Search This SEO Blog

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Google Translate Drops Systran

Google Translate has stopped using the language translation technology Systran still being utilized by Yahoo!'s BabelFish. The Google technology was brought forth from Google Research Group and uses statistical machine translation. The different languages that are translated from English already include Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Balihoo Search Engine Expands Beta Program

Balihoo just opened their beta program to include media companies instead of media buyers, advertising agencies and major national advertisers, as reported by our Texas SEO firm. Balihoo search engine hails from Boise, Idaho and claims to be the first and only vertical search engine for advertisers and media buyers.

Balihoo claims that 8 out of 10 of the major media buyers in North America are participating and all organizations represent purchases of about $80 billion a year in advertising. Balihoo says it connects advertisers and agencies to assist in searches for media properties.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Billionaire Seeks Google's Help

Sir Richard Branson, a British billionaire and close friend of aviator Steve Fossett, is seeking help from Google in finding the missing pilot who was last seen taking off from an airport in Nevada several days ago. The search engine is known for its ability to map the earth with 3D images and Branson is hoping the search engine giant can turn its attention to the area Fossett was last known to have been flying over although no flight plan was submitted to aviation officials.

It would be interesting to know the cost the billionaire submitted to Google or the amount of cash Google would need to perform such a terrain search on earth from space.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Texas SEO Hacked

That's right, Texas SEO was hacked. SEO Metro is quiet pleased that the competition knows it stands no chance against those who know SEO versus those that "think" just a bunch of inbound links will suffice versus knowledge in website optimization. It is amazing that SEO sites appear to jump up and down, screaming we "are SEO experts" or "we have figure out the puzzle". If they had the algorithms figured out they would not be sinking like an overladen ship in the Pacific. Maybe they should hire a real SEO firm to come and bail them out before they sink to the floor or past the front page which will drive little traffic in this field.

  1. On the positive side we now see what we are up against; just a bunch of unscrupulous individuals or an individual that cannot get their website(s) to the top and must resort to underhanded tactics because of their lack of SEO knowledge.
  2. SEO Metro will remain vigilant in watching our sites and our clients sites to ensure no files are uploaded or manipulated.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

SEO Resellers?

After receiving a call today asking about our SEO business, I was surprised to hear of another SEO company asking another firm to resell their product. I don't understand why they would ask our Texas SEO firm to give them clients for a 20% cut in their profits gained from giving them our clients.

Perhaps they think (1) we are swamped with customers and willing to give them up, which is not true yet since this search engine company is new or (2) that we just market services but don't actually perform services, untrue, or (3) we would justify sending them clients since they can do a better optimization which is doubtful as the telemarketer claimed they have 6,000 clients.

And why would we risk our reputation by sending them to an SEO company that currently has 6,000 clients. It certainly sounds like they perform quantitative versus qualitative services.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Google Announces Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center

Google announced its Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center that will help educate consumers who purchase Adwords. The resource center will have blogs by Google engineers, articles, presentation and other material to help consumers understand and combat click fraud and to help consumers with ad quality. The resource center is said to "be a work in progress" that will continue to add more resources.

Texas SEO reported that click fraud was at 16%, a new all-time high. More website owners may be moving to search engine optimization in order to branch out their online marketing with organic search in mind. Long lasting results may be more in order for a balanced marketing approach versus relying 100% on Adwords and other search engine paid results. A benefit also it to work on long-tailed keywords that can more easily achieved for top search result positioning.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Wikipedia Editors Exposed

SEO Metro has been amuzed about the story of the CalTech student who developed an unofficial Widipedia tool that can detect which IP addresses edit Wikipedia. The Wiki story about edit tracing talks about high profile government agencies and corporations who come into Wikipedia to edit any negative comments that arise about the entity they represent. It appears these high profile corporations have people hired just to perform 'online damage control'.

Curiously, do these editors have SEO titles or maybe more appropriately Public Relations titles within a Search Engine Optimization department? Obviously, they are there not just to perform damage control with readers but to accomplish damage control with search engines.

Agencies noted for such behavior include Diebold (voting machine manufacturer), Scientology, Dow, ExxonMobil and Disney among the top spinsters.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Texas SEO- #1

Well SEO Metro's first goal has been reached and that is getting the #1 position for Texas SEO and SEO Texas on Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Not bad I must say for a company that has been on the web for 4 1/2 months. The results may go up and down as Google makes adjustments but we are still satisfied.

The next goal is to reach the top of the fold for Dallas SEO on Google. Although the keyword has approximately 1.93 million documents compare to Texas SEO having approximately 2.2 million documents the competition for Dallas SEO may prove to be challenging. SEO Metro will begin the Dallas campaign within the next several weeks after some adjustments are made and more solidification of off-page optimization is accomplished.

