Past High Rankings Advisor Newsletter Articles: 2008

How Poor Usability Can Kill Your Copy and Conversions - It's funny how we, as website owners, don't always think like our visitors. A course of action that might seem perfectly obvious to us may stop our visitors right in the middle of their buying process. Take, for instance, e-commerce–type copy. Do you realize that what happens after your customers read your copy could make or break your sale? I'm not talking about shopping cart abandonment. I'm talking about good communication that keeps the buying cycle moving forward. Let me give you a real-world example.

Stuff You Might Like: Jill's Latest SEO Columns - In case you missed them, my September columns for both Search Engine Land and TalentZoo are definitely worth a read (if I do say so myself!).

Affect of a Domain Name on Search Results - Advanced Forum Thread - Forum member "wassim" asks if a domain name affects the search results, and if so, how much effect does it have?

HRA Wrap-up 241 - We've had a good response so far for our SEO Lunch & Learn on Nov. 7. There are still a few seats left, if you're interested in joining us. There's no charge and no catch!

SEO Is Not a Last-Ditch Effort - Sales are down for many businesses due to the slow economy. Business owners and CEOs are looking for that one thing that can pull them through the hard times and keep them afloat. When times get tough, many turn to SEO, hoping that it will be the ticket to increased sales. While SEO is almost always a good idea, if you're counting on it to save a failing business, you may want to rethink things.

There IS Such Thing as a Free (SEO) Lunch! - Once again, there IS such a thing as a free lunch and it's happening on November 7, 2008 at the High Rankings office in Framingham, MA.

Newbie Web Designer Needs Direction - Forum member "wonder371" is wondering which software products and programming languages would be the best for him as he embarks on his new career as a website designer.

Advisor Wrap-up: Good Times With Others - So let's see, what has happened since the last newsletter? The September SEO Training Class went very well as usual, so now it's time to gear up for October's.

Measuring Success Beyond the Search Engines - I admit it. I'm a Google Analytics junkie. I try to stay away, but every now and then I hear it calling my name and I break down and log in. I feel the familiar rush of excitement running through my veins almost instantly. And I know anything else I may have planned to do that day won't get done because I'll be in my own world for hours. My analytics world. Just me and my stats. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…

Free Pass to SMX East - The folks at Search Marketing Expo have graciously provided us with a free pass to SMX East to give away to one lucky Advisor subscriber. The conference is being held in NYC October 6–8.

Example of Nofollow in Action, Unsustainable? - Last week Twitter decided to remove the ability to gain any link popularity via people's Twitter profile page. This set off a firestorm from some SEOs who always look for as much link popularity as they can gather. What really made them mad was that they felt that Google (via Matt Cutts) had "bullied" Twitter into the decision.

HRA Wrap-up 239 - Got to continue preparing for this week's SEO Training Class so will end this now.

Can Google Follow Non-www Links? - For purposes of discussion, let's say my main URL is www.example.com. I have a plethora of links in my site for indexing purposes between pages. The page links all go to their respective pages properly, but are linked to example.com (without the www part).

Blog on Different IP - I'm wondering if there is more link value provided by a new blog if it is hosted on an IP with a different C block than the IP address of the web site itself. The owner of the business would be writing the blog and sharing business expertise with the idea of building the brand of the business.

Getting Search Engines to Re-crawl - I recently set up a new site, which isn't something I often do, and forgot to set up the meta title and description. Now what is called up on Google for my site is HOME and a sentence from mid-page. Now that I have fixed the Web problem, how do I get the search engines to do another crawl of the site?

Top Search Engine Ranking Software - I'm about to renew our contract with our search engine ranking optimization software, but thought I'd check out other options before committing. What do you folks use?

Stuff You Might Like: Recent Interviews With Jill Whalen, CEO High Rankings - I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by a number of online marketing folks and thought you might enjoy learning more about me and my thoughts on a plethora of search marketing issues.

