SEO Mentor

clipped from www.seobythesea.com Do Domain Ages Affect Search Rankings? Posted by: William Slawski on April 11th, 2008 The order that pages appear in the results of a search at a search engine may be influenced by the number of pages that link to that page, and by rankings of the pages that link to that page. When a site is linked to by a popular and trusted domain, that link might provide more value (and a higher ranking) than a link from a site that is less popular and trusted. Ages of Linking Domains A new patent application from Microsoft adds another twist, by also ranking domains based upon the ages of domains which link to those domains. Why? The cost of purchasing a domain has decreased significantly in recent years, and some domain registrars have offered free domain registrations for up to thirty to sixty day trial periods. This is a preview of Do Domain Ages Affect Search Rankings?. Read the full post (875 words)

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I recently had a question from Mike Florence about Universal Search and what it is. Blended Search or Universal Search, whichever you call it; both are changing the online world. Google was the main pioneer of Universal Search and of course all the Major Search Engines (of course I mean Yahoo & MSN) soon followed.

Here are a couple things changed in the search engines when Universal Search came to fruition:

Digital Content syndicated in search results such as -

• Video Content
• Images
• Press Releases
• Articles
• News
• Local Listings
• Books
• etc.

Let me show you a quick image example of what I am trying to explain in words:

As you can see from the screen shot above, images and video are part of the organic search results. I don’t see any better explanation of blended search than the above image.

So how is Universal Search effecting the SEO and Search Engine Marketing industry? Well think of it this way, at one point you were competing with 10 other results to be on the first page of Google. Now with universal search, if there is a news and video result within the search query your website now only has a 80% chance to be listed on the first page of the search engine.

So you might be asking, “What does this mean for me and my business?” Well no need to worry. IF!!! You are taking advantage of video, press releases, image optimization, news, etc. Sites such as the well know YouTube.com, PRWeb.com, and Flickr.com just to name a few will help you take advantage of Universal Search.

Now you also need to know about the latest Social Media, also called Social Marketing, Social Networking. Search engines are picking up content from Social Networking sites such as Hubpages.com, Zimbio.com, and Gather.com, and these are just a few examples. Stay tuned for more about Social Marketing in future posts and podcasts.

Hope this answers your question Mike!

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clipped from searchengineland.com One Day You’re Optimized, The Next Day You’re A Spammer by Aaron Wall It is no secret that human review has been playing a bigger role at Google over the past couple years. And we are emotional beings… no matter how logical the guidelines may be, emotions cause human errors. But not all sites that get penalized are penalized in error. Many deserve it. Sadly, Google’s guidelines for its “remote quality raters,” people who are paid by Google to help with quality control, are clearer than the public guidelines for webmasters. Why? Google is using these remote quality raters as an effective and efficient piece of the relevancy algorithm. I have read and re-read leaked Google guidelines for remote quality raters from 2003, 2005, and 2007. The general intent was similar in all 3 document sets, but the specifics changed as the web changed. One of the most revealing quotes from the 2007 document was about music lyrics sites:

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So I was on vacation this last week and got to watch my Cubs in spring training in Mesa, Arizona. While there I was thinking about what I could write about to help those that may stumble upon my fairly simple blog. With my experience in mentoring individuals, the question about getting websites indexed in the major search engines is always one of the first questions. So I would like to give a quick outline of what I think you can plan on when it comes to getting indexed in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

First off there is no real amount of time that I can tell you that your site will be indexed cause I have seen my own sites take as long as 3 months and have had sites get indexed as fast as a week. But overall I have found that my sites get indexed in MSN first within on average about 8 weeks and then Yahoo follows on average of 10 weeks and Google usually shortly follows of an average of 12-15 weeks. Now keep in mind this is just from my research and also that I am talking about brand new websites.

Here is the manual way to see if your site has been indexed go to the search engine (I know this works for Google, Yahoo, and MSN) and in the search box input site:(your url) for example site:http://www.yourseomentor.com/. Then click search and if you see at least your home page in the results then BADABOOM your site has been indexed in the search engine, meaning that the spiders/robots have found your site.

Here are secret SEO tips (ok it so they are not so secret anymore) but none-the-less a great tip to getting indexed faster:

• Start your Link Building and get links from related authority websites with high pagerank
• Also link to other sites (External Links) it is rumored that some search engines don’t index sites that don’t have external links
• Content!!! Make sure that your site has content related to your site Title and Meta Tags (Note: Stay away from Frames, Flash, and all image site design)
• Do not Spam (e.g. Keyword Stuffing)

The most important thing you should remember from this article is PATIENCE, continue your SEO campaign and don’t give up.

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So I am finally getting done with the design of my blog here at YourSEOMentor.com and am almost happy with the layout and design. I am so sorry I know that design doesn’t matter and content does but I guess I am a perfectionist when it comes to all this stuff. Any ways I just wanted to write and let everyone that ever reads this blog know what I will be writing about and why you should continue reading it.

First of all if you are beginner, guru, professional, or whatever you are you should become a reader of YourSEOMentor.com. Here is why:

Why Not!!!

No, I do not consider my self a guru or professional I simply consider myself a Teacher and Mentor of SEO and Social Marketing. I have had much success in the last 4 years and would like to share that success with everyone that is willing to accept my point of view (Which won’t always be right). I say this because I can tell you right now that I will be getting people commenting on my posts that will disagree with me which is fine. I know the SEO industry all to well and I know there will be people that consider themselves know it alls and will try and tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about. But it all comes down to this I DON’T CARE what they think. I know what works and what doesn’t work cause I do this for a living all day every day. Does this mean I know everything, of course not and I would never dream of telling you all that I do know everything.

So there it is somewhat of a disclaimer for all those that read this blog. Will I give you some great content? Yes! Will I help you with your SEO and Social Marketing online journey? Yes! Will I make mistakes? Yes! But you can know this I am here to help and mentor those that want to Learn SEO and Social Marketing. I will give you access to great tools, techniques, to help you get better rankings in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. I will be writing about what others in the industry is saying, and any news that I think is worth talking about.

Here is a list of my Categories that I will be talking about (this is the list as of February 6, 2008):

• SEO
• SEO Tools
• Google
• Yahoo
• MSN
• Link Building
• Keyword Research
• SEM
• Social Marketing
• Social Bookmarking
• Web 2.0
• Web Design & Usability

So there it is all laid out for you to decide, “Is this blog really worth following?” Well I hope it is and I will do my best to give you the content you want. So simply click on the Get SEO Advice under that cartoon image of me and ask me anything and everything and I will try and help answer all you SEO and Social Marketing questions to the best of my ability.

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