The next goals to achieve are the global keywords "SEO" and "Search Engine Optimization" that will be quite a daunting task, ongoing as long as the site is in existence.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Squidoo Showing Again in Google Results

Well, it seems Google's results are now showing Squidoo entries so Texas SEO has now added an SEO page to Squidoo. Like there is no other avenues to pursue at the moment or where time cannot be better spent. We thought it would be some fun plus it will be amuzing to see where we can take it whether successful or not. It may well turnout to be another good avenue for linking, announcements, buzz, etc.

No content has been added but it has been setup in a temporary fashion and will be adjusted accordingly as time goes by and as Squidoo is figured out in all its aspects, plugins, etc. This blog is now shown with the last 10 entries of Site SEO Blogger along with another 5 SEO blogs showing from Google's results which hopefully may prove to be of user benefit.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Online Ad Spending Expected to Explode in 2011

An article by MediaPost reports that online ad spending will explode by 2011 and is expected to reach $61.98 Billion, surpassing newspaper ads. The report by Veronis Suhler Stevenson explains that consumers are spending 19.8% more time on the internet and with video games, consumer-supported media, compared to 2001 and that ad-supported media like broadcast television and newspapers has fallen 6.3% since 2001.

This is good news for search engine optimization firms like Texas SEO as that challenge will be to get clients to the top of the SERPs without the dependency on ad purchases. Why not choose good keywords and put a little time and money in the promotion to gain a more permanent presence versus an expensive ad campaign.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Spock in Beta

Spock, the "people search" engine is now in beta, according to Texas SEO, and opened to the public versus a member login. Reports came in that the searches were slow which indicates a significant amount of traffic that the search company may not have expected. The company may have to increase its hardware and internet service to accompany the many of folks that will come to it to search for friends and others. The people search engine is a growing number of vertical search engines coming online.

WhitePages.com is rumored to be now repositioning in accordance with competition that is springing up in the "name world".

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Answers.com Blames Google on Traffic Demise

Answers.com took a rare move in announcing on their Press Release that their internet traffic is down 28% do to a shift in Google's algorithm. Answers.com stated reliance on search engines was the main reason to purchase Dictionary.com

Answers.com would probably fair better to hire a search engine optimization company versus blaming a major shift in Google. Answers says the traffic decline started last week and that they 'are diligently working to determine the algorithm shift change and to address that before the next quarterly meeting'.

Seems to be rational that they would be paying attention to algorithms and SEO news on a regular basis so no major breakdowns occur. Also to note; there has been no major shift in Google's algorithm that we can ascertain.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Google May Recognize Underscores

Google may recognize underscores as word separators in URLs like they have been doing with hyphens. Google may now be among the major search engines, Yahoo and MSN Live that have been recognizing this naming convention in the past, according to Texas Search Engine Optimization.

URLs using hyphen naming conventions like http://www.seo-metro.com/search-engine-optimization.html may be seen and indexed the same as URLs with the naming convention using underscores http://www.seo_metro.com/search_engine_optimization.html

Web authors who have used the underscore file naming in the past should be pleased and may see some positive positioning in search results and a possible increase in traffic if Google recognizes the naming convention.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

AOL Acquires Tacoda

AOL announce that it is acquiring Tacoda, a behavioral targeting company ad network and technology company, according to Texas SEO. AOL is going to utilize Tacoda's behavioral targeting to Advertising.com that is the largest ad network online. AOL seems to be wanting to catch up with Google and Yahoo who already use behavioral targeting successfully.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

SEO-Metro- What's is a Name?

Well it seems like some over-zealous individual or company has purchased a similar domain name to our search engine optimization company, SEO-Metro, in the hopes of selling it to us (bribery) or to another unsuspecting individual or company for profit; the domain name is the same name, seo-metro.com without the hyphen.

The individual or company who we, SEO Metro, will research to discover the domain purchaser's identity, will be fully documented and sent a legal notice that any attempt to undermine or take from our company identity and to employ another individual or company to our demise will be considered felony conspiracy by SEO Metro and reported to the F.B.I.

SEO-Metro will not be intimidated nor coerced by a bunch of online thugs or thug attempts at intimidation by those who lack talent but have to succeed by bullying.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Online Marketing Mistakes

SEO Metro has noticed some bizarre marketing by websites that have thousands of links leading into them but use Google sponsored ads to direct traffic to them for terms that they don't even rank for or does it seem they try. I cannot imagine as a Texas SEO company that we go work and get hundreds of links but we are so inept at link building and content that we must use a pay-per-click program for expensive keywords.