Advanced SEO Forum Thread: Will Google Suggest Changes in the Way You Optimize? - Google has announced that they are rolling out "Google Suggest" this week, which will provide searchers with a list of query suggestions when they start typing into the search box.

Advanced Forum Thread of the Week: Important Hub Pages in Supplemental / Not Ranking - Forum member "don h" discusses a website problem that's been plaguing him for ages.

High Rankings Advisor 238 Wrap-up - Lots has happened since the last newsletter.

Is Twitter for the Birds? - Today's guest article comes to us from my friend and long-time HRA subscriber Jim Spencer, founder of JBS Partners  – a website design and marketing firm in Winchester, MA, that serves small business and solo entrepreneurs. I met Jim in person at a SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England) event.  

Save $10 on Writing With Keywords - So, I'm a total toad! In the last newsletter, I mistakenly sent Karon's special discount offer on the latest version of her "Writing With Keywords" book only to the "text-only" newsletter subscribers and not to the HTML ones...duh. Since the HTML readers make up more than 2/3 of the readers, Karon has agreed to extend the offer through this week.

Reverse DNS to Find All Your Sites - Forum member "doogie88" was looking for a website where he could do a reverse DNS lookup. 

HRA Wrap-up 237 - Been busy around here still. We have our August SEO training class on Friday and are looking forward to that. Each group of 6 online marketers always brings a new perspective on things.

Understanding Your Conversion Rates - The question is a rather odd one: "What's your conversion rate?" The correct response would be another question: "Which conversion rate?" What most people are really asking is how many sales have you made? But the sales process – in almost all cases – takes more than one step.

Offer Expiring 7/31 on B2B Lead Gen Book - This is your last chance to save a few hundred bucks on MarketingSherpa's B2B Lead Gen BigBook...erm Handbook ;).

Using the NoScript Tag - Forum member "Webstream" wonders if it's okay to use the "noscript" tag as a place for links and text on a site that is all Flash and images.

HRA Wrap-up 236 - Holy smokes...I just realized July is nearly over. Besides the fact that time is slipping by way faster than usual, the 31st of July also means that the High Rankings Forum is now 5 years old!

Are Websites Ranked as a Whole? - I recently signed up as an advertiser with [a blog review website] so I could purchase blog review postings for one of my clients. After enrolling, I purchased a PR5 blog review posting at the standard PR5 price of $40. Eventually my offer was picked up by a blogger, but the review posting only stayed on their PR5 home page for one day as the next day it was shifted from the front page of the blog to an archived page that had a PR0.

Entry-level SEO Job Opening at High Rankings - High Rankings is hiring! We're looking for an entry-level SEO / Search Marketing Associate to join our team. This is a full-time in-house position in our Framingham, MA office.

Rewriting URLs to be Search Friendly - Forum member "danielwachy" was looking for some technical help on how to rewrite his URLs to be more search friendly. But did he really need to?

HRA Wrap-up 235 - We had an enjoyable 4th of July weekend on our cruise to St. John's, Canada. The cruise itself was okay, but when you're not big eaters or gamblers, there's not a whole heck of a lot to do! The good part was having the time to just hang out with the family.

SEO Plagiarism - Over the past few weeks, I've had a few run-ins with plagiarism in various forms and thought I'd take the opportunity to have a little rant about it. My hope is that by discussing it, people will become more educated about the issue and perhaps it will become a little less rampant online.

2008-09 B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook - MarketingSherpa has recently come out with an amazing handbook for B2B marketers. While they call it a "handbook" that's really not a good description of it, as it's basically too huge to hold in your hands for very long! 

I Google, Therefore I Am Losing the Ability to Think - Forum Thread of the Week - High Rankings forum members discuss a Guardian article by John Naughton (who was writing about a Nicholas Carr article in The Atlantic), which talks about how we seem to be losing our ability to concentrate for long periods of time. And apparently, the Internet is to blame!

HRA Wrap-up 234 - There are still a few seats for our SEO Lunch and Learn on July 18th. If you're in the Boston/Framingham area, please join us, we'd love to meet you.

