About Google’s SEO Report Card

,

Google recently published this article on the Official Google Webmaster Blog regarding the overall SEO of Google and the products and services they offer.  The PDF link within the article gives a very good overall view of how a site should be graded for SEO and what the most important things to look for include.  Here’s what they had to say:

How many of Google’s web pages use a descriptive title tag? Do we use description meta tags? Heading tags? While we always try to focus on the user, could our products use an SEO tune up? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer with Google’s SEO Report Card.

Google’s SEO Report Card is an effort to provide Google’s product teams with ideas on how they can improve their products’ pages using simple and accepted optimizations. These optimizations are intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users’ experience when visiting our sites. Simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links, simplifying URL choice, and providing easier-to-understand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines. From the start of the project we also wanted to release the report card publicly so other companies and webmasters could learn from the report, which is filled with dozens of examples taken straight from our products’ pages.

The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. Future iterations of the project might look at deeper Google product web pages as well as international ones. We released the report card within Google last month and since then a good number of teams have taken action on it or plan to.

We hope you find our SEO Report Card useful and we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below or in the Webmaster Central Help Forum. And if you’d like to do your own SEO tune up, a good place to start is by reading our free SEO Beginner’s Guide.

We hope this helps you on your journey through SEO and understanding what the pros look for when taking any SEO into consideration.

/by

PlayStation Users Advised to Not Use Their PS3

, , ,

A recent update from Sony PlayStation Blog stated that PlayStation users are advised to NOT use their PS3’s due to the wide-spread issue with the PlayStation Network. Here’s the direct post that they made:

As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today. This problem affects the models other than the new slim PS3.

We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.

Errors include:

  • The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
  • When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following
    message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been
    signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
  • When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears
    on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install
    trophies. Please exit your game.”
  • When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the
    Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date
    and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
  • Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the
    PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.

As mentioned above, please be advised that the new slim PS3 is not affected with this error. We are doing our best to resolve the issue and do apologize for any inconvenience caused.

As we thought, this is the PS3 Y2K bug indeed. Let’s hope this is resolved before FFXIII comes out.

/by
PlayStation Network Down

PlayStation Network Down from 8001050F Error Code Recap

, , ,

As we had reported last night, the Sony PlayStation Network was (and still is) down because of an unexplained technical issue.  The issue causes an error code of 8001050F to appear upon launching any PS3 Blu-Ray Game, setting the clock back to 12/31/1999 (sounds a lot like a Y2K bug), trophy sync problems and downloaded content (DLC) to show that there are invalid copyright permissions.  This has caused a lot of headache among hundreds of thousands of gamers globally and still no update from Sony on their blog or their Twitter feed.

So, what is this? A PS3 Y2K bug? Possibly.  The error code “8001050F” is referenced to mean “Hardware failure. Cannot update firmware or connect to internet.” However, upon launching most games, players are getting a message stating “Registration of the trophy information could not be completed. The game will quit. (8001050F)”. Why would this be? Shouldn’t the PS3 work offline too? That’s what we thought. All of our offline DLC, such as Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII (PS1/PSP Playable) does not work at all. We can’t play single player games that shouldn’t rely on the Internet or not such as Heavy Rain. All we have to say is we hope that this is fixed today, and for sure before the 9th of this month, when Final Fantasy XIII releases.

Usually by this point, Sony would/should have replied…but what’s to be expected from a free network?  Our advice: If you haven’t turned on your PS3 yet, don’t. It’s tragic enough to read about and even worse to see for yourself. Last night, the topic of “playstation network crash” hit the #5 hottest trend on Google and now currently sits at #40. Wait until Sony updates their Blog or Twitter with “we’ve fixed the error”. We will keep you posted as well, so stay tuned.

/by

Vodafone to Sell Apple iPhone in UK and Ireland

, ,

Vodafone and Apple today confirmed that they have reached agreement to bring iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to the UK and Ireland in early 2010. The move follows the announcement yesterday that Orange would be selling the phones in the UK before the end of this year.

Beginning today, Vodafone UK and Vodafone Ireland customers can register their interest in iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS at www.vodafone.co.uk/iphone and www.vodafone.ie/iphone respectively. Pricing, tariffs and availability information will be announced locally in the future.

Vodafone now offers iPhone through thirteen of its operating companies.

