Entries Tagged 'Search Engines' ↓

Like many another person who has a Movable Type weblog I thought it would be funny to list search phrases people used on search engines to get here, the searches they did once here and the entries that were commented on.

Added those to my weblogs’ sidebars had the unexpected effect of increasing the density of certain keywords and phrases. That made Google pay more attention and got me yet more hits from the search engines.

Everyone who writes a weblog, however lofty his purpose or aloof from the majority he may be, likes to see people reading what he writes. Right? Well, maybe.

Unless you’re an adolescent quantity addict you want the folks who come to your weblog to share a taste, interest, quirk or interest. The weblog visitors who come and find your writing not up to their standards are to be expected. You’ll inescapably have people who arrive and feel misled by the search engine because your opinions are different or not exactly what they were searching for.

Edifying Spectacle has a sex weblog. And I write about my sexuality in my personal weblog. References to personal names and words like nude occur in consanguineous entries. Google is just a collection of asocial, unsympathetic algorithms. Often Google directs the zillions and zillions of folks searching for naked pictures of a celebrity here. Even guys looking for the naked image of gay conservative political writer Andrew Sullivan (maybe Sullivan should offer a nude calendar the next time he’s having a pledge drive).

So noting comments and searching in my weblogs sidebars mostly brought me more and more people looking for sexual thrills that aren’t to be found here. Finally I took them down. I don’t need their visits.

Originally posted 2003-03-25 17:25:54. Republished by Old Post Promoter

A simple note that Gogole.com was a one of the domains Google registered to protect itself and searchers from the domain abusers and spammers has been one of Computer Toaster’s most visited pages. Here’s an interesting list:

Domain Name Registrations That Include the Word Google

Via ResearchBuzz

Originally posted 2004-05-06 09:14:22. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: S. Housley

Tips for Helping Your RSS Feed Perform! In some ways RSS is very similar to HTML, the language commonly used to create websites. Just as with HTML, webmasters using traditional search engine optimization tactics when creating an RSS feed will find that their RSS feed receives additional exposure and interest.

Simple steps to optimize an RSS feed for search engines:

1.) The title should contain important search terms. To state the obvious, the title should be relevant and not misleading, while still emphasizing keywords. Ultimately, the title should entice the reader to read on, not mislead them.

2.) Display RSS feeds. Most webmasters display their feeds as content on their website. When displaying a feed be sure to use PHP, ASP or HTML so that search engines will spider the contents of the feed displayed. If using a template to display feeds, use header tags to define the appearance of the Channel Title and Item Titles. Many search engines weight header tags with more importance. See Displaying RSS Feeds for additional information – http://www.small-business-software.net/display-rss.htm

3.) Internal & external Links. Within a feed you should always use the full path of any links, keeping in mind that other sites may syndicate the contents of the RSS feed. Links that are not local to the site should launch a new browser. While this is not specific to search engines it will help keep visitors on your site.

4.) Link text should emphasize keywords. It is no longer a deep, dark secret that the text used for incoming links will help a site contextually define the keywords that the site appears for in the search engines. Keeping that in mind, be sure to use keywords in any link text that points back to your website.

5.) My.Yahoo and My.MSN. This is surprisingly simple to do but often overlooked by publishers and webmasters. The fastest way to have an RSS feed spidered by Yahoo or MSN is to include the feed on a personal my.yahoo or my.msn home page. Simply create an account on the respective search engines and customize the home page to include your RSS feed. This is done by adding content and listing the URL to the RSS feed. Typically, within 24-48 hours the feed’s contents will be spidered and indexed by Yahoo and MSN.

6.) Theme feeds. Feeds should be themed. This will help with themed links back to a publisher’s website from anyone syndicating the feed’s content.

7. ) Link popularity. Increase link popularity by submitting the RSS feed, blog or podcast to the appropriate directories. The following directories allow submissions of specific kinds of RSS feeds. Be sure to follow the guidelines of each site and choose categories wisely.