Getting and Keeping Clients and Customers - Today's article is a bit off-topic as it talks about how the little things you do can make a big difference in obtaining and keeping your search marketing clients.

Improved Google SEO Documentation - Google's Matt Cutts has informed us that they've improved many things in their SEO documentation, including what they've written about robots.txt, IP delivery/geolocation vs. cloaking, the nofollow attribute, doorway pages and more.

Should You Change Your Copy When Rankings Fall? - Karon Thackston has a great article on her blog that I highly recommend.

Jill's Interview on SEO Myths and Scams - In preparation for next week's SES Toronto, I was interviewed by Manoj Jasra at Web Analytics World.

How to Determine ROI for Social Media - Forum Thread of the Week - Forum member "ramki" has a bunch of questions about social media marketing.

HRA Wrap-up 233 - Our June SEO training class is coming up this week, and we're looking forward to another great group of 6.

Will Linkbait Ruin the Internet? - When the term "linkbait" first appeared on the search marketing scene a few years ago, I wasn't too keen on it because it has a lot of negative connotations. In fishing, bait is not really a good thing (to the fish). One minute the fish thinks he's going to have a tasty meal, and the next minute he IS the tasty meal! Works out nicely for the fisherman, however.

Review of Advanced SEO Course from SEMPO Institute - Today. Here are some thoughts on another one of SEMPO's online training courses. Enjoy! – Jill

Updated Nitty-gritty Guide - Just wanted to let you know that I've finally updated my "Nitty-gritty Guide of Writing for the Search Engines"!

How Do I Redirect HTTPS to HTTP on My Site? - Advanced Forum Thread of the Week - Forum member "chrisjum" is wondering what the code is to redirect the HTTPS version of his website to the HTTP version.

HRA Wrap-up 232 - We're planning an "SEO Lunch and Learn" on July 18 from noon to 1:30PM here at High Rankings headquarters in Framingham, MA.

2 Domains, 1 Website - I have a client who has 2 domain names: namehere.com and differentnamehere.us pointing at the same IP address. Is it bad SEO to have multiple domain names for the same site? And will this negatively impact search engine results for each?

Lost Toolbar PageRank - The front page of my website has a [toolbar] PageRank of 4 and most of my inner pages had a PageRank of 3. After this quarter's Google [toolbar] update, my homepage remained a 4, but most of my inner pages went down to a 2.

SEO Consequences to Adding a Sharing Button - While this question may not be directly SEO-related, I'm wondering if there might be any negative SEO implications to including a social bookmarking and sharing button to the more popular pages on our website to leverage some of the popularity of social networking?

SEM Scholarship Contest - I'm honored to have been asked to be a judge in Marketing Pilgrim's third annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship contest. There are a ton of great prizes for the winner, including a free seat at an upcoming High Rankings Training Class!

302 Redirects Appear As 200 Status - If you're a true techie geek, you will like this High Rankings forum thread where member "doughayman" notices some weirdness in his server logs. With some probing, forum moderator and all-around server wizard "Randy" helps diagnose the problem, and all is well again.

HRA Wrap-up 231 - Let's see ... what's been going on lately that I can talk about? Oh yeah...I almost forgot about last week's family reunion for my grandmother's 100th b-day in Florida.

Optimizing Articles for Long-tail Keywords - Regarding long-tail keywords, I often find it difficult optimizing them in an article, mainly because it can look unnatural if you include them too often. How do you recommend I deal with this problem? Apart from in the headline, at what density do they need to be mentioned in an article in order to maximize our chances of getting good listings?

How to Make an Emotional Connection Through Your Copywriting - If you know where to look, you can easily find clues about what people are feeling. Once you discover that, making the connection is simple.

Diagnosing the SEO Health Of Your Website - Is your website sick? In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall health of your website. It's true we're not working with life or death situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is not receiving all the targeted search engine traffic it could be, is a sign of a sick website.