These particular companies are geared toward global keywords that are so hard to achieve good rankings that it would take years of link building and content building before the desired rank could be achieved. That being said would not common sense dictate to use long-tailed keywords or geographic keyword phrases? One would think. Why build a website that takes many hours much less take hundreds of hours to build inbound links to go and purchase expensive adwords?

Speaking of adwords...how many internet users actually click on them? 20%? Does not appear to be the best strategy if you ask me. I am definitely not a marketing genius nor is it my discipline. Maybe I am wrong but if it were a chess game I would think I would be taking my opponents pieces off the board much quicker. If this were a real-life game, in which it is, I would think I would have more toys in the end than my opponent.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Microsoft Live Search Market Increases

Microsoft Live's searches are on the rise but it is hard to tell why.
  1. One reason is that they have a "Live Search Club" that is rewarded by the amount of searches users execute.
  2. Another reason may be that bots are on the rise that 'hit' Live searches regularly as if in a denial of service mode. The blog noted below states that bots are not counted and can be discerned from actual human users.
Compete.com commented on their blog about MSN Live that searches were up 67% from May, and 48% from a year ago which is quiet commendable. The blog also reports that Live took away about 5 percentage points from the other search engines, mostly Google, but SEO Metro is skeptical about these initial reports for several reasons, including preliminary comments about these statistics rattling Google.

MSN Search Market Results Skewed?

  1. There is a defined difference between human users and bots that could be manipulated by technology savvy individuals.
  2. Will this contest go on forever and do the latest search results comparing the search engines just discount MSN Live's Club and the prizes awarded? Compete.com believes so.
  3. Are these results being generated and exaggerated by those wanting to hype another search engine over Google? Actually appears that way regardless.
  4. May and June searches on MSN Live spike to over 3 million, according to the blog. Looking at MSN's past search records that seems out of the ordinary and would not be contributed to anything other than a contest. Noting kids are out of school this summer and wanting free Zune's and Vista operating systems that have been offered for prizes the spike should not be a surprise.
The results seem to be skewed if we are looking at the big picture and the long haul of search engines and number of searches.

Annoying Link Managers

SEO Metro is becoming increasingly annoyed at "link managers" and their requests and what they will do for our sites. These people tell us how they will link back to us and have multiple sites with many different niches that they can link back to our sites...yada, yada, yada. We explain our position that we are not "into" reciprocal linking but that we can link from several different sites giving one-way links. Then we post the link, email them the posting and ask for a one-way link into a different site for the "favor". These "link managers" are not heard from ever again.

For one, I would like to know what their (link manager) knowledge is on linking and link building. It appears they are just going for numbers and not quality. I just do not understand the lack of concern or ignorance over linking and how quality affects the search engines. SEO Metro received one flattering and notable email about one of our sites and that is was a perfect match and yada, yada, yada... I explained we were not engaging in reciprocal linking but were willing to give a front page link back to their site if they would take another one of their "many sites" and link back to another one of our sites. They were never heard from again.

It certainly appears these individuals or firms are after numbers versus quality just to show their clients the quantity of work versus the quality of work. We will certainly be taking this into account in the future and just may mail them the link to this post to see if the "link managers" would like to continue the dialogue.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Sky Ryders Drum Corps: Marketing Push

Sky Ryders Drum and Bugle Corps are having their first official reunion in Hutchinson, KS on July 28, 2007. This event coincides with Drums Across Kansas that will feature, Bluecoats, Carolina Crown, Crossmen, Mandarins, Seattle Cascades and the TROOPERS! The event should prove alot of fun with a BBQ picnic and a few parties to follow and most likely preceed.

SEO Metro will provide an internet marketing push to promote the drum corps reunion. There is a drive to put together a Sky Ryders' DVD, a t-shirt being offered and rooms in Hutchinson, KS.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Quality Link Building

Quality link building requires good decision making in order to give the best return of investment (ROI). Search engines have their own proprietary algorithms of course which they ultimately determine that value of the link but we have the final decision in where we put our links and if we are going to pay for directories, taking into decision making process that Google is devaluing paid text links.

Industry related links are the best choice and one-way incoming links are favorable over reciprocal linking. One way of finding industry related back links is to check the competition's backlinks. Also of course is the page rank of the webpage that is linking back to your site including the text link and description or way in which the link is incorporated into a text document.

