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High Rankings Advisor: Search Engine Optimization Glossary - Issue No. 036December 4, 2002 ________________________________________________________
~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~ *Introductory Comments: ----> Some Cool Press *Search Engine Marketing: ----> Search Engine Optimization Glossary *This Week's Sponsor: ----> LinkSurvey Link-popularity Software *Guest Article: ----> How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated *Other SEO News: ----> Thanksgiving Surprise from Google ----> WebmasterWorld Forums Breaks Alexa's Top 1000 *Stuff You Might Like ----> Recap of Past Stuff *Advisor Wrap-up: ----> Dallas SES Conference ________________________________________________________ ~~~Introductory Comments~~~ Hey everyone! Hope my fellow Americans enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday, and that all my international readers enjoyed the quiet time while we pigged out and watched football! A lot has happened since last time. Peter Da Vanzo from Search Engine Blog interviewed me and we discussed my approach to search engine optimization, my old RankWrite newsletter, my most memorable conference experience and more! Read the interview here: <http://www.searchengineblog.com/interviews/jill_whalen_interview.htm>. I also started a weekly audio segment entitled "Sound Advice for Search Engine Optimization" in conjunction with "What's Working in Biz." These two-minute SEO tips can be found at Microsoft's WindowsMedia.com business section, or from my redirect link for the What's Working in Biz site here: </soundadvice>. This week's audio tip is entitled "Are Cutting Edge Designs Killing Your Rankings?" Look for a new section in future Advisors to announce each week's audio tip. (Or just click on the "Sound Advice" graphic on my press page: </press.htm>.) Let me know what you think of them! Okay, enough about me...let's get to the good stuff! - Jill ~~~Search Engine Marketing Issues~~~ ++Search Engine Optimization Glossary++ From: Nancy Houtz Jill, I have newly entered the field of Internet marketing, and more specifically pay-per-click bid management as a result of my employer turning over a big pay-per-click account to me, and finding I am a natural at it and truly enjoy doing it. I was introduced to your newsletter and find it very informative and helpful; however, I find myself continually frustrated by many of the abbreviated terms used in the articles that I don't understand the meaning of. I try second-guessing, and figure out many of them, but some have me stumped! Right now, I feel like the kid in school, afraid to raise his/her hand and ask a "dumb question"... but perhaps, like that kid, there are others afraid to ask too! I realize to sound knowledgeable you need to use the accepted "jargon"; however, would it be possible to include a list at the bottom of the article of brief explanation and spelled out meaning of all the abbreviations or terms? Example: From most recent newsletter, SEO (Search Engine Operative?), ODP, paid inclusion URL, DMOZ link, Googlebot - know what Google is, but not the "bot" part. If I'm the only one, then please disregard. Just thought I'd ask/suggest! Nancy Houtz ~~~Jill's Response~~~ Hi Nancy, Sorry to have confused you! Please don't worry about asking any "dumb" questions, as that's the only way to learn about anything. Your comments are well taken and you're definitely not alone. I do try to give the full word and put the abbreviation in parentheses most of the time, but apparently I've been lax at doing this! Some of the terms, e.g., DMOZ, are just so commonplace to me that I forget that others may not know them. So let's define the ones in your email plus any others I can think of. I'm sure you won't be the only one to appreciate this mini-glossary. (Please note that with some phrases such as SEO, there will be people who disagree with my definition. That's what keeps this industry interesting!) SEO = Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimizer (depending on how you use it). My definition of SEO is "optimizing" your existing Web site to be search engine friendly. Search engine friendly simply means that your keyword phrases have been researched and carefully chosen, and have been incorporated into a few hundred words of visible copy on the pages of the site. It also means that the design of the site is such that search engines can follow the links throughout the site and read the information provided on every page. Other aspects of SEO include creating search engine friendly HTML (hyper text markup language) coding such as keyword-rich Title tags and Meta tags. Modern-day professional SEO does not try to *trick* the search engines into believing your site is relevant for particular keyword phrases, nor does it create hundreds of keyword-laden pages meant for search engine "eyes" only. This is what is known as search engine spamming, not search engine optimization. SEM = Search Engine Marketing. This phrase and acronym is often used interchangeably with SEO; however, it's actually much more than SEO. Search engine optimization is actually one type of SEM. The other major type of SEM would be pay-per-click advertising (PPC). Many companies specialize in all types of SEM, but plenty of them specialize in either SEO or PPC. My area of expertise lies in the SEO end of things. In that same vein, another phrase that was bandied about for awhile was Search Engine Positioning or SEP. We don't hear that one quite as much now that SEM has gained in popularity. Many use the term SEP interchangeably with SEO, but since optimizers don't actually "position" pages within the search engines, I find it to be a misnomer. It works