Submit Podcasts – http://www.podcasting-tools.com/submit-podcasts.htm Submit RSS feeds – http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm Submit Blogs – http://www.blog-connection.com/submit-blogs.htm

8.) RSS feed descriptions. RSS feed descriptions are generally summaries or introductions to other content. Often, feed creators will provide additional information on an HTML site, enticing the reader to click through for the full information if it is a topic that is of interest to them. Provide enough teaser copy that the reader can easily discern if the contents are something that is important to them.

9.) Subscribe to feeds. This might seem obvious, but a surprisingly large number of publishers do not subscribe to their own feed. This is a great way to visualize what your customers see, and experiment with formatting and integrating HTML into feeds.

10.) Image ads. Add your corporate logo to your RSS feed. Create a brand and enforce that brand by including the image in the RSS feed. The image will enhance your corporate identity and dress up the look of your feed by adding your corporate logo.

11.) Alphabetical rank. Many feed readers list feeds alphabetically in the reader. Feed channels that begin with A will naturally appear in the top of the feed list in most feed readers. If you wish to appear in the top of list of feeds that a reader has subscribed to, keep this tip in mind.

12.) Meaningful Links Each item in your feed should contain a unique URL associated with it. This will direct users to associated information. Many find using target URLs with the “#” symbol in the link to identify specific content useful.

Most marketers have a love-hate relationship with search engines. Search engines have the abilitiy to make even the most confident webmaster feel powerless . Let’s face it – all of us have felt the wrath of the search engine powers-that-be at one time or another, and while it may be difficult to know what line was crossed or how we fell out of favor, following some basic guidelines will be helpful in optomizing feeds for search engines.

About the author:  About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

Originally posted 2005-03-22 19:49:00. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Playing By Googles Rules

Author: Wil Rushmer

As the undisputable leader in search engines, Google places a very high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search results, especially now that the company is public. The know that in order to keep the shareholders and users of the engine happy, the quality of returned results are extremely important. For this reason, doing the wrong thing, purposely or unintentionally could result in a severe penalty or even get you get you banned from the listings. Below is a short list of ideas to consider when drafting your search engine optimization campaign.

Hidden Links

Link PR is becoming a hot topic among seo firms, however whether or not incoming/outgoing links still play an as important role as they used to, it still considered a ”blackhat” technique that can and most likely will result in a ban or penalty from Google.

Hidden Text

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Originally posted 2005-04-29 17:39:43. Republished by Old Post Promoter

That Alexa rankings don’t have much value is a given with experienced webmasters.

With some sites I like to see how the ranking shifts. Just a minor supplement to what I get from AWStats and Webalizer.

People who are thinking about advertising on websites often take the Alexa ranking very seriously. And some of the online ad services incorporate Alexa’s stats in their summary of the sites for whom they are selling ads.

That makes it even easier for Google and other search engines to gulp up the statistics and links.

Referral spammers have caught on to this.

Have you ever wondered why all those poker sites would send so many false referrers when your site’s visitor statistics aren’t visible to the search engines.

The bogus referrals show up in Alexa’s results. Yet another way to get Google to pay attention to your URL.

Some of my sites list a huge number of visitors from gambling sites that don’t link to me.

More search engine spam for the Google, Yahoo, Jeeves and MSN to eventually find a way to filter out.

Surely makes it hard for potential website advertisers to make a decision.

Originally posted 2005-09-04 00:17:30. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Many months ago I made a passing reference to the good vocal mechanics but lack of taste of a current MTV nymphet I’ll call Dirty Christina or DC (to keep from getting the hits described below).

I found that a few people came to Edifying Spectacle hoping to find nude pictures of DC. Thinking that funny I made of mention of it in what was then my Sunday summary of search engine requests. The entry was entitled “Naked DC!”