Ways to Achieve Ranking Through Link Building

  1. As previously stated, Google frowns upon paid text links, however other search engines to not penalize or devalue paid text links. Search other competitors and see if they are using paid text links within industry topic sites. If you site is devalued with the text link their site will also be devalued but that needs to be taken into consideration; a conservative view may be the best approach long term. Another factor to consider in paid text links are the potential traffic the link may be. Bottomline is ROI for SEO efforts.
  2. Web directories are another consideration. High quality web directories bring good links along with some traffic which is a big plus. Yahoo's directory and DMOZ directory are nice especially taking into account that Yahoo's directory charges $299. Dmoz directory is human edited as with many other directories but it has high quality listing on high page rank pages but the drawback is it can take months to get listed.
  3. Blogs are important for link building and SEO . Quality blogs can be built that brings the latest industry news and issues and links them back into the site. Deep-linking strategies can also be built where new pages on the site can instantly be linked.
  4. Quality Content for Link Baiting is also important. Quality content will prompt other webmasters to link to you in order to further explain their positions and give examples and further educate their readership.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Google and Microsoft's Desktop Search

Google goes back into Federal court to complain that Microsoft's desktop for VISTA is not compatible with Google's desktop search and Google has ask the judge to interact in the case as a "friend of the court." Google complains that other desktop searches also experience sluggish performance compared to Microsoft's version.

Monday, July 2, 2007

SEO Defined on Wikipedia

Wikipedia finally has its "Search Engine Optimization" page that explains and defines SEO. The page has reported to have "no follows" on it so search engines will not follow the links and give a boost to external sites; hence SEO. Noted are some well-known SEO people and search engine optimization companies along with some history about SEO and some facts and history about Black Hat SEO.

The article smells political; as an example is the link to Wikipedia's SEMPO's page and when taken to that page on Wikipedia it appears that Wiki has left a note for them, "This article or section is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this from a neutral point of view per Wikipedia policy.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

New Search Engine: SPOCK

SEO Metro has recently learned of the new search engine SPOCK that has indexed over 100 million people and claims millions are added daily with SPOCK proclaiming they are "building the broadest and deepest people specific search engine. The search engine repots that Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures "an early-stage venture capital firm with more than $1 billion in committed capital under management".

Spock is also committing to a contest with a winning purse of $50,000 for an individual or team that can overcome its obstacles in people search.

Negative SEO

Forbes has written about online sabateurs who may bring unfavorable search engine results to websites. The article talks about specific companies that are focused upon 'rubbing out' negative comments about companies to taking the competition down from the search results by different techniques and tactics called "negative seo" or "negative search engine optimization". Particular companies are engaged in sabotaging competing websites by spamming search engines with negative text links.

Setting up a competitor with negative link spamming is called "Google Bowling" although Matt Cutts with Google says he would prefer to call it "search engine bowling" with Mr. Cutts further stating that Google's algorithms are constructed to protect against negative link spamming.

SEO Metro
is not interested in contracting for negative SEO campaigns.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Will New Report Slam Paid Search Ads?

Holy smokes, could a new report being leaked by the New York Post prove unsatisfactorily for Paid Search Ads? ISM, Internet Search Management is expected to release the paid search ads audit this week. The big attention that was directed toward eBay's decision to withdraw their paid ads from Google has made some companies rethink. The really big deal, however, over eBay withdrawing from Google is that they, eBay, lost little in revenue.

The leaked report further states that companies are not marketing their sites with much effort nor or they utilizing search engine optimization to increase traffic.

Texas SEO Metro understands it needs to educate clients about natural, organic search versus paid search ads. Paid search ads disappear when the budget is out. Organic searches and online marketing stays, regardless of the present budget. This may be the "tipping scale" where search engine optimization over powers paid search.

Our client, Dallas Computer Repair, has seen an enormous growth in online traffic and a huge boost in computer repairs after Search Engine Optimization and online marketing.

Monday, June 25, 2007

ICANN Considers New Domain Suffixes

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is considering new domain suffixes that even include the possibility of non-English characters, according to a report by Yahoo. Paul Twomey, ICANN's chief executive expects a policy report or two to be presented before consideration will be taken. Proponents say that even though they are non-English speaking they must enter English characters into suffixes to access the internet.

SEO Metro may be partial as we are primarily English speaking but here is the bottomline: the majority of the internet is English speaking as is the business world. Why compromise a universal internet language and World Language, regardless if it is English.