Free Preview Copy of Best Website - We've got a special offer for you today – a completely free preview copy of Nelson Bates' "Best Website" ebook.

Too Many Hits for My Custom 404 Page - Forum member "johking" posted that her 404-error page is getting tons of hits, and wonders if it's set up incorrectly.

HRA Wrap-up 230 - If you're in the New England area this week (and if you see this before Thursday night), you don't want to miss the latest SEMNE event happening in Nashua, NH on May 1 from 6:30 to 9:00PM. A whole bunch of search marketers will be networking and sharing ideas, as well as learning why blogging is essential from business consultant Ted Demopoulos.

Same Tags and Keywords But No High Rankings - If I have the same title tags and keywords as the company listed first in Google, Yahoo, etc., why don't I get a high ranking?

Getting to Grips with the AdWords Quality Score - Today’s guest article is written by Dave Collins, from UK-based SharewarePromotions Ltd. I really liked because it shows a similar philosophy to that of High Rankings (i.e., create good stuff and good stuff will happen!).

High Rankings Search Marketing Training Videos - We videotaped 8 search marketing training sessions and compiled them into a 4-DVD set. All of the sessions are taught by recognized experts who work in the search marketing trenches every day.

Creating Terrific Title Tags - Read the third installment of my "Avoiding SEO Brain Freeze" series at TalentZoo.

Advanced SEO High Rankings Forum Thread of the Week - Forum member "Christopher" is looking for help to improve his checkout conversions.

HRA Wrap-up 229 - The April SEO training class went off without a hitch and turned out to be another fun and interesting group. It's really nice having just 6 people in each class because then we all get to know each other a bit during the day. Can't wait to meet the May folks in a few weeks!

9 Websites on 1 Server - Here is the scenario: I had a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with 9 websites on it that were all interlinked. It worked great for awhile. Then in Nov. 2004, Google did a big adjustment, and all 9 of my sites dropped out of sight.

Different Results in Different States - Search engine results seem to vary for US states. For instance, one of my clients gets top results while one of my clients from another state doesn't get the same results.

SEMPO Institute's Online Training Insider's Guide to Search Marketing - This review is the first of a 3-part series reviewing each of the courses available to budding search marketers via the SEMPO Institute's online training curriculum.

Do We Need SEO Standards? - In a nutshell, I don't believe we need them. That said, after reading additional forum discussions on the topic, it certainly does make sense for search marketing organizations such as SEMPO to have a set of standards that their members must adhere to (if they don't already). However, there's no way for the search marketing industry as a whole to have standards, as we don't have (nor do we need) some sort of governing body that would enforce them.

Winning the Paid-search Game - My good friends at Page Zero Media, Andrew Goodman and Mona Elesseily, have just announced their half-day in-person seminar in Toronto which focuses on winning the paid-search game.

Sitemaps: How Important Are They? - When you're done reading the SEO Standards threads, here's a good one on sitemaps.

HRA Wrap-up 228 -

I'm gearing up for our SEO Training Class on Friday, which looks to be a good one. After all these years in the biz (13!), I still enjoy reviewing all these websites and figuring out the best way to help them increase their search engine traffic. It's like getting to solve SEO puzzles all day long in the office!

Consistency Is Key in the PPC Conversion Process - Let me enlighten you about something you might not have considered. Ultimate conversions from pay-per-click (PPC) ads come from a process, not a single event. Oftentimes, online marketers focus on the effects of PPC copywriting and the clickthrough rate it achieves. That clickthrough rate is thought of as the end-all, be-all for the campaign. But the overall goal of PPC copywriting is not to get people to click. Clicking a PPC ad is merely step one. The ultimate goal is to get visitors to take action once they reach your site.

Avoiding SEO Brain Freeze Series - If you're looking for an organized SEO method that won't confuse you, you may want to check out my recent columns at TalentZoo. I'm writing an series of articles on how to do on-page SEO from start to finish in a step-by-step manner.