/by

Apple iPhone 3GS 32GB White Edition Review – MMS Launched Today on AT&T

, , , ,

It is based from fact that Apple’s iPhone 3GS has made a remarkable trademark for phone users worldwide with its amazing new features. Now, another innovation for the Apple iPhone is launched today with the use of MMS on the AT&T network.

The iPhone 3GS White Edition with a 32 GB of memory is what we use at TurkReno and in the field. One word sums it all up: “Amazing”. This innovation has outdone the first Apple iPhone 3G and 2G because of its improved features from calling contacts, playing music, camera, video and video editing, surfing the internet down to mapping different places. All these features are possible with the newly introduced Apple iPhone 3GS. Now, we have MMS to add to the features making the iPhone superior to the Blackberry paperweights worldwide! The camera in the 3GS edition is far better than the first iteration because of its automatic still-life capture feature and auto-focus. This allows the photo to balance the contrast and color of the moment an individual wants to capture with the help of Apple iPhone 3GS technology. Another good feature of this smartphone is its voice control. You can command the Apple iPhone 3GS by voice on who to call or what music to play. For example, one can tell it whom to call whether it is straight from the contact list or a new phone number, what play list or album to play, whether to repeat or toggle similar songs or artists. Recently, this was expanded for Bluetooth headset support with OS 3.1.

The 3GS series of Apple iPhone also has a built-in compass and GPS system. Mapping locations has never been this easy. With an app such as WiFiFoFum, you can even map out your WiFi Connections for research. It will provide almost perfect and accurate data of where one is heading to or where you are located. Another feature is the cut, copy and paste feature where one can literally cut, copy and paste message from Safari, e-mail, and text messages and send it to friends with little to no effort. If you make a mistake or something needs to be corrected, you can just shake Apple iPhone 3GS to undo your last action. Stay connected with the app IM+. This is an advantage for a person who would like to share an event with friends or would just like to post something interesting.

Another great feature is the Search feature. If one has a long list of messages in his or her inbox, this feature is useful. All one has to do is to type the word that he or she wants to search, then a list of messages will appear containing the keyword that the person is currently searching. Screening out all the messages will make the search easier and faster. One can do the same thing with contacts, iPod or notes. Another way to search on Apple iPhone 3GS is to use the spotlight search, typing the letters alone, a list of similar post or saved items will appear making the search a lot easier, faster and more convenient.

Regarding MMS, the Apple iPhone 3GS has included this feature. Now, one can receive a text message with videos, pictures or contact information in it, all at the same time. If one wants to view the MMS message, all he or she needs to do is to tap on the video or picture sent to him or her to see in full screen, and he or she can even save it straight to his or her photo library. Apple iPhone 3GS also includes Voice Memos application which lets the user record a meeting, class or any important conversation which can be shared through email, MMS or synchronize it with a Mac or Personal Computer. To get MMS working on your phone, you must have an authentic iPhone (not jailbroken) and update to 3.1 in iTunes. Then follow these steps:

  • Sync your iPhone with your computer’s installation of iTunes
  • iTunes will prompt you for a carrier update. Say YES!
  • Allow the update to finish
  • Powercycle, or restart, your phone.
  • Once you restart your phone, when you begin to message someone, there will be a small camera icon to the left of the text input field. Touch that and you can take a picture immediately or send a photo from your camera roll

A special thank you goes to AT&T for releasing this on time as promised! If you don’t have an iPhone, go to AT&T or your local Walmart and pick one up today! They WILL change your life!

/by

Current Website Design, Web Hosting, and Search Optimization Offerings

, , , , , ,

Current Web Design, Web Hosting, and Search Optimization Offerings

Over the past few months, we at TurkReno have had a wonderful time supporting our clients and meeting new clients providing professional services such as Website Design, Website and E-mail Hosting, and Search Optimization from both the aspects of Social Networks and Natural Organic Searches. From a recent statement by Taylor S. Ripley, Owner of TurkReno, he gave the following information:

“To our existing clients: Thank you several times over. Without people and businesses like you, we would not exist and we owe it all to you.” He later moved to say that (the clients) should “Continue to rest at ease as you have from the beginning of your service” and that “Your continued support and requests have been or are being completed with one-hundred percent of our ability. As always, we look forward to how we can use the latest trusted and stable technology to serve your needs.”