Several questions are being poised at the ICANN Puerto Rico Conference:
  1. Who will get the new names, China, Korea, etc.
  2. Will non-English scripts disrupt emails and the ability to surf the internet.
  3. Discussion on adding addition English suffixes, the third discussion of its kind and first since the creation of the suffixes.
  4. Applicants would go through a review phase where anyone could protest due to racial conflicts, trademark conflicts, etc.
  5. If no objections are raised then the suffix would be approve within three months while objections to a suffix would put the proposed suffix under further review.
If internet users have the ability to access computers, configure computers to access the internet, then they have the ability to speak the world language: English

ICANN: Keep the internet English Speaking, the universal language.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Dell to Manufacture Google Search Appliance

According to a post in the Google Enterprise Blog Dell will start manufacturing Google's Search Appliance. Currently the Mini Google Appliance sells for $1,995.00 and searches up to 50,000 documents. Additional versions will search up to 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 documents. Dell may be able to bring the price down as it has shown that it can compete in the hardware business as a top leader with affordable solutions.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Business.com on the Auction Block

Business.com is on the auction block according to a report on SEO Metro. The auction for the website is expected to go for an estimated $300 to $400 million dollars. The domain was originally purchased in 1999 for a reported $7.5 million and was laughed at by online professionals. The website serves as a powerful webdirectory who charges to be listed.

Looks like the site is going to be laughing all the way to the bank when the auction is over. Several high profile businesses are reputed to be vying for the domain.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

SEO.com

Web Targeted has moved its site to SEO.com with the purchase of the domain for a whopping, reported $5 million. Web Targeted says that it will get a new logo, build a new site and have lots of SEO resources and tools along with articles and insights into the industry.

That is just a little more than SEO-metro.com paid for its domain; but hey, ours is paid for, no debt, no borrowers fees or interest.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

SEMPO's SEO Certification

Well, the first graduate of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) has graduated and now the big fanfare as reported on DMNews. SEO Metro is just a little curious about this certification and poses a few questions not to be disrespectful or demeaning just some brutally honest questions from someone who holds advanced college degrees that are recognized world-wide. I am not trying to be arrogant here nor want to like some snob but some type of standards need to be met if SEMPO is wanting to use this as an industry standard.

  1. What body of professionals are backing this SEO certification besides SEMPO?
  2. What are the teachers credentials within the SEO community and within the educational community both as mutually exclusive credentials?
  3. If the Board of Directors from SEMPO are standing behind this, what is their educational level outside of SEO and within SEO?
  4. Where did the educational material come from?
  5. Where did the testing material come from?
  6. What empirical evidence is presented to back the material?
  7. What statistical knowledge is expected in completing the SEO certification?
  8. Does the certification use software to conduct search engine optimization or is the optimization completed by theory.
  9. Is the test readily available?
  10. Do I have to pay for the educational unit or can I just take the test?
I will no doubt revise this post.......Gregory R. Roberts M.S.S.W.

Friday, June 15, 2007

SEO Metro's New Logo

SEO Metro has a new logo that reflects a global image of the company and simply the company name beneath it. The logo reflects the search engine optimization company in that many times a simple approach is more to the point than complicated avenues that often must be supported in multiple, dynamic problem solving. The earth colors reflect the companies down to earth approach and labor that goes into working the land along with lots of labor and sometimes lots of tears if the desired results are not achieved as quick as one would like. The lettering is simply a bold arial that compliments the clean sleak logo design.

The logo has now been uploaded to aboutus.org

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Google Penalties- Nonsense

SEO Metro has grown tired of the misconception that Google penalizes websites. This has tirelessly been explored by Google's search engineers and explained yet those who claim to be in the know talk continuously about Google penalties. The term to be used is 'filtered' not 'penalized'. Sites will be filtered for different reasons: (1) new sites, because of "trust issues", (2) duplicate content, upon which the page(s) with duplicate content will not be indexed, (3) 'bad neighborhoods' are linking to the offending website, (4) webmasters who try and trick Google with different spam techniques, (5) over optimization, keyword stuffing, etc.

These 'so-called SEO experts' then tell webmasters they can resubmit their websites to Google. Bad move.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Google Wants More Foreign Workers

As reported by SEO Metro, Google's Executive, Laszlo Bock, the search giant's vice president of people operations.....testified before the US Congress that the company needs 'brilliant minds from all over the world'. Bock testified that Sergey Brin who made it to the United States when he was 6 y.o. as his parents fled the former Soviet Union grew up to become the cofounder of Google, according the News.com.

This all to place during the U.S. House Judiciary Oversight Committee meeting and the relationship of the business community on foreign workers and those on the status of H-1B workers. Bock testified that 8% of Google's employes hold H-1B visas and are responsible for the creation of Google News and Orkut. Also, interesting to note, 75% of these foreigners have degrees from the United States.

It's too bad that we in the United States are not brilliant enough for Google. I mean afterall, they, foreigners, created news and social networking for Google.