Save $100 on Google Analytics Training Series - April Class - I wanted to give you a heads-up that ROI Revolution is starting their next Google Analytics Training Series on April 10, 2008. As you may remember, Jesse DaCosta was trained in Google Analytics through this series. They have been kind enough to continue to offer a $100 discount to any High Rankings Advisor subscribers who wish to attend.

Client Responsiveness: How Do You Prod Them Into Action - Forum member "lenwood" has provided a client with lots of SEO recommendations that should ultimately increase their search engine traffic. That is, however, if the client would only implement them!

Using Nofollow: Good, Bad, or Indifferent? - Now that the nofollow link attribute has been around for awhile, and even sanctioned by Google's Matt Cutts for "PageRank Sculpting," forum member "nethy" is wondering what your thoughts are on it.

How To Prove ROI with SEO? - Forum member "iloveseo2" wonders how one can prove one's return on investment and track conversions with SEO.

HRA Wrap-up 227 - Last week's Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC went really well. The organic SEO session that I spoke at had some interesting questions posed by audience members. I even broke my no-party rule and checked out MSN's party at Slate. It was surprisingly fun for 2 reasons: 1) it wasn't too loud, and 2) they had ping-pong tables!

A Marketer’s Thoughts from the SMX West Trenches -

Recently, Pauline and I were at the SMX West conference in Santa Clara. The event was well attended, and we'd both recommend the SMX conferences to anyone interested in the search marketing industry. In fact, if you're looking to learn some SEO/SEM stuff that is more complex, SMX Advanced in Seattle is coming up in June.

Negative SEO - I recently read an interesting article by someone who goes by the name of "slightlyshadyseo" regarding negative SEO, and asked our High Rankings Forum members what they thought about it.

HRA Wrap-up 226 - If you're at SES NYC next week, be sure to attend the Organic SEO panel discussion on Monday morning. I'm on the panel with Greg Boser and Dave Naylor. With Mike Grehan moderating, it's sure to be a fun and informative session!

PPC Campaign Tips - Today's guest article is a very informative one on paid-search campaigns by my friend Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media. Mona is considered by many to be the authority on the Yahoo Search Marketing platform. She's recently completed the world's only guide to Yahoo Search Marketing, called "Mastering Panama: A special report on Yahoo's new search marketing platform."

Stuff You Might Like - MarketMotive and Small Business Marketing Unleashed - In the last newsletter I told you about all sorts of educational opportunities in the search marketing space. Aside from the online learning previously mentioned (SEMPO Institute, Marketing Experiments) and the large conferences (such as SMX West and Search Engine Strategies), or the very small, customized High Rankings SEO Training Classes, there are a couple of other search marketing educational opportunities you may also be interested in.

PDFs Not Being Completely Indexed - I was checking to make sure that all my client's PDFs were appearing in Google's index and noticed something odd. Luckily all the PDFs appear when I do a site:yoursite.com filetype:pdf.

HRA Wrap-up 225 - Jill's Excellent February Adventure - I've been having a wonderful time traveling the world the past few weeks. Well, not really the world, but across the world! Wellington, New Zealand was terrific, as was the Webstock conference. Every person I met there couldn't have been nicer.

Learning SEO and SEM - Where to Start? -

Nearly every day I hear from newsletter subscribers, forum posters, and potential clients who've been charged with the task of learning how to optimize their company's website to gain more targeted search engine traffic, but they simply don't know where to begin or the best way to go about it.

Marketing Experiments Paid Search Management Course - The following is a review of the paid-search management certification course put on by Marketing Experiments. Enjoy! - Jill

Yes, [Toolbar] PageRank Means Nothing! -

There's a good thread in the forum from member "fishermack" explaining why toolbar PageRank is not an effective measurement for website traffic and sales.