“To our new and potential clients: If you’re not with us, we offer our website for you to review in consideration of becoming one of our clients. We have expanded our portfolio three times over since we began November of 2008 and continue to have room for any and all additional clientele. Our deployment strategy for the Mobile Bay area was solid and we have continued to be prosperous since our initial launch. We offer Web Design services which consist of basic HTML or CSS designs, to completely dynamic Content Management Systems that are scalable enough to operate as social networks or ecommerce platforms. Our servers are connected to seven ISP Backbones: AT&T, Cogent, Global Crossing, Level3, Savvis, Abovenet, Comcast, and Verio. Wherever you are, we are too.”

In regards to Search Optimization, Mr. Ripley commented that: “We can easily show you how to aggressively take over any natural and organic search result terms with very little money or investment. Our methods are tried, tested, and proven ‘white-hat’ techniques that work one-hundred percent of the time since they are based off of International Website Design Standards. We are also prepared to help you embark or further your journey on services such as Twitter, Digg, Mixx, Facebook, and MySpace as well as help you get listed in key local directories.”

Mr. Ripley later went on to say: “The TurkReno Content Network, comprised of every client hosted by TurkReno, has a wide variety of media including Advertising Agencies, Fine Clothiers, Detective Agencies, Corporate, Legal Counsel, Adventure and Sports, City-Wide Directories, Unique Handcrafted Goods Sales, and other Basic Informational websites.”

“We want your business and want to offer you the chance to let us serve you with one free month of hosting. This is a limited time offer and a hosting contract is required to continue to use our hosting after the first 30 days. All sites are subject to content approval and our Terms of Service. All that you need to do to take advantage of this offer is contact us via our website and mention code ‘HOST-RENO’ and we will take care of your needs from there.”

At TurkReno, we don’t just make impressive websites, we create solutions that work. Contact us today via our website, https://turkreno.com, via telephone at (251) 279-0278, or via our contact form at https://turkreno.com/contact-turkreno.html. TurkReno, Incorporated, is based in Daphne, Alabama and services the surrounding Baldwin County cities: Fairhope, Spanish Fort, Foley, Elberta, Orange Beach, Silverhill, Robertsdale, Gulf Shores, Point Clear, Bay Minette, and parts of Rural Baldwin County. Our website hosting and website design service is available internationally.

###

Also listed at:

PRLog

/by
Google Voice

TurkReno Contact Information Changes; Partnership with Google Voice

,

As we as a company continue to move into a virtual world, we have improved our telephone capabilities by integrating our systems with Google Voice. We now have one main number that we would prefer that all contact is made through: 1 (251) 279-0278 — Local to Fairhope, Alabama. This service not only allows us to be called on all phones simultaneously, but also the ability to receive voicemail from anywhere which is then automatically transcribed into a text message to our phones. There are other features that we are going to be using with this system.

From Google explaining the Google Voice System: “Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more.” We would encourage all of our clients that are interested in this type of technology to go to Google Voice and sign up to be a part of the initial group before this becomes a major public service.

More info from Google: http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

We appreciate your business and will continue to keep in contact with each of you.

Best Regards,

Taylor S. Ripley
TurkReno Inc.
P: (251) 279-0278
W: https://turkreno.com

Privacy Notice: This information is not to be collected for advertising purposes.

/by
Local SEO

Professional SEO Consultant Services, TurkReno, Daphne, Alabama

, ,

Search engine optimization (SEO) has changed a LOT over the past 10 years, so much so that for some types of websites it is practically impossible to gain enough organic search engine traffic (through SEO means) to warrant spending significant money on organic SEO services (low ROI).

Before contacting TurkReno for a free SEO quote for our Professional SEO Consultant Services please read through the following site descriptions to determine if your business web site is likely to benefit from our long term professional SEO services.

Is the Professional SEO Consultant Services Plan for you?

1. I own a new domain or an old domain with hardly any backlinks (very low PR) and want fast Google rankings.

Any ethical SEO consultant will tell you since 2005 it takes far longer to gain rankings in Google with a new domain than it did in 2004: see the Google Sandbox Effect for details.

If you expect fast results for a new domain NO organic search engine optimization service can help you: you could sink tens of thousands of dollars into an extensive links campaign, but Google’s algorithm changed in late 2004 made it impossible to rank highly for competitive SERPs fast: fast being a few months from going live.