better to describe PPC ads, since those are really the only way someone can actually place a site in an exact position in a search engine. Paid inclusion (sometimes known as pay-per-inclusion or PPI) = Paying a search engine to include your page or pages in their database. Paid-inclusion submissions are very often done through a third-party company such as PositionTech <http://www.positiontech.com>. All of the major search engines (except for Google) have paid-inclusion programs. PPI does not give sites any special treatment other than regular spidering (usually every 48 hours). This regular spidering is helpful to pages that change content frequently, or for Webmasters who are attempting to tweak their pages for higher rankings. ODP = Open Directory Project. Also known as DMOZ (Directory MOZilla) <http://www.dmoz.org>. This one is very confusing to people because they call themselves "DMOZ open directory project" on their site, but they don't seem to define "DMOZ." Seems like it would be less confusing if they got rid of the DMOZ acronym and used only ODP instead. You can learn more about them on their "about us" page: <http://dmoz.org/about.html>. In a nutshell, ODP/DMOZ is an Internet directory where you can submit your site for review and (hopefully) a listing. Once you get a listing, it would be considered a "DMOZ link" (or an "ODP link"). Googlebot = The automated robot (or bot) that Google sends out to crawl the Web in order to find new pages to add to their vast database. These bots are sometimes called spiders also. If you can check your server logs, you can often see which bots have visited your site. A couple of other search engine bot names are "Slurp" (Inktomi) and "Scooter" (AltaVista). I'm sure there are plenty of other acronyms and words that you're not sure of. Adventive put a glossary together a few years ago, but I'm not sure if it's been kept up to date. You can check it out here: <http://www.adventive.com/tools/SEO.html>. If you do a search for "SEO glossary" on Google you'll find many more. Feel free to email me with any other terms you're not sure of and I'll be happy to explain them to you! ____________________________________________adv. LOOKING FOR HIGH-QUALITY LINK PARTNERS? ____________________________________________ LinkSurvey link-popularity software is the tool you need. Check the link pop. of a whole bunch of related sites all at once. Our user-friendly software saves you tons of time & aggravation! Search through all the major search engines in one fell swoop, and quickly create your own detailed link-popularity reports. Free trial and no-risk money-back guarantee! Learn more now at: <http://www.antssoft.com/linksurvey/index.htm>. _____________________________________________ ~~~Guest Article~~~ ++How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated++ Two of my fellow moderators from the Ihelpyou Forums <http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums>, Kalena Jordan and Dan Thies, recently went through the process of setting up a syndicated news feed for Kal's site so that her articles and blog entries could start getting picked up by many of the big news sources on the Net. They learned a lot along the way and were nice enough to share what they learned in the following guest article. You may remember Dan from his "Search Engine Fast Start" book </faststart> and the interview I did with him in June </issue014.htm#stuff>. You'll also remember Kalena from the excellent coverage she gave us of the Search Engine Strategies conference in Sydney, Australia </issue018.htm#seonews2>. Kal is the CEO of Web Rank Ltd. <http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com> and was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australasia. As you can imagine, Dan and Kal make quite the dynamic duo! Please give them a warm Advisor welcome. Guest Article How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated By Kalena Jordan and Dan Thies A little known secret for attracting more traffic is to add bucket loads of fresh content to your site. When promoted effectively, fresh content can act like a magnet by pulling in new visitors every single day -- giving you the opportunity to turn those visitors into loyal followers and paying customers. Fresh content improves the "stickiness" of your site too, which gives visitors a reason to return on a regular basis. Plus, the search engines reward popular sites with more link popularity and a higher search ranking. So how do you spread the word about your new content and get it placed in front of your target audience? One way is by creating an "RSS feed," i.e., a special .rss file containing the content you want syndicated. It's through this RSS feed that news sites can instantly grab your fresh content. Your RSS feed is just a text file that uses XML language format; it's fairly simple to create if you're at all familiar with HTML. Let's look at a simplified example of the RSS file we created: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> <rss version="0.91"> <channel> <title>Search Engine News Blog</title> <link>http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/search_engine_news_blo g.htm</link> <description>search engine news web log, tracking daily developments in the search engine optimization industry</description> <language>en-us</language> <copyright>Copyright 2002.