynamic website? First, let us take a look at what we are referring to when talking about a dynamic website. When we are talking of dynamic sites here we are talking about those that generate a non-static URL when it comes to building and displaying pages. For example: A typical URL of a dynamic site would look something like this: www.mysite.com/index.php?variable1=ID1&variable2=ID3&variable3=ID3 Some dynamic sites have more variables, some less, but essentially a “true” dynamic site must use variables as shown above to render the pages. Why is this a problem? The problem with these types of URLs is that a search engine crawler has problems indexing pages with extended URL variables. In other words, a crawler will not be able to index the above URL example. While it is true that today's more sophisticated crawlers can index some dynamic pages, in general they can not get past more than 1 or 2 variables in the URL. That means, in the above example, the crawler may only be able to index pages utilizing “variable1” and “variable2”. Beyond that the crawler likely would not be able to index the page. That means those other pages will not show up in search engine results As you can probably already guess this is a problem. That is because in many cases (such as e-commerce sites) the “meat” of the site – the product pages – are those pages found after those first 2 variables. In other words, most of the site will not be able to get indexed (or ranked) because of those long, dynamically generated URLs. Some CMS vendors have attempted to address the issue by implementing coding changes to help make the URLs more search engine friendly, but in many cases the result is not ideal. That is because they take a URL like this: www.mysite.com/index.php?variable1=ID1&variable2=ID3&variable3=ID3 and turn it into: www.mysite.com/index.php/variable1/ID1/variable2/ID3/variable3/ID3 by replacing all the “?” “=” and “&” with “/” While this does make the URL more search engine friendly because it helps to create a static URL, it does pose another problem to search engine rankings: That is, the page now becomes too deep in the folder hierarchy to be worth anything to the search engines. The logic goes back to the “old days” of the web, where websites were hand coded and presented as static HTML or HTM pages. Back then, webmasters would still use a folder structure to organize their sites, but they placed their most important content in the shallower folders, and less important content in deeper folders. When we say “shallower” and “deeper” we are referring to folder depths. A folder is the text between the slashes in the URL. That means that in the above example, index.php is the first subfolder, and the most shallow, while ID3 is the 7th, and deepest, subfolder. So as you can see in the above example, product pages found in “ID3” likely will not get indexed by search engine crawlers because of their folder depth. In fact, most content found below “ID1” (the third folder depth) will not be indexed. This is because the search engine crawlers expect the important content to be found within the first two or three subfolders. Why is this important to SEO? This is important because as a search engine optimizer we need as much content to be found and indexed as possible. In general, larger sites outperform smaller ones. Therefore we want all that content to be found and indexed as it all has an impact on how the site will perform on the search engines. For one, every single page indexed increases the chance of a visitor coming the site. That is because every single page can potentially be ranked for any combination of keywords found on that page. If you have a 400 word page, how many keyword combinations do you think that works out to? Now multiply that by 1,000 or 10,000 or even 100,000 pages. Now how many potential keyword combinations do you think there are? The second most important reason for having all those pages indexed is because they can influence your link popularity. The search engines today are driven by link popularity. At it's most basic form link popularity equates to the number of links a site has. The site with the most links can rank higher than the site with fewer links. That means the more pages you have indexed (all presumably with links elsewhere on the site including the home page) the more internal link popularity that site has. Not only that, but more pages also increases the chances of other sites linking to your site via those pages. For example, let's say you are the only site on the web selling blue widgets. By offering a good static URL to the search engines, an opportunity is created whereby other sites that support blue widgets would link to your blue widgets pages. This then increases the site's overall link popularity. My site has dynamic URLs. How do I fix it? Well there could be many ways. The simplest is to check with your web development team or CMS system provider to see if this is part of the system. Many commercial and open source CMS systems have options or modules already installed, or easily installable, which allow you to change dynamic URLs on the fly to static appearing ones. Keep in mind what we mentioned earlier, however. Simply changing a long dynamic URL into a static URL which places your content more than 3 folders deep is not an effective choice. While you would open up more of your content to crawlers, it would not receive as much of a boost in search engines as it could because of that folder depth. In other words, folder depth is key when it comes to changing from dynamic to static URLs. If such a module is not available for your chosen content management system there could still be options. For example there are many different free and paid software packages available which allows one to rewrite URLs “on the fly.” These include mod_rewrite for sites hosted on Apache, or ISAPI Rewrite for Windows based hosting. But this would obviously depend on your hosting. In conclusion Our goal here was not to scare you. It was to bring to light one of the most misunderstood barriers to search engine indexing and ranking. Sometimes such a fix is as easy as turning on a bit of code, while other times it could be a little more complex, such as perhaps rewriting or adding code. But in the end, the best way to get a dynamic site fully indexed is to first fix the URLs by having them rewritten into static appearing URLs. Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

SEO, SEP, or SEM Specialists - Who am I talking to?