Because of the Google Sandbox effect it takes over 9 months for a new domain to rank well for competitive SERPs in Google. This doesn’t mean a new site can’t gain any SERPs/traffic at all, but it’s hard to gain reasonable traffic SERPs in those early months and so paying for professional SEO services at this point might not be a good use of your marketing funds.

Many online business owners expect unrealistic results with new domains, even with perfectly search engine optimized content and a great links campaign it’s going to take at least a year before you’ll see a return on your SEO investment (this is not the case for sites with aged links, see later).

Based on the previous 3 years experience (2005-2008) only a small percentage of SEO clients are prepared to wait this time while paying for professional SEO services: Average SEO client with a new domain will come on board and within a few months of poor search engine results become frustrated, consider the SEO service a failure and drop our SEO consultant.

This isn’t good for us or the client, it wastes the clients and ours time/money (we only make money from long term clients, not short term). For this reason it’s rare for SEO Gold to take on clients with new domains: understandably a year is too long to wait for most business owners when they have to pay SEO fees.

As a potential SEO client of ours with a new domain if you can’t wait a year for good search engine results we are not for you: please don’t think you can find another quality SEO service that can rank new domains fast, it’s not possible (we’ve tried on over 200 domains) and any SEO firm that tells you otherwise is at worst unethical or at best poorly educated in current search engine optimization techniques and trends!

If your site falls within the description above please continue to read our Free SEO Blog and spend six months optimizing your content and gaining new links (aim for a PageRank of at least 4 for your home page). If you need help at that point come back to us for a free SEO quote.

2. I have a domain PR4+ with aged backlinks (a year plus old backlinks), but only have a small number of pages on the site and have NO plans to add new content.

Good news is you are in a much better position than if you were starting with a new domain. Google relies heavily on backlinks, in particular aged backlinks: the age of links is so important which is why it’s impossible to rank fast for competitive SERPs in Google with a new domain (no aged backlinks).

If you have a domain with aged backlinks your business site has far more potential for Google search engine rankings than a website with no/few aged links.

However, with only a small number of content pages you aren’t giving the search engines anything to work with. This means all your organic search engine traffic has to come in through a small number of pages and this means your going to need high traffic SERPs (which are always hard/competitive).

Although it is possible to gain competitive SERPs long term, there’s no guarantee your site will be in the top 5 for this type of SERP in a reasonable time frame. Although top 10 SERPs will generate traffic, top 5 is where the real traffic is. There can be millions of competing pages for a single competitive search phrase, only 10 of them are going to be listed top 10 and there’s no guarantee even when doing everything right that your page will be one of them. Basically a small number of pages SEO strategies are high risk.

To give an extreme hypothetical example of why many small sites are not SEO friendly: lets say you own a mortgage website consisting of 5 pages with only two (one being the home page) targeting actual mortgage SERPs (other 3 pages are contact/privacy type pages).

Together we could do everything right SEO copywriting/backlinks wise and get your site to the top 10 for SOME mortgage SERPs, but with only two content pages to work with there’s only so much we can do.

The top traffic mortgage SERPs are these:

mortgage calculator
mortgage rates
mortgage rates predictions
mortgage payment calculator
reverse mortgage
(lots of calculator SERPs)

This is a particularly difficult niche (most financial niches are competitive) and to do well it’s going to take highly optimized content and a lot of backlinks using mortgage phrases as the anchor text.

Depending on the starting point of the site will determine how much optimization and text links are needed and unless you already have a lot of decent PR backlinks already (that have aged) our basic 50 text links supplied with the SEO service isn’t going to be nearly enough (more text links will be needed and this can be costly).

Let’s assume to make a good return on your SEO investment a site like this is going to need to be top 10 for a half a dozen of the top traffic SERPs (so most of the mortgage SERPs list above).

This is where it gets almost impossible for a small site, (it’s difficult for a large site) there’s only so many phrases one page can target before the SEO copywriting is watered down so much the page doesn’t do particularly well for any of the targeted mortgage SERPs.

In a perfect SEO world you would target one phrase per page with the hard SERP being targeted on the home page. From an SEO copywriting perspective it’s not hard to optimize for one phrase, but to optimize for even half a dozen phrases on one page is almost impossible without impacting a pages main SERP (there should always be one main phrase).