ABSOLUTE GENIUS.

Yahoo Shareholders Asked to Not Vote for Board Members Re-election

Yahoo's shareholders have been asked by two independent proxy advisory firms to not vote for three board members that were responsible for the $71 Million compensation package to CEO Terry Semel after the company had a 60 percent decrease in net income, slow revenue growth and a 35% drop in stock price for 2006.

Doesn't this go with all CEOs and their lucrative packages despite performance? Just typical...can he alone really be responsible for his companies poor performance? It's just the economy...right?

Pitiful, be the shareholders may say something different. 35% stock price decline....?!?!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Yahoo Algorithm Update

Yahoo announced that it's search engine is going through an algorithm update and many commentors appear to not be so happy about it. Yahoo's update still has not listed SEO Metro as it appears to still be filtered as a new site.

This new update does not see much search engine rank pages differ from the other Yahoo Weather Update that was supposed to help filter out spam results.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Google Filters Appear Lifted

Finally, SEO Metro has gained position on Google for "Texas SEO" on the third page in 24th postion. SEO Metro is now 9 weeks at birth with over 120 one-way inbound links from Yahoo, Altavista and Alltheweb. The company is starting to make headway but have yet to begin the Dallas SEO keywords.

  1. SEO Metro is in 4th postion for "Texas SEO" and 11th postion for "Texas Search Engine Optimization" on MSN Live Search.
  2. SEO Metro is not on the first 5 Search Engine Rank Pages(SERP) for Altavista
  3. SEO Metro is not on the first 5 SERP pages for Alltheweb
  4. SEO Metro is not on the first 5 SERP pages for Yahoo

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Google Rankings Analyzed by German Company

Sistrix, a German SEO company recently analyzed top Google-ranking websites and published their results.

  1. Key words in the title tag are important along with keywords in the body.
  2. Key words in the H1 title do not appear to be important although important in the H2-H6 titles.
  3. Keywords in bold or italicized had some positive effect, along with keywords in the image files and alt images.
  4. Domain names with targeted keywords often had an advantage that may be due to inbound links with the domain name as the link text.
  5. Sistrix found that keywords in the file name appeared to have no positive effects but file names with the least amount or no parameters ranked higher than those pages with many file parameters.
  6. The file size has no effect, however, it was noted that smaller sites have a slight advantage over large sites.
  7. Inbound links had definite positive effects and that pages on the top results of the first page rank results were more likely to have 4 times the amount of inbound links with web sites on the second rank result pages.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Texas SEO

Well, after a delay of reporting search engine rank pages (SERP), we have been on the second page of MSN Live for Texas Search Engine Optimization for two weeks. SEO Metro started at 3rd but second company in line for Texas SEO on MSN but now rank 3rd company that is positioned in number 5 with MSN. Google, no rank on 50 pages; Yahoo no rank on 50 pages.

SEO Metro will prevail slowly........our goal. Slow, steady and relentless.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Online Ad Sales Record for 2006

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the internet saw a dramatic increase in Branded Display Ads and Search Placement of 35% to a whopping tune of $16.9 Billion as reported on Texas SEO. It appears online advertising will be at a pace for several years to come. This is good news for the online industry as other media such as newspapers continue to decline at an alarming rate. The Dallas Morning News has been suffering subscriptions deficits for a record number of years that probably totals a decade.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Google Buying More Ad Power?

Rumor is online about Google buying Feedpower for $100 million. Google seems to be at no stopping for slurping up the competition. They have the money to burn and buy up all the existing ad comanies and they seem to be at a pace to set records if records have not already been set. Google appears to be interested in the company because of the advertsing embedded within FeedPowers RSS Feeds.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Google on Microsoft- Yahoo Merge

Google must have its ears to the wall on the Microsoft Yahoo meetings where speculation is running. Google must surely have some concern over the ramblings and are probably meeting themselves to see where the search engine wars take their next battles.

If MSN and Yahoo do merge in their search marketing advertisement but remain separate as far as independent search engines strategies will be tweaked to keep bringing in traffic to both entities. So far everyone is tight-lipped but the news should come about soon. If no news happens then we will no it is a "no go" situation.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Microsoft Obtaining Yahoo!?

The New York Post reported earlier today that Microsoft is in negotiations with Yahoo! Microsoft is remaining hush about the meeting but a similar meeting happened last year with no results. Yahoo! shares rose 15% and yesterday their online marketing was worth a whopping $38 billion. Some analyst speculate that Microsoft may bid $50 billion for the search engine company but MS has indicated that some services are duplicated and would do them little good to purchase the whole company. Some analysts believe that Microsoft is attempting to gain Yahoo!'s online search advertising market.