2006-10-23T18:23:24Z

In the past few years there has been a lot of confusion over these terms. Some people interchange search engine optimization (SEO) or SEP (search engine positioning) with search engine marketing (SEM). Others feel each term describes a definite specialty. Martha Lee and Rob Sullivan discuss how they each define and implement SEO/SEM and what it means to be an expert in this arena. How is SEO (SEP) different from SEM or is it? Martha says: Search Engine Optimization is about positioning a site to gain merit based search traffic in the “organic” or regular listings while SEM encompasses many facets of online promotion. In the early days of SEO, one could build targeted keywords into web site content, titles and meta tags, submit to the major search engines, and get found by their audience. As the Internet has grown, so has the complexity of getting search visibility online. One area that is most likely to muddy the waters of where SEO ends and SEM begins, is the ever-growing and broad reaching ‘Link Building Campaign’. Quality link generation, obtained through both editorial results and advertising efforts, plays a vital role in driving search credibility. Though I see SEO and SEM as two distinct areas of expertise, I find, in my own practice over the last 7 years, that a combination of the two is not only more effective, but essential for establishing a search friendly online business. Rob Says: In reality, SEO and SEM are essentially the same. As Martha said, sometimes the terms are used to mean different things but in a nutshell, to me, they are similar in meaning. I say “similar” because to me, SEO is merely a part of a much broader SEM campaign. When I started in this industry, there was only SEO – Search Engine Optimization. In fact, when I first heard of Goto (which then became Overture and was later purchased by Yahoo!) my first thought was “paid advertising on search engines won't last – why would you pay for a listing you can easily get for free?” It soon became apparent, however, that paid search engine listings are at least as effective, and sometimes more effective, than organic search engine rankings. So to answer the question, I think organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search marketing (Pay Per Click, or PPC) are just aspects of a total Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign. So what does it mean to be an SEO/SEM expert? Martha Says: Over the last few years, the number of SEO firms has grown enormously. Similarly, so has the number of “SEO experts”. Typically an SEO expert will say anything from “I am an accredited SEO expert (meaning they took a class in search engine optimization) to “I am one of the first to practice SEO” to “I have proven results to show”, to “we’re the biggest SEO firm in (our city/state/region/etc.)” with a name dropping client list to match. So who do you choose? Well that depends on many things: your needs, your budget, the range of web services they provide (for example, some firms provide development, hosting, design, information architecture, project management, and so on). Also very important is the complexity of your site. For example, a dynamic data base driven or e-commerce site has its own unique challenges to getting effective positioning on the search engines. In general, the best SEO experts have been around long enough (5 or more years) to get solid results and adjust with their clients changing industries online. They often have a web development and/or design background, and can map out the collaborative process. Most important of all, the best SEO/SEM experts are leading the pack in identifying and implementing client opportunities through new Internet marketing and media trends. Rob Says: As Martha suggested, sometimes the best SEO's are ones that don't name drop. Sure I can name drop too – I've worked on celebrities sites, Fortune 500 sites and many you've probably used. Does that make me an SEO expert? Not necessarily. The fact of the matter is, an SEM or SEO expert is one that can show demonstrable results and proof of their worth. After all, I can claim to rank you “in the top 5 on all the major search engines in 2 weeks.” and I could probably do that for you...For terms that drive little or no traffic, and will result in zero additional revenue for you. In reality an SEM expert is one who can first identify your needs and then draft a project to help you reach your target audience when and where they need to be reached. Whether that is through an organic optimization plan, a PPC program, newsletter releases, press release optimization, blogs or any other means necessary to help you make money. Because, lets face it, almost anyone with a web presence is online to make money. The best SEOs know what it takes to help you make money. Optimizing a website so that one can name drop, or write up an impressive case study doesn't make a good (or even average) SEO. In summary, Martha and Rob say: SEM is a broad term meant to indicate how one markets their website through search engines. Search Engine Optimization is just one way of achieving results through search engines, as is Pay Per Click. Essentially, SEO drives the baseline integration of words and language, identifying (to both humans and crawlers) what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and who you are. A good SEO Expert is able to look at your site, understand your goals, and tailor a search engine marketing campaign to suit your needs. That usually means an initial consultation, a questionnaire, and sometimes additional meetings with primary decision makers to confirm the “collective view and goals” for your online presence. A valued SEO expert is one who truly understands your business, is enthusiastic about what you do, and can help you achieve measurable online success. Martha Lee Founder and CEO Get In Position Rob Sullivan Search Engine Marketing and Brand Development Strategist Get In Position]]>

Still Putting All of Your Eggs in Google's Basket?

2005-12-04T01:00:44Z

Google has become synonymous with searching the Internet. So much so that "googling" means to search for information online. When people try to improve their site's visibility, it's no surprise that they measure their success by their Google ranking. This perception is not unreasonable. Google is still the most popular search engine, used for about 46 percent of all searches [1], down from a high of 80 percent [2]. However, focusing all your efforts on Google means ignoring a large part of your potential audience. Yahoo is used for 22 percent of all searches, MSN for 13 [3], and both companies are positioning themselves for dominance of the search engine market. All three engines remain relevant when building a web marketing campaign. Get In Position Alex Kahl Owner Kahl Consultants]]>