</copyright> <webMaster>info@high-search-engine-ranking.com</webMaster> <image> <title>Search Engine News Blog</title> <url>http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/senblogotiny.jpg</url> <link>http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/search_engine_news_blo g.htm</link> <width>90</width> <height>52</height> <description>Search Engine News Blog</description> </image> <item> <title>Google Defines Ethical SEO</title> <link>http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/GoogleDefinesEthicalSE O.htm</link> </item> <item> <title>Yahoo Offends Gay Community in UK</title> <link>http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/YahooOffendsGayCommuni tyInUK.htm</link> </item> </channel> </rss> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The RSS feed consists of one or more "channels." A single channel will be sufficient for the majority of sites. Each channel contains information about one or more news articles on your site. A channel consists of the following required information: * Title: the name of the channel (in the above example, the channel title is called "Search Engine News Blog"). * Link: the URL for the channel's main Web page (the page on the Web site where the news items are displayed). * Description: a description of the channel's purpose and content. The first two lines in the example define it as an RSS feed. The <channel> tag comes next and contains the required information about the news channel. Optional information follows these items and includes language, copyright info, contact email addresses, and an image (logo) that can be displayed with the channel's headlines. Our example contains all these options, but you can leave these out of your feed if you prefer. In addition to the required information, the channel must contain at least one news item. News items consist of the following: * Title: this is the headline that will be displayed for the news item. * Link: the URL where the full news item can be found (for best results, each item should be on its own unique Web page). * Description: a description of the news item - sometimes referred to as a "teaser." The first two elements are the minimum expected by nearly all sites that carry headlines. The description field is optional, as some syndicators will ignore this field altogether, posting only the item headline. Because of this, our example RSS file does not include item descriptions. Next you'll see two news items listed in our example: "Google Defines Ethical SEO" and "Yahoo Offends Gay Community in UK." Additional news items would follow the same format, and be listed directly below within <item> </item> tags. Finally, the last two lines of the feed are closing tags. (XML, like HTML, requires opening and closing tags.) To preview what our example RSS feed looks like when syndicated, click on the following link: <http://www.wc.cc.va.us/services/news/preview.asp?c=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.h igh-search-engine-ranking.com%2Fsenb.rss>. (This link may break up and need to be copied and pasted into your browser in order to view it correctly.) Once your RSS file is set up, here are your next steps to getting it found by content aggregators: 1. Save the file with an .rss extension (e.g., mynews.rss), and upload it to the main folder of your Web site. 2. Validate your RSS feed by running it through the RSS Validator <http://feeds.archive.org/validator/> to make sure it's set up correctly. 3. Display the "valid RSS" logo on your site (available from the link above) and provide a visible link to your feed (e.g., http://www.mydomain.com/mynews.rss) from your site pages. We used the following wording: Webmasters! Click below to feature our Search Engine News Blog headlines on your site. RSS Feed For This Page. 4. (Optional) Create a JavaScript version of the RSS feed to enable other Webmasters to syndicate your content on their sites (the Wytheville Community College News Center <http://www.wc.cc.va.us/services/news/default.asp> provides this service for free). 5. Submit your feed to content aggregators. (Some sources are provided at the end of this article.) 6. Update your feed regularly by adding new items to the .rss file and ensure that each item has its own link on your Web site. 7. To keep your feed fresh, try to limit your channel items to a maximum of five by deleting older items from your feed as you add new ones. The dates next to your news items will adjust depending on when the content aggregators pick them up. We've only scratched the surface of RSS feeds in this short lesson, but it should be enough to get you started. A complete description of the RSS 0.91 format can be found here: <http://backend.userland.com/rss>. Here are some additional resources for creating your own news feed: Set Up Your Own Newsfeed <http://www.internet-tips.net/Homepages/newsfeeds.htm> RSS: Lo-Fi Content Syndication <http://www.econtentmag.com/r4/2002/bannan1_02.html> Blogify Your Page <http://logicerror.com/blogifyYourPage> Content Syndication with RSS <http://rss.benhammersley.com/> (a blog about RSS) Here are a few content aggregators where you can register your feed: Syndic8 <http://www.syndic8.com/> Moreover <http://www.moreover.com/> Aggregator Userland <http://aggregator.userland.com/> News is Free <http://www.newsisfree.com/> News Knowledge <http://www.newsknowledge.com/> Once your feed is registered, the news sites will automatically pick up your content as you add it. You can also download one of these RSS readers to examine your feed: Feed Reader <http://www.feedreader.com/> Headline Viewer <http://www.headlineviewer.com/> So there you go. Not as difficult as you thought, huh? With a little effort, your site can be rubbing shoulders with the big players on major news portals. Enjoy the traffic! Kalena Jordan (kalena@high-search-engine-ranking.com) Dan Thies (dan@cannedhelp.com) ~~~Other SEO News~~~ ++Thanksgiving Surprise from Google++ So last week I'm at my grandmother's condo in Pompano, Florida, checking my email and a few of my favorite SEO forums. Thinking that the Internet would be pretty