In our hypothetical mortgage site example (just two pages to work with) we clearly need a mortgage calculator page for maximum search engine traffic, but what if the clients site lacks this type of content, to tackle a SERP ethically the targeted phrases should be found within the content: if we are optimizing for mortgage calculator SERPs there should be a mortgage calculator on the site or some information about them.

But our hypothetical site lacks a mortgage calculator and doesn’t keep track of mortgage rates since the client doesn’t plan to add new content, so there’s nothing to use to gain most of these SERPs, or at least not ethically and within Google’s webmaster guidelines: never a good idea to use blackhat techniques.

What this means is we are limited in what SERPs we can aim for, we’d be left with SERPs like Mortgage, Home Mortgage, Mortgage Company, etc. which are good SERPs, but they are hard and even if you owned one of the major banking sites your not guaranteed a top 10 for SERPs this hard!

As it happens for the mortgage calculator SERP there’s only one major bank in the top 20 (RBC Royal Bank).

With a site like this (very small) it either does really well (usually because it’s really old and a has a LOT of old backlinks) or terrible and for this reason we avoid working with web site owners who have small sites with no plans to expand. We only work with sites that we are reasonably confident we’ll help gain more organic search engine traffic for.

As you can imagine a business owner like the hypothetical one above is very frustrating and unrewarding for our SEO consultants to work with and since our SEO services are in high demand we never take on clients like this.

A Little Free SEO Advice

If you have a aged site with little content on it you could increase your traffic many times over just by adding new content to cover more relevant SERPs.

If your site falls within the site description above please read our Free SEO Tutorial and if you ever reconsider your position on the size of your site feel free to contact us for a free SEO quote.

What Sort of Website is Ideal for SEO Services?

Now that we’ve scared off most of our potential SEO business clients we finally come to what the perfect SEO client looks like.

You have a aged domain with a lot of content, preferably sales based content (like product pages) with unique content on most pages.

This is the perfect site for us to work with because there’s the potential from the aged backlinks and there’s plenty of content for the search engines to work with, we can go for thousands of long tail SERPs.

With content optimization and steady link building a site like this can see significant organic traffic growth. How much/fast depends a lot on the site/niche and how old and how many aged backlinks the site has. We’ve seen ~1,000 page ecommerce sites with a PR4 home page go from under 500 visitors a day to over 4,000 visitors a day within a few months of working with us mostly due to simple code changes and better SEO copywriting: we taught the owners how to write for search engines and visitors and their websites cleaned up on long tail SERPs.

If you have a under performing site like this or plan to create one we’d love to work with you to gain maximum organic search engine traffic. Working with business owners with large websites is very rewarding for us.

What is the Professional SEO Consultant Services Plan

For a fixed monthly fee you retain the long term services of an experienced SEO consultant. Your consultant will guide you through the mine field of SEO myths and misinformation you’ll find online today and be available to answer any questions about your web sites search engine optimization needs by email.

There are no limits (within reason) to the number of SEO questions you can ask your SEO expert about your web site.

From simple yes or no questions to fully detail multiple page responses (most emails answered within 48hrs) your SEO consultant will be there to help guide your webmaster through the optimization process of your website over time.

No need to wade through hundreds of websites that are trying to sell worthless search engine submission software (complete waste of time) or how to generate obsolete meta tags (most not important to Google any more) and don’t forget the countless hours spent reading contradictory information on the SEO forums some of which can harm your site!

We tend to have an informal/friendly relationship with our clients and can either deal with the client direct or their webmaster (usually the best option).

Your SEO consultant will look through your website and provide lists of items to improve, you arrange to have these items changed on your timescale and over time your entire website can be search engine optimized.

The best way to use our service is to designate one person to work with us through email. Ideally this person will understand your websites code (so they have no problem optimizing your code) and have access to its content (so they can rewrite some of it).

Through one to one email we can teach a member of your staff how to optimize your websites code, how to write for search engines (SEO copywriting skills) without damaging your visitor experience and how to gain new backlinks.

If you follow all the advice the end result will be a fully search engine optimized website and the ability to gain organic backlinks.

We also supply 50 text links as part of the service for as long as you use our Professional SEO Consultant Services. We try to match these to your content, but it’s more about adding some new links to get you started (will be some PR4+ links) than adding 50 themed text links.

If your HTML skills aren’t very good your SEO consultant will try to guide you through the HTML changes to be made to your sites code.