The second entry started getting lots of hits, lots and lots. I changed my Movable Type archives. The file names and locations changed. Normally I leave the old files in place to keep people getting 404 pages when they come in from search engines. But I did delete the old Naked DC entry hoping it would drop out of the search engines listings more quickly. The search engines quickly found the new entry. And it was once again two out of thee of Google’s top results for Naked DC.

Restless fellow that I am I eventually made another change to my Movable Type individual archives (making the directory the category name and the individual archive name the entry title). I went and made the second version of Naked DC a redirect to my sexuality weblog, Amorous Propensities. Maybe they’d find something there to amuse them. If nothing else it was politer than throwing them to the 404 page.

Yesterday checking my server logs for the first time in ages I discovered that 9.3% of my hits for the last few weeks have been from people looking for Naked DC. A real waste of bandwidth. So I finally took the sensible action: I changed the title of the entry.

It’ll take the search engines a couple of months but with luck the folks looking for the naked pop diva will be looking elsewhere.

Originally posted 2003-03-25 16:32:47. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: Dina Giolitto, Wordfeeder.com

Article authors who use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keywords to attract attention and falsely position themselves as experts, are like impurities in the water, clogging up the pipes. This is indeed a sorry situation. Unlike the days when the internet was young, if you want to find good information, you have to filter out the dirt first.

When you do web research using keywords, do you generally have to read anywhere from 4-7 articles on one particular topic before finding one written by an intelligent human being? SEO abuse is making it more and more difficult to locate the people with real expertise and valuable insights. It’s a growing problem, to say the least. But in terms of information-gathering, how do we pick through the chaff and get to the gold?

Use Specialized Terms in Your Keyword Search

When I’m in research mode, in addition to keywords, I use specific and/or specialized terms in my web searches. This helps me scope out authors with real knowledge as opposed to the BS artist looking to make a quick buck. It works for me, and it can work for you as well.

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Originally posted 2005-06-26 18:10:15. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Haven’t tried it, don’t know if I will. I appreciate the value of Google Page Rank but don’t spend my time drooling over it. As the clich� goes: design your page for users, not for search engines. But I know some site admins have take inexhaustible pleasure in displaying statistics and are ever hungry for more information about their status on Google’s almighty eyes.

MyRankOnline was created to enable webmasters easily know and post PageRank on their pages without any Toolbar. If you want to profit from this service, then copy/paste the code below on your site :

MyRankOnline

A comment left on another entry:

Whoever is interested how the scripts work that show your pagerank, here you can find the source code:

http://www.pagerank-without-toolbar.com

Originally posted 2004-07-26 17:28:10. Republished by Old Post Promoter

When Feedster first started up under the name Roogle I noticed a surprising number of visitors coming to my weblogs. All looking for sex. The hits dwindled as I guess my entries grew submerged under other weblogs sex talk.

The other day I noticed a sudden surge in Feedster referrals .Earlier in the day I’d posted covers of three old gay pornographic paperbacks. Looks like a large group of people are using Feedster’s image search instead of Google’s. I’ll have to check and see if Feedster’s image searches yield fewer irrelevant images than Google.

The Feedster folks were still looking for sex. No complaint, it is normal enough

Originally posted 2003-05-16 07:29:21. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I’m still sleepy and Extreme Tracking is down. But I’d planned to make Sunday my day for writing about referrals to the cite.

I have a page, Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) title=”Name of a Tex Williams song.”, about my cigarette addiction. The pages title was the title of an old Western Swing song by Tex Williams. Not a week goes by without at least one person looking for “Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette.” Probably looking for an MP3.

For a long time my favorite brand was St. Moritz. They had gold bands at the filter edge. I thought (still think) they had the best menthol of any cigarette I’d tried. They don’t make St. Moritz cigarettes any more in the US. If you are a rich addict you can buy the original European ones. I suspect folks coming to my site are looking for a cheap source.

The page makes passing references to cigarette ad campaigns of the 60s so people digging deeply down Google’s listings for info old brands like Taryeton find their way to the page.

Originally posted 2002-12-01 09:08:52. Republished by Old Post Promoter