dead with the holiday and all, I didn't expect there to be much going on. Whoo-boy was I wrong! It seems that Google tried to slip in some new Webmaster guidelines <http://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html> while nobody was looking! So there I am reading forum posts on how negative Google was towards SEOs, and how people just couldn't believe Google would write stuff like that. Hmm, I thought...what in the world did Google write? Of course there was no way I could wait until I was back from vacation to find out, so I clicked to the section regarding SEOs <http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html>. When I finished reading it I was really confused. Where was the negativity? I thought what they wrote was right on the money. In fact, it seemed like I could have written it! Aside from a few minor details that I didn't agree with, the sentiments were ones that I've been trying to get across to the world for years. It started out saying that there are a few unethical SEOs who give the industry a bad name. I think they were too kind. Judging from the emails and phone calls I receive from people who have been "burned" by these types of "SEOs," I would have said "many" as opposed to "a few." It has always irked me that the first thing people think of when you say "search engine optimization" is snake-oil salesmen. One day I hope to be able to proudly shout to the world that I'm an SEO and not have people think I do sneaky things. Google's article and guidelines are a small step in the right direction. I hope that my own articles, forum posts and this newsletter are also small steps. If you add up all my small steps and the steps of others with similar beliefs, we're beginning to put a dent in the problem! Please read what Google has to say and let me know what you think. Am I just seeing what I want to see, or do you agree that Google is on track with their information? That said -- there were a couple of things I didn't agree with. The first was that "Ethical SEO firms report deceptive sites that violate Google's spam guidelines." Patrolling for spam is Google's job, not mine! They could easily hire some people to go searching for that stuff, and maybe they already have. It wouldn't be hard to find and would be a pretty fun job! The other statement I disagreed with was where they told potential SEO consumers, "For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee." In another paragraph they tell you to beware of any SEO company that guarantees rankings, yet they tell you we're supposed to guarantee your money back for any reason whatsoever (unconditionally). Umm...I don't think so! Professional SEO consists of lots of upfront work, with researching keywords, rewriting content, fixing design issues and working out usability problems. If we're left to do exactly what we want to do for your site, we *will* substantially increase its rankings for the keywords we target. But there are always factors outside of our control that can figure into the mix. Regardless, we deserve to be paid for the work that was done. Another minor issue was the implication that large SEO companies are somehow better than smaller ones. I tend to think the opposite is true. With a large company, you could be pawned off on some junior account rep once the contract is signed. With a small firm, you deal directly with the "expert." All in all though, I really liked what Google had to say, and these few things don't detract from it too much. ++WebmasterWorld Forums Breaks Alexa's Top 1000++ Just received an interesting email newsletter from Brett Tabke of the WebmasterWorld forums, which mentioned that they've broken Alexa's top 1000 most popular sites on the Net. Congrats to Brett and WMW! My site's at 19,897. Looks like I have quite a lot of catching up to do! ~~~Stuff You Might Like~~~ ++Recap of Past Stuff++ Sorry, just a recap again! "Step-By-Step(tm) Copywriting Course" by Karon Thackston - a full-blown copywriting course disguised as a .pdf file </issue009.htm#stuff>. "Search Engine Optimization" Report by Mike Grehan </searchenginereport> - This is the one that's rocking the search engine world by providing solid facts on how search engines work. While the rest of us have been using trial and error to determine how to get high rankings, Mike's been interviewing the people that invented search engines! Read my full review here: </issue018.htm#stuff>. "21 Techniques to Maximize your Profits on Google AdWords Select" by Andrew Goodman - a special report that shows how to do exactly that </issue006.htm#seonews2>. "Words That Work" reports for copywriters and wannabe copywriters to get into the minds of their target audience. Read my review here: </issue033.htm#stuff>. "Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content" - This is the 253-page transcript from ContentBiz's "2nd Annual Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content Summit" which was held in May. If you have great free content that you want to start charging for, this report is a must-read. See my full review here: </issue017.htm#stuff>. ~~~Advisor Wrap-up~~~ I had a nice relaxing time visiting with my grandmother and my sister last week in Florida. I swear my grandmother gets younger each year. I'm crossing my fingers that this is a genetic thing! We didn't get to swim with the dolphins as they were all booked up -- maybe next year. No Advisor again next week, cuz I'll be speaking at the Dallas Search Engine Strategies conference. Hope to see you there! For more info or to register, check out the SES site here: <http://www.searchenginestrategies.com>. If you can't make it, we'll catch up in two weeks! - Jill    |
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