Microsoft and Yahoo's share of the search advertising market would add up to 27 percent against Google's 65 percent but would bridge the gap in online ads with Google to just 13 percent.

YouTube and User Monetization

YouTube announced that it is starting a program for "popular users" to gain monetarily by having advertisements placed near their posted content. It appears that users will be able to have some control over the placing of advertisements but the news so far is vague. The users having this feature have been "invited" by YouTube but it appears that this may be a feature for other users in the future.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

SEO and Page Rank

Often new search engine optimization enthusiasts discuss page rank(PR) and their disappointed that the page does not achieve a higher score. Page rank is nothing but an "indicator" of how popular a page is or not. Pages that have a PR0 may just as well out rank a page that has a significantly higher score.

I have had a site with absolutely no page rank that was positioned "above the fold" for a local highly sought after topic. Finally, when I sought out some inbound links the page rank jumped from PR0 to PR3 almost overnight. I really never watched it that closely but when I checked it had suddenly taken a big jump.

Now with a page that has a high PR that links to another page or website will help that page more than a page linking to it with no page rank. A web page with one PR3 linking to another page or site is more valuable than three PR1's linking to it and so forth.

And finally, do consumers value page rank when they visit a site? Most consumers have no idea what page rank is and could really care less. After all, is the product that is being sold relevant to the page rank?

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Google Data Center in Oklahoma?

SearchEngineLand reports that Google may be making a move to Oklahoma in an industrial complex that even has its own coal-operating power plant. Evidently Google is looking at the complex to house another data center. Google is growing immensely with other data centers around the country including one here in Dallas. The area being considered by Google is an area of 7,000 acres in an industrial complex. The officials at the complex are being tight-lipped and are neither confirming nor denying whether Google is the company that has purchased 800 acres just south of the area that Gatorade owns.

The data center should be able to handle better local search deliveries and hopefully will help with search engine optimization.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Black Hat Scare Tactics

A really disturbing trend I see in the Search Engine Optimization industry is for so-called SEO professionals to either blog for hysteria or report it on their own website stating, "Blackhat Professional SEOers are on the loose". I suppose they are suggesting they be hired through the mass hysteria that will next leave small babies vulnerable.

This is THE FIRST sign that something is amiss; pointing to others and 'how they are bad'. These unethical tactics run amuck from small agencies to large. I have seen one agency boastings, from one of the largest US cities, they are #1 on MSN but further results show they are 468 place on Yahoo and do not even place within 100 pages of Google which is 1,000 placings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The above "agency" was from the North US. Here is what came from a Southern US SEO agency: 'WE WILL SEE YOU GET TO #1 ON GOOGLE!' Fact is, they cannot even place on the first page of google with their city name and SEO. So how can they promise first place on Google when they cannot make to the first page of Google for 'City SEO'.

The best thing for clients to learn is investigate. PERIOD.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Click Fraud

Click Forensics of Austin Texas has announced an increase of click fraud for the first quarter of 2007 at 14.8% which is up from 14.2% from the last quarter of 2006. Also interesting to note is that higher priced keywords from $2.00 and up was up to 22.2% click fraud.

Advertisers may soon realize that organic search engine optimization is the preferred way to proceed over the long haul. Admittedly, pay-per-click may be the best way to proceed for commercial websites to gain immediate revenue and traffic but that may come at a premium for small to medium sized businesses.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

SEO Companies Positioning

Wow. One company from a major U.S. city announced how they were number 1 on MSN and how they were such big shots in the Search Engine Optimization- SEO community and how they were ranked in the search engine result placements (SERP). Analysis reveals, yes, numbero uno for MSN but for yahoo? Number 486 and Google? Not within 1,000 results for their city and "SEO".

Anything else to say? Oh, SEO-Metro is claiming nada.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Google and Paid Links

Well, here it is Google want to know who sells links. Maybe someone could point out to Matt that his company is the largest seller of links on the planet if I am not mistaken.

That being said, is this not a campaign for webmasters to take advantage of in a fair way or an unfair way with each other. Matt even said,
“Example.com is selling links; here’s a page on example.com that demonstrates that” or “www.shadyseo.com is buying links.
in referencing how users should report websites and webmasters seeking paid links.

SEO-Metro is not seeking paid links but wondering, was not this OK in the past? I know for sure it was common acceptance. Now I understand how a website with cash could out-rank another website with more relevant content but less PR quality links. That would deliver less quality search engine result pages (SERPs) but isn't the algorithms supposed to take care of ranking quality backlinks? So if a site selling airplanes has links from a PR10 selling Antarctica asparagus plus paid links, should not the search engines be able to determine that is not the best quality back-link compared to a PR10 that is about airplanes linking to the airplane site (regardless if links are paid or not)?

