SEO Mentor

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Take a listen to my SEO Weekly News Tuesday Podcast above. Here are a couple of the news items that I talked about:

Google Walks Away From Digg Deal

Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements. Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away …

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So I am back an am a new daddy but I will get to that in my next post tomorrow. While I was gone I was reading up on my favorite blogs and came across a great article by Bill Slawski of SEObytheSea.com. Bill always has very intense and intellectual SEO Articles and his How Search Engines Can Learn From Looking at Sequences of Search Queries article was no exception.

Bill writes,

“Whenever someone searches at a search engine, they not only get information in response to their search, but they also provide information to the search engine about the things they are searching for – information which the search engine might find useful in helping other searchers.

If that searcher performs another search related to their first search, then the search engine might create an association between the two search phrases that the searcher used, if the two phrases appear to be related. If they perform a series, or sequence, of searches on a concept, then the search engine might take advantage of that information.”

If you are not following Bill at SEObytheSea.com then you are crazy! So I am going to make it easy for you, go to http://www.seobythesea.com/?feed=rss2 now and subscribe to his RSS Feed.

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Here it is my third SEO Mentor Podcast and this one is packed full of the latest SEO News and Tips. Here are some of the things that I talk about:

SEO News:

• Google Stock Up 18% to $533
• Yahoo Earnings : Q1 Increases Beat Market Expectations of Revenues that reached $1.818 billion for the first quarter of 2008
• Google Enters Utility Business : Invests in Solar Power Plant Technology
• Google Rolls Out Mobile Image Ads
• Microsoft Acquires Farecast : Travel Search & Airline Fare Search Engine
• Google Applies Copyright-ID Technology to Fight Child Porn Online

I also talked about “The SEO Baby Contest” and my last Jason Gambert post and added some great SEO tips with the help from Richard Burckhardt from Searchenginejournal.com. Here are some of those tips I thought were crucial to your search engine optimization:

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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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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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