We’ll try to give code snippets, detailed explanations to help get the work done and if you lack the skills required to modify your site we can do it for you at a relatively low fee: we charge SEO clients on this plan just $85 per hour for code work.

If you are looking to learn about SEO, this is a perfect opportunity to do so whilst putting your website on the search engines map.

Our SEO consultants are here to explain why a change is necessary and what its SEO benefits are, why you shouldn’t be using blackhat search engine optimization techniques that can land you with the Google death penalty!

You’ll note how much information we’ve supplied on this page and our free SEO Tutorial pages, if you need a detailed explanation of something you don’t understand we’ll supply one.

Our SEO Consultants – Who Will You Be Working With

Our expert consultants are native English speakers and have many years of experience building and running websites including ecommerce sites, between us we own well over 300 websites totaling millions of pages (indexed in Google etc.).

Our main SEO consultants’ websites for example receives over 20,000 search engine visitors a day (August 2008).

For example, panda.com.sa that’s owned by one of our clients, has 10s of thousands of pages indexed in Google and as of August 2008 receives over 10,000s visitors a day (these are real visitors a day, NOT HITS).

This means not only do our expert SEO consultants understand the latest SEO techniques, they use them to rank their own websites in Google, so if something stops working they will ‘feel’ it in their organic traffic (none of us pay for traffic) and will have to learn what went wrong and how to get a site ranked today.

We also appreciate the intricacies of running a successful online business website (we’ve all ran ecommerce sites at one time). Our main SEO consultant for example ran a successful online store (~1,500 products) that received up to 8,000 unique visitors a day in the very competitive lingerie niche.

It’s not about a few good SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but masses of highly targeted search engine traffic (the SEO long tail) that converts to sales without ruining your visitors experience (you want repeat customers after all).

Payment Details

Pay by credit or debit card (online), cashier’s check, or PayPal.

Since we need to view your web site prior to agreeing to an SEO consultation, detailed payment advice will be supplied with your no obligation SEO quote.

Our starter fee for the SEO Consultant Retainer Plan is $400 a month with no setup fees and no minimum contract: you should budget for at least 6 months and ideally 12 months.

For an extra monthly fee we can also supply text links at low cost if you’re having problems gaining them yourself.

Free SEO Quote for Professional SEO Services

To obtain your free SEO quote contact us at sales@turkreno.com detailing as much about your website and your needs as possible. Please be as descriptive as possible, more information you supply easier it is for us to understand your website/business and research your niche.

We are very busy and existing SEO and Web Design clients always come first.
Please allow at least 5 working days for a response.

Note: if you only supply a link to your website and no other information we will not supply a free SEO quote. A business serious about its search engine optimization needs will supply a lot of information at this early stage to help us help them: we sometimes supply free SEO tips along with the quote.

Taylor S. Ripley, Owner – TurkReno Inc.

/by

Sneaky SEO – Using Google Images to Your Advantage

, , , , ,

Few people use sitemaps effectively, and fewer actually use their images effectively. Even though most will think of SEO as just text content, it actually includes all content on your pages such as images and code functions.

What I’d like to point out is a simple process of making sure that you can maximize your SEO using the images that are on your pages.

1. Make sure ALL images have a descriptive ALT tag.

By doing this, you’re not only helping the plain-text SEO, but you’re also helping Google and other services index your site correctly if you follow that simple step.  Not sure if you are using the ALT Tags correctly?  Check your site at DomainTools.  You will see something that looks a lot like this:

Images: 1 (Alt tags missing: 0)

Ready to take this to the next level?  Good.

2. After you’ve verified your site, created a sitemap, submitted it to the major search engines, you can then select an option in Google Webmaster Tools called “Enhanced Image Search”.  The really great thing about this service is that you can begin to index your site in a whole new way.  So how do I do this again? Glad you asked.  Here’s the instructions per Google:

What does it mean to opt-in to enhanced image search?

If you choose to opt in to enhanced image search, Google may use tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images.

To opt in to enhanced image search:

  1. Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
  2. Click the URL for the site you want.
  3. Click Tools, and then click Enable enhanced image search.

Once you have opted in to enhanced image search, you can opt out at any time by returning to this page and clearing the checkbox.

If you’re really bored, Google Image Labeler is actually a pretty fun way to pass the time.  You and a random partner pair up and start guessing what a picture should be called.  Now the idea, for Google, is not to take just your matching suggestion, but also to try and associate all of the terms that were suggested during that and that’s how they improve their “algorithm”.