HRA Wrap-up 224 -

That's all for today! I'm off to New Zealand, then Honolulu, followed by Santa Clara starting on Saturday morning. If you're in the Wellington, NZ area the week of Feb. 11, let me know and we can try to get together. If you're in the Honolulu area the week of Feb. 18, same thing! And if you're in Santa Clara the week after that for SMX West, I'll totally see you there!

Measuring B2B Conversions - You briefly hit on ROI and basically described perfectly a dilemma I have. We are a B2B manufacturer of machinery that costs anywhere from the 10's of thousands to the 100's of thousands each. We sell a handful of these machines each year. Consequently, the buying cycle can take up to a year or more. How would you suggest we figure ROI and conversions for this kind of business?

5 Keyword Strategies for B2B PPC Campaigns - Today's guest article is written by Andy Komack, the President of KoMarketing Associates. I had the pleasure of meeting Andy through SEMNE, the search marketing association for New England (see...networking *does* work!). Andy has been creating online marketing strategies for clients since 1999, so he's one of the old-timers who definitely knows what he's doing. KoMarketing provides search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social-media marketing, and corporate blogging strategies for their clients.

Does Google Use Theming? -

An interesting topic of discussion has broken out in the forum regarding whether Google understands the "theme" of a website.

HRA Wrap-up 223 -

We're looking forward to our SEO Training Class at the end of next week. It looks like we have a great crew signed up so far. We've been hard at work reviewing their websites and overall SEO pain points so that we can provide them with the info and SEO strategies they're seeking. It's going to be a lot of fun!

Number of Words on a Page -

I have a customer who is convinced that for maximum SEO, the page length must be between 450 and 625 words. He has a software program that tells him this. Is there any truth to it?

Duplicate Content Within Shopping Cart -

I have plain html pages that describe the various health-related products that I recommend. If one of my readers wishes to purchase a product, they click on an "order now" button, which takes them to the desired product at my shopping cart.

Are SEO Conferences Worthwhile If You're Already #1? -

I really would like to go to a SEO conference someday, but which? I'm not an SEO novice and PPC is not my strategy. Plus being #1 what could anybody teach me, anyway? Now, I know that is a very stupid and dangerous statement. ;-) Future trends or expert hints very specific to my site are what I think I need. What do you think?

High Rankings In the News - Online Radio Programs -

January has already been busy for me with a couple of different radio interviews.

$10k per Year for Directory Inclusion -

Forum member "maleman" asks if it is worth $10K plus per year for advertising on a website/directory?

HRA Wrap-up 222 -

That's all for today. January is off to a bang, and we're busy, busy, busy! I'm looking forward to my trip to New Zealand in February for the Webstock NZ conference, although I'm not looking forward to the amazingly long flight. But I figure it can't be worse than it is in my head thinking about it. At least I hope not!

Data Feeds and Duplicate Content - A lot of my clients pull data/products from semi-public databases to populate their websites, similar to how real estate agents show listings of homes on their sites. I've been ensuring that each client has unique valuable and professionally edited content whenever possible on the rest of the site, but I’m afraid that if I make the portions of the site that use the semi-public data accessible to the search engines, they will find duplicate information on other sites and my client site(s) would not be indexed.

The 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide - Jesse is back with another of his reviews for you. This week he read Marketing Sherpa’s 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide, and has provided his thoughts about it for you here. Enjoy! – Jill

Free SMX Pass - Thanks to everyone who filled out our survey after the last newsletter! We're still looking for more people to fill it out.

Need Some Input on Site Outline - Forum member "ronfrank" is new to SEO and is having trouble figuring out how to categorize his site based on keyword phrases.

HRA Wrap-up 221 - Between going live with the new site, uploading old newsletters (still many to go), creating redirects, and documenting how Google is indexing the whole thing, I did get away with the family for a few days to Florida. We had a nice, relaxing time, especially the full day I got to sit by the pool with my laptop. Now that's my idea of fun! The hotel had great poolside service for food and drinks, and that made things even nicer. Corie would have liked someone to go to the beach with her, but the rest of us aren't really into that, unfortunately.