So in regards to links and quality content, is not the quality of content that should have higher SERPs? Regardless of back-links or to a lesser extent determined by back-links? All-in-all realizing that back-links "help" determine more relevant content.

Maybe Mr. Cutts has that in plans with his mentioned,
That will be enough for Google to start testing out some new techniques we’ve got — thanks!


I would suppose this leaves link brokers in a quandary among others.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Google Searches Increase

Well, Google got off its feet once again to dominate the United States search engine industry. March results are in with Google leading the other search engines with 64% according to Newsweek Information and HitWise. Yahoo! was positioned at 22% and MSN at 9% with Ask.com sliding in with 3%.

The search engine war is on. Make not doubt about it. The other smaller engines are still at the prevailing war and not giving up. Very interesting for statistics keepers. SEO Metro loves comptetition, it's good for business.

User Analytics

Recently a company announced it had a "new approach" to measuring users conversions, surfing habits, click-through rates, etc. It then proclaimed that its initial cost per lead was $500 per lead and had been reduced to $70 per lead after three months of interactive software. Seems like quite an expense that would be avoided with proper, organic SEO. Any company that can spend $500 to generate a lead should have a university classroom to tear apart the statistics, problems presented, leads, landing page stats, etc. to expertly work out the problems. My question is are these reports even valid. It seems it is just a marketing hype from companies that are either irresponsible, lazy or just ignorant of basic statistics, SEO and online marketing.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Indexability for SEO

The ability for search engines to not be able to index pages is an often unforeseen variable in SEO. Take for example SEO Metro's client Dallas Computer Repair. This website at one time had another template that was indexable by MSN search engines and Yahoo! search engines but was not able to be easily indexed by Google. Problem? Well, yeah with Google having 50% of the searches worldwide daily. The aforementioned website is now able to be crawled by all the major search engines which has made a huge difference in traffic.

The reason that Google was unable to crawl the content was most likely the amount of code that preceded the actual content. The new web template is much cleaner with dramatically less code preceding the content. It took some time, a few months, before the search engines would properly place the site. It was as if the site had launched for the first time minus the filtering time a new site is given.

Monday, April 9, 2007

SEO Slamming

Slamming SEO Professionals

One thing I just saw on the internet was about SEO professionals slamming other SEO pro's. One thing SEO Metro will never engage in personal slamming nor slamming professionals. Now, we may slam techniques and what is being said, however, we will not point to the source but will make vague comments; nothing that could be directly pointed at a particular event or article per se. The owner of SEO Metro has graduate, professional credentials and does need to engage in practices of slamming individuals, however, SEO techniques that are bad are up to endless slamming.

SEO Methods

I keep seeing gawd awful SEO claims, ads, techniques, worthless duplicate articles that should have stopped long ago. These SEO Pro's claim to be Professional, however, their techniques and methods stand alone as solid proof. Another claim particular SEO Pro's use is to proclaim they use "ethical" methods while either lying through their teeth OR ignorant of sound SEO techniques and methods while all the time spamming the search engine with their very own SEO website. Is there no shame? No. These people have never stated their supposed credentials on their websites if they even have any.

SEO Credentials

What is quite disturbing in this online wild frontier is that professionals are not posting any professional credentials. I see tons of supposed testimonials, tons of boasting about anonymous clients and making the millions of dollars in ROI thanks to the SEO work but no proof.

Need I say more.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Search Engine Submission

One topic that needs to be ended for our clients is "search engine submission". SEO Metro is not engaging any wasted time in search engine submission. Our marketing campaigns ensure our clients the search engines will find them quickly. We frequently get asked about search engine submission and our time is better utilized with a better ROI using sound and grounded marketing with quality backlinks.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Marketing

SEO Metro has been off on a massive marketing campaign, content building and research trying to get all the right keywords and relevant helpful content online. We are now indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN and some of the minor search engines which will help bring visitors and clients to our search engine optimization company.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

SEO Metro

SEO Metro is a new search engine optimization company bringing services to websites to increase visibility and bring their ranks to the top of the search engine result pages. Our services benefit websites by increases their sales and revenues. Our professional reports help our clients to determine the proper direction to take and what questions need to be addressed for better search engine placement.

SEO-Metro's pricing is affordable and competitive. We provide invaluable link building to help clients' visibility and we offer the latest search engine news to keep our clients current in search engine trends. Visit SEO-Metro and find out how your company can become visible in search engines today with organic search engine optimization.