3.  Use image names the same way that blogs create permalinks.  For example.  This blog will have a permalink like “sneaky-seo-using-google-images-to-your-advantage” in the URL.  So, go start describing your images and make sure that they are the same within the code.

These things do matter and show up in different types of search engine algorithms.  Use this tip to your advantage.

/by

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization According to Idiots

, ,

So I’m sitting here, reading through some of the larger social sites like Digg and Mixx, and I’m seeing a surprising amount of blogs and sites popping up today talking about things like “The secret of getting to the top of Google”.  I just want to point out that most of what I’ve read is bullshit.  Plain and simple.  So, what I wanted to do was basically go through these sites, make a list, and give my two cents to the matter at hand in a “Truth or Bullshit” manner and explain why.

1. Ways of getting traffic other than Search engines

Half Bullshit, Half Truth – This article basically goes through, explains some basic techniques of stealing other people’s steam, and then goes on to try and explain what directories are.  For the most part, these methods work, but they are not going to put you at the top of Google.  Instead of going and adding your listing into a directory, go make your own directory.  There is plenty of software out there to do this with little or no licensing fees associated with it.  If you do it right, you can actually create an income by selling placement in these directories.

2. How to Hire a Good SEO Expert

This is extremely important to note (and truthful):

“You don’t find offers of guaranteed placement from most of the reputable firms,” says Brad Fallon. “Almost to affirm it, they’ll say, ‘We can’t guarantee results – and anyone that would is a charlatan.'”

NO ONE CAN GUARANTEE YOU AT THE TOP OF GOOGLE!  But, a friend of a friend told me….  No, you’re not listening now.  You’ve bought into the whole “AdSense will make me 100 Dollars” mentality.  Again, NO ONE CAN GUARANTEE YOU AT THE TOP OF GOOGLE!  There are plenty of techniques that even I employ and show on this blog that used in conjunction with each other on a full moon MIGHT get you to the very top of Google, but that doesn’t mean you have any permanent fixture there.

Think about it.  If you go in, decide nonchalantly “I want to be at the top of Google” like a moron, and start padding the wallet of an SEO company, then you’ve done nothing but waste your money – bottom line.  The BEST thing that you can do for yourself is go write and rewrite your content.  Say it 10,000 different ways on 100 different pages, watch your tracker/stats, and make sure your Robots.txt isn’t blocking anything and you’ve just done 75% of what an SEO company will do.

I can remember thinking to myself, “Why not just hire an SEO company (to do my job for me)”, and I realized after I spoke to them just how much of an idiot I’d really have to be to buy this service just because I was trying to impress my boss.  SEO companies do NOT have any further control over Google than YOU do.  So, what, you’re paying them to make YOU feel better?  Fluff, you pay them for fluff.

3. Damn sure SEO tactics- SEO tips

Absolute Bullshit.  Ok, well, maybe it is true that you need the right keywords, but how the hell are you going to know that they’re working?  Easy and I’ll tell you because this guy obviously doesn’t.  Go use DomainTools and search your site or go use Google Webmaster Tools.  There will be an SEO browser, also better known as a plain text browser, there to show you. 

I digress.  You don’t convert keywords.  Words can have several meanings, but rarely do those words mean anything to anyone else unless millions of dollars worth of advertising and branding has happened to them…like the words Camel, Frosty, or Gateway.

He instructs you to use your company logo….well, I may use my company logo time and time again, but in the end I know that no one gives a damn about my logo, how much time I spent making my logo, or what it means.  No one cares about your “free wallpaper” either.  If they came there to get something for free, after you’ve fulfilled the obligation of “free stuff”, nothing is going to keep them there – including a search engine. 

Translation is a funny thing too.  Babelfish has been out for years and it’s still wrong.  What would make the difference to say that Google has any better technology yet?  Well, I can tell you from being quoted in Portugese that Google isn’t right all the time.  Just because you translate it to another language doesn’t mean that you’re even anywhere near the Google search engine for that language.  Go search your site on something like http://yandex.ru/ and see where you stand.  Much different, isn’t it?  What makes you think that SEO from just translating the site to another language makes any difference?  Again, the majority might just ignorantly brush this off because they think Russians are poor or because they have this inate fear of doing business overseas.  But, it matters, so think outside the box.

/by